My cousin stationed in Japan is a-ok. I also have distant relatives there, but haven't heard from them in dozens of years. Since I use this lj to follow anime/manga/asian pop, it was interesting to see all the posts regarding celebrities tweeting or blogging their status.
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Beck live-action jmovie! was unexpectedly quirky & cheesy, but entertaining. Based on the manga, the movie follows 5 teens as they form a band, and rock the stage. The casting was pretty spot-on. I initially thought they dubbed the english parts, but further into the movie, it seems as though the two main english-speaking charactes have a decent grasp of english; liberal use of the f-word makes it so. There was one huge missing element to the movie which may spoil the movie for fans, so don't read on if you don't want to be spoiled. *** Koyuki doesn't have a singing voice. There's a mysterious void where you are supposed to imagine this great voice coming through the music. Chiba gets to rap his songs and all the other rival groups sing, but yes, the mystery of Koyuki's mesmerizing voice is left to the audience's imagination. It's a good movie despite the well, cop-out. ~7/10 rating~