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Answerman - What Are Those Radio Exercises Kids Do In Japan?


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belvadeer





PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 12:15 pm Reply with quote
So I guess this gives Japanese kids a reason to loathe the U.S. in a very faint sense. XD

Joking aside, old-fashioned ideas and concepts annoy the modern person's sensibilities greatly, and they would find such a thing as enforced exercise to be far too reminiscent of the imperialism regime.
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#861208



Joined: 07 Oct 2016
Posts: 423
PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 12:36 pm Reply with quote
and then there's this version.
Animate employees and bunnies.
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vanfanel



Joined: 26 Dec 2008
Posts: 1239
PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 1:04 pm Reply with quote
Very much still a thing; I've got a TV broadcast DVR'd myself for the occasional bit of exercise. I see retirees doing this in the park whenever I manage to drag myself out of bed early enough to go jogging, and employees at a few stores and companies will be out exercising in their parking lots before work too. One of my coworkers has a young daughter who did this every day last summer vacation, enjoyed it, and dragged him into participating too.
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maximilianjenus



Joined: 29 Apr 2013
Posts: 2858
PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 1:09 pm Reply with quote
thanks for the gantz mention.
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 2:17 pm Reply with quote
Justin wrote:
The broadcast is always essentially the same
[...]
The exercises are now the longest-running program in Japanese broadcast history
[...]
Since Radio Taisou has been more or less unchanged since just after WWII, it's considered to be very old-fashioned.

Why, it's just like the BBC's Shipping Forecast!
Tyne, Dogger, North Utsire, South Utsire: Southwest 4, occasionally 5 later. Moderate or good...
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Superfield



Joined: 13 Jun 2016
Posts: 76
PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 2:35 pm Reply with quote
Let's see... I believe I saw this on an episode of Ika Musume, where she started participating along with the elementary school kids... and took out all of them with her tentacles on accident. Poor kids.

I'm straining my brain to come up with a reference to this in Pretty Cure... I don't think there is, which is shocking, considering how it focuses on the lives of girls in their early teens who would certainly have vivid memories of having to do them in elementary school (not to mention that it just hit 650 episodes; you'd think it would've come up somewhere).

That's probably also the inspiration for Monokuma Tai Chi from Chapter 4 of Super Danganronpa 2, where the kids, trapped in a building with no food, are then further tortured by being forced to participate in daily morning exercises, making their famished state even worse.

EDIT: Wow, the mind is a weird thing. The first thing I thought of when I saw these exercises was Pretty Cure, despite it never having been in the show. I think I know why. That episode of Ika Musume I mentioned? A scene from that very episode was taken by some fans and re-animated using Pretty Cure characters (since Ika and Cure Peace share a seiyuu). That's probably how my brain made the connection.
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Tuor_of_Gondolin



Joined: 20 Apr 2009
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PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 2:43 pm Reply with quote
I believe that in Re: Zero, this was one of the things Subaru did to get involved with the villagers.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 2:58 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Many companies have enforced participation in the radio exercises. Kids learn to loathe them, since many children are forced to get up early every day during summer vacation and go to the park to do the exercises. To incentivize them, they're given a stamp book to keep track of attendance. A fully-filled attendance book can be traded in for cheap prizes. Nonetheless, the unpleasant memory is enough that many adults wince when they hear the theme song being played.


Qv. the scene from Azumanga Daioh, where Chiyo is the only one who gets up early on the summer beach vacation to do her morning exercises (Minamo: "Honestly, I don't know whether she's a kid or an old man..."), and Minamo rewards her with a daily book of cute bunny-stamps.
The next day, we see Sakaki joining Chiyo in the exercises... Anime catgrin + sweatdrop

During the corporate boom, morning exercises were also seen as a Group-Unity builder, so employees at Toyota factories would be gathered out front for a fifteen-minute radio-exercise before the opening bell.
When Japan's "corporate invaders" in the 80's tried to bring the idea to US Toyota plant employees, the idea...didn't quite culturally go over as well.
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Tenchi



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4462
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 3:06 pm Reply with quote
The kids on Non Non Biyori seem to be expected to do the radio calisthenics even on summer break. The one time it was featured in the manga and anime, Kazuho Miyauchi, the local village teacher (and Renge's much older sister) slept in so Yukiko Koshigaya, mother of Natsumi, Komari, and Suguru (Glasses-kun), stepped in to stamp the kids' calisthenics attendance sheets and that segment segued into her inviting them all over for breakfast.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 3:27 pm Reply with quote
Huh, I never even thought about this being a thing in Japan. I just thought it was some sort of joke that caught on and got imitated, played around with, and adapted across a bunch of different stories around Japan.

I wonder if people in Japan think we Americans do this too. Or if they're aware that radio isn't really as popular in America as in Japan.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
Subscriber



Joined: 17 Apr 2015
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PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 3:29 pm Reply with quote
Tenchi wrote:
The kids on Non Non Biyori seem to be expected to do the radio calisthenics even on summer break. The one time it was featured in the manga and anime, Kazuho Miyauchi, the local village teacher (and Renge's much older sister) slept in so Yukiko Koshigaya, mother of Natsumi, Komari, and Suguru (Glasses-kun), stepped in to stamp the kids' calisthenics attendance sheets and that segment segued into her inviting them all over for breakfast.


This is exactly what I thought of when I first read the question. It makes sense, in a way; why bother hiring a phys ed teacher for your one-teacher schoolhouse if there's a readily-available, free alternative?
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Paiprince



Joined: 21 Dec 2013
Posts: 593
PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 3:39 pm Reply with quote
#861208 wrote:
and then there's this version.
Animate employees and bunnies.


Someone with internet celebrity cred just has to do something like this and turn it into a meme and the kids will think it's cool again.
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Northlander



Joined: 10 Feb 2009
Posts: 900
PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 4:03 pm Reply with quote
I remember it being done in Hidamari Sketch (mostly after Nori and Nazuna moves into the apartment complex) and Aria (the episode centered around the post office.) I've seen it far more often than that, but those are the two first shows that comes to mind.

And some women are also doing this at the place where I work. Sort of.
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Tripple-A



Joined: 21 Feb 2017
Posts: 383
Location: Hamburg, Germany
PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 4:48 pm Reply with quote
How new do you have to be to Anime/Manga or Japan in general to not know what Radio Taisou is -.-
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ninjamitsuki



Joined: 15 Sep 2007
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Location: Anywhere (Thanks, technology)
PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2017 6:23 pm Reply with quote
I remember these things being a feature in the original Animal Crossing. You even get the stamps for doing it.
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