I gave up on Jme TV, NHK Cosmomedia's streaming replacement for TV Japan. They're charging the same $25/month they did for the cable channel, an amount completely out of whack with comparable streaming services. Jme offered to grandfather the VOD service for $15/month, which is no less absurd, especially given the size of its catalog.

In many cases, push the price point low enough and you can stop thinking about the sunk costs. Kocowa, for example, South Korea's equivalent of TV Japan, offers its basic plan for $7/month. But the Jme TV website and app are so poorly designed that I'd be unlikely to stick around at any price greater than zero.

Speaking of which, NHK really ought to host a version of the Jme Select channel on NHK World Japan, along with the Asadora. If nothing else, it'd be a great publicity move. TV Japan used to be the only game in town for live-action Japanese content. Used to be. That built-in audience is long gone by now.

NHK World Japan, TV Japan's public service sibling, has something worthwhile to offer most days (especially during the sumo tournaments). NHK posts its flagship domestic newscasts online. Japan's commercial news networks stream their television feeds on YouTube. NHK's hourly radio broadcasts are also online.

And it's all free.

Back in February (the offer has since expired), I couldn't resist Rakuten Viki's 30 percent off sale and got the annual basic plan for $3.50/month. Even with its emphasis on romance and Kdrama, Viki has a decent enough collection of contemporary Jdrama that there simply isn't a downside.

Though given the glacial pace at which Viki acquires new Japanese content, I'll probably subscribe every other year. That's one reason why I think Viki should do a deal with NHK to license more of their material. (It is very telling that Rakuten Viki, a Japanese company, is dominated by Korean and Chinese content.)

Tubi is probably the best FAST (free advertising supported streaming television) streaming service currently available.

As Jordan Minor puts it, "Tubi fearlessly gets down and dirty by adding whatever cheap, old, and just plain weird stuff it can find to make sure you can always look forward to a novel viewing experience." In other words, Tubi's Japanese content consists of everything from art house to grindhouse to anime, along with quirky travelogues and documentaries.

Tubi has few contemporary Jdramas series, such as Daughter of Lupin and Special Security Squad and romances like A Girl and Three Sweethearts. Plus many more older period dramas and Sonny Chiba actioners. At least two dozen subbed or dubbed Godzilla and kaiju films, four Kamen Rider series, and a sizable selection from the Ultraman franchise.

My only big gripe with Tubi is the absence of language and country filters that would make it easier to find live-action Japanese content. Tubi has three anime channels and two Kdrama channels but nothing specific to Jdrama.

Many of the Japanese historical dramas on Tubi are distributed by Samurai vs Ninja, which has an impressive collection of action-oriented television movies and series from the 1970s up to the present. Content can be viewed online and there are apps for Android and Apple (but not Roku). The cost of a streaming subscription is $7.99/month.

Netflix's affordable ad-supported tier provides access to an eclectic collection of anime-inspired adaptations (One Piece and City Hunter being two of the latest), live-action dramas, and reality TV. Netflix licenses and produces new Japanese content on a regular basis.

With its worldwide reach, Netflix is emerging as one of the best sources of modern Japanese movies and television outside Japan. Netflix also provides subtitles in English and Japanese for many of its Japanese and non-Japanese titles.

The focus here is on live-action television, but you could spend a good portion of your life working through the free anime catalogs at Tubi and Retrocrush alone. Then for under $20/month total, you could add to that Crunchyroll, HIDIVE, and Netflix, and you'd need another lifetime.

Related posts

Jme TV (NHK World Premium)
Jme TV (grumpy old man edition)
Tubi in Japanese
News from Japan (in Japanese)
Japanese language links

Labels: anime, hidive, japanese culture, japanese tv, jdrama, jme, netflix, nhk, samurai vs ninja, streaming, tubi, viki

Thinking about slice-of-life anime, I believe the genre often has an clear-cut narrative structure, what I call the outsider-to-insider learning curve.

In Super Cub, Koguma starts out as a novice. Learning the ropes first from her mechanic and then from Reiko, a Super Cub aficionado, Koguma goes from outsider to insider over the first half of the series. But neither of them have ridden their motorcycles in the winter, so a whole arc is devoted them learning how to adapt their Super Cubs (and themselves) to the cold, again going from outsiders to insiders.

In the last episode, their friend Shii buys a Super Cub and so she as well is on her journey from outsider to insider.

Non Non Biyori begins with Hotaru moving from Tokyo and attending her first day of school. The quintessential outsider. Laid-Back Camp has Nadeshiko biking to a scenic overlook for a view of Mt. Fuji. There she meets Rin and gets interested in camping. As in Super Cub, the first season follows Nadeshiko as she learns about camping from Rin and the school's camping club. As the POV character, what she learns, the audience learns.

In the food genre, Solitary Gourmet features Yutaka Matsushige eating at a different (real) restaurant every episode (being the proprietor of a one-man import-export business is the pretext for him traveling all over the place). Every episode begins with him as an outsider at that particular restaurant and ends with him an insider, having observed the cooks and clientele and eaten practically everything on the menu.

Samurai Gourmet and Wakako Zake follow a similar formula. The latter even includes details about the restaurants visited at the end of each episode.

What makes Akebi in Akebi's Sailor Uniform more of a Mary Sue (though an entertaining one) is that she goes from outsider to insider in one episode. By contrast, in Snow White with the Red Hair, earning her insider status takes Shirayuki most of the first cour.

As a general rule, the romance genre always benefits from a learning curve unrelated to the romantic relationship, such as Sawako in Kimi ni Todoke using her nickname as an impetus to study up on Japanese folklore, which pays off brilliantly at the end of the second season.

And in Insomniacs After School, given the task of revitalizing the astronomy club, Ganta takes up the hobby of astrophotography and finally learns how to use the expensive digital camera his father gave him.

In the last third of the season, Ganta and Isaki travel around the Noto Peninsula searching for shooting locations, a narrative arc now made all the more poignant in the aftermath of the 2024 Noto earthquake. A realistic learning curve can't help but touch upon the real world.

Related posts

Mary Sue to the rescue
Non Non Biyori

Labels: anime, anime lists, anime reviews, japanese culture, thinking about writing

Buried inside a cache of religious relics from Medieval England, the ghost of a young boy knows only that he must protect these holy treasures. But as his era recedes into history and the relics scatter hither and yon, all he can do is rage against the collectors of the last remaining object, a silver spoon.

Centuries later, he encounters Donna Howard, an antiquities appraiser who can speak with the spirits. Donna's research has convinced her that a sixteenth century skeleton recently discovered in England is the boy's remains. Now in order to free himself from the spoon, the boy must confront his own murder.

Even when the crime is five hundred years old, Donna Howard is determined to solve the case.

The Kindle and paperback editions can be purchased at Amazon worldwide. The ePub format is available at Apple Books, Google Play, Rakuten Kobo, B & N Nook, Smashwords and many other ebook retailers.

Kindle
Paperback
ePub
Read an excerpt

Donna Howard Mysteries

Coin
Silver Spoon
Apron
Clasp

Labels: books, clasp, donna howard, ebooks, history, kate, kindle, mystery, peaks island press, publishing

Tubi has anime and Kdrama channels but nothing specific to Jdrama. Tubi doesn't have language filters either, so the only way to sift through Tubi's catalog, aside from using third-party sites like Reelgood, is to look up specific titles, actors, and directors or do global searches for "Japan" and "Japanese."

Even there, the Tubi search engine is fuzzy, so the hits will be all over the map and may have nothing to do with Japan. And because Tubi licenses just about anything as long as it's cheap and available, everything from art house to grindhouse to documentaries and travelogues will show up in the results.

I've curated a list of Japanese language titles on Tubi I thought were worth a second glance. I will update this list on a semi-regular basis.

• Blue Thermal (2022) follows Tamaki Tsuru as she learns to fly gliders in the college soaring club. The movie makes the common mistake of cramming in too many plot points from the manga, and relies on angst as an excuse for doing really dumb stuff, but the unique subject matter kept me interested.
• Cats of Japan (2020) is a cute travel documentary about cats lounging around and being cool. The kind of show to watch when you just want to kick back and relax.
• Detective Dobu (1991) is an Edo period Columbo, whose slovenly and bumbling ways disguise his keen mind and relentless drive to catch the criminal (although Columbo never drank as much as Dobu does, if at all). The series covers the same material as the earlier made-for-television movies, also on Tubi.
• Crisis: Special Security Squad (2017) Shun Oguri heads a secret team of specialists tackling threats the regular cops can't handle. In both good and bad ways, it's pretty much by-the-numbers for the genre.
• The Great War of Archimedes (2019) The first six minutes documents the sinking of the battleship Yamato. The rest of the movie is a political drama (that feels like a stage play) about how Admiral Yamamoto tried to scuttle the project in favor of building more carriers. Also see my longer review.
• Kamen Rider Zero-One (2020) This comedy action series in the long-running Kamen Rider franchise could be a Terminator prequel. Enjoyable in small doses as practically every episode is the same and not all that different. It gets old fast if you don't pace yourself.
• The Life of Bangaku (2002) is an Edo period action comedy starring acclaimed actor Koji Yakusho as an expert swordsman who is simply too honest and principled for his own good. Directed by Kon Ichikawa.
• Shogun's Samurai (1978) was broadcast in Japan as The Yagyuu Conspiracy. Sonny Chiba stars as the historical figure Yagyuu Jubei. Together with his brother and father, Yagyuu carries out a palace coup in order to install Iemitsu as the third Tokugawa shogun, and then has to deal with the violent blowback.
• Zankuro (2001) Ken Watanabe is a retainer of the shogun during the Edo period. Despite his position in the low aristocracy, his bad habits and his mother's spendthrift ways constantly outstrip his stipend, leaving him to moonlight as a bodyguard or executioner or detective, whatever it takes to make ends meet.

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Tubi in Japanese (1)
Tubi in Japanese (2)
Tubi in Japanese (3)
Samurai vs Ninja
Japanese language links

Labels: anime, anime lists, anime reviews, japanese, japanese tv, jdrama, streaming, technology, television reviews, tubi

This list of Japanese language resources is not intended to be definitive. These are simply the sites I access the most.

My main online dictionary is Weblio. I also reference Eijirou and Word Bank.

Along with the Random House Dictionary from my WordPerfect days (it's an ancient TSR that runs in vDOS), my favorite English language dictionary is Word Hippo.

NHK World Japan is NHK's English language service. The live feed can be viewed online, along with an extensive VOD library and OTA in some areas (9.4 in Northern Utah). There are apps for most streaming platforms.

Good Morning Japan, News at Noon, News 7, and International Report, NHK's four domestic news programs, are available on the NHK World Premium website. The site also includes recent episodes of Today's Close-Up, A Small Journey, and A Hundred Views of Nature.

The previous 24 hours of NHK Radio newscasts can be streamed online.

YouTube hosts a large number of commercial network news feeds from Japan, including the always delightful Weather News (hosted coverage begins at 5:00 AM JST).

For now, my primary sources for anime and Jdrama are Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Tubi. Many of the Japanese historical dramas on Tubi are distributed by Samurai vs Ninja. I purchase emanga at BookWalker.

A Japanese tutoring YouTube channel I watch on a regular basis is Kaname Naito.

Related links

Weblio
Eijirou
Word Bank
Word Hippo

NHK World (Japanese)
NHK World (English)
News from Japan
NHK Radio News

Crunchyroll
Tubi
Netflix
Samurai vs Ninja

BookWalker (Japanese)
BookWalker (English)
Kindle Store
Yes Asia

Labels: anime, bookwalker, crunchyroll, ebooks, hidive, japanese, japanese tv, jdrama, jme, kindle, language, netflix, nhk, nhk world, samurai vs ninja

NHK Cosmomedia has created a classic Hobson's Choice. Just as Henry Ford famously offered the Model T in any color as long as it was black, now you can legally livestream any live-action Japanese content as long as it's on Jme TV. (Crunchyroll simulcasts most of its new anime content every season.)

Dish briefly picked up Family Gekijyo after getting dumped by TV Japan. DirecTV offers Nippon TV as a replacement for TV Japan. NHK World Japan aside, there's no Japanese programming left on Xfinity or Dish. By contrast, Korean live-action content is available everywhere and on all platforms. Even Tubi has two dedicated Kdrama channels.

Live-action television comprises a paltry 5.5 percent of Japan's media exports. Fuyuhiko Takahori points to the cour system, with small budgets and short run-times holding down audience size, which limits budgets and run-times. But as anime has proven, I don't think the cour system is the impediment Takahori makes it out to be.

The cour-length season became standard practice in North America back during the premium cable days, long before streaming took off.

There's nothing wrong with the episode counts of the typical Jdrama series. The push, rather, should be to increase audience size. NHK Cosmomedia's overpriced and poorly designed streaming service is the wrong approach. If NHK cannot reduce costs to the consumer, it should let somebody else handle the business.

Another part of the problem may be a sibling rivalry. NHK World Japan is a worldwide service with an international audience, available for free online and streaming, on cable and satellite, and OTA in nineteen North American markets.

NHK World Japan is on YouTube and even shows up in screensaver ads on my Roku. Compared to NHK World Japan, NHK World Premium (née TV Japan) has taken over a vanishing niche. Jme TV is not a long-term solution. Granted, if you're looking for a one-stop shop, now you don't have a choice, unless one of the choices is "None of the above."

Here are a few possible solutions. I was also going to suggest creating a VOD sumo channel but Jme has already done that. So kudos for that. However, I would mirror the sumo channel on NHK World Japan as well.

• Move Jme Select to the free NHK World Japan website and use the same templates for the program guide. Jme Select has the same format as NHK World Japan, meaning a six-hour block of programs repeated four times a day. NHK World Japan should also add the Asadora with subtitles. It'd be a great PR move.
  
  Like NHK World Japan, the Select programming would be primarily news and infotainment. The premium drama and variety content would remain behind the paywall. Even NHK World Japan content could be reused by removing the dubbing and ADR.
• Do a deal with Rakuten Viki similar to the deal Viki has with Kocowa. Kocowa is South Korea's far more affordable equivalent of NHK World Premium. The $10/month Viki Pass Plus plan gives subscribers access to Kocowa and the entire Viki catalog, that includes VOD content from across Asia, including Japan.
  
  A hypothetical Viki Pass Japan Plus plan would provide subscribers with access to Viki's VOD catalog and all of the non-localized material that previously ended up on TV Japan. One big advantage here is that Rakuten Viki is a well-designed and well-known (in its niche) website with all of the streaming apps in place.
• Okay, instead of doing a deal with Rakuten Viki, at least copy their website and app designs. Viki really does have one of the best streaming UIs in the business. And then only stream the newscasts live (simply copy the news section from NHK World Premium). Make the rest of the programming available as VOD.
• If nothing else, the core VOD streaming service should cost considerably less. HIDIVE and Viki charge $6/month. Kocowa and Netflix start at $7/month. You can bundle Viki and Kocowa for $10/month. Crunchyroll's basic tier is $8/month. HIDIVE, Viki, and Crunchyroll offer discounted annual subscriptions.

And for a non-hypothetical option, simply go elsewhere. If you're willing to forgo the latest and greatest from prime time Japanese TV and do a bit of spelunking through sites like Viki, Tubi, and Netflix, there is plenty of (legal) live-action content available at far more affordable prices and even for free.

Related posts

Jme TV
NHK World Japan
Live-action Japanese TV
Jme TV (grumpy old man edition)

Labels: business, japanese tv, jme, nhk, nhk cosmomedia, nhk world, streaming, technology, television