How much Japanese programming have you REALLY seen? This is NHK, remember. Publicly-funded, non-commercial television. Educational and occasionally odd but really funny anime, great documentaries, historical dramas, news.
We used to watch TV all the time in Japan. When we moved to Canada we watched North-American programming for the two weeks we were staying in a hotel then made the conscious decision not to receive any broadcast TV at home. 60+ channels of 95% crap.
This is NHK, non-commercial, government funded TV. It'll be 50 years of period dramas (Jidai Geki, from whence came Lucas' Jedi), boring news programs and some REALLY, REALLY good (although occasionally faked) documentaries.
Fluffy technical details.
Two guys, one with only entrepreneurial interest.
Overemphasis on promotion and marketing.
No pictures of current or previous hardware/software.
Compare with the Thrust SSC site. Still going strong three years after the feat.
Hence their reluctance to release a DVD with a Japanese track abroad which would then instantly become a hot commodity in Japan and be re-imported by the black market.
Begs a couple of questions though:
1) The US version will be Region 1. I don't think too many Japanese have Region 1-capable players. Some, but the mass market will buy the regular-store Region 2 player.
2) Why the hell have they waited this long to release Ghibli's films on DVD anyway?
We have everything they've released on VHS up to now. (The Ghibli ga Ippai Collection) All Japanese and only Japanese. Any dub is NEVER going to do justice to the talents of the original voice actors.
NHK, the Japanese broadcasting agency had a special on what Hubble has discovered accompanied by the most moving and haunting soundtrack. They take this picture then seamlessly transition to a 3-dimensional CG flight through all the galaxies giving you an even greater impression of the depth. There has been many American and UK-made specials like this, even in IMax (Cosmic Voyage) but absolutely NOTHING compares to this. Has me reaching for the hankies everytime.
Japanese adopt technology earlier????? No way. They may produce lots of neat consumer electronics toys but a visit to any major Japanese company would have you think you were back in the 60's.
I would discount the language as an impediment as proper training with technologies such as IMEs result in faster input and document creation than by hand.
The sad truth is that short-sighted techno-phobic management have kept computers out of Japanese firms. These are guys who grew up in the poverty of post-war Japan and who think that only hard work and endless hours of manual labour can produce a result. The concept that a simple CrossTalk + Excel macro can do in 30 seconds what took two girls an entire Friday every week to accomplish is beyond their comprehension.
This situation is changing as the post-war generation retires and the young shinjin-rui step into management positions, but there is still a long way to go.
Other posts mentioned the bastardized double-byte encodings that have hindered Asian MS products up to now. MS's Japanese Shift-JIS (a.k.a. Shit-JIS) is no exception. Imagine some foreign company coming into the States saying "We have a great new encoding for your language which is really efficient except you can't use Q or X because there aren't enough data points". The Japanese are looking for a proper alternative which they can adapt to be their own (as they always will). An Open Source OS such as Linux is perfect for the job but I would say the risk of forking is WAY higher in Japan since each company will still want to "do it their way". Those around in Japan in the 80's will recall that every manufacturer's hardware was incompatible so a software maker had to produce an NEC version, a Fujitsu version, a Hitachi version, etc. etc.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot Nintama Rantaro! :-)
Anime, educational and funny as hell!
How much Japanese programming have you REALLY seen? This is NHK, remember. Publicly-funded, non-commercial television. Educational and occasionally odd but really funny anime, great documentaries, historical dramas, news.
We used to watch TV all the time in Japan. When we moved to Canada we watched North-American programming for the two weeks we were staying in a hotel then made the conscious decision not to receive any broadcast TV at home. 60+ channels of 95% crap.
This is NHK, non-commercial, government funded TV. It'll be 50 years of period dramas (Jidai Geki, from whence came Lucas' Jedi), boring news programs and some REALLY, REALLY good (although occasionally faked) documentaries.
Fluffy technical details.
Two guys, one with only entrepreneurial interest.
Overemphasis on promotion and marketing.
No pictures of current or previous hardware/software.
Compare with the Thrust SSC site . Still going strong three years after the feat.
At least on Skylab they could do that "Dave Bowman runs around the centrifuge" thing.
If Skylab had nothing else it was spacious.
World's tallest free-standing tourist trap.
~30,000,000m trip to Geo on space tower = ~C$300
300m to CN tower observation level = C$16
At CN's rate the Geo trip would cost C$160,000
Always subbed.
So why, if foreign films are always shown in their native language would BV Japan not want their own product shown in its native language?
The above is rhetorical. Beuna Vista Japan asked for it, the REAL reasons known only to them.
Wonder if my ex-girlfriend's sister still works at BV Japan?
Hence their reluctance to release a DVD with a Japanese track abroad which would then instantly become a hot commodity in Japan and be re-imported by the black market.
Begs a couple of questions though:
1) The US version will be Region 1. I don't think too many Japanese have Region 1-capable players. Some, but the mass market will buy the regular-store Region 2 player.
2) Why the hell have they waited this long to release Ghibli's films on DVD anyway?
We have everything they've released on VHS up to now. (The Ghibli ga Ippai Collection) All Japanese and only Japanese. Any dub is NEVER going to do justice to the talents of the original voice actors.
This? http://www.etunnels.com
NHK, the Japanese broadcasting agency had a special on what Hubble has discovered accompanied by the most moving and haunting soundtrack. They take this picture then seamlessly transition to a 3-dimensional CG flight through all the galaxies giving you an even greater impression of the depth. There has been many American and UK-made specials like this, even in IMax (Cosmic Voyage) but absolutely NOTHING compares to this. Has me reaching for the hankies everytime.
He he he.
Reminds me of the April Fool's Japan Times - Not! ad of a few years ago:
Now in Theaters: Godzilla vs Hello Kitty!
"He's back, He's mad, and he's looking for a little pussy!"
Prayer is an expression of wishful thinking. An externalizing of internal desires.
First prove computers can think or have desires, then decide if they can pray.
"...when he looked overhead slowly, one by one, the stars were going out." - The Nine Billion Names of God. Great Story.
Japanese adopt technology earlier????? No way. They may produce lots of neat consumer electronics toys but a visit to any major Japanese company would have you think you were back in the 60's.
I would discount the language as an impediment as proper training with technologies such as IMEs result in faster input and document creation than by hand.
The sad truth is that short-sighted techno-phobic management have kept computers out of Japanese firms. These are guys who grew up in the poverty of post-war Japan and who think that only hard work and endless hours of manual labour can produce a result. The concept that a simple CrossTalk + Excel macro can do in 30 seconds what took two girls an entire Friday every week to accomplish is beyond their comprehension.
This situation is changing as the post-war generation retires and the young shinjin-rui step into management positions, but there is still a long way to go.
Other posts mentioned the bastardized double-byte encodings that have hindered Asian MS products up to now. MS's Japanese Shift-JIS (a.k.a. Shit-JIS) is no exception. Imagine some foreign company coming into the States saying "We have a great new encoding for your language which is really efficient except you can't use Q or X because there aren't enough data points". The Japanese are looking for a proper alternative which they can adapt to be their own (as they always will). An Open Source OS such as Linux is perfect for the job but I would say the risk of forking is WAY higher in Japan since each company will still want to "do it their way". Those around in Japan in the 80's will recall that every manufacturer's hardware was incompatible so a software maker had to produce an NEC version, a Fujitsu version, a Hitachi version, etc. etc.
- Guregu -
WHAT?! No Vancouver? AAAARRRGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Not that I haven't seen the original Japanese video 20+ times already. (Offshoot of Japanese wife and bilingual kids).
Let me make this perfectly clear...
YOU MUST SEE THIS FILM!!
Ashitaka
And I keep staring to see if there are any hidden messages. Just wish my screensaver version filled the whole bloody screen.
Makes me wonder how large the flightsim easter egg in Excel was?
In Japan NEC is called 60% of the market.
But now that iMacs make up 70% of new machine purchases in the last year....