Thursday 7 August 2008

Time Off

I went away from three weeks to Japan and thus had to take time off telly. I have no idea what's going on in Big Brother, who knows who's still in Beauty and the Geek. Home and Away probably had a few accidents, a wedding, three funerals and introduced a couple of new characters in a matter of days without me getting to see any of it.

But, alas, I return lost in a word of BBC dramas about Sadam Hussein. Something I caught a few minutes of last night before switching over to something more bareable: Why couldn't they either speak in an English accent or speak in Arabic?!? Why did they have to do that awful Disney style 'Arabic accent' it makes neither sense nor difference to anything. The guy looked like Sadam, wasn't that enough to demonstrate that this was a show about him and about Iraq?

I learnt a little about Japanese telly whilst I was away, not much, I'll admit, I saw no cool anime and they seemed to enjoy showing Western films dubbed in Japanese in all the hostels which was no use to anyone. However, the odd moment presented me with visual gems.

There was one riveting piece of weekday afternoon programming, presented by a woman so easily impressed and so talented at producing just the right sound to convey her awe. One episode involved a sort of magic man performing various tricks and illusions and seemingly (though, obviously I couldn't understand a word of it) he was teaching the viewers how to do them. All the while lovely lady was aaaah'ing and ooooh'ing and Japanese style 'ooaawwwaaahhh'ing' away quite wonderfully.

Another episode involved BUBBLES. Now, I think it could well be argued that just about everyone loves BUBBLES right? So, a couple of blokes were pissing about in the studio making bubbles. They demonstrated how to make the perfect bubble formula, they blew bubbles through their own hands, they made little bubbles inside big bubbles, they split big bubbles into two smaller bubbles, they even put lovely awe-struck lady IN A BUBBLE. Then, whilst she was still in said bubble, they shook her hand, bubbles in tact. Frankly, Richard and Judy need to step up with educational bubble and magic trickery. It's a winner.

The rest of my televisual experience, much like the rest of my experience in various cities of Japan involved a lot of bright coloureed and a lot of excitable Japanese talking, fast, excitable, loud, noisy talking. And more bright colours. There was also a lot of baseball, which I don't understand, oh, and some sumo.

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