Japanese with anime voice: episode95
Hello, I’m Sachi.
July 12 is the day of radio broadcasting. In Japan, radio broadcasting started today in 1925. Tentative broadcasting started on March 22 of the same year. It is said that a memorial day is established on that day as the anniversary of the broadcast.
When the program was first broadcast, it had five hours of airtime per day. Five hours of broadcasting time is short, isn’t it? It was over in the blink of an eye. How about nowadays? There are programs until midnight, aren’t there? I wonder if it’s already 24 hours a day.
Before I moved to my current house, I used to listen to the radio all the time while driving in my hometown. When I was in my 20s, I listened to music on CDs and MDs. I guess it was when I started studying English that I stopped listening to music. I started listening to English audio for listening, then I started listening to radio programs with a lot of Western music, and since then I’ve been listening to the radio all the time.
In my hometown, the Nagoya radio program is very popular. It was very interesting. And as I listened to it all the time, a DJ I liked came up, and he was also very interesting. Just the thought of going to work would lower my mood during my commute, but because the radio was so interesting, I was surprisingly able to go to work in a pleasant mood every morning. But once I got to the office, I was full of bad things and my mood was down.
Radio makes people happy, doesn’t it? One day, however, I was giving my dad a ride in the car. We didn’t have anything to say to each other, and the radio was playing happily in the car. Then my dad said to me, “The radio really talks a lot.” What? Radio is supposed to talk, though? If the radio doesn’t talk, what’s the point? I thought to myself. My dad sometimes says outrageous things like this.
But, radio was said to be a new form of entertainment at the time of its broadcast, and it became very popular. It is true that it was a form of entertainment. Because there was almost no other entertainment at that time. Moreover, it must have been a surprise to people at that time that they could hear people’s voices through a small device. My grandma’s and parents’ generation must have been in a transitional period. Radio, TV, records, desktop computers, cell phones, pocket bells, CDs, laptops. In their lives, various devices came along. In my generation, pocket bells and cell phones appeared when I was in junior high school and high school, but even so, it did not seem like a huge breakthrough.
I think it was when I was listening to radio that I began to yearn to be a radio DJ. I liked my dialect so much that I gave up on my dream of being a voice actor, but I thought radio would be a good place for me, even with my accent. I thought that I could be popular as a radio DJ because I have a rather distinctive voice. But it was just a longing, and I didn’t know how to become a radio DJ, so I didn’t take any particular action. Then I came across podcasts. Anyone can easily create something like a radio show.
In this day and age, the word “radio” may seem old-fashioned. Nevertheless, I believe that the influence of radio is still strong today. Because, unlike TV or YouTube videos, you can listen to it while doing something. Even if you don’t watch YouTube, you can listen to a video by ear, which is the same as listening to the radio after all. For example, listening to English CDs, which I used to listen to when I first started learning English, is the same as listening to the radio. Recently, there are audibles and e-books with audio, which I think are also derived from the radio. Podcasts are just like what I mentioned earlier. You can listen to only your favorite radio programs. The radio was the first to create a culture of listening with the ears and getting information.
Even if we say that radio is old or something, the impact it has had on future generations is actually quite significant, even if we don’t realize it. It’s amazing who thought of radio.
