*to Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Κυνόσαργες

Tuesday 14 August 2012

NHK wtf?!

That was my first reaction to reading this yesterday: 'Japan GDP expands for 4th straight quarter'.  Even before I read the more common news, today: 'Japan's economic growth slows to 0.3% in second quarter'.

Yes, even I know the two articles are probably talking about different economic indicators that I am not interested in researching at all, but you tell me which one paints the more accurate picture of Japan.

 ('NHK Special: Working-Poor')

In my Canada, the CBC is always dying a 'death from a thousand cuts' from the neo-con government, yet never gets better than mediocre, or fights back properly, except its tepid centrism; the NHK is a fully paid-for propaganda organ, but then again, so is the rest of the accredited media in Japan.  No wonder so many Japanese buy the 'classless society' line (yet can talk about 'erai-hito' in the same breath).  In Canada, some investigative journalism is still done by the CBC and the Toronto Star; in Japan, we got the truth about Fukushima, and the 'Senkaku incident' from individuals on the Internet.  The Japanese media has adjusted to this, by repeating what someone else had the guts to print.

- Could someone translate the top picture?  I think it is something to the effect of 'don't collect NHK fees here!'.

13 comments:

  1. The first part says visits from NHK are permitted.

    The second part says that if the request is not followed, the police will be notified.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That was supposed to be: The first part says visits from NHK are NOT permitted.

      Delete
    2. That's more what I was looking for.

      Delete
  2. Thanks for the translation. Wow, what cocks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Where is that [top] NHK picture from?

      Delete
    2. Just a Google search. Something like 'NHK sucks'. Japanese site or forum, but didn't keep the location.

      Delete
  3. Sorry to be anal, but the last part says: any instances of trespass will be subject to police notification.

    So what was the working poor one about? Did you watch it?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I did not learn enough kanji before I got old and lazy, and had children. Alas.

      The working poor one is about the life of about a third of all Japanese, and most of the old. Didn't see it. Why bother?
      'Dou-shimashouka?'
      'Dou-shimashouka-ne?'

      Delete
    2. I can understand the lack of motivation with children and all the joy they bring.

      I think the minimum wage here (in the prefecture) is about 650 an hour, I don't know how that compares internationally. At my last job though, they used to do this thing called naishoku where they would drive partly built products out to people's homes and then pick them up when they were done. They used to get about 200-300 yen an hour if they worked hard, mainly mums at home or old people. It used to take ages, there were fuck-ups that not much could be done about (how can you yell at someone on that wage?) and half the guys who went to pick them up would have a sleep at the convenience store or find a nice quiet spot and read a book for a while (don't blame them, they had to work back everyday until late for no reason). But the bosses fucking loved that system and wouldn't change it no matter what. So I imagine a lot of these systems from the 70's wouldn't do much to help things.

      Delete
  4. Since coming back to Japan in May, other than the Olympics, I've made it a point not to watch any Japanese TV stations at all.

    For the sake of my sanity...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are a couple of good ones, but for the most part they are soul crushing.

      - NHK Historia
      - Tanken Night Scoop
      - Downtown
      - The renovation show on Sunday night.
      - Umechan sensei (sorry!)

      Are all good I reckon. There was a good doco on the end of the war last night on NHK too. I saw a program the other day where these American people who could speak Japanese were showing them around for Independence Day. It was pretty fishbowly and reeked of host-familyism. Are these people from a Japanese person's perspective the equivalent of an used-underwear vending machine?

      The shit they keep on broadcasting in Australia gets better and better too. There is this one show that just came out called The Shire, which is mindblowingly mindnumbing and apart from that it's all reality TV and sitcoms etc. from the US. SBS and ABC put out some alright things sometimes, but the ABC has had the guts sucked out of it thanks to a 10 year reign of neo-liberals and so just broadcasts a lot of English TV now, although I would prefer that to CSI in Miami underground special corps courthouse NYPD cross-over edition.

      Delete
    2. Hey Momotaro, when are you going to get your blog running? I'll put you in the links.
      http://momotaroadventure.blogspot.jp/

      Delete
    3. You're best not to as I was planning to put up some cycling trips, but I injured my knee and am still trying to get back into some sort of form so I can start climbing mountains again.

      Anything else and I am better at ranting about it than any structured and interesting posts.

      Sorry.

      Delete