So I'm around 1650 in RTK1 and am going to start embracing some media soon.

The trick is, I have no idea what is "good," and before a flame war erupts talking about how "good" is in the eye of the beholder, what I really mean is that I'd love to know if there are any good Japanese resources that would be the equivalent of the IMDB Top 100, or Best Selling Novels (on Amazon), or just some sort of indication of quality/popularity. Obviously, this might be flawed because some of the best stuff out there might be the hardest to watch/read.

Just curious what your experiences have been and how you've found the best "stuff" if it wasn't through "massive turnover / quantity" as Khatz recommends.

You are in Tokyo so just get a digital TV and watch what ever is interesting to you with captions on so you can practice reading.

Watch whatever interests you basically.

you guys have both missed my point.

Most best/top lists are rubbish. Personally, as I mentioned here, I'm interested in something more bottom-up/sideways and flexible.... till then I'd just recommend looking 'sideways' the long way 'round, that is to say, check out stuff you see mentioned a lot, then look at related works and reviews, and you'll end up getting whatever interests you. ;p

Although I'll admit, looking at different awards/prizes etc. given out, a lot of the winners are actually quite good across the spectrum, even if not mainstream popular in Japan. Akutagawa Prize, Dengeki Novel Prize, (Television) Drama Academy awards, Mainichi film awards, stuff like that will surely turn up interesting things.

I'm not sure how anyone is missing your point, you're looking for "good" media. Well, the point being -- "good" media in Japanese is "good" media in your native tongue, aka, what interests you and keeps your attention. I don't need imdb to tell me that "Jurassic Park" is a "good" movie.

As for finding "good" books, why not try Amazon?
Here, the "Best" books of 2009: http://tinyurl.com/yelkd62

If it's Drama you're interested in, you can check out Upcoming Japanese Dramas, or check out some that are Already Airing (check ratings!!)
Higher ratings = more people watch(ed) it = "good" media

nest0r Wrote:Although I'll admit, looking at different awards/prizes etc....
...(Television) Drama Academy awards...

Excellent, why not Check out the winners?

I probably "missed your point" too, but what are you really looking for?

@Asriel hehe I thought about linking to various sites for each of those but was too lazy, figured Google would take care of that. ;p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ja...ilm_awards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ja...ary_awards

Google ベストセラー

Asriel, others...

my point is this - GOOD stuff, no matter what the subject matter, can be interesting. I don't like chick flicks. Know what? If it is a GOOD chick flick, I will like it. Masterfully produced literature/film/whatever is interesting almost regardless of subject matter.

That is why, for example, even though I'm not a big fantasy guy, the Lord of the Rings movies were a fantastic watch for me. And they're all extremely highly rated.

See what I mean? Something like a "Most Popular Media of the RevTK Forum Members" across all subject matters / media would be quite cool.

Just watch Legend of (the) Galactic Heroes. You don't need anything else. When you're finished, read the novels.

So popular != "good"

I can agree with that -- just take a look at Twilight.

Lord of the Rings -- The movies are very good. The books also get a lot of acclaim, although I found them overly descriptive and boring. The world and lore, however, is fascinating.

But if you're looking for something like "TIME's 100 Greatest Pieces of Japanese Literature" or something...I have no idea.

Dude that's the problem, 'best' is not objective, it differs from people to people. I think its more important that you first establish what you roughly want first. Seeing as you haven't finished RTK yet and seeing as you haven't really been immersing to this point (I think), you should start probably with some shonen/shojo stuff.
I'd suggest getting some anime first (or drama if you want). How you want to find something that's interesting to you is up to you. If you want to look at awarded stuff then be my guest. What I did at the start was just go to some anime reviewing site and see what scores high, read the synopsis and see if it seemed interesting. I also used animeseed a lot to select new anime, I just went to their top50 and see what was interesting. Yet another option is to see what the people on this forum like -> http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=4005

What I did after, was buy some manga from a show I already seen and enjoyed. This so I wasn't completely lost (and possibly bored) the few first times I read a manga. After that you can move up to manga you dont know / doesnt have furigana, and eventually (light) novels.

And yea, if its true that you live in Japan, abuse the TV!

rswarsaw Wrote:See what I mean? Something like a "Most Popular Media of the RevTK Forum Members" across all subject matters / media would be quite cool.

There was an attempt to do just that. That could give you some ideas.

EDIT: too late

thanks Codexus... exactly the type of stuff I'm looking for.

seems I predicted this accurately in my first post

Quote:"before a flame war erupts talking about how "good" is in the eye of the beholder"

btw, I have been doing immersion, just JapanesePod101, some random animes/comedy shows, etc. (again, the point being that I have no idea how "good" these are compared with the universe of available materials.")

Well what is your definition of 'good'? Mine is: good: stuff I like. If you like it, and its in Japanese, then you're right on track .

I'll be honest, I prefer a "top list" that's derived from many people's top five list. JDorama is the only site I found that seems to pull it off with a bit of success as I do like many of the dramas on the top 50.

Are there any other sites that have a similar system for Movies, Anime Movies, Anime Dramas, and Manga? The results, if there's enough user input, would be a useful tool to decide what to try out first with one's limited time.

If you're interested in reading good novels, I think the recent winners of the Naoki Prize are a good starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoki_Prize

The Akutagawa Prize is awarded for 'pure' literature as opposed to the 'popular' literature that receives the Naoki prize; it's given out for short stories so they aren't necessarily going to be as easy to find. But I'm very much a fan of Wataya Risa's 蹴りたい背中 which won in 2003.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akutagawa_Prize

I say 'recent' because there was a real shift in novel style starting in the 1980s to a more casual and vernacular style, and if you go much earlier they start getting harder to read.

The real masterworks of Japanese literature are mostly sufficiently old that they pose some problems for a beginner starting to read. You could by all means get one of the annotated-for-children editions of Soseki's 我輩は猫である or ぼっちゃん but I think recent novels are a better place to start. There's a bilingual edition of some of the short stories of Miyazawa Kenji, one of Japan's great children's writers, but even those I found rather difficult when I was just starting out -- they use some very old-fashioned vocabulary.

That's not to say that there's not some great stuff being written today. But except maybe for Murakami Haruki (and Kenzaburo Oe, who I had somehow thought was dead until just recently) they don't have the same kind of powerful and wide-reaching cultural influence as the major writers of Meiji, or the major classical writers, do.

You might also want to read "Breaking Into Japanese Literature" and "Exploring Japanese Literature," which are anthologies of short stories by important writers, with English glossaries provided. I'm not a huge fan personally just because I think it makes more sense to "break into" Japanese literature with contemporary writers than with someone like Mishima, who used to get bullied as a kid because his vocabulary was too large! But if you want to read great writing, that is a place to start.

Also, obviously this is a list that's done by a publisher trying to promote their own books, but I find that Kadokawa's lists of "100 books for summer" are a great mix of stuff. You cannot fault a list that manages to include both the "Wolf and Spice" light novels and "Crime and Punishment"!
http://www.kadokawa.co.jp/hakken/summer/bunko.php

For anime, manga and light novels, you may check MyAnimeList. You can also use that site to find works similar to the ones you already like, or that were produced by the same people.

Fillanzea Wrote:You cannot fault a list that manages to include both the "Wolf and Spice" light novels and "Crime and Punishment"!

Seconded.

What about using the Listmania/So you'd like to guides on Amazon.co.jp?

I use them in English all the time, found my absolute favorite books and movies through them. Yes, they're totally subjective and all that, but the sucky ones tend to get low ratings, so it's pretty easy to tell which ones to avoid...

Once you know what you want, the best way to "find" (by find I mean steal) Japanese media is by using a program called Perfect Dark. Well, it's not going to help you get japanese subs so you'll probably only use it to get variety shows which have the subs burned into the video and usually animated and stuff. There are tons of other shows on there though, all with no japanese subs.

On Perfect Dark, you will find shows that do not even exist on DVD. For example, Sekai no Hatemade ItteQ (世界の果てまでイッテQ) which is the most hilarious and most educational variety show I've ever seen. sample It's been in the top 10 japanese tv ratings quite a few times and it's still running after 3 years.

When you get on Perfect Dark (you'll need to do some google searches to find out how to get it running) just type in what you are looking for and be extremely careful not to download anything that you aren't specifically looking for. I'm sure it's ripe with CP because it's anonymous P2P. Also keep in mind that it forces 100% of your bandwidth 100% of the time. It says the minimum upload is 128K/s which is almost unheard of here in the states but I got it to work just fine with only around 75K/s. Also you need a big hard drive because it requires a minimum of 40 gigs for it's "unity" files which are hard to explain but if you google search it there is a good explanation.

Have fun