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August 15, 2024
 

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CHANNEL SURF

CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 17, 2002
Grow up, get over it or get done
Several weeks ago, Goro Inagaki, the quiet member of SMAP who for three months excluded himself from the group's activities as penance for a traffic violation, returned to showbiz with considerable fanfare.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 3, 2002
It's not just who's cast but how they're cast out
A nother milestone in Japan-Korea cultural relations is achieved with the two-part drama special "Friends" (TBS, Monday and Tuesday, 9 p.m.). Japanese idol Kyoko Fukada and Korean heartthrob Wonbin portray a couple who meet in Hong Kong and then strike up a cross-Japan Sea e-mail exchange that turns...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 27, 2002
Can't start a fire without a match
A popular format for variety specials is the omiai, bringing together single men and women for the purpose of making couples. Often the stated goal is nothing more than dating, but of course the ultimate goal is matrimony.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 20, 2002
Fifty lashings for serving up wet noodles
This week, former teenage beauty queen Ryoko Sakaguchi returns to "Tuesday Suspense Theater" (Nippon TV; 9:03 p.m.) for the fifth time. She stars in "Rinsho Shinrishi (Clinical Psychologist)" as college lecturer Yuri Matsunami, who uses her psychoanalytical skills to solve murder mysteries that leave...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 13, 2002
Different strokes, different folks
Former Olympic swimmer Yasuko Tajima appears tonight on the exotic travel show, "Sekai Ururun Taizaiki (World Sojourn)" (TBS, 10 p.m.), the program on which she made her showbiz debut last year.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 6, 2002
All the tricks, touch-ups and trip-ups of the trade
TV Asahi's new dramatic comedy series, "Trick 2," which premieres this week (Friday, 11:15 p.m.), fits comfortably into the current TV zeitgeist of pop spiritualism and magic shows. A lot of the renewed interest in paranormal phenomena has been boosted by the addition of debunking elements. On many recent...
JAPAN / Media / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 30, 2001
A holiday basking in the blue glow
Depending on how you feel about the New Year's holidays and Japanese TV programming in general, the first week of the year is either the best week for TV or the worst. Most New Year's specials mimic what the average Japanese family is doing at home. Celebrities sit around in their finest holiday duds...
JAPAN / Media / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 23, 2001
Remembering the year that was
It's the penultimate week of the year, which means regular variety shows get to save a bit of money by looking back at the year's highlights. "Sanma's Karakuri TV" (tonight at 7, TBS), a mix-and-match assembly of out-of-studio comedy skits hosted in-studio by Osaka funnyman Sanma Akashiya, presents an...
JAPAN / Media / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 16, 2001
Living life to the fullest in fields of dreams
This week's "Sunday Big Special" (TV Tokyo; tonight, 7 p.m.) revisits six families it has featured in the past on its occasional "Back to Nature" specials. These programs explore the burgeoning self-sufficiency movement by profiling families that have given up the rat race and moved to isolated rural...
Japan Times
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 9, 2001
And they call it puppy love
H igh on the cuteness scale this week is TBS's "Dobutsu Kiso Tengai (Unbelievable Animals)" (tonight, 8 p.m.), a variety-cum-quiz show that covers animals both wild and domesticated.
JAPAN / Media / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 2, 2001
They're playing our song . . .
The Japanese penal system is a murky realm since contact between inmates and the outside world is limited. Much of what is reported about prison life is received from indirect sources.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / CHANNEL SURF
Nov 25, 2001
Only the garbage knows
One of the things all single-episode TV mysteries have in common besides being single-episode TV mysteries is ridiculous titles. The title of this week's "Monday Mystery Theatre" (TBS, 9 p.m.) is "Obasan Kaicho Murasaki no Hanzai Seiso Nikki: Gomi wa Koroshi wo Shitte Iru," which translates as "Middle-aged...
JAPAN / Media / CHANNEL SURF
Nov 18, 2001
Saddle up for the mystery tour
Monday night at 8 and 9:15, NHK-G will broadcast the first two parts of a six-part drama series by best-selling mystery novelist Keigo Tono, who is famous for his elaborate plot twists. Tono himself was quite surprised that NHK had picked up his novel, "Akui (Malice)," for serialization, since, according...
Japan Times
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Nov 11, 2001
Taking things one moment at a time
Monday night, the Nippon TV documentary series "Super TV" (9 p.m.) chronicles the last six months of a man with terminal cancer. Last year, the show's producers received a letter from the man's children, who explained their father's situation and asked them "to record his life right up until the last...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Nov 4, 2001
And that's all she wrote, folks
In addition to being the author of the oldest novel in the world, Murasaki Shikibu has the distinction of being the first woman whose image has ever graced Japanese currency. You can be forgiven if you've never noticed her, since she's on the back of the relatively new 2,000 yen note, which seems to...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 28, 2001
Oh, those meddling grandmothers
One of the most common themes in Japanese drama is the battle between yome and shutome -- brides and mothers-in-law. The new Nippon TV comedy series, "Honke no Yome (Bride of the Main House)" (Monday, 10 p.m.), stretches this concept by using a grandmother-in-law and updates the overall theme for an...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 21, 2001
Tune in, there are big things on the horizon
The cult of dieting takes on new meaning in Nippon TV's fall comedy serial "Kangei! Danjiki Goikko-sama," literally, "Welcome, Honorable Party of Fasters" (Saturday, 9 p.m.). The series is set at Rakuraku-jin, a Buddhist temple that accepts civilians who want to do the ascetic thing.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 14, 2001
Time for a quickie and some canoodling
The theme of TV Asahi's new variety show, "Jungle Book" (Tuesday, 7 p.m.) is "making friends with animals all over the world." The producers send "young rangers," who are invariably teenagers, on various "assignments" in foreign countries where they interact on a long-term basis with both domestic and...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 7, 2001
Schools of hard knocks and TV docs
Several of the new fall drama series begin this week, and one of the season's topics is education. Trendy drama mainstay Masakazu Tamura steps out of character as the title character in "Sayonara Ozu Sensei" (Fuji, Tuesday, 9 p.m.), playing the former manager of the New York branch of a major Japanese...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Sep 30, 2001
Take a ride on the travel food choo-choo
TBS withdrew from the morning wide-show sweepstakes in 1996 after it was revealed that a wide-show producer had secretly shown members of Aum Shinrikyo a tape of an interview with anti-Aum lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto in 1989 as a means of gaining favor with the cult. Sakamoto was subsequently murdered by...
Japan to revise consumption tax exemption for overseas tourists
Tourists walk through Nakamise shopping street near Sensoji Temple in Tokyo in April
Japan's tourism industry hit by cancellations after megaquake alert
A beach closed due to a megaquake alert in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, from Friday to Thursday.
Focus shifts to incoming typhoon as Tropical Storm Maria dissipates
Newly formed Tropical Storm Ampil, which is forecast to approach eastern Japan this weekend, is seen on the left side of this satellite image.
Kishida to step down in September in bid to show ‘LDP has changed’
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a news conference Wednesday at the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo.
Publisher finds surprise audience after translating history textbooks
Yamakawa Shuppansha president Takeshi Nozawa holds the publisher's textbook on Japanese history — used in high schools across Japan — alongside the new English version in Tokyo on May 23.
Economic security is about strengthening and sustaining growth, former minister says
Former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi says changes in the international balance of power, along with deepening economic interdependence, have led some countries to attempt to use their economic power to impose their will on others.
Ice bandanas, convenience store breaks: Running under Japan’s summer sun
Blistering heat is becoming a fixture of summer in Japan, but a few tweaks to your routine can make your outdoor runs bearable — if not enjoyable — until cooler temperatures return.
Japan issued its first-ever megaquake alert. What does that mean?
Naoshi Hirata (center), chairman of a committee tasked with evaluating the risk of a Nankai Trough earthquake, speaks at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
France brings down the curtain on its Olympic party with Tom Cruise and Leon Marchand
Fireworks are set off during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Stade de France in Saint-Denis on Sunday.
Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom
Flaring at the Cameron LNG export terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana. Flaring, a common sight at LNG plants, is a controlled burning of gas for reasons ranging from depressurizing equipment to disposing of gas that can’t be used. The practice is a "waste of money" and negatively impacts climate change and human health, says the International Energy Agency.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

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’
By Thu-Huong Ha

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