Why do some Japanese TV shows use difficult English phrases instead of Japanese ones?
Japanese is assimilative, but this is not limited to English- words from many different languages have been incorporated into modern Japanese. A similar thing can be seen historically, with the adoption of Chinese poetic forms (not to mention a significant component of the writing system itself). The script used for a particular foreign word can be a good index of its degree of assimilation into Japanese, from Romanji to Gana scripts to proper Kanji. Of course, English is somewhat more fetishized than other languages, given its official promotion by the government, its importance in the university entrance exams, and some of the aspirations of immediate post-war Japan. To many it would represent a degree of cosmopolitanism (although for some nationalists, it’s now indicative of the corruption of Japanese).
The trendiness aspect has already been well-covered here. Almost all Japanese comprehend some English, particularly when it’s written down (spoken, maybe not so much). My favorite example of this was a restaurant that had a sign in the window reading “Every Monday Holiday,” which means “closed Mondays.” This is obviously a Japanese construction intended for a Japanese audience, but using English words. There are, of course, ways of expressing this in Japanese. But the whole of English is considered available for borrowing into Japanese and even for creating new phrases, as in this example. In English, we mostly restrict borrowing from Japanese to specific concepts or objects that originate in Japan. “Spider crawl” is a case of the same thing. I disagree with zengargoyle that it would be more difficult to express it in conventional Japanese. “supaida- kuro-ru” is no better than, say, “kumo yuki” (I’m just spitballing here). And make no mistake: when the announcer says supaida- kuro-ru,
