Sesame Street (Japan)

Sesame Street has been airing as a Japanese co-production since 2004. The American version of Sesame Street aired until April 2004 on NHK; the new co-production debuted in October on TV Tokyo. The show airs on Sunday mornings.

The show includes four new Muppet characters: Teena, a pink monster girl who likes to sing, Mojabo, a bossy green and purple monster who likes to exercise, Pierre, a blue frog, and Arthur, a little yellow bird.

A 2004 article in the Japan Times said: "The original Sesame Street focuses on basic education for preschoolers, such as learning the alphabet, but the Japanese version takes up a wide range of topics, including ethics, how to interact with friends and environmental issues, according to TV Tokyo officials. Some of the program's goals include encouraging children to be considerate toward others, to be honest with other people and to think logically, they say."

The article went on to say that the show was suffering from low ratings in its early months: "Viewers are complaining about the differences in the characters' voices compared with the NHK-aired version and about the exclusive use of Japanese."

Another scathing article, published in November in Yoimuri, was titled "A wrong turn on new Sesame Street": "[The] new and not improved version of Sesame Street...opens with the cast shouting: 'English Everybody. It's Sesame Street,' but it was 20 minutes later before we heard another English phrase. One of the better decisions NHK made this year was not to get involved with the Japanization of Sesame Street.

"The show... bears very little resemblance to the original.... If anything, the show looks poised to further the scope of Japlish and make the work of the nation's English teachers even more challenging. First, there is the perplexing problem of how to pronounce the names. Since the show is now all in Japanese... bye-bye Big Bird and hello Biggu Baado, Baato and Kukkii Monsutaa...

"Then, at last, came the show's ode to its English-language-education roots -- a section called English on Street set in a convenience store. Big Bird wants an 'umeboshi ika manju'... The obliging 'onii-san'... makes him one and we get the English phrase for the day: "Tastes bad!" No one bothers to add an "It," as in "It tastes bad." Who needs a complete, correct English sentence in a Japanized version of Sesame Street? "Tastes bad" is repeated in an assortment of very bad accents and then we are given the appropriate translation: "mazui." That is definitely the taste the show left with me -- mazui, mazui, mazui.... Yes, all in all, I'd say this show is a giant six-step leap backward for early childhood education in Japan."

In 2006, two new Muppets were added. These include Groly, an orange Grover-like monster and Megu, a Japanese AM girl.