しあわせ

All the films above (except coming soon) are available on DVD.

Send It is a good internet store to purchase DVDs available in the UK.

The Japanese Center has many Japanese DVDs with subtitles for rent including the entire Ghibli collection and recent releases unavailable elsewhere in the UK.

If you feel adventurous you can try ordering direct from Japan with Amazon.jp.
For the slightly less adventurous there’s CD Japan that has a fully English site and even singles out films with English subtitles.

There’s also YesAsia.com that pays the vat and duty on UK imports and whose site is in English. (And they operate as advertised when I ordered two discs from them. The discs seem to be imported to the UK then posted to you from this local distributor. Delivery took about 7 days after the discs had been sourced. The face price of the discs was 7120円 about ￡37 and I was charged ￡42 which I think is quite good for imported discs, being only slightly more than I’d expect to pay for a first release Arthouse DVD.)

One advantage of Japanese discs is that they can have Japanese subtitles, and sometimes even the kanji characters in subtitles are subtitled (furigana). I’ve found the subtitles can help me make out what has been said in Japanese — when I freeze frame to give myself time to read. And the soundtrack helps me find the pronunciation and meaning of kanji in the subtitles.

Japanese discs are Region 2 the same as Europe, but are NTSC not PAL (two incompatible TV formats) However NTSC discs will play on computers and most players also ought to play them without any problem (but it might be best to check before spending money). If ordering from Japan make sure there are English subtitles (- 英語 means English language, - 字幕 means subtitle) unless you are very sure of your Japanese abilities.

America of course has the largest amount of English dubbed and subbed DVDs available. (Subbed is best) Amazon is as good a place as any to look. You may get hit for duty on any imports to the EU and most non-EU stores now charge VAT on internet sales. You’ll also need a multi region hacked player to play region 1 discs.

For the ultimate in convenience I’d recommend LOVEFiLM.com. For ￡15 a month you have unlimited DVD rentals. Its very easy. You set up an account online with your credit card. You then select about 20 DVDs from their database that are put in a queue. Then they send you three DVDs from the list (not necessarily the first ones but I think they come from as high up the list as possible). They come in slim plastic cases in a cardboard envelope by first class mail. There’s no problem in them fitting through a letterbox. You watch them then return them in the pre paid mailer. When the company gets one back they send you another from your list. There are no late fees as its a flat rate subscription and you don’t get the next film until you return the disc you have out. It’s brilliant.

The site is very well made and easy to use. It has lots of reviews; from other members, its own reviewers and Time Out reviews. There is also a member rating system.

They seem to have every DVD available in the UK including all the Anime series. There are 350+ discs of Japanese language titles. Which would keep most people busy for quite a while! They have a good selection of Japanese language films from directors like Miike Takashi, Kurosawa, and Ozu.

At ￡15 it’s excellent value when you consider that to buy a disc is ￡20 and high street rentals (if you can find Japanese titles) are about ￡4 plus the effort in going there.

You Tube has a lot of Japanese Music videos as well as fan-subbed drama and anime and also some clips of TV programs. However as all this is copyrighted material, it’s anybody’s guess how long this will continue. Either the rights holders will complain or You Tube will have a clean out. Enjoy while you can I guess.

YouTube doesn’t allow you to download video. However… If you go to Video Downloader a link will be generated to allow you to download a particular video. Also if you really want you can find the hidden cache where Flash stores the videos you watch and copy it out from there.

Other Interesting Music Videos on You Tube.
Not a lot at the moment. You Tube has been clearing house recently and a lot of things I found interesting have gone.

This guys videos are interesting. He tapes street performers in Tokyo.

This site is reasonably advanced. (Juku is the name for what most westerners would know as cram schools.) The sites owner writes blog entries and also records them as audio. So you get reading and listening practice and also a vocabulary list.

Listening exercises. Recorded in the field, in several real life situations can you understand what’s being said to you? Can you get it in one go?