Radio Taisou

07 Aug, 2026

Radio calisthenics (ラジオ体操, rajio taisō; literally, "radio exercises") are warm-up calisthenics performed to music and guidance from radio broadcasts. Originating from the United States, they are popular in Japan and parts of China, North Korea and Taiwan.
— Wikipedia

If you've ever read my Now page, you know I try to keep myself in shape with the bare minimum of less than 5 minutes of stretching every day. Emphasis on try, because I end up skipping several days if I don't put my mind fully into it, and sometimes I can only mark it as done because I do them after dinner, or before bed. Like today.

It all started because I find physical exercise an utter pain in the ass: trekking is great, weights and anything that resembles gym and requires me to count repetitions and wait between them instead of just going until I'm too tired to go on causes me a lot more psychological pain than physical. But I'm not getting any younger, and I at least owe my wife not to dissolve into dust anytime soon, so I'm at least trying to keep myself flexible. It would be oh so much easier if I didn't hate dancing too!

The thing with exercise videos is that a lot of them are very gendered: if you're a man you must want to get ripped, if you're a woman you must want to lose weight. I'm a woman who'd like to build some healthy muscles, and apparently that's not very popular in the gym sphere. It doesn't really matter as long as you pick a routine that works, but the fact that it's packaged in a certain way really annoys me.
So I remembered when I played Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation a couple of years ago; there, every morning all the people you've met so far exercise together, kids and adults alike.

I searched for "Radio Taisou¹" on YouTube found this guy. Remembered I used to follow him and then stopped because he was starting to sound ridiculous and glamorized Japan too much. Now I enjoy his stuff for what it is, and I've also memorized that video of his so that every time I hit a certain pose my brain hallucinates his voice saying "Don't forget to smile!".

Coincidentally, I'm playing Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 this month, one in-game day per real-life day, and in your inventory there's a card to check each day you join the daily exercises. It's been 7 days so far and I have no clue where the people in town do it. Funnily enough, I've been skipping mine for the same amount of days.

I'm going to go stretch now.