DVDs with japanese and english together; subtitles
 

I'm looking to buy movies on dvd that have english and japanese together, with one being spoken with the other in subtitles. For example, ranked in order of what I prefer to find:

1. Movies originally made in Japan with the original japanese audio, with english subtitles.

2. Movies originally made in Japan, overdubbed with english audio, with japanese subtitles.

3. American movies overdubbed with japanese audio, with english subtitles.

4. American movies with original english audio and japanese subtitles.

I'm an american living in the U.S., I just recently started dating a lady who is native japanese currently living in U.S. She's doing great learning english, but still kind of new to it and has trouble following english dialogue without having to pause frequently to ask what was just said.

I don't know japanese at all. As long as we are dating I'm sure I'll gradually pick up as much as I can. In the mean time, it would be nice if we could find movies we could both enjoy with the least effort. We're just looking to have a shared experience.

The dvds would need to be NTSC format.

We stumbled upon the movie Ponyo recently. It was rented from Netflix and was capable of being played back in the following modes:

Japanese audio, english subtitles
English audio, japanese subtitles
And of course with either language audio and no subtitles

It's pretty good for a kid's movie, it was kinda fun to watch. But mostly it was refreshing, especially for her, to enjoy a movie with a non-japanese-speaker, where she was the one who could enjoy without having to read the subtitles.

We'll buy from US or Japan. I'm not too optimistic about this, but it's worth a shot.

All movies imported to Japan have Japanese subtitles but are a different region than U.S. America is region 1 and Japan is region 2. You need a region free DVD player or rent the DVD then rip it. You can find out how by googling about it. Your local Japanese Video rental store will have Hollywood movies all brought over from Japan so they are region 2 dvds. If you want to actually buy Hollywood movies you can go to amazon.co.jp which is Amazon in Japan.

Most Japanese movies brought to America have the original Japanese audio and Japanese subtitles in place with the addition of English subtitles and sometimes even an English audio. This time you want the region 1 version( meant for U.S. ) - the region 2( meant for Japan) won't have English in them.

You realize there are hundreds of Japanese movies available on DVD with English subtitles.

You have Netflix, right?

Browse DVDs > Genre > Foreign > All Foreign > Foreign Languages > Japanese Language

There are hundreds to choose from.

He is not in Japan.

Yeah I know.

the Japanese Video stores in U.S. carry U.S. movies with Japanese subtitles. I'm sure it's the same for Japanese video stores around the world.

Japanese video stores are a luxury found only where there are large Japanese populations. With Amazon.co.jp you must pay with a credit card billed to a Japanese address.

spank me with the "LAZY NOOB" paddle, re: Netflix
 

OK so I subscribe to Netflix, but its mostly for my kids, I don't spend much time browsing on there. I figured they would have some selection of "foreign" films, didn't think to check for Japanese films. I figured there would only be a small number of artsy foreign films, maybe a few dozen of all languages.

The selection for japanese language films isn't too deep, less than a hundred. But we should be able to find a few there.

That japanese amazon thing is kind of a drag for me, but more frustrating for my girlfriend.

I live near Milwaukee and there certainly is not a large Japanese population at this time. Ten - fifteen years ago there were lots more university students from Japan, now more of them are from Korea.

There is at least one Korean grocery store that has a few hundred Korean language movies to rent, but no Japanese store/movies available that I know of.

So Netflix will give us an adequate start. Next mission is to find american made movies with japanese language, whether dubbed or subtitles.

Yeah I know. I've had to buy from Amazon-Japan before. it cost a lot and not all sellers ship to America. It's a last resort but you can get the movie this way. We have Book-off in L.A. so I can get used Japanese media that Amazon won't even be carrying anymore at a discounted price.( $1 a CD).

@OP
Sad to here there is no Japanese community at your location. Is there a Japanese person you can ask? Maybe there is a Japanese Vid store within 70 miles. I drive an hour to go to the biggest Japanese community(Gardena) to buy stuff.

I'm not 100% surer, but in a conversation with a friend, she said there was something like a Netflix for Japanese in America that are too far from Japanese communities. I don't know how it worked or if it was local to Utah, I'll ask her about it.

I don't know if your Netflix is the same as my Netflix, but I count 480 movies in the Japanese language section.

Finding American made movie with Japanese subtitles is going to be trickier.

You can find some at Japanese Movies: English Subtitled Japanese Movies. The biggest problem may be the price. Don't trust the site when they say that "All DVDs are Region 2 unless otherwise posted", because I have a fair amount of DVDs from that site that are actually viewable on all regions, and they never posted that they were.

If you're not put off by the price of some of the DVDs, but don't want to risk getting a DVD you can't watch, you can always write to customer service and ask them what the region encoding is, because, like I said, I got some DVDs that were encoded for all regions, but they never said anything, so I wound up buying a DVD player I don't need yet.

If you would like to get the DVD player that plays PAL(Region 2), then you can get one at JLIST.com Search : dvd player. Then, there is a site where you can watch movies for free(it's not for downloading, it's just watching), but I don't know if they include subtitles, and I don't know if I can post the link for it here.