One thing I like about TV in Japan is the variety of shows they broadcast. From popular dramas to educational quiz shows to something called World’s Greatest TV in which stories from around the world are shown, like a turtle enthusiast who recreates famous scenes from Hollywood movies using turtles, there’s always something interesting on to watch. One show I like is called Sekai no Shaso Kara, or From The Train Window of the World, which sends camera crews to places like Norway, the Czech Republic, the U.S. and China to document the beautiful sights seen from trains. I caught an interesting program recently called “A Discovery in the Village of the World! Japanese Living in a Place Like This,” which was about Japanese people who happen to live in unique places. First there was the story of a Japanese girl who had fallen in love with a student from Sweden and married him, and they were living in Iceland, about as far from Japan as you can get in the world. Then there was another Japanese girl who’d decided to put down roots in a village along the Amazon river in Bolivia, an unexpected place to find a nihonjin. Although these Japanese people were far from home, you could feel the cultural connection they still felt with their home country.
