Japanese React to Why I DON'T Watch JAPANESE TV by Abroad in Japan

[Music] hey guys it's yuta so today i'm going to be reacting to why i don't watch japanese tv by chris aka abroad in japan let's get started salted egg flavor potato chips this was supposed to be my reward for a job well done today on my 1980 never tried that crisps my reward for a job well done today on my 98 is japanese living room now you might be thinking to yourself well very nice editing very nice editing now right about now you might be thinking wait a minute did you just say bad things about japanese television japanese tv is amazing and i hate anyone who says otherwise what about takeshi's castle the game show i've never watched that show uh ever one of the greatest myths about japan to the outside world is that japanese tv is actually good because while people falling over yeah that's kind of weird as a japanese person i've never thought that way before when i was little i didn't watch a lot of tv because my parents didn't want us to see those variety shows they didn't think it was good for education so i just watched anime and that was pretty much it when i was little and when i was a teenager i also watched some music shows some a little bit of dramas but not a lot and some films and yeah that was pretty much it when my classmates talked about tv shows i didn't know what they were talking about but it didn't bother me because i thought i don't know like i didn't feel like i belonged to japanese tv culture i have a brother so we had our own rooms my brother bought tv for his own room but i didn't i just wasn't interested in tv in general i preferred reading listening to music playing some instruments and a bunch of other stuff so i was okay with not watching tv when my parents were watching some tv shows i would often criticize them for being crappy and cheesy and kind of fake now over the years by virtue of having lived here and done this i've found myself on both sides of the screen both as a bemused viewer and as a bemused participant somehow ended up on tv around half a dozen times including japan's biggest morning breakfast show mezamashi television thanks of youtube super villain logan paul which we'll get on to in a minute i've always wanted to make a video talking about those somewhat awkward experiences and breaking down the aforementioned myth but i didn't find the real motivation to do that up until a few weeks ago when a tv show here aired a segment that beautifully personified everything wrong with japanese tv in about ten seconds shrewd tv remember japan's biggest channels were discussing why and how the number of cases of kovic 19 was so low in japan and a groundbreaking theory was put forward suggesting it's something to do with the japanese language itself was it because the japanese language is more elegant and softly spoken a test subject stood before a tissue and said the phrase codo appendes literally this is a pen to measure the exhalation of air and any potential virus riddled spit as she spoke and i think we can all agree so that got shared that's how i got to know about that but that was just one part of the tv show and that tv show in question it was the type of tv show it's basically a daytime show that nobody but people who stay at home and nothing else to do so they don't have a job and yeah they don't have anything else to do so basically elderies and some housewives these are the main audience and these tv shows are not known for quality content we have the impression we tend to think these tv shows are quite crappy so yeah i'm not surprised that they did something like that it's not a serious news program and i expect a lot of misinformation and uh over sensationalization and i think we can all agree looking at the results of this objective and particular scientific totally said results are above scientific was there a lack of cases in japan due to the wide adoption of face masks or an absence of mass testing no it could only be cory what pendants this is a pen i know for a fact because i've done the experiment myself so i know it's true peter piper picked a peck of pickleballs yeah i know he's exaggerating but uh i don't think what they were saying was that that was the primary reason why we had fewer cases you know it was just one of theories to be honest i'm as guilty as anyone else of believing that japanese tv was on another level before i came here like a lot of people i grew up watching reruns of takeshi's castle a game show in which around 100 willing participants battled their way through increasingly sinister obstacles so these game shows get shared a lot on english social media because it's easy to understand them without understanding language i wouldn't have known any of these tv shows if it wasn't for english speakers sharing these uh clips even though i didn't watch a lot of tv i know that there have been plenty of shows uh based on like uh discussions and debates there was a pretty popular show called asanama back then where people would discuss social issues so we sometimes had politicians and journalists discussing things it was quite late at night so i actually didn't watch that show but they would often refer to the show in books and i read a lot of books when i was uh teenager we also had this show called dragon's den which shark tank was based on so we had many different types of tv shows but obviously uh if they talk about japanese social issues uh it might not get shared on english social media you have to be familiar with some japanese issues to be interested in these shows and they might not be as visually interesting as those crazy game shows so there's lots of biases when it comes to types of japanese tv shows that many english speakers are familiar with but if you want to enjoy more intelligent kinds of tv shows you need to speak japanese and if you want to learn japanese with me i will teach you the kind of japanese the real life japanese people today actually speak so click the link in the description and subscribe in order to take the castle and beat takeshi himself it was ludicrously hard in 133 episodes only eight contestants ever actually took the castle and won the grand prize of a million yen a grand prize that wasn't really so grand when he converted it into dollars and pounds especially given the questionable scenarios the contestants have put themselves so you have to think about the fact that it was decades ago so the uh the value of the money was different back then because of inflation the same amount of money values less today compared to back then the winnings probably wouldn't cover the cost of the health insurance claims nevertheless i've given many reasons over the years as to why i moved to japan cultural exchange learning a language becoming an english teacher but it was all a lie the real reason was just wanted to be on takeshi's castle so you can probably imagine my horror and despair when i started working as an english teacher my students asked me one day chris sensei what's your favorite japanese tv show and i thought yes this is my chance to show off to show that i've actually watched what's my favorite japanese tv show i can't think of any because i don't watch tv not just japanese tv i don't watch tv in general but i do watch a lot of youtube so it's kind of similar but different youtube is more active it's easy to find the type of contents you that you are interested in so i sort of said well i like to watch sakeshi's castle yeah no i was met with a deafening silence because none of my 16 year old students had seen it apart from my 50 year old colleague who fondly remembered it and gave a nostalgic grin because it turns out takeshi's castle finished broadcasting in 1989 one year before i was even born yeah that makes sense i had never had the show before until somebody some english speakers mentioned it the truth is that outlandish wacky game shows that most people know about are very few and far between spectacularly rare and difficult to find people often ask me oh you must watch that show candy or not candy the one where people walk into a room oh i remember there was this tv show we would watch when i was fairly little i just forgot name i have to google it yeah there you go i found it it's called magikari yeah this is basically a quiz program yeah yeah yeah we would watch this uh with my family now remember so i did watch some japanese tv shows and they played in a lot of interesting games but these games are more like a verbal games you know that you can play with uh your friends so it wasn't a crazy uh game show random objects to see if it's candy or not you must have seen the guy stuff a shoe i've never seen this show either on a delicious tasty table and of course i have it's ingenious it's glorious and it's also a half hour segment from a tv show broadcast six years ago it's not an ongoing series although it definitely should be it's just a funny thing that happened once in 2014 and it's been repeated so much that people think this is what japanese tv looks like imagine if you were to switch your tv on right now outside of japan what would you expect to find uh food show maybe yeah for some reason food shows are super popular in japan but i've heard that it's partly because it's very cheap to produce these shows attention suspense i'm right you're not views debates conflict it's what we crave in the west we want to be angry from a japanese perspective it's very interesting because you know there's lots of debate on uh news outlets like cnn and they call that well they're supposed to be like a debate but it's more like a shouting match you know who can shout louder who can shout loud enough so that nobody can hear the other person's voice exceptionally happy yeah food shows very typical it's always fun to act like gordon ramsay you know in a restaurant but you know you don't say that to the chef but among your friends like you know and criticize food you know yo this is uh under-seasoned this is disgusting yeah it's it's always fun to do that but they do serve a lot of underseasoned and over-seasoned food and they do serve dried chicken like it's quite common depending on which country you go no other constructive criticism no other comments just blind superficially positive statements repeated over and over and over as if someone was threatening him secretly off-screen to act that way and that is what japanese tv is like and for once i am not exaggerating [Music] now yesterday i did something unspeakable i sat down actually watched some japanese television and i did my own meticulous scientific experiment just like corey rapendes where i went through some programs to see if there were any key traits or attributes that they all had and i boiled it down to four points and the four points are number one every show requires hyperbolic interesting where everything is incredible or oishi meaning delicious or in some cases really delicious number two you need lots of canned sound effects every actual screen must be accompanied by some sort of comical cartoon sound effect stage three is the entire screen needs to be so sound effects uh very interesting because i think it's very cultural i also feel like when i watch other countries youtube videos for example or in latin america for example you know latino youtubers i also noticed that they used a lot of sound effects but come to think about it yeah japanese youtubers also do use many sound effects but i might not notice them these sound effects might not stand out to me because i'm japanese and i'm more familiar with the types of sound effects that japanese people use but yeah if i watch like latino youtubers i do notice the types of sound effects that they use but i also do think english speaking youtubers tend to use less sound effects maybe i think that's possible and actually on my channel i use like no sound effects at all i just don't think it's necessary oh canned laughter i think it's very common with american sitcoms but yeah we don't i don't think we use it a lot on japanese tv i can only think of one tv show that kind of like imitated an american sitcom that used canned laughter but otherwise i don't think it's common in japan so yeah i think maybe each culture has its own preferred types of sound effects stage three is the entire screen needs to be drenched from top to bottom in text and finally that's very very true and that also applies to japanese youtubers even i as a japanese person i find a lot of these texts a bit excessive finally of course it's stage four the infamous reaction box where enthusiastic presenter is forced to look on and deliver a relentless positive appraisal of everything happening okay reaction box it's very interesting that he thinks it's something that is characteristic of japanese tv because have you guys watched pewdiepie have you guys watched any tweet stream reaction boxes are everywhere around the world it's interesting some people think it's something japanese just because something happens in japan it doesn't mean it's japanese maybe these boxes are not as common specifically on tv shows in other countries but since they are very common with live streaming and youtube videos i don't think you can say that's something that's japanese and to give you a quick example of all those things combined let's now do a horrifying simulation of what the aurora japan channel would look like if it were on japanese television to be honest this just looks like any japanese youtuber uh yeah this is yeah here's his own point [Music] you know what's interesting i just noticed that he was speaking japanese i didn't notice he switched from english to japanese because it was so seamless it's very interesting [Music] to be honest i think japanese people will watch it if he starts making this type of video talking ass now you know the kind of performance and sheer excitement required to go on japanese tv you can probably realize why i don't enjoy doing it very much which takes us through to my own awkward experiences the first time i featured on japanese tv was during the brexit vote in 2016 when a local tv station wanted to interview a british person and get an expert expert opinion on what was happening basically an interview twice once on the day of the vote and once on the day of the results i was asked to glare at the laptop screen clasping my mouth in shock biting my fingers in despair as i nursed a mournful expression yeah i kind of understand why they want you to kind of overreact i sometimes film reaction videos in the street with random japanese people but like not everybody reacts in a very visual way they sometimes just stare at the screen and they barely change their facial expressions and that's not very visually interesting so yeah tv people they always do that it's like any reality you want to watch people react in an exaggerated way anyway despite the experience of looking like a murderer on japanese tv though one year later when one of the country's biggest tv channels reached out to me and asked me to feature on a show eating the local cuisine of north japan i of course said yes and jumped at the chance and the prospect of fame and glory be on my wildest dreams instead however it turned out i'd be eating nothing but vegetables clearly they hired the wrong guy for the job as i was quickly handed an assortment of pickles and told to give a big happy face and reaction as i ate them which i then inevitably failed to do disgusting the pickles are too salty pickles are dry what if he reacted that way but the worst scene was on a farm where i had to eat some edamame soy beans in front of the kind elderly farmer who'd so painstakingly cultivated them only for me to turn up and fail to show them the appreciation they so sorely deserved now odds are if you've been to a japanese restaurant you'll have had edamame soybeans at some point and they are very nice they're a great start or a great side dish you can't be they're delicious they like them but the variety of edamame that i was trying on screen were actually called the dachamami which are well just said mummy with a different name there's no literal difference however for 40 minutes we stood in the field as i had to painstakingly describe the difference between edamame and adacha mummy what is that no there was no difference whatsoever i had to make it up yeah let me just google it [Music] i think this is it so it's a type of edamame and it's called king of edamame they're supposed to be quite delicious maybe more delicious than the average yemen yes i think what happened was uh jamaa is a type of edamame that's more fancy and supposed to be more delicious so what they really wanted to see was if the mame is better than the average nmr but maybe they didn't do a good job explaining that to chris and i could not do it over and over about 15 times the producers tried to put words in my mouth and try and get me to see the difference that wasn't there or maybe he just couldn't tell the difference or maybe there's no difference but i mean like if there's different types of vitamin i'm pretty sure there's some differences maybe they're very subtle but to be fair animal isn't something that most japanese people pay a lot of attention to so i'm pretty sure there's many many japanese people who can't really tell the difference unless maybe they compare that like a frozen supermarket edamame then maybe you can tell the difference some example imagine you took a crisp right you split it in half i asked you to eat this one and then i asked you to eat this one and then compare the difference on camera for 40 minutes in a field on a hot summer's day and i just yeah okay that's how it felt like no for him but in reality it's more like uh here's two dollar coffee beans here's 20 coffee beans and to see if the more expensive ones taste better yeah i think that's what's going on here because they're both coffee beans but they're different types of coffee beans i just couldn't do it and throughout the whole ludicrous situation the nice kind elderly woman just stood there bemused wondering what the hell was going on in the end they just gave up and turned the entire 40-minute ordeal into a 10 second sequence yes so from the producer's perspective because they went there to try that special kind of edamame they would want some type of positive reaction otherwise there's no point showing that but i don't know like what would uh british tv do in this situation do you guys think that british tv producers would be okay with chris just saying oh you know i don't see any difference it just doesn't taste any special i don't i don't know if they would be okay with that i know maybe they would let me know what you guys think six months after my disastrous performance reviewing soybeans and pickles i found myself on japan's biggest morning show mezamashi after the universally beloved youtuber logan paul can definitely remember it's left a trail of destruction but despite the serious subject nature it all had a bit of a wacky vibe to it when the presenter knocked on my front door and insisted on doing this are you youtuber i am chris broad they always always always always do that they always do that when they visit somebody there was like knock on the door and the person comes out and they were like oh you know we are we are from such and such tv station can we interview you as though they just arrived but of course it's staged because i'd always wondered like they just happened to visit somebody who just happens to be there who just happens to be okay uh to be interviewed and i i'd always thought it's quite amusing it just makes me laugh at this point you might be wondering why is japanese tv this way and ironically the reason tv's so bad is also the same reason living in japan is so good it's no secret that japan is one of the most polite cultures on earth where people are very reserved and appreciative look at how happy she looks she looks so happy and what's she holding an onion ring or something she looks so happy food and people around them what you're seeing on screen is essentially a reflection of everyday life in japan that's been grossly exaggerated and as much as i would love the golden ramsay to do a season of kitchen nightmares in japan it's simply an equation that just doesn't work it's going well maybe it does work you know everybody likes somebody criticizing somebody harshly just watching it is fine you know as long as you're not the one who is being criticized it just wouldn't go down well it would be incredibly rude the chef would be mortified i don't think so kitchen nightmares they do that in the states right i i don't think american chefs would enjoy that either i don't think it would be polite to go to a restaurant in the states and start relentlessly criticizing their food i don't think that would be polite and i don't think the the restaurant would enjoy it but viewers would just feel deeply uncomfortable as opposed to feeling entertained you might be uh i don't agree with that uh pretty sure there's plenty of japanese people who would enjoy confrontations and fights and disagreements uh for example if you watch japanese youtube there's a lot of uh yeah fights confrontations and we have like road rage completions just like any other country and even like uh japanese even with the japanese tv programs for example dragons then investors would often criticize quite harshly and also with asana for example yeah like you know there were a lot of disagreements so plenty of japanese people would enjoy that it's more like the mainstream tv stations these days don't want to do that kind of stuff maybe i'm not sure maybe it's because of the demographic like people the types of japanese people who watch tv and i i don't know but i don't think it's the case that japanese people wouldn't enjoy confrontations on tv they might not want to do that themselves in person in real life but watching other people fighting should be fine at this point oh you just don't get it because you're foreign right and that might be fair enough to come from western television to japanese television is a jarring transition however a recent study showed even 18 to 29 year olds in japan are losing interest in tv don't watch tv at all anymore in favor of streaming platforms and video games and that is a trend that's been increasing over the years and while i'll continue to avoid watching it that guy that guy in the background he's uh oriza who's my favorite playwright he owns a theater in tokyo and he's plays a kind of the opposite of a japanese tv his place tend to be more quiet subtle conversations and very realistic uh way of speaking japanese and stuff like that so i like his place i recommend his place except for as a background noise on long lonely nights in hotel rooms even i have to admit japan just wouldn't be japan without it it is so otherworldly in its presentation and you've got to sit at least once or twice if you come in put it on check it out it's a cultural experience unto itself this is a pen so what do you reckon am i exaggerating is japanese tv really as bad as i've made yeah i think people just have unrealistic expectations of japanese tv it's just any other tv in any other country i don't think is there any country who has like very high quality tv shows in general like of course you can find good tv shows in any country maybe but in general i kind of think tv shows are crappy yeah and i'm pretty sure you can find good good japanese tv shows like good documentaries or something if you look for it but now you can have youtube and other streaming services so yeah we have much fewer reasons to watch tv but of course you can find plenty of more intellectual content on japanese tv or elsewhere in japanese but if you want to enjoy these things you need to understand japanese and if you don't speak japanese i will teach you the kind of japanese that real life japanese people today actually speak which can be different from the kind of japanese that textbooks teach you because it can be unnatural and old-fashioned so click the link and subscribe to my email group japanese with utah alright see you guys soon ciao

Channel: That Japanese Man Yuta

Views: 168,254

Rating: 4.807838 out of 5

Keywords: abroad in japan, japanese react, abroad in japan reaction, japan, that japanese man yuta, yuta, japanese tv, japanese man yuta, japanese reaction, japanese react to, japanese react to abroad in japan, react to abroad in japan, japanese, abroad in japan tv, japan reaction, reacting to abroad in japan, why i don't watch japanese tv

Id: oWTmP36oAPE

Length: 28min 34sec (1714 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020