dorama with diverse vocabulary...

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Reply #1 - 2013 May 04, 10:19 pm
kodorakun Member
From: Seattle Registered: 2008-10-15 Posts: 276 Website

Hi All,

First, a confession: My favorite ドラマ is 相棒（あいぼう）. For those of you that don't know it's a police murder mystery show, kind of like a Japanese CSI. It has a good mixture of rough and tough language via the criminals and thugs, some medium-crudeness language via the cowboy-esque police partner and then refined, intelligent language via the refined, intelligent police partner. In general, the show has some suspense to it via solving the murders and other crimes, and by its theme it's probably a little more serious than the average drama but tries to insert a fair bit of comic relief in each episode (but only so much, because at the end of the day there are still pretty serious crimes being dealt with).

Furthermore, each crime in each episode is new and a different type (though there are a lot of murders...) -- the motives, the characters and culprits which come and go with each episode all have different character backgrounds. This is pretty cool because each episode brings a variety contextual, descriptive vocabulary (e.g. in one episode the murder revolved around an art gallery owner, so there was by way of storyline development some art gallery scenes, art discussion, art buying discussion, etc).

In contrast, I recently watched 家政婦の三田, which is melodramatic and mostly unbearable, but it had its quirks and weird parts which kind of interested me (at least for 10 episodes). However, I studied all the vocab in the first and second episode (via subtitles available), and then in each subsequent 1-hour episode there would be maybe 50 or 100 or so new words or phrases. This is great in terms of finding a drama with very specific characters that appear in each episode, repeat the same phrases and have the same style of speech. It's a good intermediate step, I'd say. But pretty worthless in terms of getting vocab-expansion bang for your time-buck.

Fortunately for me there's about ten million episodes of 相棒 at the local TSUTAYA, waiting to be rented. But this got me wondering if people had thought about these feature of specific dramas -- the style, the impact on language, the diversity and all that. What dramas do people think have particular language merits and for what reasons? Also, if the plain text subs in Japanese are available on d-addict's subtitle index, all the better (and even better if the english subs are there too!).

Any thoughts?

Reply #2 - 2013 May 04, 10:53 pm
bbvoncrumb Member
Registered: 2010-09-05 Posts: 19

Personally I have no idea how 家政婦の三田 managed to break records with 40% viewership (wut). Average at best.

As far as diverse vocabulary, probably any crime/detective or lawyer drama will do, since each episode usually has a different kind of case/vocabulary associated with it.

Just a few: (Romaji, cbf typing out the titles)
Hokaben
Strawberry Night
Mr Brain
Joker
Hero (But it's Kimutaku, so don't expect a lot of dialogue, at least from him lol)

Reply #3 - 2013 May 05, 12:35 am
tokyostyle Member
From: Tokyo Registered: 2008-04-11 Posts: 720

kodorakun wrote:

But this got me wondering if people had thought about these feature of specific dramas -- the style, the impact on language, the diversity and all that. What dramas do people think have particular language merits and for what reasons?

Before I got insanely addicted to Japanese TV I used to pick my dramas based only on their content.  When my interest in learning Japanese was entirely for socializing I mainly stuck with the various high school love dramas and then picked a few specific male actors and grabbed other dramas they were in.  Sticking with the same actors made them easier to mimic from show to show.

These days I care a lot more about finding interesting things to watch and sadly that generally means variety shows win out over dramas.

相棒 isn't really my taste, but I'm jealous that you have a drama you enjoy that runs for more than a season or two!  With 11 seasons and 2 movies you could probably become insanely proficient without watching anything else. smile

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Reply #4 - 2013 May 05, 3:06 am
kodorakun Member
From: Seattle Registered: 2008-10-15 Posts: 276 Website

tokyostyle wrote:

When my interest in learning Japanese was entirely for socializing I mainly stuck with the various high school love dramas...

Interesting choice of material to build your socializing foundation on... tongue

tokyostyle wrote:

相棒 isn't really my taste, but I'm jealous that you have a drama you enjoy that runs for more than a season or two!  With 11 seasons and 2 movies you could probably become insanely proficient without watching anything else. smile

Insanely proficient... That's the idea big_smile But yeah, I do feel grateful for happening to enjoy Aibou because it is the _only_ drama I've found that I enjoy, amongst a sea of... brown liquid.

Anyways, I second your idea of picking actors you like. I really love Katsuhito Ishii's writing and directing, and he seems to select a core set of actors that are all pretty funny and interesting and make minor parts or major parts in various films. 茶の味 is probably one of my favorite films I've seen in a while, not restricted to Japanese content... But beware, ナイスの森 is without a doubt the #1 strangest film I've ever seen.

On the topic of variety shows -- I know TSUTAYA has a variety and comedy section, but I never really gave it much attention. Do you recommend any particular show from that genre that might be fun to "build" a familiarity with? I find them pretty hard to follow, but maybe if I got used to their template it'd be easier.

Thanks for the comments!

Reply #5 - 2013 May 05, 3:57 am
shinsen Member
Registered: 2009-02-18 Posts: 181

kodorakun wrote:

But this got me wondering if people had thought about these feature of specific dramas -- the style, the impact on language, the diversity and all that. What dramas do people think have particular language merits and for what reasons?

Other than the topic (crime, legal, medical, etc.) the biggest factor that influences a dorama's vocabulary is the writer who wrote the script. The actors use the writer's words, after all. When I watched Unubore Deka I extracted 3-4 times the amount of vocab of a typical dorama. I looked up the screenwriter and it was Kudo Kankuro who also wrote Tiger and Dragon.

Reply #6 - 2013 May 05, 4:10 am
Stian Member
From: England Registered: 2012-06-21 Posts: 426

相棒 seems to be excactly what I'm looking for; a "Japanese CSI". :p
Thanks! big_smile

Reply #7 - 2013 May 05, 10:08 am
kodorakun Member
From: Seattle Registered: 2008-10-15 Posts: 276 Website

shinsen wrote:

kodorakun wrote:

But this got me wondering if people had thought about these feature of specific dramas -- the style, the impact on language, the diversity and all that. What dramas do people think have particular language merits and for what reasons?

Other than the topic (crime, legal, medical, etc.) the biggest factor that influences a dorama's vocabulary is the writer who wrote the script. The actors use the writer's words, after all. When I watched Unubore Deka I extracted 3-4 times the amount of vocab of a typical dorama. I looked up the screenwriter and it was Kudo Kankuro who also wrote Tiger and Dragon.

Ha! Cool. I just started watching Unubore deka! big_smile First episode was pretty funny, I look forward to checking out more...

Reply #8 - 2013 May 06, 10:18 am
tokyostyle Member
From: Tokyo Registered: 2008-04-11 Posts: 720

kodorakun wrote:

On the topic of variety shows -- I know TSUTAYA has a variety and comedy section, but I never really gave it much attention. Do you recommend any particular show from that genre that might be fun to "build" a familiarity with? I find them pretty hard to follow, but maybe if I got used to their template it'd be easier.

With variety shows you can find out who the guests are and use that as a guide.  Some of the shows are more thematic like イッテQ is sort of travel related and 世界番付 is lots of discussions about other countries.  You might want to browse around youku a bit and see if there's something you liked but I personally just used the "turn on the TV at night" method.

Comedy took a bit more effort but some of the manzai acts are somewhat easy to follow.  Just try a random sample of the best ones and see if anything catches.  Try Downtown, Bananaman, Cow Cow, and the Ramens.

Also, TSUTAYA is nice but actually having a TV you can just flip on pays for itself.  I learned just as much from commercials as I did from the stuff in between.

Reply #9 - 2013 June 07, 9:28 am
sherlock Member
Registered: 2013-03-29 Posts: 55 Website

I think Galileo, Joker and HERO has got diverse vocab. I guess if you get an episodic crime series, you get different words mainly because of the diversity of situations. I love these 3, and will never tire of rewatching them smile

Other doramas like Iryu use more specialized terms. These things I cannot watch without subtitles because it will make my nose bleed from all those technical terms.

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