Hello all,
I’m after live tv on I can watch online. Stuff like NHK, TBS, Fuji TV, TV Asahi,… etc. All those standard TV stations you get without cable.
The closest thing I’ve found for live tv so far is abema (link below). But really miss watching the regular stations.
Do you just want to watch the shows or are you specifically looking for a live experience with the commercials?
Some of the channels used to offer live streams on their websites, but now those seem to have all been taken down and live broadcasts are being moved over to TVer.jp
Example:
TVer is a free streaming service that has the latest episodes of all of the newest shows available for free, and then episodes disappear one week after they air (and are replaced with the newest episode). There’s also a back catalogue with older shows which are periodically available. If you’re not in Japan you could access it with a VPN.
Yeah, live TV (with commercials) would be ideal. I’m in Australia so the timezones line up pretty well.
But honestly, anything will do. I’ll check out that link now, thank you!
Had to find the apk file for it as Google Play is a bit snooty and wouldn’t let me download it in Australia. But with a good old vpn and a few dodgy looking sites later, got it installed. Thank you for the recommendation.
They have a website too. TVer.jp
I’m not sure how…uh… moral this site is, but https://aqstream.com/ is what I use to view some local Japanese stuff. It’s just live channels commercials and all.
Morals aside for a moment, when I try to open the site I get an 502 error; is it because of some IP block or is the site down?
TVer.jp is pretty good if you want to watch VOD of Japanese TV. If you live in a very different time zone, however, it might be difficult to watch the live broadcasts.
Site works for me in the US. Dunno if they block certain countries tho.
While there might be better, free alternatives out there, over the years I’ve drifted in and out of ForJoyTV, which is a somewhat expensive subscription service ($30/month iirc). I’ve used it to watch my favorite series live when they get new seasons, without having to wade through dodgy and (generally unreliable) livestreaming sites.
It streams Japanese TV stations live, with a 30 second ~ 2 minute delay at best, so you can tune in to watch while they’re actually airing in Japan. This includes commercials, quite a few channels to flip through, and a 7 day tv guide. You can save episodes to their app as well as go back through the channel - program list to select items up to 2 weeks old to rewatch them. (So you can, for example, go back and click on what played at 7 pm on TV Tokyo last Sunday.)
This is convenient if you enjoyed what you just watched, but don’t want to go download the episode. Wait a couple minutes after it finishes airing for it to be archived, then just click on the last 30 minute time slot to immediately begin watching again. The quality is pretty good too, ranging 720 ~ 1080p on my rural connection.
Tried it again with US IP via VPN and it works now, thank you!
This also might be an “immoral” link, so I’ll delete this reply if it’s not allowed.
The link provided is normally how I catch up with NHK G Asadora. At worst, there would be a “buffering mode” displayed on a frozen computer-like screen. At best, there’s a minute or two delay compared to the real Japan time.
However, there are other Japanese channels available on the left sidebar for when the NHK channel isn’t working, but I dislike most of the other channels’ ads.
Nothing wrong with them, but it’s too attention-grabbing for me, and that just means the ad works and I’ll have extra procrastination excuses for not doing my Japanese revisions, lol. But maybe the ads could be exactly what’s needed to make you “extra focused” on immersion, so enjoy! 
use it too, thumbs up
on github there is a link to see many channels via vlc player.