The service that lets you do this is called TVU networks.  They explain themselves much better than I can, so let’s let them do it.

TVU uses a new broadcast technology called Real-Time Packet Replication.  With this technology, all the viewers who are watching a channel at the same time are cooperating to give everyone the best possible signal.  TVU’s application does not create any new files on your hard disk because you’re watching live TV. [source]

So, that’s how it’s done, but I bet you want to know how to get it up and running, like now. Who wouldn’t? Ridiculous Japanese commercials await!

How to Watch Japanese Television for Free, from Anywhere:

First, you have to download TVU’s player. It’s a bit glitchy, and not the prettiest application in the world, but like Lang-8, it’s functional, and does a great job doing what it does best.

Download TVU’s media player

From there, it’s really easy. Open up the program and switch the language over to Japanese. It’s up on the top left.

After you do that, all of the Japanese channels that are available will show up. I frequent the first three the most, but there’s a lot of stuff there, including music videos for all you music buffs. Right now, as I write this, I’m watching a show about a boxer who seduces a nun. Only in a Japanese drama, right? Only now, it’s live!

Japanese TV isn’t all you can see, though. Of course, there’s television from all over the world, and you can watch it for free as well. I’ve looked at a few American channels, since I don’t have cable TV at my home (why would I, when I’ve got internet to replace it for less money?).

So, I hope you enjoy this! Try to take breaks and go outside once in a while, yeah?

Once again, thank you rjhoolan for finding this and sharing! You are my new favorite person for the day :)

UPDATE 2-25: Since this is a p2p television thing, your connection, as well as the channels available at any given time, are dependent on who’s using TVU at the time. The people sharing are hooking into their tv, and if nobody is watching a channel at the time you want to watch it, you won’t be able to see it to. So, basically what I’m getting at, is you won’t always get all the channels, and it depends on when you are watching, sadly. Still, I’ve had good luck with it, and it hasn’t caused me any problems.

this is a test, testing the feed footer plugin. swavvy!

The dictionary is the little wwwJDic icon, and yes, huge M’s fan!

Looking up Japanese Vocab

The first thing I did was look up words, English -> Japanese. I found that it wasn’t always perfect, but neither is the original Jim Breen dictionary, for that matter. Sometimes, the web version requires you to scroll through lists and lists of results. Although it is sometimes difficult to find the vocabulary word you were originally searching for, Jim Breen’s depth of search results are handy when you’re looking for something out of the ordinary.

Back to the iPhone version!

The iPhone version is quite a bit worse than the real version. The iPhone version will only allow you to see the first page of results when the vocab word you’re looking for can sometimes be on page two or three. For example, when I searched for telephone, it wouldn’t come up with 電話 (でんわ). Instead, it came up with things like telephone box, push pin telephone, etc. The results for telephone were probably on pages two or three, but since those results aren’t included in the iPhone version, there was no way to find the right translation. There were situations like this where it was obvious it didn’t quite work right, so at least you won’t be tricked into thinking a translation is something it’s not.

Here’s one that did work. I searched for the word Monkey, and it came up with these results:

I turned “Common Words Only,” since this normally helps the real version of this dictionary come up with more usable search results.

First result was correct! Sadly, the results aren’t always the best possible results. That’s something that hopefully they will work on for the future of this app.

Translating Kanji into English

Here’s another feature I was excited about. Since the iPhone can now type in Japanese, being able to look up kanji would be wonderful. Unfortunately, at this time (August 6, 2008), the app just crashes whenever you try to look something up. I hope they fix this feature soon.

Overall Impressions

I wasn’t entirely impressed with this application. It has a lot of potential for being a great Japanese dictionary for the iPhone, but it just doesn’t work consistantly enough (right now). I think it will get better, so it’s worth checking out after they fix some of the bugs. There’s another Japanese dictionary on the iTunes App store, iJisho, but that ones way way worse, plus it costs money. The wwwJDic application is free, and you can’t beat  that, especially when it beats the current competition (which isn’t all that great either).

Even though this application is buggy, and it doesn’t always come up with good search results, it’s still the best thing available, so if you’re looking for a Japanese dictionary for your iPhone, this is your best bet.

Other News: Don’t forget about our Twitter Contest, where you can win the tastiest Japanese candy in the whole world known and unknown plus the universe too.

Every week (i.e. whenever time allows), I’ll be doing a “Japan week in review.” These segments will cover smaller news articles from throughout the week that we don’t want to cover individually. Although these articles of news won’t necessarily be very important, they’ll surely be interesting instead. Included after the break is a video; before that, though, let’s go through the stories not covered in moving picture.

Army of Tiny Crustaceans is Destroying a Small Japanese Island: On a small island 1650 ft off the cost of Hiroshima, a whole bunch of tiny crustaceans are burrowing into the island, causing it to break apart into a billion little pieces. The island’s name is Hoboro, if you ever want to visit, though I’m not sure why you would, since it’s inhabited (except for our friends the “nanatsuba-kotsubumushi,” of course). Supposedly the increasing number of these shrimp/crab relatives was caused by increasing temperature of surrounding waters, which caused plankton blooms. These little guys love the stuff, so they reproduced like crazy. Since they make their homes by burrowing into rock, they are destroying the island one burrow at a time. Reports say that the island could disappear within the century if this keeps up. Wow! [source]

Japan Stops their Brutal “Research” of Whales: When Japan “researches” whales, they kill them in large numbers and feed them to their upper classes. “I say, Mr. Tanaka, I’m going to have to research some more of that ‘Whale Curry‘, it tastes smashing” (British Accent). Thankfully, due to international pressures, Japan has halted (for now) this nasty practice. We’ll see how long Japan can keep from eating that lovely whale cocaine. [source]

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s Vlog: As you can in the video above, Yasuo Fukuda (along with the whole Liberal Democratic Party) has started a Youtube page. You can even check out his English Video and see what the Prime Minister actually had to say (instead of what he said in my video). It’s pretty interesting and pretty blah at the same time. His English is fairly good, anyways. I’ll include it below for your convenience:

Mobile Post Offices: In Aichi Prefecture (where I used to live), a lot of rural post offices are getting shut down. To combat the obvious problems that would arise because of this, mobile post offices (big vans) are being sent out. People can do all the normal mail stuff as well as withdraw money from ATMs. One neat little tidbit for the non-Japanese explorer: If you need to withdraw money from an ATM, the post office is the way to go! Most ATMs won’t accept your cards, but for some reason post office (and Airport) ATMs often do. Just something good to know if you are visiting. [source]

Death By Mochi is Wonderfully Tasty: Every New Years, a lot of Japanese people eat mochi soup (zoni). It’s one of those things that if you grow up with it you’ll absolutely love it. With every wonderful thing comes a price, though, and Mochi Soup is no exception. Every year a handful of people die from choking on the mochi, although usually they are of the elderly variety. This year four people died, and ten people were hospitalized - a pretty average New Years in my book. Party on, Garth. [source]

Ass n’ Boobs Airbag: You really just have to look at the picture. These airbags are supposedly better for you when you smash your face into them. I imagine they’d be a lot more fun too. Made by Takata, these airbags will reduce injury from airbags, but greatly increase (suspicious) male driver collisions. [source]

Tallest Elevator Test Tower: *Ah, dang, I messed up on this one. I thought it was the tallest elevator (as said in the video above). It’s actually the world’s tallest elevator testing tower, which sounds a lot less impressive, because I don’t imagine there are very many towers dedicated to elevator testing. Still, it seems like a pretty cool place to visit, so why not check it out if you’re near Inazawa City? [source]

Japanese Inmates Think Their Jumpsuits Aren’t Stylish: Aw damn, and I thought gray with vertical stripes was in again. O Brother Where Art Thou is hax. Recently a survey was done showing everyone what everyone already knew: Jail cells are too small, solitary confinement is no fun, and their clothes aren’t very fashionable. It’s not like we’d want our prisoners to be wearing the latest fads. How would we tell them apart from society? They have to look crazy, otherwise it would be hard to spot them amongst the millions of spiffy Japanese teenagers.

Hello Kitty Shames Soldiers, Kills You With Love: Apparently Hello Kitty has come out with it’s newest (and cutest!) high powered rifle … just kidding. Actually, a crazy gun-otaku put together a themed Hello Kitty AR-15 rifle for his wife. Here’s a quote from the creator: “Well, in the “spirit” of the California Assault Weapon Ban I decided to do my best to alleviate the fears of my fellow citizens and gun-banning legislators when I put together a new AR-15 for my wife.” Maybe if President Bush saw these he’d start equipping our fearless soldiers with these deadly assault rifles. [source]

So what do you think about this week’s useless Japanese News? I’m particularly interested in politicians blogging. I don’t think they pull it off very well, with Mr. Fukuda being no exception. All the American candidates are using Youtube as well, though for a different purpose. Fukuda’s use of it is more of a running thing; I think it’s good to keep the young’uns informed. Otherwise, I’m terrified of the Hello Kitty Gun, laughing at the Japanese inmates, and craving Mochi Soup. I might have to go make some of that right now, I think we have leftovers. See you all next week (or so)!

*Update: Aw, man, I kind of feel bad for posting this. I’m not very happy with it, overall. This has been a big learning opportunity, so there will be big improvements on this series for next time, though. Until next time…

The most important part is the top left. That baby’s never been happier!

Basically, what you do is you stick the soft end in the baby’s sloppy, gushing nose and put the other end in your mouth. Luckily there is an easy to clean bottle between you and your child’s snot factory, but what seems to be missing is the brown paper bag for when you have to throw up. Maybe that will appear in version two. If you’d like to see the product “live” on video, go ahead and read more:

If you like this video, then check out Zenhill’s other stuff!

I really want to know about the market research before the Mama Hanamizu Totte was released. Granted, Japan is a pretty sexist society, but I love how papa is left completely free of responsibility when it comes to sucking baby’s brains out. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a Papa Hanamizu Totte. I guess papa is busy enough slapping his children for kanchoing him in the butt.

Luckily, as long as your child is old enough (or you’re brave enough), you can do a thing called “self mucus sucking.” Strangely, I found a couple of Japanese blogs that talked a little about this. Unfortunately, the children doing it don’t seem to have the right idea. They try though:

Stay away mom. I don’t want another lobotomy. (Source)

I can’t figure out why it isn’t working…oh wait, that’s because both tubes are in the same nostril. (Source)

Here Mommy! Now that I’ve put both tubes in my nose you try to do it! (Source)

In all honesty, though, this is another one of those genius Japanese products. Have you ever seen the book “Crazy Japanese Inventions?” (or something like that) This really feels like one of those except so much better. No more raw noses from blowing. No more clogged noses…even the toughest clogs can be torn right out of your inner sanctum with one sharp swig on the ‘ol hanamizu totte. Still, something like this would never sell over here. It’s not a pill so us American’s won’t deal with it.

So, what do you think? Would you use it? Just imagine your mom trying to pull this on you in public.