Japan's TV language barrier

Published on September 22, 2007

Certainly, these are the questions we immediately want answered when we watch a scene like this on TV. But if you're staying in a Japanese hotel, don't expect to get much satisfaction unless you understand Japanese.

The first thing I did after checking into my hotel in Nagoya was turn on the TV. There were 12 channels available and all featured local programmes. That night I killed time by watching a channel showing rescuers helping flood victims following the arrival of a typhoon. Though I didn't understand a word, I could see how difficult the situation must have been from the scenes that were shown.

A similar experience took place when I arrived at a hotel in Noboribetsu, a small spa town in Hokkaido that draws hordes of visitors with the promise of hot springs. There, I was also entertained by 12 channels, all in Japanese. What's funny is that these two hotels had identical remote controls, a simple console with buttons numbered one to 12 - there was no need to look for the button to press that indicated more channels.

Most of visitors to these towns were Japanese. In Nagoya, they went to Ise Jingu, the old Shinto temple. In Noborigetsu, they came for the famous springs.

So, I was overjoyed when I finally got to Tokyo a few days later. With the huge capital full of foreign workers and tourists, there were bound to be English-language channels. Or so I thought.

To my amazement, my hotel, located in the busy district of Shinjuku, offered only one English-language channel - Bloomberg.

Another of the satellite channels offered was CNN. But though the programmes were beamed from the US with Western anchors, the sound was unmistakably Japanese. Yeah, it was dubbed.

Therefore, if CNN was reporting on a fire, showing flames and smoke after a small aircraft crashed into a high-rise on Manhattan's Upper East Side, a non-Japanese speaker would only understand as much as their eyes could tell them.

Too bad that I normally use both eyes and ears to enjoy TV programmes.

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