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Where Do You Watch Japanese Videos Online? — 22 Comments

  1. Omg, Japanese videos on youtube are the best! They provide one with short videos that can satisfy any attention span. I just thought I’d take a little time to share some channels that I’m currently subscribed to on youtube:

    アリさん is a Japanese vlogger that posts daily news tidbits and also has a second channel that he posts more raw footage. He speaks insanely fast but when you can understand him, understanding other Japanese becomes easier.
    http://www.youtube.com/user/ARIKEITA113
    http://www.youtube.com/user/ARIORALI

    エグリさん is another vlogger that posts regularly. From what I’ve seen so far, he makes videos on random purchased items, and social/promotional events ranging from a device that creates foam on top of a poured pint of beer to DJ’d events.
    http://www.youtube.com/user/eguri89

    チカさん is a vlogger who’s videos are aimed at Japanese people learning english. She’s a bilingual Japanese girl that grew up in the US and returned to Japan for work. This is a good intro youtube channel because she usually repeats herself in both Japanese and English.
    http://www.youtube.com/user/cyoshida1231

    Sgrproject is a vlogger who posts random videos but are usually well done. Originally a parkour practitioner, he has given reviews on things such as shoes and energy drinks.
    http://www.youtube.com/user/sgrproject

    PDRKabushikigaisha is a vlogger I recently just subscribed to. I believe he is half Japanese and half, uhm, other. I suggest watching the video where he puts makeup on his gf with a blindfold on (I had many laughs).
    http://www.youtube.com/user/PDRKabushikigaisha

    I can’t create a Japanese youtube channel recommendation list without promoting the following channel. Every couple of weeks JPCMHD uploads the most recent Japanese commercials for foreign viewing pleasure. It is awesome!
    http://www.youtube.com/user/JPCMHD

    カズさん has two different channels, one promoting various food recipes and food cooking appliances and another that has a somewhat broad range of topics (below).
    http://www.youtube.com/user/kazuch0924p

    An honorable mention is the following channel. It is of a University in Japan (Keio University) and they post videos ranging from 5min snippets that researchers are working on to full length lectures on Physics/Science and Math.
    http://www.youtube.com/user/keiouniversity

      • My pleasure! Also, the great thing about vlogs directed at a Japanese audience: Comments! Talk about Japanese in the raw. I could never get into 2ch because the layout was so unappealing, but youtube’s always trying to make their site look nice. In this way I get the forum-y Japanese experience in a nice looking environment :D

  2. Netflix is not the best for Japanese videos. There’s a good selection of movies, but if you watch anime streamed, it’ll be in English!

    I don’t have iTunes, but there’s probably a great selection there. Crunchyroll and Funimation are great free and legal options. I most often go to Funimation to rip audio for my CDs, but Crunchyroll has more selection, so I’d probably go there to watch series. Hulu has a great collection as well. Crunchyroll is mostly anime, but Hulu has anime and movies, but I don’t think it has dramas. Hulu will sometimes link from Crunchyroll. However, Hulu commercials are extremely annoying. There’s too many of them and sometimes it’s hard to skip to a part if you’ve already seen some of the video. Over all, dramas are the one thing that you can’t find much of legally over the internet.

    I usually just go to a website that has all these sources like Dailymotion or YouTube collected and categorized by drama/anime and episode, so that you can just type in the series you’re looking for and watch it.

    YouTube is great and I can usually find what I’m looking for. They sometimes block videos though because of copyright infringement, so in that case, I’ll go to Dailymotion.

    • Gosh, there’s a lot of inappropriate stuff on this site. Just a warning for others. I’ll stick to covering up subs with microsoft notepad.

      Torrenting is probably the best way to get access to material without subtitles. Some sites will offer links to RAW streams along side their links to subbed and dubbed versions. But I’m finding it’s fewer and fewer. Mainly just for new series that are currently airing.

      Another option is watching videos with Chinese subtitles. I feel it’s more common to find videos with Chinese subs than videos that are RAW. May be a bit annoying to have something at the bottom of the screen, but it’s not English. That is if Chinese isn’t your native language.

      • I mainly use torrent myself. Also what parts were inappropriate, maybe I didn’t see them because I use adblocker.

  3. Just throwing it out there, Viki recently put up a bunch of Japanese dramas, mostly police procedurals. Not all of them are subbed yet, but somehow I don’t think that’s a problem for this group. Also, Dramafever is streaming Mischievous Kiss the day after it’s aired in Japan, which I think is a mega breakthrough. Hopefully this means Japanese stations are going to start making their shows more widely available online for foreign audiences – can you imagine if NHK started letting us watch their historical dramas online? Maybe by the time that happens my Japanese will be adequate enough to comprehend them . . . .

  4. Niji Show. P2P streaming of live Japanese television. It’s got its ups and downs and sometimes doesn’t work right, but it’s worlds better than what KeyHoleTV used to be. I basically have it going 24 hours a day except for when it doesn’t work.

    Also, I highly recommend random Japanese YouTubers who put up 実況プレイ videos. There is very little as entertaining as watching a Japanese guy try to wrap his head around Saints Row the Third, or watching someone get lost in Skyrim for the first time. Plus they usually play lots of more obscure Japanese titles, so if it’s stuff you’re not likely to import yourself, it can be well worth watching.

    • A little late to the party here… but I was looking around for YouTubers playing modded Minecraft (might be somewhat narrow field of search, but anyway) and I had a hard time finding any that looked good… The few I found all had weird almost robot-like voices… Does anybody know what that’s about?

      • People in Japan tend to be more “private” on the internet than we are in Western countries. It’s much rarer for them to share their real names and faces online (there’s even a tag for the latter: 顔出し), and video content is often voiced over by vocaloids or other TTS, rather than the creator’s real voice.

        If you haven’t already, I’d suggest getting a ニコニコ動画 account and checking out the content. While Youtube and Twitch are picking up steam in Japan, Nico’s still the biggest platform for video sharing over there.

      • I know there’s a pretty fair number of good (in my opinion) Japanese Youtubers that use their own voices that have lets plays of regular minecraft. (HikakinGames, KazuGames, 等) One Youtuber that I can think of that has at least one (probably more) modded minecraft series is “love movie ch”. (変な名前ですけど)He is actually currently making a modded series last I checked.

        I find the robot voices kind of weird as well, but there are indeed lots of those videos out there because of the whole privacy thing, like Matt said.

      • I understand the not showing your face thing for privacy. There is a lot of trolls and haters out there who are just waiting to ruin your life, unfortunately. And not seeing a YouTuber’s face doesn’t bother me at all. However the strange voice really annoys me to a point where I don’t want to watch the video at all.

        Thanks for the recommendations, Jacob! I’ll look into those.

      • As I understand it, it’s not even so much about trolling. It’s more about fear of one’s online (private) life clashing with one’s offline (public/professional) life. If you’ve already learned about the concepts of 建前 and 本音, that’s basically what it comes down to.

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