Familymart entrance melody remixed!

This should be familiar to those living in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea.

Ai Kago + Public Enemy + Anime

Former Morning Musume Ai Kago is singing a couple of classic anime songs on a compilation and they’re gonna be produced by none other than Public Enemy. What is this world coming to?!  😛

Ai Kago back in her Morning Musume days.

Anime songs she is covering are “Himitsu no Akko-chan”:

and “Lum no Love Song” (Lum’s Love Song) from Urusei Yatsura:

Admittedly I’m curious about what the songs will sound like in the end, but there’s no way Public Enemy (or most likely just Terminator X?) knows who Kago or Morning Musume are, or the anime songs in question at all, haha.

Hotto Peppa

Initially annoying, but now catchy ads for Hot Pepper, a free coupon magazine, by Kaela Kimura and the Peanuts gang.

Utada’s US foray, part 2

Hikaru Utada (Wiki, the number of languages is impressive) is the most popular singer in Japan, and has sold over 50 million records worldwide (though most of that is in Japan and some in East Asia).

After a long and successful career in the Japanese and East Asian markets, she has tried to penetrate the biggest pop music market in the world, the US (she’s born and partially raised in NYC so she is a native English speaker).

Her US debut album EXODUS in 2004 was a dud, topping the Billboard charts at 160. She has just released her second all English album aimed at the US market, This Is The One. And she has earned a network TV appearance on CBS’s 2nd Cup.

I gave the album a listen at my local HMV, and unfortunately her second all English offering is very similar in flavour to her debut effort. Her voice is extremely well suited for J-Pop but not the US Top 40. And her naturally bilingual wordplay makes her (especially early) Japanese albums great, but she can’t unleash this aspect in a monolingual album.

This Is The One has entered the Billboard Album charts at #69, which is an improvement from her debut album, we’ll see if this is the peak or she can gain word of mouth cred and air play to move up the charts. She also violates my sampling rules by heavily sampling Ryuichi Sakamoto’s classic tune Merry Christmas Mr.Lawrence. I’m all for sampling, but not when the new song basically freerides on the coattails of the original (even though this is sort of like a tribute/remix). Unfortunately, for me, her recent Japanese album was rather soppy and lame as well, so she hasn’t produced anything that I really like in a while. Maybe she needs to marry another guy who could be her father?  😛

Shamisen fusion

More a note to myself than anything but I have a soft spot for genre crossing music… when done right (they can go awry very easily).

And Tsugaru-jamisen is an awesome traditional Japanese instrument that’s often played up tempo with passion, so it can meld nicely with modern instruments and sounds.

Itanji (異端侍) – I gotta check these guys out soon in Tokyo

Musashi (六三四) – I have one of their albums, and should own more, trad-prog-rock done to perfection

Yoshida Brothers (吉田兄弟) – One of the first big stars in the world of modern Tsugaru-jamisen fusion

世界初の…

ＤＪバトルｗｗ

X-Japan curry bread

Apparently Don Quixote the downmarket 24 hour everything store is collaborating with X-Japan (the number of languages available in Wikipedia is amazing) the visual-kei rock band in a line of products, but I only spotted this curry bread at the cash register so I decided to pick it up to give it a try. 

Turns out, the curry bread was just a normal curry bread despite its “Spicy” name, ah well.

見た目じゃ分からない

Britain’s Got Talent で47才のオバサン、スーザン・ボイルの熱唱。

Engrish with a purpose

Japanese beverage manufacturer Suntory has a new pop drink out called Lucky Cider. The commercial for the drink is full on Engrish (or Japlish)… but done on purpose for effect, with the Lucky Cider girl Nozomi Sasaki singing katakana-ized lyrics with a heavy Japanese accent. This is a new self-conscious twist on inadvertent Japanese Engrish commercials and advertisements that are still pretty common.

Here are the lyrics:

–

Papa Mama Lucky morning !

My friend is unlucky !

Sun is shining for me !

Handsome guys want me !!

Big money hit me !!!

I am a lucky girl !

Because I drink Lucky Cider !!

Hi !!!

–

Awesomez.

This commercial is doubly awesome because it was all done in one take… which means it took 26 takes over 5 hours to get it right. (The 3’3″ video on the right is the making of video.)

Kick Ass Korean Drummer!

Is this band even still active (the image looks old, the song sounds old – Korean enka? -, except for the drums), who is he drumming for now, does he have his own band, who is this mystery Korean drummer? He’s the Korean Neil Peart, better than Yoshiki. You gotta take a look.

He totally steals the show despite being the drummer tucked away behind the singer, awesomzz! The drums totally don’t go along with the rest of the song, but it doesn’t matter because the mismatch totally enhances the effect.