kilgoretrout comments

Oh where to start.

Even for bigger productions such as dramas, the production quality of the shows is so low that the special effects and cinematography looks like something submitted by a college student with no money or crew available.

Variety show sets look like they were designed by a 10 year old child on a sugar rush, absolute lack of any cohesion and blinding colors everywhere.

The characters are almost universally archetypes on a level that would appear to be caricature, if only they had aspirations for that level of depth of meaning.

They have not attempted to make the transition from the grammar of stage acting to film, which is essentially about showing over telling. Instead you get huge ridiculous over-acting (food shows are especially notorious) that should embarrass anyone involved in the making or distribution of such garbage.

One example I can recall from the few painful minutes I spent trying to watch "Reiko Kujo: the woman who knows bones" (a detective show that apparently tried to take itself seriously). Enter young female detective and older male coworker.

NARRATOR: Madoka Kirishima was trained in forensic science at Harvard University and operates the most cutting edge machinery better than anyone on the planet.

We see SEMPAI walk up to MADOKA

MADOKA (childish pout on face): Heeeeeee------ I don't understand this! (puts hands on hips and pouts)

SEMPAI (voice as deep as the final resting place of MH370): Let me take a look.

Just one of a million examples of idiotic use of stereotype, an inability to use the visual nature of the medium to convey information, and of course, a pointless reinforcement of gender roles.

I could go on and on but why bother.

Man this sure isn't a good week to be traveling as a Chinese person.

I was in New York City. About to go to bed when I get a ton of emails from people in Japan saying "I'm OK".

If you live in Japan you know that people take their earthquakes in stride, so I knew something awful had happened. Turned on the TV and saw the towns getting sucked into the ocean. Tried calling who I knew in Japan but no phones could get through.

I was working on a large-scale Japanese translation project in Times Square at that time, nearly 100 Japanese translators. We had a few that didn't come back that day, or any day after. Women in kimonos were out collecting money in Times Square while I was calling anyone I could to try and get water and other essentials to the girl I was dating at the time, who was still in Tokyo.

Initially I thought that nobody I knew was directly impacted until I got a call from a former employer who asked if I could remotely assist through their headquarters in NYC as my former colleague and teammate in Tokyo had gone missing. Turns out that she went looking for her parents in Miyagi and never found them.

We didn't meet up again until two years after that day, but the change in her face is clear as day. One only wonders what it's like for those still unable to go home.