Cable Conundrum
One of the nice things about living where I do is that the neighborhood is very nice. I’m just 45 minutes from downtown Tokyo by train, but the town I live in is open, spacious and green. Lots of parks, great view from where I live. There are drawbacks, however–fewer stores, and my place is a good distance from the train station, so I have to depend on buses, and they usually are not very convenient.
And oh yeah, the cable TV sucks.
Cable TV in Japan is very different from back home. You don’t get fifty channels here. Nor seventy. With the most liberal count, you get 35 where I live. Only about 20 count as non-broadcast type of channels, the rest are just local stations you can get for free. And of the non-broadcast channels, few are worth watching. CNNj, Super Channel (U.S. TV shows), Movie Plus, and Discovery Channel are all that are really worth watching. MTV if you like that. But the rest are pretty much mind-numbing, like the “Go and Shogi Channel,” a channel devoted to the Japanese board games go (or “i-go,” the one with black and white stones on a grid) and shogi (Japanese chess). Not included are channels most other cable companies give their clients, like the BBC, FOX (entertainment, not news), AXN (lots more syndicated TV shows), TBS Movies, and lots of other good channels.
Every once in a while, they dangle the hope of new channels in front of you. I just got a questionnaire which asks to rate which channels you like, which you don’t, and which channels would you like to get. Last time this happened, they listed all the really good channels everyone else has–but the “results of the survey” apparently prompted them to get rid of an excellent news channel and a few other decent stations, and add pretty much just crap–including the “Go and Shogi” channel, yet another sports news channel (we already had three), and a home shopping channel. Oh, joy.
So I’m filling out the questionnaire yet again, but without hope of getting anything decent. Probably they’ll take away the Discovery Channel and give us “The Golf Network” or “The Golf Channel” (both are candidates this time, but I’d rather go with Nader on that one), “The Jidai Geki Channel” (24-hour bad samurai dramas from 30 years ago), and Yet Another Sports Channel (5 of the 20 extra choices offered are sports).
I’d go for the SkyPerfecTV satellite dish, but another apartment building is 10 meters too far in the wrong direction and is blocking the reception.
Ah, the horrible suffering I must endure.
We got to a stage where we were watching far too much TV, so in 2002 we finally bit the bullet and had our cable cut off – we went from hundreds of channels in New York, to no TV, not even free to air. After a week of withdrawal, we have been really happy and its amazing how much time suddenly freed up in our lives! Now I can waste it all on the internet instead…….
I moved to an apartment in a small city in Denmark without cable three years ago. I thought about getting a satellite dish, but had a severe dentist bill just at that time, so I never got it, and I must say that I am rather pleased that I only have 2 channels here
I spend far too much time on the ‘net, though 😉
Luis, are you hooked up with j-com cable by any chance? I’m not too far from tama, actually used to work at tama-center, and have j-com cable but have never seen one of these questionnaires. I do miss BBC though when we had sky-perfect a few years ago.
Oh for cable! Here in Shinagawa I think I could actually get a couple of good channels like BBC World in addition to the Go Channel– that is if we had cable.
We’ve been in this building just a few weeks shy of two years and they have held two votes on letting cable into the building, both failed. If you vote “yes” you don’t have to subscribe, just let the cable company come in and install the network. The wiring panels and such are all there already, so it should be fairly easy. But, no! People keep voting against cable.
I don’t so much want more TV, but I’d love to get my Internet access over cable and get rid of NTT altogether. The wife and I both have cell phones that we use for most everything. We’re just paying NTT to get ADSL. What a waste.
My only hope is that with the high-rises going up nearby, the ghosting of broadcast will get bad enough to pull out one or two more “yes” votes next time.
Mark:
Alas, I got Tama TV cable service. If you know any way to change to J-Com, let me know!
I live in Inagi, so I think my choices are limited….
Ted:
Cable Internet might not as great as it sounds; they advertise a high bandwidth, but that speed is shared between all the people in your neighborhood. If there is high local usage, then the speeds can drop quite a bit.
I used to use NTT Flets for ADSL, but I got tired of waiting a year or two to get the advancements everyone else was getting, so I switched to Dion. I’m 3km from the closest telephone switching station, so I don’t get the full speed. But with NTT, I got maybe 1.5 Mb from a 12 Mb account, only a paltry improvement of 100 kb or so over my prior 8 Mb account with them. With Dion I have a 26 Mb account, but my real speed jumped to more than 4 Mb, and I get the IP Phone service as well. Pay under 4,000 yen/mo.
What is the cable service advertising in terms of speed and payment?
Luis,
I get about the same as what you were– 1.5Mb from the 12Mb service. I forget what the cable provider was offering. I think I just obliterated it from my memory in frustration that people won’t let cable in the building. Most of the units are owner-occupied, but some are, or soon will be rental. Cable definitely increases the rent people can ask for an apartment, or at least should make the apartments more attractive.
Instead they are hassling with a nearby real estate developer to enhance the building antenna to fix ghosting which started after a high-rise went up. I think a few folks are just more interested in the battle than getting the end result we all want. Probably bad blood between longtime neighbors. Thanks for the tip about Dion.
Ted
Is this blog still in use? I see the latest comment dated March 7th but nothing after that. Sorry if I have my wires crossed.
Yep, still in use. Just visit the home page by clicking on “Main” or on the blog logo at the top of the page. Or just type in “www.blogd.com” and you’re there. I have been posting daily since Aug. 2, 2003. But this post specifically does not receive personal attention.
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