This is why I love Japanese TV!

When I came back from Japan I promised myself, that I’ll find a way to somehow make it possible to watch Japanese TV at home, and a few days ago I did it! It’s called Nihon Nama Terebi and it’s a web service, that uses SlingBox technology, of which I’ve only heard before. Sling Media makes these set top boxes, where you plug in the TV cable and it can stream the channels on the internet.

Until now other solutions I’ve found were usually no “proper” channels, or had horrible quality streams that stalled after a few seconds, if they even started to play.

So I applied for a 2 day trial at NNT, which went easily despite the fact that most of the site is in Japanese. Soon after I got an e-mail with access details… Basically one has to download the SlingPlayer software, which works under Mac and Windows too and enter some information. The quality of the service seems to be very nice and reliable (as much as my own connection is…) and I have 7 channels to choose from.

There are a lot of different shows: of course there’s all the hilarious edutainment shows where all participants get humiliated over and over again. In one I watched, you could see them screaming, with a camera strapped to their foreheads, while riding on the top 30 most thrilling roller coasters around the world. Everybody had a good laugh and learned some interesting facts about physics. There’s a cartload of cooking programs too, and they are not too shy to show all sorts of sea animals chopped up alive, but most of the dishes look absolutely delicious in the end, the presentation is flawless (and they taste delicious too, I promise!). Oh and don’t forget baseball! Ichiro has just reached 3000 career baseball hits! …And women’s golf. And anime, on tap. And daily soaps (called ‘drama’ there, also on tap)

I’ve also seen an episode of Heroes and Desperate Housewives and an awful Jackie Chan movie. These were a bit interesting, Japanese and English dubbing is put into the left and right speakers respectively and you’re better off switching to mono (from the left or right channel) if you value your sanity; something that is probably a remnant of the analog era. There’s an advert that they show on repeat, apparently in 2011 analog TV will be completely phased out.

All in all it’s really addictive, it gave my Japanese learning a big push, as well as reminded me of when I went to Japan: many nights when we got back to the hotel room we watched TV until we fell asleep. Now imagine three grown up men getting excited about a daily soap titled Love & Farm! I guess the novelty factor had something to do with it, but still…

One more thing: did I mention it’s not free? Of course I didn’t. As I’ve calculated though the monthly fee should be similar that of World of Warcraft, so it’s not too bad.