[OT} Why is Japanese radio so unbelievably bad?

I drove to Chiba today to go to Ikea (pronounced イケア in Japanese, by the way), so now I have lots of new flat pack furniture, lamps and mattresses in my house. On the way the connection to Eagle 810 broke down, and since it was more than two hours of traffic jams to Funabashi, I was forced to listen to Japanese FM radio.

Now I cannot understand why this doesn't drive the Japanese insane. Perhaps someone can explain to me why the Japanese can tolerate or even enjoy:

* People talking while music is playing. I don't mean just at the beginning or end of a track, although that is annoying enough. I mean for example sometimes they start talking over the track about half way through it, and then they go on talking until the end. Sometimes they talk from the very beginning to the very end of the track. Then when the track is finished they go on talking.

* People not only talking while the music is playing, but talking about what the music is like when the music is playing. For example describing the music and telling you it is by the "densetsu na yuunito" or something and telling you what the music is like and why people like it, while the music is playing, but you cannot hear the music because of all the talking about what the music is like.

* After a track has ended, the DJ tells you why you should like the music which you have just heard, as if you had not heard the music and could not make up your mind whether you liked it until someone explained to you why you should like it.

* People talking about excruciatingly trivial, mundane, pointless, and boring things. A lot of the stuff on the Japanese radio is like overhearing someone else's boring conversation. About half or more of the time they don't even play any music but they just talk about their parrot's bowel problems, what colour socks they are wearing, or the number of almonds in the almond flavoured dessert they ate yesterday. I am not joking at all: quite seriously, this is the kind of thing they talk about, for more than half the time.

* People who suddenly start gabbing in a foreign language. There is one woman who talks in French but most of them just do English. They suddenly gab out something in a foreign language then they go back to talking Japanese again.

* Cruddy, rubbish, offensively bad music which was never a hit in the US or anywhere else being presented as the next musical sensation by dishonest DJs who seem to be able to speak English and surely should know better.

And this is all day, every day, on channels like J-Wave and Tokyo Bay FM.

Today I listened to not just one programme but four different Japanese FM radio stations, which I listened for about as long as I could stand, and I've heard this stuff many times in the past. The barber I go to, who I hope I haven't offended by calling a tokoya, plays the J-Wave all the time. I really can't understand how Japanese people manage to tolerate this endless verbal diarrhea.

Fortunately on the way back I got Eagle 810 again which is why I'm still feeling relatively sane, even after spending four hours in Chiba traffic jams and three hours in Ikea, which plays even worse music than J-Wave.

--
sci.lang.japan FAQ: http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/afaq.html

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