watashi to tokyo

grass eating boys

Japanese DJ Saitone played "Thriller 8bit tribute mix". The music will be released on HearJapan & iTunes store on November 25th. He will play on LAN party "Dreamhack" in Sweden on 26 to 29 November. It's great job! On the other hand, I remember ring tone had only 8 before when I was working for ring tone service site, we made 8 bit music everyday. Of course those are not good at all like his.

Finally "Shoshoku-kei danshi" Herbivore boys in Japan become world wide famous! Here is an article of npr. The articl said "the declining birthrate". But I don't think so, grass eating boys are not agressive for girls but they are popular for girls and no need to attack from them. Over 60% of girls said prefre grass eating boys to meat eating boys. Actually grass eating boy will enjoy more things with wife without chasing another woman.

I knew our brain use a lot of calories, this is funny article "Try the Sudoku diet: How to burn 90 calories an hour without leaving your armchair". If you play game, it should be sudoku! Here is sudoku free site, enjoy it.

Boys band empire in Japan

Yesterday, NHK released the list of artists that will appear on the annual "Kohaku Utagassen" (Music Show) on New Years Eve. After a long interval, four singing groups from the Johnny's association will appear on the show. The Johnny's association is a well know boy band factory. They train cute boys from the time they are young and produce teenage boy bands who can sing, dance and act. The owner of Johnny's is Johnny Kitagawa, he made the company about 40 years ago and has been consistently successful in the Japanese entertainment biz despite some scandals.

Even though they are hardly known in Western countries, some bands are famous in Asia. But I guess you know Nino, he appeared in the Eastwood movie "Letters from Iwo-jima" and got acclaim for his appearance. He belongs to the boy band "Arashi", one of the most popular bands in Johnny's.

Johnny's bands are girls dream basically, but many people, especially guys think it is terrible that Johnny's bands dominate the charts and dramas on TV. But it's business girls intense love for cute boys that make good business in Japanese show biz, it's true. Actually not only financial success, but some of Johnny's boy are chosen for their talent, like Nino. Jin Akanishi is a member of one of Johnny's bands KAT-TUN, he acted in the movie "Bandage" directed by music producer Takeshi Kobayashi. He can sing well.

Right Place

The biggest short film festival in Asia, "Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia 2010," has started to accept entries. You can check out the details here. As for Japanese short films, I like "Right Place" a lot. It’s a glimpse into the world of an obsessively neat man working as a convenience store clerk who believes there is a "right place" for everything. I read that this film won the Young Director’s Award/ Best Short Film at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and the Rain dance Film Festival/DIESEL Film Festival Award.

10 crazy things about Japan

Last Friday and Thursday I took Franklin Covey's leadership workshop. It was really interesting and I was impressed that they showed methods and solutions for issues that I wanted to know. What is leadership is the same in the world maybe, or I wonder if they changed something to fit the Japanese.

 Here is a post "10 Crazy Things About Japan". It's fun. I wonder if it is strange to take a bath at night? I guess the sheets would be dirty easier without taking a shower or bath before going to bed. Do you change the sheets every day? I will add this post too, my loving post "Japanese is insane."

 Japan Probe picked this "Japanese anime: slant-eyed Chinaman fights Nazi". Ha ha, Kinniku man (means Muscleman) is a professional wrestling manga and he has fights with wrestlers from other countries like Ramen man from China, Brocken Jr from German. An American wrestler is Terryman. He is a nice guy.

short post on rainy Monday

Just a short post on this rainy Monday, we been having a strange summer this year. We’ve hardly seen any sunshine and it's humid but not so hot. I am afraid the price of fruits and vegetables will get high sooner or later.

Some Japanese entertainment news: "Jasmine You," the guitarist of the Visual Kei band Versailles, has died. They didn't release the cause of death yet. These are pictures of Versailles.

Masaharu Fukuyama, the second most popular actor in Japan, confessed that he is the child of atomic-bomb victims. I sense that a new era has come, people won't hide the past anymore and will become more active against nuclear programs.

Japanese pop star Noriko Sakai was arrested for drugs. Actor Manabu Oshio was arrested too, he was with a woman who was found dead in an apartment in Tokyo's Roppongi.

Do Japanese people have an image as being hard workers? If so, that image might be false, you might be much harder workers than we are. Japan didn't even rank in this article. But why do we feel we’re always overworked and don't have enough vacation? Maybe our work style is inefficient?

It's scary

This was a broadcasting accident. At the end of a program, the scene froze and shook and a strange sound played. Then the red part grew wider and looked like the character for "death." This occult TV occurrence is very hot today.

This post is about the worst criminals in Japan. At any rate, the worst must be Shoko Asahara, I agree with that. There are mass murderers but not so many serial killers.
Worst 5: Shoko Asahara: founder of the controversial Japanese religious group Aum Shinrikyo
Tsuyama massacre: a 21-year-old man killed 30 people, including his grandmother, using a shotgun, a Japanese sword, and an axe
Seito Sakakibara: the alias of a then-14-year-old student from Kobe, Japan who murdered an 11-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl
Concrete encased high school girl: I feel bad after reading this wiki article...
Kiyoshi Okubo: He was a famous Japanese serial killer

I picked this before: "Japanese couple charged nearly 700 Euros for a seafood lunch become an unwitting symbol of tourist rip-offs in the Italian capital." The Italian government offered them a free holiday in Italy but the Japanese couple turned it down. Hmm… I would take the offer :-P

20th Ceuntury boy trailer.

Brian sent me this link, American TV hosts tried to be voice actor of "Ghost in the Shell". Ha ha It's funny. In original Japanese animation, Atsuko Tanaka plays Motoko. (here she is ). When Innocence was made, the producer Toshio Suzuki would like to use Tomoko Yamaguchi (actress and she is a wife of Toshiaki Karasawa : 21th century boy) but director Oshii opposed it and push Tanaka.

 

A former director aplogized for Haruhi

At Otakon2009, the former director of Haruhi apologized for the "endless story" in the new series "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya". He said he was aware of this problem and he left to stop it. Hmm it will be framing, actually Kyo-ani made a comment that he is not related to the project anymore.
Animation creator Yoshinori Kaneda died today, he was known for breaking down the directorial system in animation, which allowed individual key animators to use their own style in a particular work. It is called the Kaneda perspective in Japan. For example, you can see it in the Voltes V opening. He has worked for Studio Ghibli since Nausicaä and move to Square Enix to make Final Fantasy.

Makoto Yabuki is a Japanese art director, we saw his work in TV ads. Today, I found his official site and saw his other artwork. I like this white style. It's beautiful, check it out.

Another video is this making of TOYOTA IQ font: when driving becomes writing. Very cute idea. You can download the IQ font. :-)

iQ font - When driving becomes writing / Full making of video from wireless on Vimeo.

Tokyo Toy Show 2009

The 2009 Tokyo Toy Show is being held now. You can see both very high-tech and low-tech designs there. For example, this is "poop san." Hmm…that is why it is said we have a poop obsession

Yaranaika is a meme on 2ch, originally it came from a gay manga. I read that a Yaranaika body pillow was released and it has big things… well, it’d be hard to sleep on it… Sorry, I don't have anything interesting today...

By the way, guys who love cute stuff a lot (but are not gay) are called "otomen" (girly men) in Japan. The term came from a manga called Otomen, which will be made into a live-action drama in August. In Japan, it’s acceptable for some guys to love cute thing even if they are not gay, but it this okay in your country? For a guy to like pink, collect lovely items and eat sweets?

Okuchi Naoshi

I had a three day weekend after a terrible Friday night :-). Since it's too hot go around Tokyo, I watched a lot of movies. One of them was Tekkon Kinkreet by Taiyo Matsumoto. I wasn’t as good as I expected and it was not for me. But interestingly, I found his son's private site today. Here is "the idiot" by Shoei.

So I am reading the manga PLUTO on this site as a palate cleanser, we say kuchi naoshi (mouth freshener) in Japanese.
You English-speakers laugh at our Engrish and sometimes my Engrish (he he he) but we laugh at funny-looking Japanese from around the world. Today Nifty Portal Z has this post: strange Japanese words that he found in Chinese supermarkets. First, both a bean snack and a blueberry snack had the same ad copy on their packages: "two packets of natural taste soup attached." I guess they had a food containing free soup packets that sold well, so they thought the ad copy was good and catchy for Japanese speakers... A bean snack in yellow packaging named HEALTH has some Japanese-like new language on it and they added the instructions: "soak in hot water and drain after three minutes," but apparently, you don’t need to do this to eat the snack. On the next page, English-speaking people will understand the joke because they put the words “rainbow-colored” on a blue cutlery set. Ha ha, funny.