Japanese, Lexington, Television

One of the surprises I experienced while visiting Lexington, Kentucky last week was the presence there of a substantial Japanese minority. For whatever reason, perhaps a nearby Japanese auto plant...whatever...I saw (and heard) quite a few Japanese people around in public (and I have a degree of familiarity with the language). At my hotel, one channel was exclusively devoted to Japanese-language programming. A weekly Japanese-language business newspaper was available as well in the lobby. Strangely to me (from Florida), there was no attempt to cater to Spanish-speaking visitors as there were no Spanish TV channels or Spanish newspapers (at least in my hotel). This in spite of the fact that I heard Spanish spoken around me in public.

My son, who had visited Japan during the summer of 2010, kept the TV pretty much on that Japanese channel in the hotel. Mornings were devoted to children's programming, once again making it seem that all those little children on the shows were such geniuses to be able to speak such a difficult language as Japanese so effortlessly. Later in the morning, the programming shifted to a more adult focus: a panel discussion of people sitting around reading and analyzing haiku poetry! It remotely reminded me of the oft-interesting Book TV shows presented on C-Span during the weekend, but that is just about the only thing on my sorry television channel lineup that can claim to have literature-friendly content. Later in the day, the Japanese station presented cartoons, business discussion, news, and entertainment shows.

A few years ago there was a TV channel called "AZN" that presented shows in various East Asian languages, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese. I used to watch it a lot, especially the morning news shows in Chinese and Vietnamese. Alas, though, they went out of business, leaving me to have to resort to Univision to get some linguistic diversity out of my hometown television.

I wish that cable television companies would try to supply major population centers with at least one channel devoted to programming in each of the major world languages. Especially in places with large universities that enroll many international students. In Gainesville, we have very sizeable Chinese and Indian communities. Let's at least get Chinese and Hindi channels!