It appears that JimmySeal, dingomick and myself have far too much time on our hands. After our interesting discussion about manga and the degredation of the Japanese language in the What you reading?thread I thought we could chat about what we like to watch, and how.

There was a good thread on the how-to...forum talking about how to get the most out of video material.

The TV is on a lot at my house but I don't actively watch that much. Recently due to my manga mania phase, I've got back into watching so anime. For stuff that I'm watching just now (that I've not seen before) e.g. 人狼 （じんろう）、Steamboy, etc, I watch them first in English with JP subs. This is so that I can simply enjoy the movie and also so that I can understand it. Next I start watching them in JP with JP subs.

TV-wise I don't use the bi-lingual button on my remote. It really does my head in hearing English and Japanese at the same time...

So any recommendations as far as TV or DVD?

Where do you get JP subs? Aside from DVDs, that is...

RoboTact Wrote:Where do you get JP subs? Aside from DVDs, that is...

I'm talking about DVDs. Apart from that, Japanese TV shows (game shows and news particularly) have subtitles in Japanese. Not necessarily of every word spoken though.

At the moment I am watching a lot of Japanese drama. I'm still very much a beginner in Japanese, so I watch these shows in Japanese with english subtitles. I make sure that I listen to what is being said as well as what I'm reading, and I am finding (of course) that I am picking up many commonly used words - so much so that it I read something in the subtitles (ahead of them saying it) I can often guess what they are going to say. Sometimes... I also try and make sure I'm actively writing down words I think I am hearing and the meaning I think they have, then after I check them in a dictionary. I find it a great way to learn new words because I remember them easily by relating them back to watch I was watching. I hope I've explained myself well

dug up an old thread but just wanted to say that the drama called trick has been excellent so far and im on the last one tonight. I watched Ikebukuro West Gate Park and that was pretty funny too but i felt it was a bit cheesey in parts (still recommend it though). Tricks actors are really funny especially the main male character and the bumbling cop.

I found listening to trick a lot easier than IWGP as there was less slang in every sentance and people generally talked a bit slower (though its very natural japanese)

I downloaded them both but found out that there was a site called crunchyroll.com that streams them. Its a jdrama youtube eque site and theres subs (bad or good thing?)

Really recommend you to try trick as im sure you will love it.

anyway back to the kanji - 300 to go. 50 a day.

Ever since I got Yahoo BBTV I haven't watched much Japanese tv. I do catch the morning news and I'm catching a lot of kanji there. Also, I find myself watching Chinese, Korean, Italian, etc. shows and reading the subtitles. I'm getting a lot more meaning these days. Usually only parts, but I watched an entire Chinese movie the other day, reading in Japanese, and really enjoyed it, not as a study tool, but as a movie.

I recently got a little usb one-seg tv tuner for my notebook. It seems that many broadcasts are completely subtitled. And there are the shows for the hearing impaired.

Cheers!

Yahoo BBTV seems interesting Aikiboy. I just skimmed through the website. Is Yahoo Broadband required to get the service? Is it just internet TV?

Well, since it's called broadband tv, I imagine so. I already had service with them and added the tv. Lan cable to set top box and into hard disk recorder and tv. Just like cable only not as stable. But good for the most part. Besides, it's way cheaper than cable. They have on-line video rentals so haven't been to the video store in ages. As for English stuff, there's cnn, fox, axn, national geographic, etc. Way more than I have time to see. Oh, yeah, and a new fox crime channel, and soon to come horror channel, i think. Not that I understand why they don't just show the crime stuff on the regular fox and stop repeating other shows so much.

The internet comes with the BBPhone service so I just dial the U.S. from the house phone and talk for pennies. Real convenient. And now vodafone is Softbank so I'm all yahoo'd out. They should give me a discount, by golly!