How to Watch Jdrama

If you caught my Intro to Jdrama article, perhaps you’ve been itching to watch Kekkon Dekinai Otoko or wondering what all the fuss over the recent drama Sunare ni Narenakute is all about, but something is holding you back: you don’t know Japanese, you don’t know where to get jdramas where you live, or you don’t know where to find titles of shows you’d like to watch.   Never fear: you can watch jdrama, and here’s how!

Jdrama is available from several sources, and what is right for you will depend on:

• Whether or not you need subtitles;
• Whether or not you live in Japan;
• How tech-savvy you want to be (whether you possess zero computer skills other than blog-navigating, or can hack in your sleep).

I have drawn up a little chart for what you should look into using if you need subtitles.   All you need to do is figure out which area of the venn diagram below you belong to!   For example, if you live in Japan, don’t speak Japanese (so you need subtitles), and aren’t tech-savvy, you would choose letter F.  And, if you don’t live in Japan, don’t need subtitles, but are tech-savvy, you would choose C.

For the purposes of this guide, you can consider yourself tech-saavy if you are familiar with things like torrenting and IRC.  If you would prefer not to deal with those things, you don’t have to!

If you answered:

A or B: You live in Japan and speak Japanese.  So, either just watch dramas as they come up on TV, or head over to your local Tsutaya (or DVD rental place of your choice) and stock up on some older jdramas!   Renting will cost money though, so for alternative free options, read on…

C: Your best option is to torrent “raws” of episodes.   Basically, how torrents and subtitling works is that someone in Japan uploads a file of an episode right after it airs (usually within a few hours) with no subtitles, and this version is called a “raw.”  Later on, a fansub group (fansubbing = “fan subtitling”) may release a version that has subtitles embedded in the video: this is not what you want.

The best place to get jdrama torrent files is to go to d-addicts and search for the name of the drama with “raw” at the end, e.g., “Nodame Cantabile raw.”

D or G: Your best bet is also torrenting because there are many torrented, subtitled versions of jdramas online available in high quality!   Just search for the name of your drama at d-addicts, and usually, the result will have the fansubber group’s name after the name of the jdrama, or you can click for details and see if subtitles are included.

You can also look for direct downloads of the show you want, which is often actually faster for older shows that don’t have as many seeders.  The Jdramas community on livejournal requires that you join the community, but once you do, you get access to lots of subtitled dramas on megaupload and other websites.

E or F: You’re in luck: there are websites that are effectively YouTube for jdramas.   The two best-known jdrama streaming sites are mysoju.com and dramacrazy.net, but occasionally, there will be clips of a show on YouTube or DailyMotion.  Those often get taken down quickly for copyright violation.   Keep in mind that the videos on these websites will be low quality.  For higher quality, you should use a direct download site like the jdramas livejournal community mentioned above.

None of the above: So, if you don’t live in Japan, don’t want to deal with torrenting, but also don’t want those pesky subtitles in your dramas, you’re unfortunately going to have to compromise.   I advise learning how to torrent, which can be done here, or suffering through the subtitles of streaming or direct download jdramas.

Some words of caution:
• If you choose to torrent your jdramas, be aware that this is actually illegal.  These shows are copyrighted and protected (even outside Japan) whether they are translated or untranslated works.  However, in reality, the chance you will actually run into trouble with the law for watching a jdrama is effectively zero.
• If you choose to watch streaming websites, know that the people who make fansubs (the fans who translate the drama for free) are vehemently opposed to mysoju, dramacrazy, etc., because these sites just take their translated versions and put them on a website with ads, meaning they profit off of others’ work without crediting them.
• It sometimes takes a while for new shows to be fansubbed.   If you’re waiting impatiently, you can check at the Fansub Map to see if any groups have picked up the project yet.

Hopefully, you now know you have a wide range of ways to get your hands on some jdrama goodness and that you can easily watch jdrama, no matter your Japanese or technical skills!  Any questions?

Next time I’ll break out a real review, so get ready!   If you’d like to start finding great dramas to watch on your own, check out the DramaWiki which is full of info about every jdrama (including new and upcoming ones!) and discussions about each drama in their forums or jdorama.com, which has a list of the top 100 dramas as voted by its users (which I don’t agree with much of the time, but there are certainly some good ones in there).

Happy jdrama watching!

Hooray, we know how to watch jdrama now!

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