Ayumi Aikawa: Uh, The Philippine you say that (Yeah) you know, the American TV programs (It’s everywhere) Yeah, everywhere right! So that’s why you- you know even you- you’re- you don’t-don’t go to school yet, you can hear it from TV all the time (Mm hm) right? In Japan, it’s so hardly to..

José Cruz: Let me give you an interesting story, I didn’t know this until um I- I started uh uh twitter. (Mm) Ha ha I started twitter and I started following some of these people that I know are very famous, (Mm hm) and they’re like philosophers and famous scientists. And one very famous scientist that I follow on twitter, his name is um, Richard Dawkins (Mm hm) Professor Richard Dawkins, and um he- even though he’s like 75. I don’t know if that’s his age but he’s like in his seventies (Mm hm) he’s 75. He decided to start studying French and German. (Mm) I go, “Wow! that’s so cool” you know that age, (That’s ve- very) that’s a really smart guy (Yeah yeah) and he realized that what is one of the problems about British programming, is that British programming is so much like NHK and Japanese mass media. If there’s an American guy speaking what they will do is they will let him speak but then the translator starts talking on top of him, so his voice goes out. (Ha) You’ll never hear English you’ll never see English at the bottom. You just hear translations. (OK) And he said, this is so stupid! Why does the BBC (Uh) This is the BBC! (Mm) So I don’t think it’s just a uniquely stupid (Mm hm) Japanese idea. It’s, it’s what happens when education doesn’t see the value in being international and challenging people to see other cultures and (Right) adapting to them. (Mm) If you’re thinking that other cultures have to adapt to me, (Mm hm) then you’ll end up with the same sort of thinking that um, old Japanese systems like NHK (Mm hm) or Fuji TV, or or anything like that, or like the British system, the BBC. (Mm hm) And it also happens in America. America itself doesn’t have a lot of foreign language programming. (Oh really) Well not on local TV. (Mm hm) If you wanted to watch French movies, yeah, there’s always Netflix, but before Netflix you could go and rent them, but they wouldn’t be on TV, and maybe they’d be subtitled, but they wouldn’t even come out at all in the first place. And Canada was better (Mm hm) because we have the two languages, you know (Right right) English and French so we always tried to accommodate that (Right right) but even now most Americans I know are basically all multi- oh not, sorry, uh unilingual, they only know English. (Oh I see) They have a very similar attitude. It’s just old thinking. It’s not specifically Japanese.

Ayumi: I see. I see. Um that’s that’s why I think, um you know we call the like a, kakkyo, kakkyo means the Chinese went to somewhere you know, outside of China, and then they have a like a- like a pretty, like a nice business in in you know the, you know in the world (other country) yeah other countries, so they always having like a very you know new, like informations um because they are like uh checking like a different country’s information all the time.

José: and bringing it back to China.

Ayumi: I think so. In for example, some of my friend- in United States, they always watching like a- like both of- like news they have like Chinese (Chinese news) like uh um how do you say that Phoenix, Phoenix TV probram (OK) program is uh very popular in China. (Mm hm) And then they’re watching, like uh they’re watching like uh local United States news program. And then they they just compare and then they just find out the real situation all the time. (Mm mm) So uh for Japanese they’re really like um like poor informations.

José: Yeah that’s why I stopped watching Japanese news.