Tag - channel-surf

 
 

CHANNEL SURF

CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jul 7, 2002
They say that love is blind
Ingenue Ryoko Hirosue finally returns to the TV drama series fold after a year of milking her French-language movie debut opposite Jean Reno in "Wasabi." The image she cultivated in that movie -- punky, cynical and a year or two behind the fashion curve -- is exploited to a certain extent in her new...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 30, 2002
Please, Hama, don't hurt 'em
Actor Masatoshi Nagase became a star in Kaizo Hayashi's 1993 tribute to Cinemascope noir, "The Most Terrible Time in My Life," as private detective Mike Hama, a none-too-veiled tribute to Mickey Spillane's hard-boiled shamus Mike Hammer. The movie was a hit, both domestically and overseas (England's...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 23, 2002
Bursting illusions and facing a sometimes ugly reality
Ever since Takuya Kimura got married and became a father, his popularity among women has cooled. Fellow SMAP member Masahiro Nakai has apparently taken up the slack, though Nakai's female fans don't seem to want to sleep with him the way they wanted to with Kimutaku. The reason for Nakai's popularity...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 16, 2002
Life's a bitch and then some
This week, Fuji TV will begin airing the entries in its Eleventh Annual FNS Documentary Grand Prix, a contest that honors video documentaries submitted by Fuji network affiliates. The winners are eventually selected by a panel of media experts.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 9, 2002
Winning always comes at a cost
The television audience-share for last Tuesday's World Cup match between Japan and Belgium climbed as high as 58 percent. As that was on a weekday, Sunday's Japan-Russia game on Fuji TV will probably be watched by even more Japanese people, so rival stations aren't even going to try to compete.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 2, 2002
Looking behind life-or-death situations
This week marks the one-year anniversary of the murder of eight young children at the Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka. Shortly after that, a young man killed a child in a Kyoto schoolyard before killing himself when faced with arrest, thus reinforcing the fear among the general public that Japan's schools...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 26, 2002
Let the coverage begin!
This week, there will be lots of television activity to help soccer enthusiasts prepare for the World Cup, which starts Saturday.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 19, 2002
The inns and outs in the life of okami
O ne of the subsections of TV Tokyo's large selection of food-travel programs is the "Bijin Okami" special. Bijin okami, which translates as "beautiful mistress of the house," are women who run inns and hotels in resort and hot-spring areas. They are usually married to the owners of the establishments...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 12, 2002
All right, now here's the skinny . . .
People with list fetishes can get off on the new TV Asahi variety show, "Japan's Best 100" (Sunday, 6:56 p.m.), which each week runs down the Top 100 products, services or ideas related to a given topic. The premiere show covered "all you can eat" restaurants throughout Japan. Perhaps as a kind of rebuttal...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 5, 2002
Death and the old maid
"Tokyo Friend Park II" (TBS, Monday, 6:55 p.m.), hosted by veteran announcer Hiroshi Sekiguchi, is a prime example of the mindless, pointless game-show genre. The main idea is to match up two complementary celebrities who will work together to win prizes for themselves and selected viewers. Because the...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Apr 28, 2002
A suck-up, a thumbs up
Ever since SMAP-man Goro Inagaki returned from self-imposed exile, during which he supposedly reflected on his heinous parking infraction, he seems to be everywhere, as if he were making up for lost time. Perhaps as a spoof on his capacity to demonstrate self-effacement, he's currently starring in his...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Apr 21, 2002
Tireless fighters and flightless invaders
Truth may not be stranger than fiction, but it's usually more dramatic, as proven in a series of best-selling memoirs by Mayumi Takeda. The 32-year-old writer has lived what some people have described as a "roller-coaster life," and Monday night on Nippon TV's "Super TV" documentary program, this life...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Apr 14, 2002
It's spring and renewal is in the air
English teachers will definitely want to check out Sunday's two-hour "SmaStation Spring Berabera Festival" (TV Asahi, 6:56 p.m.). "SmaStation" is the latest SMAP-related hit variety series, normally broadcast Saturday nights at 11 p.m. Taking its name from TV Asahi's influential nightly news program,...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Apr 7, 2002
Guess who's coming to dinner?
Thanks to a series of scandals, Snow Brand Dairy Products has seen one subsidiary fall and its image seriously damaged, but that's not the worst of it. Last Sunday, "Ryori Banzai," one of Japanese TV's longest-running cooking shows, signed off forever with a long, tearful thank-you speech. Ever since...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Mar 31, 2002
Everything you need to know: Shin-chan's still in kindergarten
One cultural export that Japan does very well is animation, as evidenced by the fact that the Japanese word anime describes its own special category overseas. But while old reruns of "Astro Boy" are still shown in the West, "Crayon Shin-chan" probably never will be.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Mar 24, 2002
Tune in for the final stretch
Next Sunday, Nippon TV's irreverent variety show "Denpa Shonen," the prototype of bizarre Japanese reality-TV programs, will once again end its long successful run with a pledge to be reincarnated in the near future. On Saturday at 9 p.m., however, there will be a special two-hour installment summing...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Mar 17, 2002
Last wills and testaments to peace
One of the more interesting economic realities of Japan is that, despite having one of the largest per capita savings rates in the world and the fact that more than 60 percent of the nation's assets are in the hands of people over the age of 60, almost no one writes wills.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Mar 10, 2002
All you can eat and then some
L ately, there has been a lot of news about a certain Japanese politician who profited personally from his interest in Russia. Tonight, on Nippon TV's newsmagazine "Document '02" (12:25 a.m.), we get to see the opposite: Russians who profit from their interest in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Mar 3, 2002
Hard realities and total fabrications
Ten years ago, Chikako Kaku was the most popular actress in trendy dramas. Though not classically beautiful, she was good at conveying the type of well-bred charm that's considered a paramount virtue in Japanese wives, while at the same time possessing a formidable capacity to exhibit nail-biting fear....
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 24, 2002
The suspense is just killing them
Director and screenwriter Yoji Yamada, who helmed all 48 installments of the record-setting "Otoko wa Tsurai-yo" movie series, and actor Toshiyuki Nishida, who has starred in Yamada's other two movie series, "Tsuri Baka Nisshi" and "Gakko," team up for a one-shot two-hour TV drama Monday night at 9 p.m....

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’