Thank you for sharing, jettyke, these look great!
Ever since I found out how great NHK高校講座 is, I stopped feeling like I really needed to search and search for Japanese documentaries, so I have none to offer, sadly. For anyone who's always looking for new educational material in Japanese, but hasn't tried these online lectures before, I suggest going over to http://www.nhk.or.jp/kokokoza/ and giving them a try. I suggest starting out with 世界史 or 日本史 for the most documentary-like vibe. Some of the others, like 生物or 地学 are composed of mostly lecturing, but history tends to have a larger focus on footage with narration.

Last edited by Nuriko (2011 August 20, 4:55 pm)

Should have made this into "Educational Documentaries and Lectures" thread but oh well.

@Nuriko But those lectures aren't all interesting, or are they?
If not, maybe you can share your favourite lectures please:D

Last edited by jettyke (2011 August 20, 4:53 pm)

sorry, no pictures, but i did post a bunch of links to documentaries in this thread: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=7962
if you missed it...

google video didn't take them down after all

Well if we're doing lectures too then here's a thread about OCW: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?p … 26#p103526

As Blahah wrote in the last post of that thread, you can find a lot of lectures through Itunes U too and I've been using it a bit. If you have trouble finding lectures with Itunes, you can start by going to the Itunes Store tab and doing a search for "東京大学” (I'm using Japanese settings in Itunes Store, dunno if it works with other settings).

By the way, you can find that thread as well as other good ones - just added this one to my post - in the "stickies" thread http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=1133
...I have a feeling it's overlooked by a lot of people, which is a shame as we've gathered some of the best the forum has to offer for learners.

Edit: Oh and thanks to everyone contributing here and especially belated thanks to Icecream for the google vid thread, I'm guessing that putting it together took some time.

Last edited by Surreal (2011 August 21, 11:07 am)

NHK 3 part special 原発危機　(on the 福島原発事故 and it's aftermath).




Part 1: 事故はなぜ深刻化しているのか
This part deals with the accident itself, and goes into detail about what mistakes were made, how time was lost, where government advice wasn't entirely sufficient for proper evacuation, what caused the size of the accident, and the reactions of government officials, HOIAN and 東京電力.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xj4aiw … yyyyy_news

Part 2: 広がる放射能汚染
This part talks about the levels of radiation levels in food, and the practical limitations on how much they can actually check. It also tells you about how they're finding hot spots of radiation far outside the evacuation zone. They explain why these hot spots exist, and how they're being found. It also tells you about what measures people in areas of relatively large amounts of radiation are taking to protect children.
http://vimeo.com/25958585
(it's pretty bad, they can't play outside in some areas. I'm sure lack of sunlight and fresh air is also going to have health effects on children. If the levels are dangerous, they should be evacuated too, imo.)

Part 3: 徹底討論　どうする原発
i haven't watched this part yet, so i'll fill in this bit when i do.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xjttgd … -yyyy_news
(4 parts)

As usual, NHK information seems pretty balanced, interesting, and especially with the last part, focused on practical information for people along with analysis... so, definately recommended!

Last edited by IceCream (2011 August 22, 2:11 pm)

みんな豊かになりたかった　１９６０年代の日本

An NHK special documentary... pulled from their archives, on 1960's Japan.



http://v.youku.com/v_playlist/f6168614o1p12.html

渡辺謙 アメリカを行く 9・11テロ に立ち向かった日系人



http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjk2MjgwNTY0.html

again, check out the channel, because there are many other NHK documentaries on the same channel, including ones on ancient egypt, nostradamus's prophecies, other archived documentaries on various subjects, and many NHK closeups as well...

I stumbled upon this one recently while researching the sarin gas attacks about 20 years ago. This is a very interesting, scary documentary.

オウム真理教事件の真実
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZuxX1pRXVY

Splatted wrote:

Thanks for all the links guys. I thought I'd bump this thread for a few reasons. Mostly I'm wondering if anyone knows a way to get subtitles for non-fiction television programs? I've been enjoying the Inka documentary that Jettyke posted, but it's quite difficult without subs and the only place I know to get subs is Daddicts, which obviously only has dramas.

I also figured it had been a while since this thread was made, so maybe some people would have some new recommendations?

You'd be surprised what d-addicts has, (I also stayed away from it for a long time since I'm not into dramas) but as for non-fiction tv it just has variety/music shows currently.T-T

I've never seen subs for documentaries, though I've looked. If it's on Youtube you could try Youtube's automatic voice recognition subtitles, but if the voices aren't clear it usually makes some unintentionally hilarious mistakes.

Oh, and here's a recommendation: Gigavision Channel. They make school prep videos and have a ton of sample lectures online. It's good because you can see how you much you understand in certain class subjects, and if high school is too hard in a subject, there's always the middle or elementary schools lectures. ^-^

Last edited by Bokusenou (2012 March 07, 8:02 am)

Splatted wrote:

Thanks Bokusenou, Gigavision looks interesting. I can't get the Youtube subs to display Japanese though. Numbers display fine, but it just shows empty rectangles in place of Japanese characters. I don't suppose you've any idea what's wrong?

If you're on Windows, switching the language for non unicode programs (Google 'language for non unicode programs' = your version of windows) to Japanese fixed my problems with that. If that doesn't work, try switching your OS language to Japanese with Vistalizator.

Last edited by Bokusenou (2012 March 08, 8:59 am)

Splatted wrote:

Thanks, but I'm using Lubuntu. I guess it's not too smart to ask for computer advice without mentioning which operating system you're using. From the little bit of googling I did it seems that this isn't something you can do in Lubuntu so I guess I'll just have to make do without the subs.

OK...That's weird. They work fine in my Japanese version of Ubuntu. o_0 Granted, I've only really used it in Firefox...Is Lubuntu that different?

Last edited by Bokusenou (2012 March 08, 9:35 pm)

Bokusenou wrote:

Splatted wrote:

Thanks, but I'm using Lubuntu. I guess it's not too smart to ask for computer advice without mentioning which operating system you're using. From the little bit of googling I did it seems that this isn't something you can do in Lubuntu so I guess I'll just have to make do without the subs.

OK...That's weird. They work fine in my Japanese version of Ubuntu. o_0 Granted, I've only really used it in Firefox...Is Lubuntu that different?

Sorry I missed your reply before. For some reason the subs work fine now though, so I guess some automatic update must have taken care of it.

@Jettyke: Thanks I'll check it out.

jettyke wrote:

エレガントな宇宙（超ひも理論）第１回アインシュタインの見果てぬ夢
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/D7BevismUQ4/0.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7BevismUQ4

Anybody interested in String Theory should see that one. Below are links to all three parts in English and corresponding parts in Japanese. Ah, and I found that you can turn the "auto captions" on, so you get some subtitles as well (they bound to have some mistakes but it's better than nothing for beginners).

E, Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH2rImNpW64
E, Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L6z91Dc3J4
E, Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUf4pVg1Lts
J, Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7BevismUQ4
J, Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psfn6fB67Xo
J, Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5vytkPuMSE