I love NHK WORLD-JAPAN! They also have a great YouTube channel[0]. I am especially fond of their "Journeys in Japan" series[1] where "English-speaking visitors travel the length of Japan, exploring the local culture, meeting the people and offering travel hints rarely found in guidebooks".
Used to watch it quite frequently because there was a Kodi add-on that could pull down their stream w/o too much trouble.
It's fun to watch, but you should always take it with a grain of salt. I imagine the "budget" to produce English-language NHK content must be coming from the state's tourism board or something, so in the five years I watched the channel, there was nary a negative fact about Japan ever mentioned. There are no problems, no conflicts...only beautiful country where old women still gather acorns by hand, and 80 year-old men who are free to hone their lifelong craft of making tofu.
I think the producers are very self aware of portraying a culture that is slowly circulating the drain.
Every 80 year old guy is "the last X artist of the prefecture" and grandma is crawling around picking acorns or wrapping pears by hand as "my children moved to the city". Every rural train and road are empty. I'm sure the Japanese have an appropriate word for melancholy.
Document 72 Hours can be soul crushing. One minute school kids buying paper products at a HW store, the next an older guy looking at kitchen tiles and talking about how his wife always wanted a new kitchen and he never had time for it. And now she's dead.
We love Document 72. It's one of our favorite things to watch, but it is absolutely true that the majority of episodes feature at least one person explaining that a family member recently died of cancer.
I do too. Somewhere Street and PythagoraSwitch are shows my family and I have watched every week for many years. I find Somewhere Street particularly rewarding - we've learned about so many different countries and cities and their people.
And in general, watching NHK you get a perspective on things that are entirely missing or lacking in the US (e.g. things that inspire confidence and trust in public institutions, what the government is doing to prepare for natural disasters).
This documentary is really eye-opening about Miyazaki, his creative process, mental state, and the relationship with Studio Ghibli. Depressing, but I thought it was worth watching.
Weirdly I sometimes listen to their Swahili news broadcast. For some reason, the Japanese radio's is the only decent short podcast I could find in Swahili, very strange
It's very weird. Mostly, it's only a few minutes of international news, about the latest G20 or the war in Ukraine, with a focus on what the Japanese government does in relation to it.
recommend ost from their anime for anyone looking for background music while working. Ghibli music has this serene and inspiring vibe which helps me stay focused: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGl75kurxok&t=724s
[0] https://www.youtube.com/@NHKWORLDJAPAN
[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFEzXnIQVwV86hG7tkoVn...