Part 7: (Life at) Home and TV
Home in Japan, where you will spend most of your days; obviously very important.
Let me tell you; if you live in an MEDC and a decent house, you will have to get used to Japanese houses. Honestly.
Japan is about 70% mountainous or forested - which means that the large settlements are usually around the coasts. Which means that about 130 million people live in that 30% of 380.000 km2. So unless you'll be living in the country sides. Expect your house to be pretty damn small. Really damn small.
Especially in the large cities like Tokyo, not only will your house be small but if your parent's work doesn't financially help for housing, it will be mad expensive!
Since earthquakes are common in Japan (I've mentioned it before), the houses are made of different material than in many other countries - for one, the walls are thin - it won't be hard to hear your neighbours, and likewise it won't be hard for your neighbours to hear you, so be considerate about noise, volume, etc. You will notice how annoying it can get if your neighbour likes to watch TV all day in a pretty loud volume.
So generally the housing conditions is pretty bad - especially the insulation. Japanese homes aren't really insulated well, I believe most of the windows aren't double layered (plus the thin walls) so you will get cold in the winter, and it will be ridiculously hot in the summer, and it will be impossible to live without AC. Also, we don't really use central heating to heat up the house - instead kerosene, or electronic space heaters are used. Luckily kerosene is easy to obtain, there will be a man carrying a large truck with kerosene every week, like an ice cream man with the music and all. Then you bring him the containers and he'll fill them up at a cheap price.
Here is how you use them.
There's a lot more trouble when it comes to having a house in Japan, but since I didn't have to worry about it then, I'm afraid I can't share any experiences.
Edit / I have just done some research, and it turns out in Hokkaido the house insulations are much better because of the harsher winter climates.
Now moving on to the subject of TV.
This subject will have multiple opinions - it really is a matter of taste.
Personally, I found Japanese TV rather amusing (maybe because I could understand it), many people don't. I can agree if I think from a different perspective.
No matter what, Japanese TV will amuse you for the first few weeks or so. Then perhaps you'll start to find it boring. because Japanese (cable) TV is always the same. Somehow most of the TV programs are "light". So interesting documentaries, and so on is pretty hard to find. Most of it is talk show, cooking show with the same people called "Talents". They sit in a decorated stage where they discuss current events, and laugh laugh laugh laugh and laugh. It can be funny but I understand that some people just will get bored of it. Then there's the food part where they'll cook food which is like 1/10 of the program, then they eat it and discuss how good it was for the rest of it.
Also, you'll find that lots of stuff is always dubbed in Japanese, not subbed. If there's a film in another language, they'll dub it; heck - they even dub CNN and BBC and other international news channels in Japanese, which may be frustrating to those having trouble. But I suggest to do your best and practice Japanese as hard as you can!
Of course there's Anime too but I rarely watched Anime to have anything to say about it. I may do some research on this, ask some friends who do watch Anime and of course if any of you have experience, please elaborate!
These were experiences of cable TV, I'm sorry I have no experience of digital.
Anyways thanks for reading, if you have any questions, please go ahead and ask!! ヽ(○・▽・○)ノ゛
