Let's Japan.org Debunking Eikaiwa and Ramblings in Japan

While I'm on the subject of TV, Japan for Sustainability has this interesting bit:

As a special one-day environmental event, Japan's public broadcaster, Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), shortened the airtime of its educational TV channel on December 29, 2008, to reduce its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and save electricity.

The shorter airtime was instituted to remind both the broadcaster and viewers that daily broadcasting consumes a large quantity of electricity and results in a considerable amount of CO2 emissions. NHK expects such an event will promote efforts in energy saving and CO2 reduction.

The educational TV channel normally broadcasts from 5:00 a.m. to 2:50 a.m. the following day. On that day, however, the channel aired programs for only nine hours, from 12:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., shortening the broadcast by 12 hours and 50 minutes. While broadcasting was suspended, NHK's approximately 3,100 analog transmitting stations across the nation stopped sending TV signals, which resulted in saving about 17,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, or a reduction of some 9.4 tons of CO2 emissions, compared to a regular broadcasting day.

If only Japan's commercial broadcasters would do the same, the nation would have the lowest CO2 emissions on earth and save us from the mountains of crap the serve on a regular basis. Snark aside, NHK's move demonstrates that not using energy is the best way to reduce emissions. There's nothing worth watching on TV in Japan anyway, so you might as well do your part and tune out and turn the TV off.