The Social Life of Public Toilets

[Charles]

I'm releasing a new video on my website, captured from FujiTV News, exploring the social aspects of the Ministry of Science and Education's new initiative to upgrade toilets in schools throughout Japan. The video is in Japanese only, and requires QuickTime 6. I have provided extensive commentary, so please don't hesitate to watch the video even if you don't understand a word of Japanese. If you have any problems seeing the video, please leave a comment.

BlogTV: The Social Life of Public Toilets

[GomiGirl]

What are the copyright issues (if any) of capturing a video like this from TV and putting it on your site???

[Charles]

What are the copyright issues (if any) of capturing a video like this from TV and putting it on your site???

It's exempt under Fair Use, since I am using the videos strictly for educational use in providing social commentary on Japanese culture and media, and I make no money from the site or its contents. It's in streaming video so it can't be downloaded to a file, which serves as a secondary measure to protect the rights of the copyrightholders.

[puargs]

SCOLA! WOOOO! We tape that shit EVERY DAY and put it out for the kids at the Phillips Hall Language Media Center.

Usually it's chinese though, and it's for the fucking *retarded* fourth year chinese students who still can't understand a word of anything that's going on.

Didn't watch the whole video, but did you get any NHK on there? Iowa City + high jap population = great early morning tv (those Let's English style shows with the "good looking" american teaching eikaiwa to the Dumb Bitch who can't pronounce a single word)... I love Iowa.

[puargs]

...You know, come to think of it, in my schools growing up, we had the most disgusting facilities ever. Conditions started in grade school with rusty sinks, broken urinals, and no doors on stalls- then up through high school it got progressively worse with no *stalls* at all, just toilets in a row, like a prison. No toilet paper, no soap, sometimes no working sink. Certainly no towels or drying mechanism of any sort. Of course, the teachers had their own private bathrooms replete with what I'm sure were at least "working" facilities.

I can remember "holding it" for almost all of my high school days, and in fact actually just ditching school and going home if I ever really had to go. Let's Japan Toilet sounds like a great idea for US public school systems.

[Charles]

SCOLA! WOOOO! We tape that shit EVERY DAY and put it out for the kids at the Phillips Hall Language Media Center.

Hey, do me a favor, email the UITV offices and request them to stop interrupting the Japanese broadcasts with the 10:30AM Monday press conferences by Kirk Ferentz. Even the Coach doesn't take those press conferences seriously, you can tell, if he was serious about it he would wear a suit and tie like the real press conferences. I've been meaning to call up and complain myself, but I suspect they'd be more responsive to requests from students, considering it is the Holy Game I'm requesting they ignore. UITV has been relatively responsive to viewer requests, at one point this summer they actually cancelled almost all the SCOLA shows, I called them up and they said "oh, we just decided to cancel a lot of news programs to see how many people complained and then we'd put them back." And then he said he would the Japanese news right on the spot by poking a few buttons on the computer. So he did.

Didn't watch the whole video, but did you get any NHK on there? Iowa City + high jap population = great early morning tv (those Let's English style shows with the "good looking" american teaching eikaiwa to the Dumb Bitch who can't pronounce a single word)... I love Iowa.

I get a few hours of NHK shows each week, but they're English news digests produced for foreign markets, they're pretty awful. Still, once in a while they have something worthwhile. But I stopped recording it on my TiVo, it's on the ANC channel and they show the same program about 10 times a day. If I tell my TiVo to record it, it just records the same damn show over and over, and it conflicts with other shows I really do want to record. But occasionally I do catch something worth recording manually.

...You know, come to think of it, in my schools growing up, we had the most disgusting facilities ever.

Just consider yourself lucky you're not old enough to remember Central Jr. High. It was so old, the rooms still had gaslight fixtures that they'd never bothered to remove.

[Big Booger]

Charles,
One suggestion for your blog, PARAGRAPH breaks... Makes reading much easier with spaces between each break.

And for some odd reason, that video doesn't play.. it hangs on saying "connecting"

NM, I got the video to work. Just had to restart it.

Very interesting yet odd show... I like the Principal at the end. he summed it up rather nicely.. I mean, I hold dear all those times I had to take a dump back in my junior high days in the icy cold winter months in good ol' Brownstown, Indiana.. thank god for heat in the restrooms, and hot water to wash my hands... oh those were the memories..

[Charles]

Charles,
One suggestion for your blog, PARAGRAPH breaks... Makes reading much easier with spaces between each break.

I'm still tweaking the formatting on the blog, I just rebuilt the entire site and it still needs a lot of improvements. I originally had breaks formatted as you suggested, but it seemed to make my already-too-lengthy articles even more lengthy.

[Big Booger]

Charles,
One suggestion for your blog, PARAGRAPH breaks... Makes reading much easier with spaces between each break.

I'm still tweaking the formatting on the blog, I just rebuilt the entire site and it still needs a lot of improvements. I originally had breaks formatted as you suggested, but it seemed to make my already-too-lengthy articles even more lengthy.

Yeah, perhaps a synopsis (first paragraph, and then a link to "read more" if the topic interests the reader. Would make for a tidier look and and easier read.

Nice blog you have over there.

[puargs]

Just consider yourself lucky you're not old enough to remember Central Jr. High. It was so old, the rooms still had gaslight fixtures that they'd never bothered to remove.

Actually, I grew up in a shitty town called Rockford, in Illinois. Voted worst school district in the nation by teacher's unions for like 11 years in a row when I was younger. They were $25 million in the hole (not overexaggerating, that's a real number)... my mom worked for them, and every year the teachers had to strike before school could start, because the district kept wanting to pay them in IOUs, instead of with checks.

This, of course, reflected poorly in the bathrooms.