5 Variety Shows That will Teach you Something About Life
Variety shows are meant to teach you something. Whether it’s love, the international world, or inspirational stories, you are bound to come out of it wiser than before.
5. あいのり (Love Ride Around The World)
Japanese Level: ☆
Oldschool reality program where 7 men/women members travel the world with the goal of falling in love with each other. When one member thinks he has developed a strong enough relationship with another, that member asks the other member to go home back together to Japan to start a relationship. If the member is successful, they both go home together happily ever after. If the member is unsuccessful, that member goes home alone. When members go back to Japan, new members take their place as the team continues to visit dozens of countries and have amazing experiences.
This show has been around for a while now, and while the original show has finished, a sequel (which I haven’t seen) came out a few years ago. The premise sounds silly (and it is), but you start to grow attached to the constantly changing cast.
4. ネプ&イモトの世界番付 (Nep and Imoto’s World Ranking)
Japanese Level: ☆☆
A cast of 20 foreigners from different countries and different fields of expertise are all gathered together to discuss a variety of world rankings. World rankings are always fun and strange topics like countries that “shower the least,” “have the most men cheating on their wives,” “are the fattest,” etc. Occasionally regular cast members go on the scene for a more hands on look at how countries are ranked.
3. ホンマでっか！？ (Really!?)
Japanese Level: ☆☆☆☆
A group of experts in various fields is gathered together to discuss recent popular trends in areas that effect our daily lives. While these are supposedly experts, they will often say things that make you go “really!?” and doubt the veracity of their information. Even the experts sometimes argue with each other over what is presented and whether it is true.
2. スクール革命! (School Revolution!)
Japanese Level: ☆☆
The host, Uchimura (same host as 世界の果てまでいってQ), plays a teacher that instructs his celebrity students through a series of fill in the blank quiz videos on a wide range of topics. If you like Uchimura’s sense of humor from 世界の果てまでいってQ, you will really enjoy it here. Occasionally there is a song and dance number. You can skip through this.
1. 人生が変わる1分間の深イイ話 (Deep Stories That Will Change Your Life In One Minute)
Japanese Level: ☆☆☆☆
Each episode is a series of motivational, inspirational, and amazing true stories that are viewed by celebrity hosts. They all then vote on whether the story was “Deep” or just “Eh…” with the goal to find one unanimous “Deep.”
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
I thought I’d try some of these since some of them seem fun enough from the descriptions and were graded at a difficulty level I’d feel comfortable watching.
So I don’t know if it is just me, but finding a decent way to watch these is a lot harder than any other Japanese media I’ve tried to acquire.
I mean, I can find some episodes streaming, but they’re just random and there aren’t too many of them. I’ve found a website that links to them in order, but they all link to gyao and gyao blocks all connections that are coming from outside of Japan.