02 05 2004

Sun, 02 May 2004

Early morning TV

Can't sleep - had a nap during the middle of the day yesterday and it meant I slept lightly last night. The sun's just come up here - though over the other side of the building. I toyed with the thought of wandering outside my aparto to take some photos, but I don't want to disturb the people around me who aren't awake yet.

So I turned on the TV, quizical about whether early morning TV in Japan is as crap as it is back home.

Pretty much. The only thing going for it is the novelty factor - various goods on the home shopping networks that you don't often see back home. Take for instance, the karaoke-box-in-a-microphone system. It looks like a cross between a microphone and a phone, and stores a bunch of songs in it. You can plug it into the TV, demonstrated by a family all singing together, and then on a separate occasion, a housewife doing the vacuuming while singing along by herself.

But it's portable, too! You can all sing along on a picnic, or on a car roadtrip. Sign me up!

The product on display at the moment is called "sweet sleeper", and to be honest it actually looks pretty attractive! It's a body-contour-following foam mattress and pillow that would probably be more comfortable than this thin futon I'm on - though it's a bit expensive. They show a segment where a guy drops a raw egg from 2 stories high, and it bounces off the mattress and doesn't crack. Cool.

Oh wait, they're back to the karaoke phone thing again.

I saw a pretty amusing shopping network show the other day, too. Sometimes they take American or Italian home shopping shows and overdub them in Japanase. In this particular show, a German guy (speaking English in a heavy accent) was demonstrating a set of cookware that his father purportedly makes. A Japanese lady was the co-host, and her job served to both translate for him and add all the usual "and it's only for this one low price! unbelievable value!" fluff that is a requisite on these shows. I've seen her advertising other products too - she's obviously a veteran of the genre.

The funny thing was that she was a little too good. She'd just keep talking and talking and the German dude was unable to get a word in edge-wise. He kept trying to interject with lines like "and I just want to show you this", which he'd have to repeat over and over before the lady would extricate herself from her interminable sales spiel. Half the time the guy just gave up and went back to cooking (showing off the cookware), for want of being able to get her to stop. When this lady talks, it really is like a machine gun going off.

I had the good fortune to catch a couple of English language shows the other night. A lot of the English shows are overdubbed which limits my ability to follow them. Sometimes it's not necessary - such as National-Geographic-esque footage of Antartic researchers (fascinating, the sort of fish that can live in that environment). But after being able to only tenuously follow any media since I arrived, it was nice to actually be able to watch a movie and catch every nuance. It wasn't a terribly great movie ("Oxygen", if any of you have seen it) - but hey, beggers can't be choosers.

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