Kirsten Dunst is Turning Japanese

February 25, 2010 · 6 comments

in Japan

Kirsten Dunst teamed up with the famous Japanese artist Takashi Murakami and made a cover of Vapor’s “Turning Japanese”, and “Akihabara Majokko Princess” is the result.



So far it has mainly received bashing, so I guess I’m one of the few first ones to praise it. While “Piling cliché upon cliché” (CNNGo) is very much true, I think the video is freaking cool. Although, it feels more like something that would come out of a YouTube collaboration than a professional production. Some Japan YouTube vloggers and applemilk1988 instead of Kirsten Dunst and this would have been even more epic^^

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Ginza Bar Street

February 25, 2010 · 6 comments

in Japan

For some reason when I was in Ginza, I decided to walk off the main street. The main street was kind of all the same thing wherever you were so it got boring rather quickly. And just next to it, streets start looking like this, it felt kind of odd but in a cool way.

Broken chairs lying outside of bar entrances and almost no people around. A shabby place in the day that probably turns into the main street of the night^^

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KillDisco

February 24, 2010 · 4 comments

in J-pop, Music

Yet again I have Tumblr to thank for my findings. This time I’ve found KillDisco a.k.a. Fakevox who makes remixes of J-pop/anime and other Japanese music. And perhaps most importantly, besides them being good remixes, is that they’re uploaded to the web for everyone to download.

For example there’s a mix of AKB48’s Namida Surprise, although it’s not one of my favorites. Well, below are a few examples, and if you want the rest you can always visit the Tumblr site or the official site (see links in the bottom of the post).

TOKYO FLASH BACK BRONX : Download MP3

[click to continue…]

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Ashita no Kita Yoshio

February 24, 2010 · 2 comments

in Dramas & TV

As I’ve only been watching idol-filled dramas as of late, I decided to go with something different when I got home from Tokyo in February. Ashita no Kita Yoshio (Kita Yoshio’s Tomorrow; The World’s Unluckiest Man, and his 11-day Miracle) is about a very unlucky man who has decided to end his life on his friend’s death anniversary, 11 days away. [click to continue…]

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Higashi Fashion Relaunch

February 23, 2010 · 1 comment

in Design, Fashion & Architecture

Some of you probably know about the fashion blog I used to run on higashifashion.com. It didn’t last long because it was too much work for me to keep two self-hosted WordPress blogs up and running at the same time. But now I have the “yonasu Network” (lame name) thanks to Tumblr which makes everything fast and simple, so therefore I’ve revived Higashi Fashion as well (Long Live Kameism relaunch mentioned here).

It’s a bit different content-wise but it’s still all about Asian fashion, with lots of eye candy and recommendations (no long boring texts^^). So if you like Asian fashion or just like looking at pretty girls and boys, you can subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow it via Tumblr.

Visit Higashi Fashion

These Tumblr blogs are very different compared to my main blog here. They all have short posts (except for my Japanese blog from time to time maybe) with lots of photos. They’re a bit spammy from time to time, but not in a bad way at least in my opinion ;)

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Up-Front Official Youtube Channel

February 23, 2010 · 3 comments

in Japan

We’ve been seeing more and more official Japanese channels popping up on YouTube lately, and this time it’s Up-Front that has realized what they’ve been missing out on. At the time I’m writing this, there are 11 videos in the channel (first 2 videos were uploaded about 3 weeks ago) including Morning Musume, HANGRY & ANGRY, Berryz Koubou and other UFA artists. The videos are all new, but hopefully we’ll see them uploading older stuff as well.

Now we finally don’t have to rely on Dohhh-Up’s rather poor streaming service. On the other hand, we just have to hope that they don’t start putting too much effort on removing user-uploaded videos, at least not until they start uploading the videos themselves!

The quality of the videos is great, and it’s great that they haven’t disabled video embedding! Ratings and comments have been disabled for some reason though. And considering the fact that they’re branching out like this, it’s not impossible that we’ll see official subtitles as well. I’m sure that would not happen anytime soon though.

Here’s a taste of what the channel offers.

HANGRY & ANGRY – Top Secret

To watch more videos and subscribe to the channel, click on the link below ;)

Official Up-Front YouTube Channel

via Hello!SayuNii

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Shibuya Information Center

February 22, 2010 · 6 comments

in Japan

Just what kind of information center is this?

Would you go in there? I’m sure they could answer all your questions, but I don’t think it would feel… right, to go in there, haha.

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Rikaichan on Google Chrome (Rikaikun)

February 22, 2010 · 4 comments

in Japan

Rikaichan is a plugin for Firefox that lets you translate Japanese by hovering over words. When you hover a word you’ll get translations and readings, and if you hover a kanji and click enter, you’ll get info on it.

Rikaichan is the only plugin I use that I haven’t been able to replace in another browser. There’s LiveDictionary for Safari which isn’t free, and I didn’t like it when I used the 10-day free trial. So I’ve been forced to use Firefox for a heck of a long time. But now I’m very happy to announce Rikaikun! A port of Rikaichan for Google Chrome.

Rikaikun is a little behind Rikaichan, not everything has been ported just yet, but the essentials work. At the moment you can’t install the names dictionary, but I can live with that for a while.

Google Chrome is super fast compared to Firefox and there’s plenty of plugins for Chrome available now. So I really have no reason to stay with Firefox anymore, I’ve let the little fox eat on my processor for far too long. If Rikaichan or any other plugin is keeping you from switching, do check the Google Chrome Extensions site to make sure you’re not waiting for something that’s already there. I’ve had no issues with the beta for Mac OS X yet.

This is the perfect tool for people who study Japanese, they actually taught us to use it at my school, so by all means, give it a go!

Download Google Chrome.

Download Rikaikun.

Thanks to CDevil for letting me know about this port, follow him on Twitter!

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Long Live Kameism

February 20, 2010 · 2 comments

in Idols, Japan

Just two days ago I announced my new Japanese blog where I’m supposed to write in Japanese on a daily basis for practice. But, when you’re using Tumblr, it’s really difficult to keep yourself from doing other stuff with it, like spamming out pictures and videos of Eri (Kamei Eri, my favorite idol). And since I don’t want to spam that blog, nor this blog, I’ve relaunched Long Live Kameism! (A Kamei Eri fansite that used to be located at longlivekameism.com)

All my Tumblr blogs are going to run on the same theme, so it’s like a network where you can use the links in the left sidebar to navigate between them (and this blog). These blogs will not affect my posting frequency here or anything like that!

So if you like Eri, you can either follow the blog with the Tumblr follow thingy, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Long Live Kameism is now located at kameism.yonasu.com! Enjoy!

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Top 5 Japan-related iPhone Apps

February 19, 2010 · 19 comments

in Japan

This post is a Japan Blog Matsuri submission. The theme of February 2010’s Matsuri is Japan Top Lists, hosted by Muza-chan. Check out this page to participate, the deadline is Tuesday, February 23rd.

I’ve ranked this list by usage rather than how much I like an app to eliminate apps that are cool but will end up collecting “dust” in no time.

  1. MiraiClock, the official dannychoo.com clock app.

    This is by far my most-used app, seeing as it’s pretty much always on when I’m at home. I like how you can customize it with either a black or white background, different images of Mirai and Haruka and the ability to use both 12 and 24-hour clocks. I tend to use a picture of Mirai with a 12-hour clock in landscape mode.

  2. Smart.fm

    This is an everyday app for me, especially when I work or have other business I can’t do from home. It makes my life so much easier. When I work I can do short instances on breaks so I don’t have to come home and do 100 reviews every day late at night. If you use Smart.fm but don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch, this app is reason enough to get one.

    [click to continue…]

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