Yay! Japanese TV
Our friend Nazuki brought some tapes here of Japanese TV that he recorded. So we were watching it and it's so fundamentally different from American TV. The best way to describe it is: non-stop. It's loud, colorful, and fast... and it never stops. We saw several game shows, some talk shows, some comedy, and some drama. And it most of the set backgrounds were multicolored and bright, with lots of seizure-inducing flashy things. You're usually never too far from hearing someone yelling, and there's large colorful subtitles to just about everything. I've never seen so many subtitles, often simply repeating what the person on camera just said. This can't be for lingual purposes, since 99.9% of the country is native Japanese. There's sometimes other graphics happening on screen, like a corner of the screen will show the faces of random studio audience members during the show. So there's just a lot going on, on the screen at once.
Also, you know how when American TV goes to commercial break, it usually fades to black, and there's a pause of blackness, maybe half a second to one second long. Sometimes you see it shift to different shades of black when they switch it to the commercial feed. Not in Japanese TV. It goes from the show to commercial in literally the blink of an eye. A lot of times there didn't even seem to be any warning a commercial was coming.
And for many products on the commercials, the ending tagline would be spoken in english. I have to wonder why this is? For example, a commercial for some Sonic the Hedgehog game. The whole commercial was spoken in Japanese until the end, the announcer says something in English. like "you're going to love it!" Why would they want to hear this in English? I know everyone studying years of English there, but isn't there bound to be members of the older generation who are lost by these?
Also, where some American commercials try to use peace and serenity as their selling point, the Japanese commercials don't dare try to advertise without constant speech, graphics, visual aids, etc. I liked the cat food commercial where they showed the side view drawing of a cat x-ray, and the food went into its stomach and collected hair or something (to show it cleans the cat's system) and then they nicely displayed the x-ray cat pooping it all out.
All in all, it was very cool to get to see the differences. I'm glad he brought the tapes.
While I'm talking about Japanese media, I'm convinced that Japanese people think magic tricks are the devil. LoL. Check this out. The looks on their faces, some of the things they say (that I could barely understand)...it's hilarious. They look like they witnessed someone die. If you listen to the audience reaction, I think I even hear some screams of terror. The best part is the end when the big black guy goes to hand the old Japanese man something... he looks truly terrified to accept it for a moment. lol
PS. Granted, this guy does some amazing tricks. Here's more of him for anyone bored: 1 2 3
Also, you know how when American TV goes to commercial break, it usually fades to black, and there's a pause of blackness, maybe half a second to one second long. Sometimes you see it shift to different shades of black when they switch it to the commercial feed. Not in Japanese TV. It goes from the show to commercial in literally the blink of an eye. A lot of times there didn't even seem to be any warning a commercial was coming.
And for many products on the commercials, the ending tagline would be spoken in english. I have to wonder why this is? For example, a commercial for some Sonic the Hedgehog game. The whole commercial was spoken in Japanese until the end, the announcer says something in English. like "you're going to love it!" Why would they want to hear this in English? I know everyone studying years of English there, but isn't there bound to be members of the older generation who are lost by these?
Also, where some American commercials try to use peace and serenity as their selling point, the Japanese commercials don't dare try to advertise without constant speech, graphics, visual aids, etc. I liked the cat food commercial where they showed the side view drawing of a cat x-ray, and the food went into its stomach and collected hair or something (to show it cleans the cat's system) and then they nicely displayed the x-ray cat pooping it all out.
All in all, it was very cool to get to see the differences. I'm glad he brought the tapes.
While I'm talking about Japanese media, I'm convinced that Japanese people think magic tricks are the devil. LoL. Check this out. The looks on their faces, some of the things they say (that I could barely understand)...it's hilarious. They look like they witnessed someone die. If you listen to the audience reaction, I think I even hear some screams of terror. The best part is the end when the big black guy goes to hand the old Japanese man something... he looks truly terrified to accept it for a moment. lol
PS. Granted, this guy does some amazing tricks. Here's more of him for anyone bored: 1 2 3