Foreign-language teachers often operate under the assumption that TV is a great teaching tool because the kids, they love their tube. This can be a convenient strategy for frazzled educators, as with my high-school Spanish teacher’s “multimedia days,” which coincidentally allowed her to eat Oreos and catch up on her steamy telenovelas for the duration of the class period. Or it might be a genuine attempt to capture students’ interest, like the Japanese professor’s familiar tactic of incorporating anime into the lesson plan.

In any case, instruction by way of pop culture rarely proves as effective as the teacher thinks it will. That fuzzy videotape of last weekend’s Sabado Gigante may be a smorgasbord of fun, but “entertaining” doesn’t necessarily mean “memorable.”

“Weird,” on the other hand, tends to have a stronger hold on the psyche. So while casting about for novel Japanese learning aids recently, I was delighted to find that a user on Japanophile video-sharing site Crunchyroll had uploaded vintage “Learn Japanese” TV programs from NHK, the country’s public broadcaster. I was hooked after just one minute of the first episode:

The formal lesson hasn’t even begun, and already we learn how Japan sees the rest of the world: an unruly mass of garish stereotypes, smushing their noses against the glass in the hope that they might glimpse the wondrous Land of the Rising Sun. “Here, broad caricatures, observe the beeping and text on our precision-manufactured video device. Does this display please you? Yes, of course it does.”

By the way, I believe the “quack” at the 0:20 mark is an artifact mistakenly added by the Crunchyroll uploader, but I’m not 100% sure. It kind of fits.

NHK produces a raft of Japanese instruction materials, and they still make Japanese lessons for broadcast, so it’s not hard to find recent episodes. Yet who wants the modern, polished stuff? The episodes on Crunchyroll have ripened with age. (The uploader thinks they were made in the 1980s, but my guess is early ’90s.)

As the videos’ technology, production value, and cultural sensitivities become more dated, the strangeness and humor value increase accordingly. For intance, if I saw a professional actor in a present-day lesson pull out his smartphone, I would be bored. Yet in 1991 Japan, I’m enraptured as “American”¹ David Roberts cracks open a portable mainframe to bang on the keys and stare at a blank screen.

Note that the producers of this episode weren’t satisfied to let the enormous notebook computer pass unnoticed, so they added a “clink-clank-clink” sound effect when David fires that sweet machine up. Really sells the moment.

Doko desu ka is page-one phrasebook stuff, but the lessons do get more interesting, like this vignette at the “AMERICAN STATE OFFICE” where David learns that passive aggression is built into the Japanese language.²

That’s from Episode 23, “Saying No Politely,” which is one of my favorites, along with Episode 28, “Criticizing Mildly.”

The videos are hilarious even for non-students, but if you are learning Japanese, they’re actually practical. The lessons won’t help you decipher the great works of Japanese literature, but they honestly are a good way to polish your conversation skills. A typical language tape’s key phrases are lifeless, utilitarian sentences that you hope to chisel into memory. But in these artifacts from NHK’s past, the Japanese phrases act as punchlines to a bizarre joke. It’s easy to remember a good punchline.

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1. Is the accent British? South African? It’s certainly not American, which I don’t understand at all. They couldn’t possibly find an American actor to play this part? In 1991, Japan owned America. ↑

2. If you’re wondering, the first Japanese-language exchange before David’s boss breaks into English goes something like this:
   David: “I wanted to ask about a vacation&hellip”
   Boss: “A vacation? Huh.”
   David: “Uh, I haven't taken a summer vacation yet.”
   Boss: “Yup. How about that.” ↑