But is it news?

Recently, I’ve been listening to the podcast from the Yomiuri newspaper just about every weekday. This is partly to improve my listening comprehension, and partly to keep up with the Japanese news. The podcast is released every weekday morning, and generally follows a fixed format. First, there are half a dozen or so news stories, the day’s headlines. Then there’s an editorial. Next is “today’s topic”: a feature article about something. Finally, there’s another short opinion piece, “Yomiuri Brief Review”.

The feature article covers a wide range of things. Yesterday’s, for example, was about a Korean who will be running in Sunday’s Tokyo Marathon.  (The URL briefly puzzled me, but I guess a marathon is 42,195m.) This is significant because his grandfather won gold in the marathon at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but, because Korean was a Japanese colony at the time, did so while running for Japan. Thus, the article was largely about international friendship.

The day before yesterday, it reported the results of a survey carried out by the newspaper, into whether men stand up or sit down to wee in the toilet at home.

Apparently 28% sit down.

Yes, but is it news?


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One response to “But is it news?”

  1. Jonathan (of the Japan Journal) avatar

    I think that doing this would be good for me as well. (Well, of course it would.) I won’t understand much of it, which will make it harder to keep up, but I think I’ll give it that old college try.

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