Japanese TV and the Olympic closing ceremonies

Okay, so the Beijing Olympics closing ceremonies are on, and the Japanese announcers WON'T SHUT UP.

The bit where the London 2012 crew did a cultural presentation was odd, but interesting. It started with a modern dance performance...representing a queue at a bus stop. They laid a zebra crossing down on the track and everything. A double-decker bus (marked "London--Beijing--London") pulled up, and everyone jostled to get on board...but they all fell to the track as a girl got off the bus.

She walked to the zebra crossing where she was presented a soccer ball (this will be relevant later), then a crossing guard walked her back to the bus -- on the backs of the people who were waiting in line. (?!)

Then the top of the bus opened up and out, and some famous British singer who I don't know popped up on a lift and sang some wordless song. This was followed by Jimmy Page on a scissor lift, and they swung into "Whole Lotta Love". And THIS is where I noticed that the Japanese announcers weren't shutting up.

There are a lot of moments of drama in a closing ceremony, and each one was ruined by the Japanese commentators over-explaining everything. I don't need to hear a brief history of Led Zeppelin, I just wanna hear Page and (singer's name here) do the song!

Anyway, after that, another scissor lift popped up with the aforementioned little girl standing next to David Beckham, who took the ball and kicked it into the crowd of athletes, while the modern dancers had all grabbed LED umbrellas (rains a lot in London, explain the NHK people) which lit up to show animated London 2012 logos.

The ceremonies are still on, AND THE NHK PEOPLE ARE STILL TALKING TOO MUCH!!! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!

They just showed a dance routine on a large climbing structure mid-field; the Chinese dancers were wearing body suits that were silver in back and red in front, so that as they twisted on the bars, they would create swirling patterns. As soon as it started, the NHK guys started shouting "OH AMAZING! THE UNIFORMS ARE RED IN FRONT! IT'S MAKING PATTERNS!"

I wonder if they're using the NHK radio feed for audio by accident?

(-_^)

Edited to add: Okay, it's gotten a little better. The announcers shut up for three whole minutes just now.

Japanese TV has managed to tick me off again.

Every Saturday night there is a popular TV program, called エンタの神様 (God of Entertainment). It's basically a variety show, with various comedian-type people doing five minutes or so of their current act.

Recently, one of the more popular recurring performers is a woman whose shtick is to do an over-the-top lip-sync of an American pop song. She usually chooses songs by black singers, I guess because it's easier for her to overact to them. This week it was Jennifer Hudson's "And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going" from Dreamgirls.

My problem with it is that she pretty much does them in blackface.

Now it's not as bad as some other performances I've seen on Japanese TV -- her makeup is more extreme ganguro rather than true blackface -- but still, it's annoying.

Every time I see something like this, I ponder the prospects of having Mickey Rooney tour Japan, reprising his role as Mr. Yuniyoshi from Breakfast at Tiffany's...

Sorry...this week was...a bit more stressful than usual. Maybe I'm a little thin-skinned right now. Thank goodness for weekends.

Happy ME day!

Let me just interrupt your grand celebrations of ME day, commemorating my b--what? You aren't actually celebrating....

...well, ANYWAY...

This year for my birthday I picked up THIS:



It's the 5-disc set of the 10-hour-long Shogun miniseries from back in the '80s. I wanted to buy this when it came out four years ago, because I had just finished reading the original James Clavell novel (thanks, Scott!). However, at the time, the price was ¥14,490, or over $120. Insanity.

The MSRP is still ¥14,490, but one of the local electronics shops is having a months-long "I Love TV Life" sale, with almost all TV box sets from 10% to 40% off, and Shogun was one of the 40% off titles. (It was also the first time I'd seen it in a store in over three years.) As it turns out, I could have gotten it from Amazon.jp for 60% off, but I would have lost a bunch in credit card conversion fees.

When this show was first broadcast over 25 years ago, Mom & Dad wouldn't let me watch it for some odd reason. Most of the rest of America tuned in to it, though... I've only watched the first disc and a half so far, and I'm glad to see that the TV series corrected some of the more egregious goofs in the novel -- like an honorable samurai family named "Bunny", or a vassal spy of Toranaga named "Ugly". However there are still some pretty big screw ups included. The bit where Mariko explains how simple the Japanese language is is particularly cringeworthy. Telling different verb tenses using differences in inflection THAT DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST IN JAPANESE...

Old CalorieMate Commercial

Rough translation of Japanese dialogue:

Student 1: Aw, man, we've got another test tomorrow!
Student 2: To be ready in 24 hours is impossible isn't it?

(English dialogue)

Announcer: Real-time balanced nutrition. CalorieMate.

And yes, they made a whole "season" of these. Some were just text-only stories, though.

のど自慢, the epilogue

Remember that singing contest that I tried out for a few months back? Well, last night was the のど自慢 contest of champions, where a large number of winners from last year duked it out for the title of "2007 のど自慢 Grand Champion". They were all really, really good. The winner from the show I tried out for was on, and did a good job, but didn't win.

The show is coming near here again in August. Should I make another attempt?

An Example of a Japanese Variety Show

In relation to that last "Here's to fail" pic, here's a video of things you can do with a camera that shoots 1 million frames a second.



P.S. to Smaug: You should recognize one of the hosts...

Laughter is truly the best medicine

Feeling tired? Had a rough week? Watch this and you'll probably feel better. It works for me:

A note or two on the Japanese language

Japanese has an amazing number of abbreviated terms and phrases. When words are taken from other languages and incorporated into Japanese, the words are almost always truncated in some way. I would conjecture that it's because the Japanese syllabry makes a lot of foreign words really long.

Take the term "plastic model". Four syllables, right? In Japanese, it's eight. "purasuchikku moderu". Small wonder that it becomes "puramoderu". Mobile Suit Gundam models have their own abbreviation, "gunpla".

They do this with their own language as well. There was a TV program on tonight, where they had a panel trying to guess what the original terms were. At first, they did a lot of "Gairaigo", foreign words rendered in Japanese, but then they started in on the native stuff, and the panel couldn't figure out about half of them.

One that everybody missed was "Konnichiwa," the standard Japanese greeting. When this one popped up, everyone was shocked that it was an abbreviation. However, if you think about it, こんにちは translates to "As for today," which makes no sense.

As it turns out, こんにちは is short for 今日はご機嫌いかがですか？ (Konnichi ha gokigen ikaga desuka?) which translates to "How are you today, honored sir?" (Lit. "As for this day, how is your health, honored sir?") "Konban wa" (Good evening) is similar.

I have a few pet theories as to why there are so many abbreviated phrases in Japanese, but as they are pretty much W.A.Gs, I won't bore you with them here.

One week and counting

I am slowly starting to enter into panic mode. Tomorrow, I'm going to drive out to the town where they will be taping the show, just to make sure that I know how to get there...

My reading comprehension in Japanese is improving.

Well, I took another look at that postcard about のど自慢. As it turns out, they'll be taping the auditions, all six hours or so, and then using it as late night/early morning filler material.

In other words, I'm gonna be on TV no matter what, and all that's left to be decided is whether or not I'll be on during daylight hours.

Oh boy.

Japan: The Nation of Rule #34

Rule #34 of the internet, in case you don't know: If you can imagine it, somewhere there is porn of it.

If you click the title, you'll find an article from the Mainichi Shimbun ("Daily Newspaper") detailing a 24-hour charity telethon for AIDS research, run by a Japanese satellite "Adults only" network. Gah.

That's a bit weird, even for Japan.

(both links are safe for work, by the way.)

NHK news slowly enters the 21st century

So, there was an accident at Naha Airport this morning. A China Airlines Boeing 737-800 burst into flames while it was taxiing towards the international terminal at the airport in Okinawa. Fortunately, all the passengers and crew were able to evacuate the plane before it exploded.

Now, in the past, when NHK covered accidents like this, they relied on foam-core dioramas and plastic models to give an overview of the situation. During coverage of a nightclub fire in Kagoshima City, back when I first came to Japan, they actually used a miniature camera to negotiate the "halls" of their foam-core building model.

Today, on the 7:00 news, they actually relied exclusively on a CG animation of the situation, complete with smoke and flames on the appropriate portion of their CG jet. They even applied a correct China Airlines livery texture on the plane model!

On the 9:00 news, they've apparently had time to construct the usual physical model, but they also made extensive use of the CG from before, including improved, realistic flame graphics.

Now, if only they could get their morning and daytime shows to use on-screen graphics instead of text placards with bits to be revealed covered by sticky tape...

(N.B. If the title has three dots next to it, it's a link)