Music: Chequendeke

This is a 7 musician and vocal band out of Tokyo that has a Latin and Nu-Jazz sound that I just got introduced too, and I kind of dig the sounds.

See more about Chequendeke down at their MySpace page.

Hot Track: Micro - Odore

Japan looks to ban P2P and RAIN is everywhere

This is an interesting article on Japan and how they are working with ISP's to help with file illegal file sharing:

Add Japan to the list of countries cracking down on illegal file sharing over the Internet. Amid ongoing pressure (not surprisingly) from the record and movie industries, the country’s four major Internet service provider organizations have agreed to cut off web access to those who repeatedly engage in illegal file-sharing.

Apparently they don't have anything like deep packet filtering in the works right now, but it begs the question really of who's Internet it really is and how far ISP's have a right to look at P2P sharing.

I'm just glad I'm live in the U.S.

On another note, while I know RAIN is huge world superstar - it's just interesting to see it in full view - because really - he is everywhere, and on everything - even in places you may not expect it.

That's my side, not yours

This story has to make you wonder if the next incarnation of a film like The Host, won't actually be coming out of Japan:

Some part of waste dump areas in the Sea of Japan designated by the South Korean government overlaps with the continental shelf area and thus the exclusive economic zone of Japan. Unaware of this, South Korea has dumped waste in these areas for the past 15 years.

Read more down at the Korea Times.

31st Japanese Academy Awards

The nominations are in for the 31st Japanese Academy Awards, and some of the top contenders and nominees are, Tokyo Tower - Mom & Me, and sometimes Dad, Always 2, and I Just Didn't Do It. Check out some of the trailers below, or past posts.

Tokyo Tower - Mom & Me, and sometimes Dad




Always 2




I Just Didn't Do It

Hiroshima and Nagasaki in their own words

Hibakusha: Hearing from the survivors in their own words

Retired Nagasaki Broadcasting Corp. (NBC) journalist Akihiko Ito has spent decades — and a small fortune — recording a huge collection of testimonies from the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are now online with English transcriptions.

Ito, 70, gathered verbal testimonies from 1,003 hibakusha in the period from 1971 to 1979 and added recordings of another 837 A-bomb survivors collected by NBC from 1986 to 2006.

He produced a series of nine CDs containing the statements made by the hibakusha and, together with copywriter Yoshihisa Furukawa and a group of 18 volunteers, added pictures and English transcripts to the recordings and listed them on a free Website called Voices of the Survivors From Hiroshima and Nagasaki (VOSHN.com).

Audience approval: Getting your Love Hotel groove on while others watch

Jeepers creepers, your love hotel might be crawling with peepers

If you — and perhaps your lady friend as well — are not sufficiently stimulated by each other’s company, you might want to consider injecting some additional excitement into your trysts, by watching other couples do the dirty deed, unbeknownst to them of course, from a handy peeping perspective, albeit not necessarily a point purposely provided.

Writing in Uramono Japan (October), reporter Hisashi Yamazaki says he developed an interest in this topic from the old days, when the walls of cheaply constructed hotels were so thin one could easily and effortlessly eavesdrop on the affectionately amorous acoustic effects generated by cavorting couples.

After considerable research, Yamazaki has found that indeed, places exist in Tokyo where a strategically situated voyeur can observe the visual action as well.

Bong Joon-ho, “Tokyo”, Ayako Fujitani, and Steven Seagal

Ayako Fujitani. Image from Off Screen

According to reports from MTV.com, the director of the ever popular Korean monster movie The Host, Bong Joon-ho will be working on a movie called “Tokyo” where directors will give their spin on the city in much the same way as the movie Paris Je T’aime.

From those same reports as well, the French director Michel Gondry will be working with Ayako Fujitani - who is the daughter of U.S. actor/director Steven Seagal.

From Wikipedia:

A writer and actress, she is the daughter of Steven Seagal from his first wife, aikido master Miyako Fujitani.

While still relatively unknown in America, she was recently featured in the French film Sansa (2003) and is best known for her role in the Heisei Gamera (1995-1999) series directed by Shusuke Kaneko. She worked again with him on an episode of Ultraman Max, whom he directed.

Fujitani wrote the short novella Shiki-Jitsu based on personal reflections of her difficulties as a multiracial child growing up in Japan and later, the unwanted attention after her father’s sudden rise to stardom.

The story was adapted into film by writer and director Hideaki Anno and stars Fujitani in the title role.

See the Off Screen movie site for more information on Shiki-Jitsu.

DJ spin that classic morning Dragon Ash

From Dragon Ash's '03 album Harvest - start the morning - or end the evening right - with Morrow:



And if you want something a little newer from the Japanese Rock/Hip-Hop group, here's a single off their '07 CD Independiente, called Ivory:

I Just Didn’t Do It, Koji Yakusho, Masayuki Suo, and the Oscars

According to reports from Variety Asia, the Japanese movie I Just Didn’t Do It, by writer/director Masayuki Suo of Shall We Dance fame (the original) has just been selected as Japan’s official entry into the Oscars for foreign language film.

The movie which stars Ryo Kase(Letters from Iwo Jima) and Koji Yakusho (Babel, Memoirs of a Geisha, Shall We Dance) takes a critical look at the Japanese legal system through the story of a falsely accused man.

From the The 45th New York Film Festival description:

Masayuki Suo, the director of Shall We Dance, trades sweetness for a tart taste of Kafka in his new film, with a dash of Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man. Falsely accused of groping a schoolgirl on a jammed train, Teppei (Ryo Kase, from Letters From Iwo Jima) is advised to plead guilty, pay a small fine, and get on with his life. But he maintains his innocence and won’t be persuaded to compromise. Suo’s follow-up to his 1996 smash hit begins as a criminal justice procedural and develops into an engrossing study (and damning indictment) of a flawed justice system, in which the presumption of innocence is basically non-existent.

A trailer from YouTube:

Alan Muraoka, Sesame Street, and Asian Americans On Broadway: Heart and Music

Alan Muraoka, who plays the owner of Mr. Hooper’s corner store on Sesame Street, will be helming the production of Asian Americans On Broadway: Heart and Music, which will be part of the benefit for the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC).

Talking about the show Muraoka said:

“The audience sees the potential that anything is possible. That there was a Belle in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ who was Asian that looked like them. And to me, I didn’t have those images when I was growing up. We’re performing for that one person — that person that this has always been their dream, but they never thought that they could do it. Well, we’re showing them that it is possible and that anything is possible.”

Read the full article about the show down at the Nichi Bei Times as well as the show’s website http://www.asianamericansonbroadway.com/. You can also learn more about Alan Muraoka at his site.

Yakuza Moon and Shoko Tendo

With her dyed-brown long hair and tight designer jeans, Shoko Tendo looks like any other stylish young Japanese woman — until she removes her shirt to reveal the vivid tattoos covering her back and most of her body.

The elaborate dragons, phoenixes and a medieval courtesan with one breast bared and a knife between her teeth are a symbol of Tendo’s childhood as the daughter of a “yakuza” gangster and her youth as a drug-using gang member.

The author of “Yakuza Moon,” a best-selling memoir just out in English, the 39-year-old Tendo says that police efforts to eradicate the gangsters have merely made them harder to track.

Read the full article here.

Koda Kumi and Fergie Team Up For Music Single

News came out a little bit ago that Koda Kumi will be teaming up with Fergie on a single for a yet to be named Japanese drama. Whether the song will be in English, Japanese, or both - which would be my bet - is still being hashed out.

No word on when it will be released.

Takashi Miike: Sci-fi romantic comedy?

This sounds pretty cool, and a departure from Miike’s more classical films he is known for, but he’ll be re-doing a movie called Kamisama no Puzzle (God’s Puzzle) - which is based on a book (of the same name) by Japanese author Shinji Kimoto (which also won the 2002 Sakyo Komatsu Awards). Apparently the book is a sci-fi comedy romance about two twins and a girl who work together to try and figure out the secrets of the universe and create their own.

Slated for a 2008 summer release.

Read more at tokyograph and firstshowing.net.

Remembering the week of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

August 6, 1945 the first of only two nuclear bombs ever used in warfare was dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later on August 9, 1945 the second of those bombs was dropped on Nagasaki. Because of those bombings, over a quarter of a million people’s lives were taken.

Takashi Miike And Shannyn Sossamon

The Japanese Horror flick “One missed call” by freak out master Takashi Miike is being remade, which will also star Shannyn Sossamon (French-German-Filipino-Hawaiian) who is also playing on Moonlight this fall on CBS.

Utada tops the digital sales charts with 7 million units sold

If you don’t know who Utada is, she’s pretty much one of the best selling J-POP artists in the world who grew up both in NY as well as Tokyo and is more widely known by Utada Hikaru, and Hikki.

According to EMI, Utada’s single “Flavor of Life”, regular and the ballad version, is the world’s biggest selling digital single with sales of seven million units across all formats including mobile phone ringtunes, full-track mobile downloads, fixed line downloads, ring videos and ringback tones.