It could be because I live in the country but I think the average Japanese person’s knowledge of American media is very limited. Unlike some other countries, simply being popular in America doesn’t mean its automatically popular here. Japan has a type of media they like.

The American movies you’ll find in most theaters are either action blockbusters or kids movies. Ted was an exception but I still don’t think most people here actually understood the movie. They just thought the bear was cute. When it came out, I had to explain to numerous people that it wasn’t a kids movie.

The music that is the most popular here is usually pop music. Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars are artist that people know even if they don’t listen to their music, Drake and Kanye West aren’t. Not to say that Drake and Kanye wouldn’t have sold out concerts here but I don’t think they are someone the average person would know.

With TV shows, I think the lack of accessibility makes it hard for them gain popularity. Most people only watch basic TV, so the only way they would have access to American TV shows is to wait for them to come out on DVD.(Netflix, Hulu and Amazon prime aren’t as popular as they are in the US). 24 was popular here, prison break was too but something like Breaking Bad is something that the average Japanese person can’t really relate to or understand. I haven’t heard anyone here talk about Game of Thrones.

I can’t really speak about video games because I haven’t really played video games since my eldest son was born 7 years ago.

Even though I live in the country, I teach English in a city that has a large percentage of foreign students by Japanese standards, mostly Brazilian and Filipino. The Filipino kids in particular are very knowledgeable of what’s popular in the US. They talk to me about new music, TV shows, movies and sports all the time. I think the difference is that they are on the look out for those things, where as most Japanese people wait for someone to bring it to them.