One of my favorite parts about watching Japanese television programs is getting to see what their commercials look like. For whatever reason, I’m always fascinated by how other countrys’ commercials differ from those seen in the United States. Japan’s are of particular interest because, well, it’s Japan. Luckily for me and everyone else, I stumbled [...]
When I first came to Japan when I was 11 years old, Japanese TV was a source of mystery and wonder to me. I kinda knew about all of the parodies about Japanese game shows, and I can remember sitting transfixed in a hotel room, watching Japanese Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, seeing a [...]
One of Japan’s greatest TV shows of all time is Iron Chef, the competitive head-to-head cooking show that elevating cooking television to an artform. But Iron Chef has been gone for over a decade on Japanese TV, and all we’ve been left has been spin-offs and imitators. Fortunately, late last year FujiTV revived the Iron [...]
I love AKBINGO! It’s one of my all time favorite Japanese variety shows, right on up there with Gaki no Tsukai. (P.S. if you haven’t already heard of Gaki no Tsukai, do yourself a huge favor and check that out as well.) Over the past century, we’ve written a few posts about the stars of [...]
I really enjoy Japanese dramas. As far as Japanese entertainment media goes, dramas are right up there with anime for me. When I was first getting into Japanese stuff, I was all about the anime until one day I realized that there was a whole side of Japanese TV I was completely missing out on: [...]
Most Americans are pretty oblivious to most Japanese TV shows, but if there’s one thing they know about, it’s the game shows. Japanese game shows, with their bizarre, quirky premises have long been the subject of American curiosity and amusement, all the way back to the old 90s Saturday Night Live cast and beyond. A [...]
Every Sunday we gather the week’s weird and interesting Japanese news and present it to you in our Sunday News column. It might not always be hard-hitting news, but we hope that it still informs and entertains you. Enjoy!
