Sigh, today was spent primarily watching Japanese TV on the international channel, and studying Japanese. Why am I doing this so obsessively? I
don't know, but it's good. Anyway, first I caught the news, which I got very little out of, other than the name Koizumi (duh), some numbers, and
a vague feel for sentence structures, with mostly past tense verbs. It also was depressing because the backdrop of the show was an aerial image
of a metropolitan area with a bunch of skyscrapers at night, and it gave me an image of Japan as nothing but a sea of skyscraper glaciers with no
signs of life, all black building automatons and no daylight. So, next was a political discussion show, which was also fairly impenetrable, but which
featured a turtle in a plastic pen which would be shown when things got dull. Meet the Press should definitely get an animal. The animal can be
called upon to decide whether or not the guest has contradicted himself. Next up was Dr. Coto's clinic, a soap opera that I didn't watch much of.

But after that...after that! After that was "Hey!Hey!Hey! Music Champ", a fantastic show where they interview pop musicians and then they perform.
When they're doing the interviews, things that they are saying are constantly popping up on the screen in stylish Japanese text, which is helpful.
During the performances they also have Japanese subtitles of the lyrics, which I guess is good for fans who want to sing along, and also good for me.
The songs had some English lyrics in the choruses, mostly things like "baby yeah, you and me, our love is forever" only less coherent. The amusing
part of that was that they didn't sing them with the right stress patterns at all, so it sounded rather strange. One performer was a pretty cool
girl who looked like a schoolgirl from Whites Stripes Elementary, with glasses, a red tie and white shirt, and requisite skirt. Her song was called
"Greatful Days."