A review of Danny Choo's "Culture Japan"

This morning I had the opportunity to watch the Culture Japan Season 1 TV series airing on 8TV every Saturday between 11:30 am and 12:30 pm. It is aired in double back-to-back episodes. The episodes are separated with a break in-between. The original broadcaster is Tokyo MX. The presenter of the programme is Danny Choo, a young Chinese Malaysian who lives in Japan. He is the son of Jimmy Choo, a famous shoe designer who is based in London. That's why he has a British accent when he speaks in English while I was watching the programme. He has his own blog called "Culture Japan" and designed his own anime character called Mirai Suenaga for Mirai Millenium. 

The programme starts off with an animated intro of Mirai walking around futuristic Tokyo. The outro encourages us to learn Japanese words by looking at the first hiragana character of each word. Danny also reminded to buy Mirai-themed karuta cards like those in the outro. Throughout the programme, Danny is accompanied by another person, usually a Japanese. Sometimes, an animated Mirai comes in to explain detalis of where Danny is going in Japanese. Unlike other documentaries, Culture Japan in my opinion targets teenagers and youths who have an interest in Japan, especially me. The programme is informal in nature.

The episode I first saw was Danny and her Japanese friend visting Edo Wonderland. Another episode that I saw later was a short interview in his studio with Sekai no Yumi, another Japanese at the start and the end of the episode. She speaks English in this episode. The episode also brings us to an animated studio called J.C. Staff. Danny was there with his Canon camera and met with the manager of the studio. The interesting part of the episode was the rushing room. The director had no idea where the name came out, but the room was used for editing the final product to video tape. They have to check the CRT monitor because the colour that came out from the monitor differs from the main monitor.

I wish I can watch more episodes of Danny Choo soon.  

You can visit his blog at http://www.dannychoo.com/.