What's on TV?

Although I really don't have as much idle time as I wanted to, and I do have lots of things in my backlog, still I often find myself watching TV here. I mentioned before that's something that I regret sometimes, but let's talk a little about TV shows in Japan.

Unfortunetely, in Kansai area some channels that broadcast animes I wanted to see (like "Bleach" by Tokyo TV) aren't open, and I can't afford paying for cable or satellite TV. So, the animes I've been watching so far are mostly Blackjack, Detective Conan, One Piece. (Reviews in English for Blackjack, Detective Conan - and I really don't like when they change the serie's name... "Case Closed"!? This reminds me of what was done with "Rurouni Kenshin"... yuck! -, One Piece.) Sometimes I see some different ones, like one based on this series (which is really funny, but I cannot say it's name... I read some episodes in Shonen Jump some years ago when I used to buy it), Tsubasa Chronicle (couldn' get this one right, but seems like a crossover of CLAMP characters... somebody correct me if I'm wrong...), Survive or Kyo kara maou... Hum... Thinking about it I've been watching a lot, huh? Well, Japanese practice! XD

Out of anime and news (fortunetely I found one that has SAP for English version, but I try some in Japanese), Japanese TV is... hummm... different. Lots of strange shows with strange personalities (including one, HG, which a friend commented in his blog), lots of music shows that make me think if I haven't tuned MTV (or I should say a different version of MTV) and dramas/soap operas basically.

A friend has recommended that I should watch a Japanese drama. That'd be a good way to learn "culture" and "language". Well, I wasn't a soap opera fan in Brazil, and some Japanese dramas seem even worse... I watch some for a while, but I was never able to follow any series here (I really miss CSI, CSI Miami, Junkyard Wars and other series I used to watch). Well, the current one at least is funny. Oniyome Diary. It focus one couple which the wife practically make the husband "lick her shoes"... Many times it's predictable, but it's funny enough to entertain me after a tiring day.

For example, this week's episode. The husband seemed to be a little overweight, so the wife put him into a severe diet... So follows situations where he had to resist to beer, sweet food and so on. Later, a friend says to the wife about "Mushroom Coffee" which is said to be good for health (or something like that... my Japanese isn't so good), but it tastes terrible... Guess what happens? She takes the thing home, and he, after noticing the (bad) taste of it, secretly changes it for normal coffee. It works well until he gets a cold and after some situations the wife found that out...

There're also some good shows here and there. One I watched some time ago was about teachers' life. Problems with students (bad behaviour, students who fall in love with the teacher...) and parents (overprotective, PTA... an interesting one was a case which a teacher recieved a complaint from a mother about the place where her son was seated. According to Feng Shui, it was a bad place...). Other more recent was showing signs that had mistakes. Like one that showed 「手作りたまご」 (tezukuri tamago). The meaning is "homemade egg", but this way seems that people make eggs with their own hands. The correct form is 「自家製たまご」 (jikasei tamago). Or another showing 「犬はひとりで歩きはいけません」 (inu wa hitori de arukiwaikemasen) which wanted to mean something like "no dogs alone allowed", but the verb form is wrong and, more that that, in Japanese there're lots of ways to count and it changes according to what you want to count. "Hitori" is "one", but it's used for people. Dogs are counted as "Ippiki". So, 「犬は一匹で歩かせてはいけません」 (inu wa ippiki de arukasetewaikemasen).