Every Friday night, just as the workweek winds down, two voices cut through the urban noise. One belongs to Jane Su, a sharp-tongued columnist with a flair for life advice; the other to Mika Horii, who makes a living doing freelance narration and emceeing, and who recently had a star turn onstage in a production of “Phaedra.”
From a dimly lit booth inside Tokyo’s TBS Broadcasting Center, the pair records “Over the Sun,” a podcast where the women crack jokes, air grievances and talk frankly about life in Japan for around 30 minutes — often longer. With 250 episodes under its belt, the show draws 1.5 million plays monthly, each episode reaching more than 200,000 listeners.
Japanese speakers often blur the “b” and “v” sounds in English pronunciation. With that in mind, try saying “Over the Sun” five times fast — it starts to sound like obasan, a word used to refer to women in their 40s or 50s. That’s the same age range as Su, Horii and many of their fans.
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