Japan has a reputation for being a country of readers. Until the advent of the smart phone–now everyone’s playing games/texting–it was common to see most people on a train reading books. They would even do this in crowded trains when there was barely enough extra space for air. (On at least two occasions I had to remind people standing next to me or behind me that I was not a book rest and not a particularly nice person.)

The truth is, though, that a good portion of those readers were reading comic books and that a good portion of those were reading comic books that most people in the West would only read alone in the bathroom because they were, how shall I say, graphic depictions of people knowing each other in a Biblical sense often in ways the Bible says are worthy of an execution. They also regularly featured characters too young to have started junior high school.

This version of lolita culture was, at the time, so common that I saw two teachers exchange school girl themed porn videos in the teachers’ office as if it was a natural thing to do, and had to chase two adult students away from the school girl uniform they were oggling during class. After I told them to step away from it they said “but you get to see them everyday” and I was like “step away from the uniform” while my brain was trying to pretend I hadn’t heard that. (For the record, the uniform was in class because it was being passed between two mothers, one whose daughter had finished junior high and the other whose daughter was about to start.)

The worst parts of this culture are changing, though, mostly by force of law. When I still lived in Niigata, I remember looking down a row of magazines in a bookstore and seeing, in pretty much this order: car magazine, literature magazine, child nudity, sumo magazine and, well, I never got to the end of the row because I’m still shocked at what was basically the equivalent of a Playboy magazine for Russian sixth graders. Nothing was covered; it was displayed as if it were normal. Sadly, at that time, it was. Chiaki Kuriyama (Go Go Yubari in Kill Bill) started her modeling career by doing a nude photo book at the age of 12. The book was a best seller.

I remember this mostly because of the controversy it generated and the fact that Japanese law changed soon after her photo book was released to ban the production (although not the possession) of such materials. I also remember that, because she was topless on the cover, the local bookstore had placed the price label in a strategic location.

Raunchy comic books, however, persisted. Soon after I started working at my current school, I confiscated a comic book from one of my 7th graders. I won’t go into details for fear this gets blocked by filters, but I will say it was elementary school girls, various animals and all nasty.

Recently, Japanese law changed to control these magazines as well. Normally I’d be against government involvement in such things, but some things pose an interesting challenge to even the most heartfelt ideals and some things just shouldn’t be.

One of my favorite quirks of Japanese TV is its absurd dedication to privacy and secrecy. The dedication is serious enough that the people involved seem to forget television is a visual medium.

The first thing they do is that they crop the neighbors when they interview them for the “He seemed like such a nice guy for a man who walked around his yard in tighty whities and a gas mask and carried a machete.” quote. They usually focus on the chest, even if the person volunteered to speak. Sometimes they even disguise the voice.

The next example is that, for some reason, TV news is not allowed to show handcuffs on an arrested suspect. I’ve been told this is so that people don’t think the suspect is guilty. Keep in mind, the suspect is stepping out of a police car, is surrounded by dozens of police officers and is being escorted into a police station, but if we see handcuffs, we might think he’s guilty. (Or as my friend Charles once said “Perhaps he’s discovered the cure for cancer…”)

Really, does the mosaic make this crimi-, er this man, look innocent?

The third thing they do is that they will blur out almost every thing on a screen to hide the faces of bystanders and to hide the story’s location. Sometimes one fragment of the screen will be clear or they will highlight the important bit, so that you can follow that something important is happening even if you can’t see it.

Very important things are happening here, as you can clearly see.

One of my favorite news broadcasts of all time was a sting operation to catch a serial train groper in the act. As bait, they used a female police officer dressed in a school girl outfit and pretty much every one in the car was a police officer. As the events unfolded every centimeter of the train car was blurred to hide the location and the inside was blurred to hide the identities of the police, the few non-police and the suspect. The actual crime occurred under a different colored blur and then there was lots of shouting–with computer distorted voice–from out of the blur and then the blur moved out onto the train platform.

The effect was the same as listening to news on a radio whilst watching the static on a dead TV channel and calling it TV news. And yet it was oddly fascinating.

A nasty headache–oddly enough, not a migraine–kept me away from karate tonight, so instead of waxing on and off about sports, I’ll talk about Japanese television and, more specifically, Japanese news announcers and how annoying they can be.

US announcers can be annoying, but at least each is annoying in their own way. They are arrogant, ignorant, ignorantly arrogant, falsely profound and, if they do features for CBS Sunday Morning, incapable of speaking above a whisper or annoyingly comic.

The latter is more like Japanese announcers. The morning shows are populated by a mix of young women and older, usually heavy set, men. The men are there to provide, as near as I can tell, the air of serious newsishness, even as they make funny faces and wear silly ties. The young women, who are usually excellent news readers, mostly exist to display fashion and smile and nod when the men speak. (Their nicknames are “so desu” girls–or “That’s right” girls.)

When it comes to sports coverage, especially at the international level, the announcers, usually men, toss away any sense of neutrality and propriety and openly support the Japanese teams. Granted, other countries do this, but none do it as loudly as the Japanese. When the other team is close to scoring the announcers start shouting–not speaking loudly, shouting–Watch out! Watch out! It’s dangerous! It’s dangerous! Watch out! When Japan scores, or is even near the goal, they can barely be contained. (Think “Do you believe in miracles!? Yes!” at every scoring opportunity.)

This carries over into other news coverage where it’s clear that the reporters feel it’s their job to emphasize how interesting this all is. (In the USA, the reporters usually try to remind us how serious is all is and that you’re only seeing that on their channel, or if it’s CNN, to talk about missing planes.) The result is over the top emphasis and nearly clownish takes to the camera. Right now there’s a Japanese announcer traveling around Cambodia trying to get them to try odd Japanese products–and, I suspect, to get them to allow Japanese manufacturers to move there from China. One of his products is an impressive water purifying powder that clumps the mud and crap in water simply by stirring it and makes the water easier to filter. Unfortunately, his manic way of presenting it–this is SO AMAZING! Isn’t it? Isn’t it? It’s JAPANESE INNOVATION!–makes me hope he gets a bad case of the runs from the water.

Sometimes the reporters are clearly bored and clearly struggling to find something interesting to report on. (Look, here’s a big bowl of soup! Look, here’s another big bowl of soup, with slightly different ingredients!) Anything that goes wrong becomes a major issue. One year, a female announcer was covering a winter soup cook off somewhere up North-East. She couldn’t just taste the soup, she pondered it with great manic energy and it was always delicious (even if she made an obvious “this is what evil tastes like” face after trying it). At one point, she started shouting “It’s horrible! It’s horrible! What will they do!? What will they do!? What will they do!?” as she ran through the booths and the camera chased her and bounced around like a badly filmed movie. Her reaction was loud enough I was expecting a Russian/Chinese/North Korean invasion; an explosion; or the crash of the Hindenburg. She arrived at the location and the camera zoomed on a broken bottle of sake. Apparently it had been knocked over and now the chef had to get a new one. Ah, the humanity.

Finally, there are the weather girls. Although Japan has a few professional meteorologists presenting the weather, most are women hired for their annoying cuteness. (There’s cute and then there’s something so cute you want to slap it–r.e. Hello Kitty.) They usually adopt high, cartoon voices designed to mitigate the effects of bad weather and/or wrong predictions. They usually pout if the weather is bad, and if they’re wrong, they remind me of squeaky voiced comic Felicia Michaels who says her unusual voice helps get her out of problems: “I didn’t mean to sleep with your brother. He tricked me.”

The same works for Japanese weather girls. “I didn’t mean to miss the spring snow storm. It tricked me.”