If you read Japanese, Japan is a news-junkie heaven, with 166 daily national and local newspaper companies printing some 70 million papers a day, more than triple the amount for the UK and even topping the US and China, despite both having much larger populations. Japan's top paper, the Yomiuri Shimbun , sells over fourteen million copies daily, making it the most widely read newspaper in the world. Lagging behind by about two million copies a day is the The International Herald Tribune Asahi Shimbun , seen as the intellectual's paper, with the other three national dailies, the Mainichi Shimbun , the right-wing Sankei Shimbun and the business paper the Nihon Keizai Shimbun , also selling respectable numbers.

The only one of these five papers not to publish a daily English-language version is the Sankei Shimbun , with the most widely available English-language daily throughout Japan being the independent Japan Times (¥160). Although far from sparkling, the Japan Times has the most comprehensive coverage of national and international news, carries a major situations vacant section every Monday, and has occasionally interesting features, some culled from the world's media. Doing a better job on the features front is the Daily Yomiuri (¥120), with specially compiled sections from the Los Angeles Times on Saturdays, and Britain's Independent newspaper on Sundays, as well as a decent arts and entertainment supplement on Thursdays. Also worth a look is the Japan edition of the Financial Times . Outside of the major cities, however, you'll be hard pushed to find anything but the Japan Times , if that. The best places to hunt out copies are the main stations and local international centres, which will often have reference copies of foreign newspapers.

The most widely available English-language magazines are Time and Newsweek . Bookstores such as Kinokuniya and Maruzen stock extensive (and expensive) ranges of imported and local magazines; in Tokyo and Osaka, Tower Records is the cheapest place to buy magazines. Local titles to look out for include the weekly Tokyo Classified (free), Tokyo Journal (¥600) and Kansai Time Out (¥300), well-written listings and features magazines for their respective areas. With more a fanzine feel, The Alien and The Outsider are published in Nagoya and Hiroshima respectively.

If you're studying Japanese, or even just trying to pick up a bit of the language during your vacation, the bilingual magazines Nihongo Journal and Hiragana Times are worth searching out. AERA is one of Japan's most respected weekly magazines, while Pia and the Walker series ( Tokyo Walker, Kansai Walker ) are the best Japanese listings magazines.

Japanese television 's notorious reputation for silly game shows and samurai dramas is well earned. If you speak no Japanese, you're likely to find all TV shows, bar the frequent weather forecasts, totally baffling - and only a little less so once you have picked up the lingo. However, watching some TV during your stay is recommended if only because of the fascinating insight it gives into Japanese society.

NHK, the main state broadcaster, has two channels (in Tokyo, NHK on channel one and NHK Educational on channel three), which are roughly equal to BBC1 and BBC2 in the UK, although much less adventurous. If you have access to a bilingual TV, it's possible to tune into the English-language commentary for NHK's nightly 7pm news. Films and imported TV shows on both NHK and the commercial channels are also sometimes broadcast with an alternative English soundtrack. In Tokyo, the other main channels are Nihon TV (four), TBS (six), Fuji TV (eight), TV Asahi (ten) and TV Tokyo (twelve), all flagship channels of the nationwide networks, with little to choose between them.

The one bright spark on Japan's TV horizon is the increasing inroads made by satellite and cable channels. As well as the ubiquitous CNN and MTV, BBC World is now available in most major cities and is often part of the room package at the top-end hotels. Perfect TV is a satellite operation offering a wide range of channels, including several devoted to sport and movies.

Radio is nowhere near as popular in Japan as TV, with most young people preferring to listen to CDs and tapes. In Tokyo the main FM stations broadcasting bilingual programmes are J-WAVE (81.3MHz) and Inter FM (76.1MHz), although both tend towards the bland end of the music spectrum. You can check out Inter FM on the Web at www.interfm.co.jp . In the Kansai area, bilingual broadcasts are available on CO-CO-LO (76.5MHz). In other areas of the country the only alternative is likely to be the US armed forces' Far East Network (FEN), worth enduring just once for its bizarre public-service announcements.