Japanese TV is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. It can be terrible and it can be brilliant. I suspect that most people's knowledge of Japanese television comes from watching The Simpsons-remember the seizure-inducing cartoons or cruel gameshows that take pleasure in other peoples' pain or embarassment? No one would accuse The Simpsons of being an accurate portrayal of reality at the best of times but there's usually a thread of truth somewhere. Japanese TV is many things but it is not easily quantifiable.
My exposure to 'real' Japanese TV has actually dropped significantly since we got cable and that's my loss. The truth of the matter is that it is so much easier to watch english television. I have the National Geographic channel on 24/7 practically. Sometimes I switch it to Fox or Discovery or the History channel. I may even watch a few minutes of the Disney channel. You're almost guaranteed to get some quality programming on these channels but rarely will it be inspirational- or brilliant.
Japanese TV can be a connundrum-sometimes it can be brilliant and sometimes it makes me want to throw the television out the window. Without a doubt though it's an important factor in Japanese society. I mean, three quarters of the people I've talked to stayed at home and watched TV on New Years Eve for God's sakes! And New Years is the biggest holiday in Japan.
Let's start off with the bad. "Variety shows" run rampant on Japanese TV. It's a scourge which is comparable to our 'reality tv' in North America. The only thing the two actually have in common is that they're a scourge to mankind. Variety shows are slightly similar to...latenight talk shows. Only they're not on during the night (they're always on) and they're a little more interactive. Basically you have the host (who, like David Letterman or Jay Leno are often bigger than the "stars" themselves,) and you have a group of celebrities and you have a live studio audience. I'd like to tell you what goes on in these variety shows but I honestly have no idea. There's usually the host and at least 8 other celebrities from all different walks of life-singers, comedians,movie stars, sports stars, etc. Sometimes they play games which, according to the audience, are extremely funny-but this stupid foreigner never gets the joke. Sometimes they just talk with each other and laugh. I don't know what goes on but it must all be very hilarious because variety shows are a craze in Japan. I honestly don't know where they get all the celebrities from.
Something else you'll also see quite frequently on tv are dramas. It may be some sappy japanese drama, it might be a sappy Korean drama or it could be some samurai drama. These shows might be fascinating to a japanese person but they usually just bore me to death.
And finally there's baseball. As you probably know, Japanese people are crazy about baseball. Fortunately, the season has ended and I haven't seen a baseball game on TV in a long time. I'm not a big fan of MLB and the Japanese league really doesn't have anything going for it either. There will be at least two games playing on TV at the same time (remember that basic TV is only about 8 channels) and it's usually boring as hell. There are only about 6 teams in each conference and the pitchers and hitters know each other like the back of their hand. Almost every at bat is guaranteed to go to a 3-2 count and the games last forever!
There we go, we finally got the bad stuff out of the way. At it's worst, Japanese TV can be boring or stupid. But fortunately it has a lot going for it too. Let's continue on shall we?
The best thing about Japanese TV is that you can see stuff that you'll never see anywhere else. This can both be fantastic or horrible but fortunately it's usually fantastic. Rather than try to analyze why it's so good, I'll just list my best japanese tv moments. Let's start with the most recent:
1)While waiting for Jared to come into the room so we could watch 24, Fumiko switched on the TV to the basic channels. What I saw reminded me just how much great tv I had been missing out on during the past couple months. First, we got to see a Japanese olympic figure skater get put in a cage, which then did 200 very fast rotations. The figure skater then had to get out and run down a straight red line without losing her balance. She did it no problem so then they put her back in for 500 rotations and then 1000 rotations. Finally the doctor observing the experiment stopped them before they could try 2000 rotations. This is something you would NEVER see on North American television. No doubt before they tried the figure skater, they probably had some silly variety show celebrities try it out themselves with hilarious results ensuing.
2)After the figure skater experiment, they decided to test out the oft said belief that a dog will protect its owner if the owner is in grave danger. They took a very realistic bear suit, rubbed bear scent all over it and then put a man inside it. The owners would take their dog for a walk in some park and the 'bear' would jump out of the shadows nearby. The owner would fall, let go of the leash and let the dog do it's thing. It was hilarious. Sometimes the dog would completely abandon the owner whilst the 'bear' pretended to eat the owner. Sometimes it wouldn't know what to do and bark a few times before scurrying off all the while looking back at his master. And very rarely, a dog might actually fight back and protect the owner (only the German Shepherd and a dog that looked suspiciously like a wolf fought back.) I was practically rolling out of my seat watching the reactions of these dogs-great stuff.
3)Then we have the variety shows. Ok sometimes they're not as bad as all that. Sometimes they have "reporters" who go out and do silly things (like joining a kids karate class, play with snakes or go around downtown Shibuya, harrassing the Shibuya girls.) These reporters/comedians are constantly on TV and seem to be on all the different variety shows-they don't seem to be loyal to any one television station. They get way more airtime than any movie star or singer does. It just goes to show you how big variety shows are. There's a whole lot of these mini celebrities but I do have to mention one in particular. His name is "Hard Gay" and he dresses up in tight leather clothes and does these awful pelvic thrusts-it's as hilarious as it is horrifying!
Here's a link to an article-it also contains a link where you can download a video of it
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/11/hard_gay_visits_yaho.html
4)I already mentioned this one in my blog I believe. On one variety show, they had a group of about three of four guys and they had to do some ridiculous contests. One of the contests involved judging a group of women, one at a time. The women would come out, dressed in some silly costume (nurse, police officer, school girl, you get the idea) and pinned to their chest they would have their "digits" their parameters as it were. The men would then ask them some questions and get them to do silly things like jump skip rope. Then they would guess if the "size" was true or not. Then the girl would strip of her costume to reveal a bikini underneath, squeeze her arms together and say in a cute highptiched voice "HON MONO DESU!" (it's the real mccoy!)
5)The dog experiment practically had me rolling out of my seat laughing, but this next one actually did it. Different universities in Japan get together and have a glider contest. Basically they design and build their own glider and then they all come together to test them out and see whose can fly the farthest. It's probably not much different than our solar powered car contests in North America. The main difference however is that gravity is much funnier than solar power and even more so when the said vehicles are flying over water. They get launched off a huge platform somewhere on the coast of Japan. The great thing was, that no matter how good the gliders were, they ALL ended up hitting the water at some point. The sooner they hit the water, the more hilarious it was. There was one two person glider that only seemed to be able to turn right and actually flew back around behind the starting point before crashing and burning (or sinking as was the case.) I had tears running down my face.
6)And finally, the odd time I'll get to see some kind of obstacle course. These things are hilarious because they usually involve watching people fall into water or mud. Those of you who live in the UK and use to watch (or still do if it's still on) Takeshi's Castle will know what I'm talking about. There never really seems to be much of a prize for winning-winning is satisfaction enough I suppose.
That's about the gist of it. The reason why Japanese television can be potentially so great I think is because they aren't afraid to go beyond the boundaries of traditional tv. Sometimes it can have horrible results but more often than not it's inspirational and brilliant.
