Japanese Television

On monday night I came home, made dinner, decided to chance it with the tv and see what I could bear to watch. I was pleasantly surprised to find I had finally got the free 2 weeks of all channels from SkyPerfect Tv for new users. Truly there`s alot of variety. I saw Japanese wrestling, music videos by famous groups like "Bump of Chicken" and "Spitz", and even the stuff from back home like Sponge Bob and the Simpsons and King of the Hill. Now SpongeBob and King of the Hill were both in regular english, with KOH in subtitles, but the Simpsons was dubbed in Japanese! I have to say it is really bizarre to watch the Simpsons in Japanese. If it is possible for Homer to sound hokier than he is, well... he did. Marge is much more high pitched in voice, Bart isn`t too bad, but Lisa is the closest to her original voice actor. I was always upset when I bought my favorite anime and listened to the American voice actors and the voices were soo different that it ruined the effect... now I see it kind of works both ways. The world needs more good voice actors! Don`t get me wrong, there are some dubbed animes I have enjoyed and were done great, like "Princess Mononoke" or "Trigun" (though I still prefer the Japanese Vash). Also "Spirited Away" was just perfect in their voice matching!

As for anime on tv here, well I`ve mostly only seen really old or recently old stuff playing. Some of it is from the 80`s and 90`s you can tell, and recent stuff that some of my friends watched in college like "Hikaru no Go" is on as well. Also on the line of anime, if anyone has ever watched Ranma 1\2 (which is really old but really funny, and good for at least 2 seasons) which you can easily find at better Blockbusters, you know the name of the high school in the anime was called Fureaikan High (or something very close).... which is the name of our sports center... and the name comes from the word "to contact or touch" I guess, like contact sports and involving everyone there in them. And in Ranma... there was always some kinda sports competition going on. Kinda cool hey?

So today, I went to the Fureaikan Hall with Chieko-san and Yoshida-sensei, and Ishizuka-san and we worked on putting down tape for badmitton courts, and replacing the lightbulbs from the ceiling lights. The fixtures float down slowly on long strings from the ceiling and look like UFOs. It was very other worldly. Of course, I only got to see them float back up, cause as they started I was still in the other room yelling at the US-Greece Olympic basket ball game....yay we won! Once we finally started paying some attention to defense and doing some good passing (cause Greece`s defense was tight buddy) then we were able to take the game. Though the tv kept clipping out parts of the game, like I have no idea what the 3rd quarter was like cause they just skipped over it! So I was pumped up then, and running around the building while they laughed at me for getting all into the game when I`m usually kinda quiet. Then Ishizuka-san showed me the taiko drums and how to play one, but he is really good, and it`s really kinda hard.... and unfortunately I think I only have rythm in one hand. I can`t wait to see KODO this weekend! Check out their site at www.kodo.or.jp/ec .