Wednesday, October 04, 2006

NHK has the best documentaries

Today I caught the tail end of a new documentary from NHK called 72 hours. They continuously film a place or person for 72 hours.

I only caught 10 minutes or so, but what a brilliant 10 minutes. They filmed a popular area of Tokyo where a fireworks display was being held. A bunch of young people gathered the night before the event to stake out a place to watch the fireworks. So that morning, the camera went around and interviewed a homeless man who lives near the viewing site. He complained that he couldn't sleep at all last night, because the young people were too noisy. So the camera wandered over and said hello to the young people, who had been camped out since last night. They chatted about that, then segued into asking what the people thought of the homeless people in the area. One young man said that he'd like the homeless problem? to disappear. The country isn't being effective in fixing the problem. Another young man said that in an ideal world there wouldn't be any homeless people, but realistically it is a difficult problem. He then mentioned that it's possible for any of them (the group of young people) to become homeless at some point in their lives. The first young man said that it's not possible, but the second person insisted that it was. "You never know what could happen." The first young man repeated his assertion that he could never become homeless. But then he said, because he just made that bold statement, he's probably the most likely to become homeless.

Man, I need an English transcript of the show. I'm sure that I've made all sorts of errors in my retelling.

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