Tokyo and tech through the eyes of a split pea

A taste of culture on American TV?

Two years ago ABC’s Lost made a significant bet by introducing subtitles for an extended period throughout its episodes. For a good part of the beginning of the season, two Korean characters communicated only in Korean, and God forbid if couch-potatoe viewers couldn’t keep up with reading the English – here was a chance for a major cable network to attempt to raise the IQ of its viewers. Not knowing the language myself, I was curious how authentic the dialog was.

Well, I just watched the season premier of NBC’s new show Heroes, and I think I have an idea (*gasp*!) One of the characters is a typical Japanese salaryman who has the unique ability to alter the space/time divide. In introducing this character, he starts off in Tokyo trying to convince a colleague of his abilities – and the dialog is ear-piercingly annoying! Okay, to be fair the main Japanese character isn’t so bad, but boy his colleague … do the Japanese a favor and stick to English! The most annoying is when this colleague tries to say English names (a reference to “Star Trek” and “Spock”, for example) with the Japanese accent – but since his Japanese is already funky, the faux accent renders a completely incomprehensible aural burp.

It’s sad – more for the Japanese, since most viewers probably couldn’t care less. For them I imagine just seeing images of Shibuya and Tokyo are fascinating. Still, since Hollywood can’t seem to find Japanese who can speak English, it’d be nice if they at least used native Japanese speakers for real Japanese dialog…