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Diary of a Hitman

Despite an interesting looking premise and an interesting looking cast, I think I will give this film a miss. The first time I wanted to record it, the recording screwed up. Last night? Hurricane Quentin slammed into western France. 450,000 homes lost power and we were one of them. At 22:02 local time. I had just started recording (and wanted to watch) "Why Reading Matters". I was then going to watch "MASH" (the film, not the series). And after, that film.

But I think I will give it a miss. The first time, a problem with recording. The second time, a hurricane. What if I tempt fate a third time? Death?

I have no idea what would have happened if I had a solid dish. I know my big 80cm solid dish, when propped on the ground, had a propensity for flying through the air up, up and away! in what would be barely a stiff wind, never mind a hurricane. As for my little mesh dish, it needed a couple of tweaks for NHK World (remember, the 19.2° LNB is held in place with a bent piece of coat hanger and some cable ties, so it is not suprising it was affected. But not so much, I could still watch the channel but with rather severe corruption.

 

Speaking of which...

What has happened to NHK World? It used to have the expected turn of news, with the rest of the programming ranging from eccentrically quirky to just cutely bizarre.
Now? Now there is still the odd bit of quirky, but now it seems to take itself a lot more seriously. I quite miss "BS News". Didn't understand a word of it as it was all Japanese, but I could make a fair bit of sense from the pictures. It is interesting to see what is really important to a country, and that you can judge from it's own news for its own people; as opposed to the international perspective. It is also useful to just get a peek into the workings of another country. I mean, if I want to hear all the finance bigwigs telling us that the world is falling apart and we'd be better off topping ourselves, I can watch BBC World, France 24, CNN, euronews, Russia Today, and a bunch more "international" news channels.

It is welcome to have the Japanese 'take' on the world; though I don't tend to pay any more attention to world events than is necessary (too much doom&gloom), I'd much rather see the Japanese 'take' on Japan! Get to know a faraway place.

To this end, actually, NHK World is quite good. It was better, the old pre-Feb version, but we still have introductions to Japanese culture and language. Do you see this on other channels? Does France 24 talk about croissants and introduce useful phrases? Do we take a trip around Montmarte (Amélie-country) as a sort of virtual tourist? No. On the other hand, NHK World took me on a guided visit to Sawara (Little Edo) and introduced a number of handy phrases. On the website is a series of short lessons to do with onomatopoeia and other assorted things.

 

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