This morning I got up early and turned on the Japanese news on Nhk, only to discover a big hoo-haa about a crane that had crashed in Chiyoda-ku, spilling onto 3 lanes of traffic and injuring 6 people.
There was 20 minutes or so coverage of the incident, then another 5 minutes while the presenter got a small pre-made model of the crane and showed how the crane, trying to lift a 6 ton cylinder used to pour concrete for a building foundation, fell over.
What I don’t understand is why Japanese people can’t just get the facts and move on? Why do they have to be shown step by step on a model exactly what happened.
In Australia, we hear that a crane fell over, and we’re already over it. No more details needed. Not so interesting.
The next news item was that a store in Ishikawa is selling bento boxes cheaply at 250 yen. We know what Japanese and their stomachs are like, so the next 10 minutes was spent on footage at the grocery store watching customers buy the cheap bento and their reactions to it.
I can’t say that this kind of news is a rare occurence. Japan seems to broadcast really lame news, or make mountains out of molehills like the news with the crane. God forbid real news happened!
Do you watch Japanese news ever? And if so, what do you think of it? Do you think it’s lame or do you think it’s more interesting and more viewer oriented than other countries’ news?
2 Comments
I rarely watch the Japanese news unless there is something I want to know about like earthquake details or some event which has occurred.
I think that the NHK news tends to be a little less show-business-like and that tends to be the first place I go when I need actual details. One thing that frustrates me is that so much of foreign news is covered (especially American). It is as if they don’t find their own news interesting or they don’t want to report on their own news.
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I rarely watch the Japanese news unless there is something I want to know about like earthquake details or some event which has occurred.
I think that the NHK news tends to be a little less show-business-like and that tends to be the first place I go when I need actual details. One thing that frustrates me is that so much of foreign news is covered (especially American). It is as if they don’t find their own news interesting or they don’t want to report on their own news.
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