How's everyone doing? Hope you're all genki.
I noticed that a lot of the things I write about or subtitle on this blog are things from several years in the past, rather than recent stuff. That's not really a problem but I suppose that its good to get with the times and mention some more up-to-date stuff once in a while?
And so......I thought I might introduce some recently released songs that have caught my attention.
Not a particularly exciting post, and just about everything I write about seems music related but well....yeah sorry about that lol. I'll have to think of something else to write for another time.
So! Yes. I few songs have been released recently that have left an impression on me.
SHIINA RINGO - Carnation
I'm a big fan of Shiina Ringo (and her band Tokyo Jihen), so was waiting for this to come out as soon as it was announced. And again, she didn't disappoint. It's a very beautiful and cute kind of tune, some have described it as Disney like etc etc. It's the theme song for a drama of the same name (Carnation), which is about the life of a fashion designer or something.
KIKKAWA KOJI- Ano Natsu Wo Wasurenai
Ano Natsu Wo Wasurenai (I Won't Forget That Summer) by Kikkawa Koji is about the atomic bomb blast in Hiroshima back in WW2. Hiroshima is Kikkawa's home city and his father personally went through the horrors of the blast. Kikkwawa made this song with primary school kids in Hiroshima and sang it with them on the memorial day of the bomb drop. The song's lyrics are about that despite losing your friends. family, home and almost everything else, there is still hope and that you can have a peaceful future.
KIMURA KAELA- 8 Album
I liked Kimura Kaela's recent album '8'. It's a lot more rock oriented than her recent albums, although there are one or two of the cute pop songs that Kimura Kaela known for too. To me it feels like she has progressed a lot as a musician in this album.
BUMP OF CHICKEN- ZERO
This is the theme song for the recent Final Fantasy Reishiki or 'Type Zero' in English. I've not really listened to a lot of this band's music and not really liked the songs that I've heard but quite liked this one. As I said before, it's the theme song for the latest Final Fantasy game on PSP, and that's where I heard it. It really fitted the game and the scene it played in and was really emotive. An enthusiastic person even reviewed it on youtube which was pretty interesting. He has also reviewed a lot of other recent singles so it might be cool to listen to a few if you're interested.... TH3JROCKFAN youtube channel
Hello!
I finally finished my latest video subbing project at last!
It's another episode of Arashi ni Shiyagare, this time featuring rock super star Kikkawa Koji. He was supremely popular in the 1980's and early to mid 90's, so he's not really well known among more recent generations. Never the less he was still e number one sweet heart of his generation, much like Kimura Takuya was for the last decade. (I wonder who it is nowadays? Maybe there isn't one just yet?)
This one took me forever for some reason! Well actually it's because it goes for a long time but I'm pretty sure it didn't take me this long with the Gackt episode. Maybe because GACKT talks really slowly.
Haha I just realised I spelled slurp as slirp. Daamn, that's what happens when there's no spell check.
I only found out about this person after subbing the 'Sakurai from Buck-Tick on Waratte iitomo video', and really only started to take interest after finding this arashini shiyagare! episode. I looked him up on youtubus and watched this music video of him with Hotei Tomoyasu (as the group, 'COMPLEX'), for the song 'Be My Baby).
I usually don't like music form the 80's but I found this one catchy plus their strange dancing made me watch it twice...and now I find myself suddenly humming the chorus and riff at times. I actually quite like it now. Apparently the two have joined up again to reform COMPLEX recently, which is interesting news.
EXPLANATION SECTION
Wow...I was anticipating to have to do a lot for this video but not this much....
Well here we go:
ANIKI
Aniki= Big Bro. I left it as aniki in most places in the video...If you found it confusing I'm sorry!
KITAGAWA THE WHISKEY MAN
At the start one of them were talking about how he learnt how to drink whiskey from a man called Kitagawa.
Kitagawa Kenzo is the man they were referring to. He's a successful novelist, mainly historical ones and ones with macho type manly man as main characters.....lol sorry about the weird explanation.
MARRIED MAN, SATOH KOUICHI
Kikkawa and Matsumoto apparently met at the marriage party of Satoh Kouichi, who is a Japanese actor. that's been in many movies such as Tarantino assisted 'Western Sukiyaki Jango', the horror film Spiral (aka Rasen), as well as many dramas. Although not a huge star, he is quite recognisable if you've seen lots of Japanese films.
ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS
'The Romance Of The Three Kingdoms' are a series of Chinese novels based on the historical text of 'The Record of The Three Kingdoms'. I'm not that knowledgeable about any specific stories about this, but it's about actual wars and happenings of the highly unstable 'Six Dynasties' era in China, with...well three fighting kingdoms. You might know the John Woo movie, Red Cliff, featuring a host of Chinese stars and Takeshi Kaneshiro. This was based off events just prior to the Three Kingdoms era, and has many of same characters in it. The video game series 'Dynasty Warriors' is also based off this story. I've made the spelling for the characters in the video in the Chinese pronunciation, as they are pronounced differently in Japanese.
SOCCER PLAYER TAKEDA
This is Takeda Nobuhiro one of the legends of Japanese soccer. He played as striker during his playing career and was very prolific in front of goal for his team of 11 years, Verdy Kawasaki. After retiring he became a TV personality, and is well known for being an air head, and having really lame style and sense in most things. That's the reason why Arashi members made a lot of noise when they compared him to Kikkawa.
IDIOT
DROP KICK
This isn't specific to Japanese culture but I thought I might mention it as people that aren't interested in sport, especially those like rugby may not know what it is. A drop kick is when you time your kick to hit the ball when you drop it and it bounces on the ground slightly. This makes the ball go flying high up into the air. So if Kikkawa starts making kids that's what's going to happen to the birthrate in Japan. Shoot upwards.
TV SHOWS AND MOVIES
They mention a lot of movies and dramas.....here's a brief intro to them
HARU-CHAN: A drama adapted from manga about a widow who owns a hot spring, follows her struggles to keeping it running and other stuff widows have to deal with.
....featuring Shimamaru Setsuko島丸せつこ as 'Nakai-san'
Young times: mmmmm.......
KOGARASHI MONJIRO (木枯し紋次郎): Drama about a one-armed, lone swordsman travelling aimlessly around Japan. He bumps into trouble and slashes up bad guys, but stays cool about it and claims that "It's none of his business" before moving onto the next set of weak and troubled people. His costume style is pretty famous and popularly used.
ZATOICHI: Similar story as Kogarashi Monjiro, except this guy is blind. He's also a lot more famous, with many movies being made in the 70's and 80's with main character 'Ichi' being played by Shintaro Katsu. A more recent one was made by Takeshi "Beat" Kitano in 2003, which many of you may have seen as it got quite a bit of attention in the West.
Takeshi Shintaro Katsu
TORA-SAN: Tora-san was the main character for movie series of 'Okoto wa Tsuraiyo' (Being a Man is Tough), which has spanned 48 titles over 30 years or so. It's about an unlucky and irresponsible, but friendly and likable man and his unsuccessful attempts with finding love and finally settling down. The movies usually follow the same plot, starting with him travelling somewhere in Japan and finding an interesting woman that seems to like him. He always ends up helping her be with another man, or doesn't realise that she's not interested in him, which is generally causes him to run off to some other part of Japan again. It's not just that though, as the story always has him return to his home town where his younger sister, uncle, auntie and various other friends live. There he deals with the embarrassment of being rejected by females all the time and various other things like family issues etc etc. What makes these films so popular however are how it is woven in with a lot of humour. It's good to watch one of these once in a while.
BEAT TAKESHI
Beat Takeshi, or more commonly known in the west as Takeshi Kitano, is one of the biggest stars of Japanese television. He started off as a manzai style comedian in the 70's and gained huge popularity for his rude content and vulgar language. He went on to host and star in many shows, write many books, and direct movies which have been very well received by the world. He has quite peculiar mannerisms, such as a twitch that makes him full up one side of his face and shoulder (after being in a motorcycle accident), and also identifiable for the way he walks; a crouched back and shuffled steps.
DEBUT SONG MONICA
Kikkawa's debut song, Monica. Ariyoshi actually kind of had the movements right. Plus I noticed that Kikkawa in the Arashi video twitches his face sometimes similarly to Beat Takeshi.
HOPPY
Hoppy is a beer flavoured non alcoholic drink (well it does have alcohol but very little) that was popular after the second world war, when beer was expensive and unobtainable for many. This used to be mixed with 'Shochu', a strong alcoholic beverage usually made form barley, sweet potatoes or rice. Although beer is much cheaper nowadays, Hoppy still exists and many people drink it.
KOFUN AND PIT HOUSE
A Kofun is an ancient grave/tomb in Japan that housed the remains of important people in history. Although they vary in size some can be huge, and they are often (although not necessarily) in a keyhole type of shape.
A Pit-house (at least the one they're referring to) is a primitive home. It it is basically a pit dug in the ground with a roof over the top. In Japanese it's called 'Tate-ana Shiki Juukyo' 竪穴式住居 which means 'vertical pit style housing'.
TACHIGUI SHOPS
Tachigui (立ち食い) means 'Eating while standing'. In Japan, businessmen often have very limited time to eat, so shops where food is served extremely fast, and eaten quickly by customers standing were produced, so that they can come and go in the shortest time possible. Like 5 minutes or something.
SOBA
Soba are thin brown noodles made out of buckwheat. There are many different 'types' although the only difference is what it is served with. I'll just explain the ones that came out on the show.
KITSUNE SOBA: The main difference of this soba is that it is served with abura-age (deep fried tofu). The abura-age loses it's original tofu like texture, and becomes like a sort of wet sponge. When it's put in soba or udon, it is nicknamed 'Kitsune' which means fox, as according to folklore, that is supposed to be their favourite food.
MORI SOBA: Is a simple soba, eaten with just the 'tsuyu' (flavouring soup) and maybe some other little toppings like spring onion, wasabi and 'nori' (seaweed). The noodles are served on a plate or a 'zaru', a flat bamboo....rollable thing (You'll see what I'm talking about in the picture. You pick up some from your plate, dip it into your bowl of 'tsuyu' and slurp it up as you go.
That wooden thing the soba is sitting on is the zaru
HIYASHI TORORO OKRA SOBA: This is a chilled soba with Tororo, a puree of yamaimo (means 'mountain potato', and called a yam in English). This becomes a flavourless white slimy substance, which I hate, as it's what I imagine a mouthful of slightly foamy snot would be like. This dish would be even slimier since it's go okra in it too....
OTHER FOOD
OHITASHI: Is chilled boiled vegetables (most commonly spinach) flavoured in soy sauce based sauce, and often served with 'Katsuobushi' (Dried Bonito shavings) or sesame seeds on top.
INARI: Is what you get if you put a ball of vinegar flavoured rice in an abura-age. 'Inari' is also the Shinto God of foxes, and if you were reading the explanation of Kitsune soba properly, fried tofu is their favorite food. Hence the name 'Inari' for this food.
THE BOSS WROTE SONGS FOR ITSUKI HIROSHI
Itsuki Hiroshi (五木ひろし) was an extremely popular 'Enka' (traditional Japanese style music) singer, who had many hits in the 70's ~80's.
Left: They allowed horrible photos to be released back in the day...
Aaannnnd there were probably more but I couldn't find them while I quickly looked.
If you've got any questions, queries, requests, inquiries, problems, confusions, complaints, or just something to say, lol
