Japanese Art and Entertainment

On the subject of Japanese art- I see it everywhere. Wall murals are all over, especially in places like train stations, restaurants, and other public areas. I love the overall visual aesthetic that is found in many advertisements, on the sides of trains or buildings, in fashion, at shrines or temples, or even on your plate. I even find some of the graffiti quite... profound. Basically, I'm a fan of Japanese design sense, and you can find it anywhere and everywhere. Japanese visual aesthetic is not just limited to "serious" art, but I appreciate it there all the same.







I could go on and on with the pictures, half of my iphoto library consists of pictures like this.

On the "entertainment" side of things, watching "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" in class was, in a word, painful. It was full of dumb reality show commentary, bad stereotypes, and they managed to somehow make people falling down NOT funny. That's quite a feat.

However, I wanted to point towards a Japanese show that was localized in the right way-MXC. They used footage from the late 80's-early 90's TV show Takeshi's Castle, cut the fat off of the clips so that it could fit in a half hour format, dubbed over the original dialogue and made a new script with silly jokes and puns that fit western humor, and most importantly, kept the sensei and talento personalities intact. The result was something uniquely Japanese, funny in it's own right, yet catered tastefully to a western audience. I wish there were more success stories like this...