I had not actually planned to do an Alice in Wonderland-themed music entry, but then I saw this, It made me think about how frequently "Alice" or "Wonderland" pop up in J-music, and I felt the urge to do a countdown. Most J-pop and J-rock songs with "Alice" in the title don't have anything to do with the book so while relevancy is a factor in ( Read more... )

Last month, there was a meme going around where you had to talk about 6 things beginning with a specific letter. tokyo_yume gave me "R". I decided to put a Japanese spin on it by using the ra-gyou (ら り る れ ろ).

1. ラーメン (ramen) - Although they’re not my favorite Japanese noodle, I really do enjoy eat a bowl of ramen, especially in the winter. Just so we’re ( Read more... )

Today, I was supposed to go to the Japan-American society New Year's celebration, which featured mochi (rice cake) pounding and several performances.  I planned on including pictures from the event in my upcoming post about celebrating New Year's, or Oshougatsu, in Japan.  However, I was feeling a bit feverish this morning so I opted to not go.

As a ( Read more... )

According to the Oricon charts, #1 single of 2009 was "Believe"/"Kumorinochi, kaisei" by Arashi/Yano Kenta starring Satoshi Ohno while the #1 album of 2009 was All the BEST 1999-2009 by Arashi.  What about my picks?  I decided to go beyond just personal preference and looked at the artist's success and prominence.

So here are my picks for the Best ( Read more... )

Lately the weather here in North Texas feels more like winter than autumn. It's typical, as one of the items on the "You Know You're from Texas if..." list is "You know all four seasons: almost summer, summer, still summer, and Christmas." I must have been one of the few ALTs who was not bothered by the students' implication that only Japan has ( Read more... )

Maki Horikita understands how I can be alarmed when people tell me that they don't read. She recommended books in her segment of the radio show GIRLS LOCK!, and she seemed shocked when her Hana Kimi co-star Toma Ikuta said that he only reads manga. Now, reading manga is better than not reading anything at all, and celebrities are busy (plus Kanji ( Read more... )

There has not been much good news in the J-rock world.  In the past week, I learned that An Cafe, Cellt, Moran, and Sendai Kamotsu are going on a hiatus or disbanding.  Of these four, only Cellt has stated that they are ending things permanently.  However, as Malice Mizer has demonstrated, an "indefinite hiatus" can seem rather permanent.  Although ( Read more... )