TsukuBlog

I know this is short notice (The Tsukuba Film Commission didn’t announce this until today!), but the TV drama that was filmed in Tsukuba, or to be specific, at Takezono Nishi Park, Takezono 3-Chome neighborhood, a Chinese restaurant in Akatsuka area, Shimo Hirooka area, and Namiki 3-Chome, will be aired tonight from 9pm.

The name of the drama is “自販機男(Jihanki Otoko or the Vending Machine Guy)” which is a part of “世にも奇妙な物語 (Yonimo Kimyou-na Monogatari) Fall Special Version.” Yonimo Kimyou-na Monogatari is a very popular omnibus series which started in 1990. It usually gives the viewers the bizarre (奇妙な) short stories that are just way too weird to be true, but still make you think, “hey, wait a minute, it could happen for real!” Yonimo Kimyou-na Monogatari is like the omnibus of urban legends, in a sense.

It looks like that “Jihanki Otoko” will be the 3rd story in tonight’s “Yonimo….”

世にも奇妙な物語 (Yonimo Kimyou-na Monogatari) Fall Special Version
October 2, Tuesday from 9:00pm to 11:24pm
Fuji TV (or Channel 8)
Tsukuba Film Commission’s announcement
(Japanese, but you can see the pictures)

開運！なんでも鑑定団 (Kaiun! Nandemo Kanteidan) that was filmed in Tsukuba last month will be aired on July 17, Tueday from 8:54PM on TV Tokyo or Channel 12 here. I went to see the shooting of this program, but I don’t want to ruin the fun by writing about it!

Please read Shaney’s post “Have Your Treasures Appraised in Tsukuba” or visit the Tsukuba City’s website for more information. According to the city’s announcement, the cityscape and some research institutions will also be on TV.

There is some English programming on the regular TV channels, but it can be hard to find. If you are not sure what is available, have a look at the weekly listings on the Metropolis website. With that information and a video recorder (to record the shows that are on during the daytime when you may be at work or at night when you may be out dancing), you should be able to collect enough English programming to keep yourself busy on the nights when you don’t go dancing.

Here is the channel guide for Tsukuba.

1 NHK
2 Shopping
3 NHK Educational
4 Nihon Terebi(NTV)
5 Tokyo MX TV
6 TBS Terebi
8 Fuji Terebi
9 Cable (ACCS)
10 Terebi Asahi
11 TV University
12 Terebi Tokyo

It’s a summer ritual here that I immediately took to. Watching the Koshien (甲子園) High School Baseball Tournament which takes place in sweltering Osaka. In my hometown New York, I had always closely followed The Boys of Summer, and by that I mean Major League Baseball. Since my first summer in Japan, however, more than watching the professionals, I have joined the millions of Japanese who, with beer or barley tea in one hand and a hand-held fan in the other, spend the dog days of August cheering on the Bozu of Summer (bozu, 坊主, is a term used to refer to a young boy), the high school baseball players who have made it into the Koshien Finals. There are 49 teams (representing each prefecture, with 2 teams from both Tokyo and Hokkaido) in all who battle it out in single elimination. If you are not a baseball fan, now is probably the time to become one, because no matter what, if you turn on the TV during the next couple of weeks that is about all you are going to see. In fact, I have a game on in front of me right now, and it’s so exciting that I can hardly type!

Koshien is a perfect way to show hometown spirit, and many of your friends who live in Tsukuba now are probably rooting for their home prefecture team. Native Ibarakians and others who have grown to love the Land of Hitachi (Hitachi no Kuni) have always had a lot to cheer about since this prefecture has often fielded very strong teams. The most famous of these is Joso High School which is located just near Tsukuba City. Once again (for the 3rd straight year) their manager Yukio Kiuchi, who is now 77 years old, has taken them to Osaka for the finals after an incredible extra-inning win in Mito on July 27th. This is a very impressive feat considering the hundreds of schools in the prefecture. Maybe attribute this success to what has been dubbed KIUCHI MAGIC.

Holy cow! This game that I’m watching! The Tokushima team has just come from behind to win! Incredible! Pandemonium! Unbridled joy! Tears (looks more like sobbing) of defeat! Slouching, bent over players. Dirty, sweaty uniforms. Wait! This is the part I love best. The winning team belting out their school song, singing with their bodies and souls making it known to the world that they are making an effort!! They go into their victory sprint. And now, the losing team is scooping up some soil from the infield, a memento of their fleeting moment on the Big Stage. Certainly the game will be replayed in their heads over and over again, probably for their whole lives, with thoughts of how it would have been if things had gone the other way.

Sorry for the digression. Let me get back to my main point. High school baseball fans in Ibaraki have been looking forward to watching Joso play and maybe even win the tournament and some people I know even went down to watch today’s game. Unfortunately, things did not go as expected and our local boys were blown away in their first game, by a Tokyo team (even more frustrating). Thus, Kiuchi’s bozu, as with all losing teams, could be seen after the game, scooping up the Sacred Soil of Koshien. So much for Kiuchi Magic. But… wait till next year!

Don’t be surprised then if you see more than the usual depressed, sulking Ibarakians this week. They were hoping to see their team do better.

And of course there are other ways of looking at this High School baseball madness. I, myself often cringe when I hear about the boys’ PURE SPIRIT. Like everyone else they are in it for the glory (and the girls?).

Another aspect to think about is the PROFESSIONALIZATION of the game in a similar way to what has happened in college sports in the US. Thus many teams, including Joso recruit players using certain incentives.  Many students DO NOT get the high school education they should be getting, and will be stuck after graduation. So the coaches, administration, etc., come out ahead, but what happens to the boys who have spent their school years playing ball and not preparing for exams?

Anyway, they sure WANT to play, and they do it well! That’s what makes it so much fun to watch.

For Koshien games just turn on your TV and flick through the channels.

On days when the light is just right and there is very little chance of rain, you might get lucky and find a colorful collection of super heroes and monsters battling it out at Tsukuba Center. For many years, TV production companies have been using the Lion Pit between the Okura Hotel and the Right-On building as an unearthly-looking set (which more importantly for the producers is free of charge!) for shooting Sunday morning kids’ programs. Like me, you will probably have to ask one of the moms with toddlers who are excitedly watching the proceedings to find out the name of the show they are filming.

Today I watched the cast and crew of the popular channel 10 show Go-On-Ja (ゴオンジャ) which often uses the Tsukuba Center location. It is interesting (especially if you have small kids to bring along) to watch the actors get warmed-up, rehearse and shoot the individual shots, then get half out of costume and enjoy a cigarette break. Sometimes small explosions startle the onlookers who ring the set and are treated very politely. (Remember, the space is being used for free!)

The professional way Japanese film crews go about their business is impressive to watch and should be eye-opening for those who can only picture the age-old racist parody of a Japanese TV director as shown in the very popular (and perpetuator of old stereotypes) Lost In Translation.

For me, the bold poses taken by each character when they identify themselves or challenge each other, is reminiscent of the mudra positions introduced to Japan by Buddhist monks, most notably Saicho and Kukai, more than 1000 years ago. This may sound far-fetched, but please look closely at both and you might see the connection.

No-one can predict when there will be filming at the center, but as I said earlier, there is a good chance it will be happening when the weather is favorable.

Dont forget to bring the kids!

There will be a TV show on tomorrow (January 1) called “The 44th New Years Parlour Tricks Competition 2007” in which two teams will compete in a taiko tournament. The teams are WaT and Ungirls (アンガールズ), which I assume are comedy teams (I don’t watch a lot of TV, so I’m just guessing here). Apparently the teams are given one month to practice a taiko routine that usually takes 3 years to learn. You can see the results on Fuji Terebi (Ch 8) from 6pm to 8:54pm (174 minutes).

And, if you read this on the day it was published (New Year’s Eve), you might want to watch Kouhaku Uta Gassen (紅白歌合戦), the traditional show that everyone (or maybe just older people these days?) watches on December 31. You can read more about this show on Wikipedia. The show will air from 7:20pm to 11:45pm on NHK (Ch 1).

Like a little goateed munchkin, or a Japanese version of one of the seven dwarves, the mascot of the 23rd Annual National Culture Festival (kokumin bunka-sai, or kokubun-sai for short), which this year is being held in our very own Ibaraki Prefecture, can be seen practically everywhere these days, adorning posters, leaflets, packages, and most noticeably the banners fluttering outside convenience stores and public buildings.

For most Japanese, from any part of the country, this cute little character is instantly recognizable as a cartoon rendering of Mito Komon, the hero of one of Japan’s longest running weekly historical TV dramas (jidai geki). And by long running, I DO mean LONG RUNNING, as new episodes have been aired every week for nearly 40 years ! As you can imagine, there have been a few cast changes (think of James Bond) over the decades.

What makes this shrunken down caricature of the great Komon so easily recognizable are his little beard and mustache, as well as purple (or golden) cap and vest (symbols of having reached a venerable old age).

The show, which has been broadcast during prime time since 1969, follows the same basic pattern each episode. Mito Komon (an affectionate appellation for the 2nd Lord of Mito, Tokugawa Mitsukuni), travels the country incognito, accompanied by his trusty bodyguards Suke and Kaku and assorted others (also undercover). You can be sure that trouble is encountered in every new locale, with the villains’ plans being properly foiled before the great Lord finally reveals his true identity by displaying an INRO (small case) with the Tokugawa Family seal of three-leaved AOI. All the locals then proceed to quiver with awe.

Amazingly, this simple formula has been keeping viewers satisfied for decades, and this show is probably what Mito (the capital of Ibaraki) is most famous for, even though the stories take place all over Japan.

Though it might be useful to check out the show on TV (Monday nights from 8-9 PM on channel 6) or rent a DVD or video for becoming more familiar with Japanese pop culture, I think that it is MORE ESSENTIAL to know a little about the historical figure on whom this fictionalized series is based.

I’m talking about Tokugawa Mitsukuni (1628-1700), a grandson of Ieyasu (the unifier of Japan), who became the second Lord of the Mito Domain, and went on to have a great impact not only on his own domain (now part of Ibaraki) but on the future course of Japan’s history and its dealings with the outside world.

This impact was due to Mitsukuni’s sponsorship of a huge and highly ambitious project which employed the services of more than 100 Japanese and Chinese scholars. Their task was to compile a definitive history of Japan, which would be called the Dai-Nihon Shi and would fill 397 volumes by the time of its completion in 1906.

This work was first carried out at Mitsukuni’s Edo (Tokyo) residences, but later continued in Mito. Thus, the way of looking at Japanese history which evolved from this undertaking (highly influenced by Chinese historiography) would be called Mito Studies (Mitogaku). Pointing to the centrality of the role of the Emperor in Japanese history, the Mito Scholars, especially during the times of Mitsukuni`s descendant Tokugawa Nariaki, would lead to the rise of the extreme xenophobia of the Revere The Emperor, Expel The Barbarians (Sonno Joi) Faction, which ironically helped lead to the overthrow of the Tokugawa Family and bring back (?) direct Imperial Rule. I don’t think I have to tell you what road this special brand of nationalism eventually lead to.

Besides sponsoring this greatly influential academic project, Mitsukuni became legendary for his wise  and benevolent rule of his domain. His tax relief and distribution of rice during times of famine was deeply appreciated by the people, and because of this his legend grew after his death. Fictional accounts of his travels around Japan were popular at the end of the 19th century. These tales eventually turned into the famous TV series from which derives the mascot of this year’s culture festival.

If you would like to do some Mitsukuni (Mito Komon) related travel, I would highly recommend a trip to SEIZAN-SO in Hitachi Ota in central Ibaraki. This is the great lord’s simple and rustic retirement villa. Beautiful in any season.  

I should’ve posted this days ago, but I completely forgot to do that(sorry!).

ACCS, a Tsukuba’s cable company, is airing the 30-miniute long “Tsukuba Festival Report” three times a day this week! I’d be fun to watch this if you were interviewed by the camera guy, or if you missed the festival and want to know what the festival was like.

The program is on channel J702, so you need to be their digital cable service subscriber to watch it. However, you can still watch the 15-minute version of the report on “analog” channel 9. You should be able to watch it if your residence is wired for ACCS’s cable TV even if you are not an ACCS customer.

Tsukuba Festival Report*
May 28 (Mon.) to June 3 (Sun.)
Channel J702
8:30am to 9am, 2:30pm to 3pm and 9:30pm to 10pm

Channel 9
7:30am to 7:45am

*I’ll check with ACCS about their program information, and update this post later.

From April 20, a new TV drama “Seito-shokun!” has been started on Friday on TV Asahi (10ch). “Seito-shokun!” is originally based on a girls’ manga which had been run from 1977 to 1984 by SHOJI Yoko.

By the way, actually, this TV drama is being filmed at the Azuma junior highschool in Tsukuba. If you are interested in filming of TV dramas, you might visit there on Saturday or Sunday. Please be sure not to interrupt the filming team!

This week again, the University of Tsukuba and the Tsukuba Express will appear on a newly started TV drama “Tokkyu Tanaka 3 go (Tanaka Express 3)” from 22:00 on May 4 (Fri.) on TBS (6ch).

Don’t miss it !