Japanese TV

The beauty about Japanese TV is that you don?ft have to speak Japanese to understand every word.

When I first arrived in Japan, I shunned any television program which wasn't a music show. Then I got addicted to The Wedding Planner, a Japanese drama centred around a wedding planning agency. Maybe it was the introductory music, I don't know, but I was hooked. To this day, I have understood maybe 4 words, and yet am able to follow it perfectly. The reason is this:

Japanese dramas are all over-exaggerated theatrics, airborne limbs and extreme facial expressions. And they illustrate the archetypal patterns of heartache, loss, betrayal and love triangles with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer splitting a pile of bricks. Think of them as an oriental Days of Our Lives on speed.

But the cream of Japanese TV undoubtedly comes in the form of game or private eye shows. One particular favourite is this gem (name unknown and inconsequential):

Every week, a team of TV investigators sets up a guy who is suspected of cheating on his girlfriend/wife. They send in a red-hot model type to convince him to go out on a dinner date. During the date, the model seduces him (of course) and after the man agrees to go home with her, the model excuses herself to go to the bathroom. At this point, the disgruntled girlfriend, dressed up in the same clothes, and with the same hair and make-up as the model, walks in from the bathroom and sits down in the model?fs place. The aftermath is standard reality TV fare.

Another strange show is set in a studio where a couple (obviously having issues) is put in a wrestling ring and spends half an hour hurling abuse at each other. There?fs not even a Rikki Lake to interject with pearls of wisdom.

Not that I'd be able to understand them if there were.