Questions about Japanese television

Hi. I was recently asked by the local anime club to do a presentation because I speak Japanese, and they all think it's cool. I was thinking about presenting what Japanese TV is really like, except I don't really know. I've read the information available on the site but I still have questions.

What is Japanese television really like? What are some examples of TV productions? How often does anime appear on TV? Who are some famous TV faces?

I won't need this til next month, but I figured I should gather as much info as I can.

Thanks in advance,
Anna

It's terrible.
Lots and lots of cooking shows. Or rather shows about people eating food. Lots of variety shows where they have celebrities comment on various clips of puppies or cute school kids or that sort of thing. Lots of very very dull shows with an elderly person merely addressing a camera and explaining things with charts. Lots of shougi and baseball.
Anime...is pretty rare. Animation on TV in Japan is probally less common than in the west. There are a few children's shows each day at around 7 o'clock at night and one or two in the mornings and very occasional adult anime after midnight.

Takedaghost sums it up pretty well.

There are only a few gems among the Japanese TV programs.

In the most usual type of program, some celebrity or "talento" travels to some location, eats the local food and declares "おいしい" (delicious).

There are a lot of variety shows that recycle the same faces every single night.

Also almost all shows that would be considered as reality shows in the west, feature these same "talento" and not normal people. They are expected to make funny faces and show big emotion, even though we all know that the thing they try is not really that tasty/cold/painful/exciting/scary/hot/fun.

Some dramas are quite good, but many times they also have some idol or "talento" that really can't act at all.

If you understand written Japanese, you might want check out the list of TV programmes.
http://tv.yahoo.co.jp/listings/realtime/

The above comments are telling true dull Japanese TV stuffs. One nice thing is that, everywhere normal people likes to talk in ''falsetto'', like cartoon voices, which Japanese call kawaii, or distinctive but it gives to me headache since is too, too much hard to listen and ridiculous. There are huge amounts of commercials, and at most they are really dementia repletion of each other, this is something I founded only here in Japan. Every single day you have samurai very cheap movies, always the story is I threaten you with the Katana and then some katana duels, the difference among them is joust the title. Weather cast are made everyday by different people, mostly acting one showing and one listening as teacher student, on the main channel there is an interesting guy that every 5-7 words continue to say ''deshio?'' I and my Japanese wife call him Mr. ''Deshio'' (one nice stuff is also the kind of maps they are able to use and change and change to more kawaii.) TV for kids seems to have the intention to drive them to have physiologic problems, if I compare it with the poor ''muppet show'' is like it was an deep educational kids show. From early morning news, people eating foods front of you, eating and talking, often you can see the chewing food inside the mouth, or some food around the mouth, this is almost every channel and all day and night long (table/eating manners in Japan are probably the badder part according all TV channels).
Sometime they play foreign movie, most are very low, and repeating them after a while, ''Die Hard'' is the most recurrent which I saw at least 4 times.
I almost stopped to look at Japanese TV since I am really getting head hake, anytime after 5 minutes, if is not new time, there is no matter which channel you change.
I always wonder what Japanese have in their mind to broadcast 90% such things and way that I do not opinion for the risk to be offensive.

Indeed, TV in Japan is generally pretty bad and done as cheaply as possible: preferably there are only two panelists (often in silly hat and spectacles) and a group of idols that want to get exposure. It seems impossible to get through an evening of TV without seeing Katori Shingo in one program or another.

There are many commercials and after the commercials are done, you get a summary of what happened before the commercials before some new content starts, so basically a program listed to take an hour, only has about 20 minutes of content.

A lot of TV programs are presented to a panel of celebrities whose faces are shown as inserts to show their reactions so the viewing public at home knows when to be amused, interested, sad or surprised (this is how I interpret it.) :-)

How could I forget about the face boxes??

When they will make a show that has a face box in a face box. That way I can watch a ''celebrity'' watching himself watching himself do something ''funny''. Then we can make a reaction chain... well reaction. Funny thing happens -- celebrity laughs -- celebrity laughs at his own laugh -- I laugh (and cry inside).

One story tells a lot about the Japanese TV. There is a model/talento called ローラ. Well apparently she was not instructed, or she just has a moment of sanity, and didn't react to hot water (that truly was not really hot). Also she was accused of not laughing when another talento told a story (that most probably was not funny at all). The agency said that she would lose her job if not conforming to the ''rules''.

I guess she learned her lesson and began faking again, as we can see her in the tube almost daily.

I find that the quality of Japanese TV has drastically declined in the past ten years or so. And I think that it is in large part due to a dramatic decrease of advertising revenues.

But there are still lots of high quality programs, especially on NHK but also some other channels. Great documentaries about social, political and economic issues as well as travel.

I am sorry to disagree with you, because MHK digital broadcasted in Japan only, is not a good channel at all, though they pretend to be paid.
NHK TV NET FREE is much better and fit to normal mind standards, there is a huge different between them, take a look and it is always in good English "made by Japanese as well".

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/index.html

But this does not reflect or show anything of Japan NHK broadcasted in japan, this is to show its good image abroad.

I can tell that any example you gave is 30% true, especially documentary, which show often western people (for western eyes) do not want the troupe there, museum restaurant, etc. Foreigners often do not really want them there to report, because is spread around, that what they say easy in Japan will be changed, at the TV choice.

For someone who never seen an open mind good documentary etc.etc, you are right they are good.

Probably better to talk about Ikebana and bonsai, Japanese are doing well (sometime).

Luca, I don't understand your post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_shock

Yeah Japanese TV is like how most people here described. Of course Japanese have some of the best film-makers in history so it is disappointing to say the least. The production values in dramas are awful too. In the "indoor" scenes people have 5 spotlights shining off their forehead.
"Great travel programs"?? All the travel programs I have seen are just about reaffirming Japanese stereotypical attitudes about foreigners. I once saw one in africa where they were testing a black african man's long distance eye sight by his ability to spot animals at a distance. Of course the black african was proven to have better long distance eyesight than the Japanese tarento.
Travel shows are also often very introspective, it seems to be unhealthily obsessed with travel as a means to see what people think about Japanese or Japan or relentlessly comparing everything with Japan. Why they cannot just enjoy the country for what it is and forget Japan for one minute I have no idea. Some people obviously like it.
I have a Japanese friend who bought a Japan travel guide book when he was in Greece. I asked "why?" and he said he wanted to know what foreign people thought was interesting about Japan. My head was in my hands.

"Great travel programs"?? All the travel programs I have seen are just about reaffirming Japanese stereotypical attitudes about foreigners.

We are definitely watching different programs then! I had mainly domestic travel programs in mind. In-depth documentaries of historic sites and regional customs. No foreigners involved. Plus a few of these NHK documentaries without comment where the hi-resolution cameras drift through historic cities across the world. No stereotypes involved.

Hello Uji.

you are very kind asking me to look at:

Culture shock is the personal disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration or a visit to a new country,

It is almost 8 years I am here good or bad. If you do not undertand my communication means you are a Kokumin and offensive.

I would like to point out that western, (not changed) may believe that heaven and hell is the next place depending on what are you. But not for indecisive person who do not have anything to say though, able to finger out dirty someone else.

Do not you feel a little shame on you?

Please japan-guide keep this message and do not delete it as usual when you do not like the issue.

Luca (my real name)

I still don't understand your attacks on NHK.

Luca Im with Uji on this one, I have no idea what you are talking about. I am sure Uji or nobody is trying to offend you.
@Uji you may have a point with domestic travel...but travel to me usually means abroad, I guess this is all related to the introspective nature of broadcasts that I was getting at.

I like these programmes on travelling abroad.

http://www.nhk.or.jp/sekaimachi/index.html
世界ふれあい街歩き
Their particular camera work makes me feel as if I'm walking around the town by myself.

http://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/train/
世界の車窓から
Very short but excellent.

TV programmes in general became extremely boring past 10 years or so, I agree with Uji on that point too.
And there still are, maybe not so many but good programmes, especially NHK.

Do you need to group to answer?

The main points are already exposed in this tread, I do wonder why I whould be finger as someone has problem here as living in Japan.
Japanese have problems with foreigners does not screw theyr mind as japanese.
Japanese have problems to open theyr eyes to understand that a foreigners critic does not point ''baka'' Stupid Japan, but try to suggest Is not time for Japanese to open eyes?

UJI...Luca, I don't understand your post. Have you ever watched an NHK documentary? Do you even understand Japanese?

I do have TV on but often volume is of since is to weird dubbing.

No need you to be upset to save NHK poorness. If you know what should be the national TV wave for the 2nd economy acting as the most cultured and open minded you will never finger me as someone with problems.

Please be fine and work for Japanese TV all, to be less silly beside evidences what they are doing.

Are you a kokumin or a switched gaijin thinking to be as kokumin?

I do like to call black, if is black. Gray, if is gray. White, if is white; sorry I do not understand Japanese telling everything is gray or snaking to it to gray with friends, if they have nothing to say.

I am not attacking anyone but it seems I need to defend myself...

Ciao

in response to the lack of reality shows in japan. there were actually a few shows that either played pranks on normal non-TV people or amateurs as they call them in japan quite a few years back.

one of the reasons that shows like this have ceased to show on japanese TV is because PTA's in japan listed that most of these shows as "harmful" to their children. you may find this stupid but even popular anime 'Crayon Shin-Chan' has been on this list before (the more recent series has been considerable toned down in my opinion). thus famous shows that were known for their realism and use of amateurs (for example London Hearts) were forced to change their perspectives/concepts (though i still watch it every week), which has led to the poor state of japanese TV these days.

yes there is an abundance of gourment/travel/history shows on japanese tv, however i can still enjoy watching it. there was talk about japanese travel show that compares everything to japan. i think that might be ネプ&イモトの世界番付(Nepu & Imoto no sekai banzu(du)ke) which gives out certain questions (i.e what percentage of women work in the specified country?) and shows a ranking of most of the countries in the world they then usually go to a few of the countries and ask about said subject. it is a show that explores and compares cultures.

regarding anime, animes that get shown on national wide tv are usually child shows and ones that are considered safe to broadcast and aimed at mostly people ranging from 10-18ish (usually on series that run in Weekly Shounen Jump). other anime that arent as popular or cant be shown to the age range are then broadcasted on local Tv stations such as TokyoMX for people near tokyo (not sure for other prefectures).

to answer your questions japanese Tv these days is playing it very safe due to pesty PTA parents who will file complaints at the smallest thing they find bad.

i mentioned some programs before so u can use those and answered the next question.

Tv faces can b split in classes

Tarentto - Ro-la, Shigemori Satomi etc

well known MCs -Beat Takeshi, Sanma Akashiya, Tamori, Shimura Ken, DownTown etc

waaaay to many idols these days so not gonna bother

then singers, comedians, tv personalities etc.

i think that should cover most of it. also i dun watch NHK so dun bash me on that :P