Some Japanese Christmas Songs

How are things going everyone? Hopefully good.

Well it's almost that time of the year again when a fat bearded man trespasses into homes and eats your cookies and drinks your milk. If you've been good then he'll leave behind some presents but that doesn't change the fact that he's sneaking into peoples houses. Anyway, yes. Christmas.

There's a little over a week to the joyous day and I thought that I might extend on my random song recommendation posts and share some Christmas themed Japanese songs. They're not Christmas carols as Japanese people just use the English ones with translated lyrics but are just pop songs that have something to do with Christmas. Well, hopefully you'll find some that you like here. 



Ryuichi Sakamoto-
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
First is this theme song from the movie with the same name (Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence). It starred the Rock superstar David Bowie in the lead role and also Kitano Takeshi (teacher from Battle Royale) and Ryuichi Sakamoto himself too. It's a pretty decent movie and worth watching I think.....The song isn't a cheerful one that you probably want to listen to at Christmas but it's a ve~ry beautiful track that I think you should know. As I said before, Ryuichi Sakamoto the person who composed this song also stars in the movie. However, he's not an actor but a very highly regarded composer/producer, having won an American Academy Award and Grammy for his soundtrack on the movie 'Last Emperor'. He was also a member of the influential electro music group, Yellow Magic Orchestra and is quite well known in the West for this reason.



B'z -Itsuka no Merry Christmas
Itsuka no Merry Christmas (Merry Christmas of Someday) is one of the most popular songs by Japan's most successful rock act, B'z. There's a famous video on youtube of this song as a duet between Hamasaki Aymumi and Gackt, so fans of those two would probably have heard this song before.





Yamashita Tatsuro -Christmas Eve
This is one of the staple Christmas songs of Japan, and if you go there around this time you'll hear this song playing non-stop all over the place (as well as 'Last Chrsitmas' by Wham, and the song by Mariah Carey...). I think I might have kind of been brain washed into liking this song because of how often they play it. You have no choice but to come to like it or else you'll be walking around irritated wherever you go. It's also famous for the Japan Rail advertisement it was used on.




Dreams Come True -Winter Song
Dreams Come True are an extremely popular pop duo (originally a trio) and responsible for many hit songs mainly in the 80's and 90's although they are still very successful now. This song was the opening theme for the famous American movie, 'Sleepless in Seatle' featuring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, although I've never watched the movie in full so haven't really heard or seen the part with the song. There's an English version and a Japanese version, and both are honestly good. The singer, Miwa has an unusually good pronunciation of English for a pure Japanese person so it shouldn't bother people that don't really like Engrish.




Kuwata Keisuke -Shiroi Koibito-tachi
Shiroi Koibito Tachi means 'White Lovers' and is by the Japanese music legend Kuwata Keisuke. Kuwata Keisuke is credited as being the first Japanese musician to sing in a foreign kind of accent which paved the way for more Western sounding music to be created with the Japanese language. This is the main reason why a lot of the old rock groups of Japan sing in English (if you've bothered to search for some). The Japanese language with ordinary pronunciation doesn't flow as nicely so what Kuwata did back then with his band Southern All-stars was a revolutionary thing and responsible for the songs that we hear today.



L'arc~en~Ciel - Hurry Xmas
Well here's a song from the super popular rock group L'arc~en~Ciel. Although they do a lot of pop sounding music it's a very poppy song even out of them. Even so, it's a snazzy jazzy uptempo tune with a nice melody.

Video Subbing: HYDE (and a bit of MUCC) on HAPPY MUSIC (19 June 2010)

みなさん今日は！

I've subbed another video. This time it's very short compared to the other ones, and featuring a different pretty boy of Japanese music. This person is Hyde of L'arc en ciel and more recently, VAMPS. The host of the show Becky interviews him before his live performance at a rock concert featuring a number of other famous acts such as MUCC. Unfortunately they only talk for a minute or so.

GET FROM MEDIAFIRE (12 MB)



The video is from June 2010, so please excuse Becky when she says she's never seen an ipad before...

Time to do a couple of explanations.


OH YOU'RE NOT GAKKI~
Hyde mistook Becky's name for Gakki~.
Gakki~ is actually the nickname of another famous female in Japan at the moment called Aragaki Yui.
I don't know, if it was on purpose to mock Becky, or he honestly (but rudely) made a mistake but basically, Gakki~ is a completely different person.

OLD WOMEN FROM OSAKA
Osaka is Japan's second largest city, and is often sort of scene as a Tokyo's rival. They have a fierce baseball rivalry, and do variously things opposite to Tokyo, such as the side to stand on while riding an escalator. The personality of the people living here are also thought as being much brighter and open than those of the capital, albeit a bit more brash and rude at the same time. Although this may be a some what sterotypical view, it is a fact that almost all of the top comedians from Japan are from Osaka or the surrounding areas (including Osaka), called Kansai (or Kinki).

As stated before, the people of Osaka can be friendly and nice, but they can also be much louder and ruder. Particularly tagged as having these qualities (particularly rudeness), are the old stressed housewives of Osaka, (generally around 40~60 years.). Known in Japanese as 'Osaka no Obasan' (大阪のおばさん), they stereotypically, love to gossip about .......well everything, and are also always trying to get bargain deals at local supermarkets.

ANYWAY........getting to the point about the video...lol
They say something like "Clothes that old women from Osaka would like". Basically, Osaka no obasan's like colourful and flashy clothes. PARTICULARLY leopard skin patterns and tiger stripes. They cannot pass by a piece of clothing like that without stopping to look/ buy.

Here's a link a video of some comedians pretending to be these obnoxious ladies, and a translation/explanation of what's happening. (courtesy of Bugs from Owarai Hive. Thank you!)
http://owaraihive.blogspot.com/2011/05/nakagawakesuper-monomane-brothers.html

BOWED LEGS
You might or might not know this so I included it in the explanations. Bowed legs is this:

In Japanese they called it Gani-mata (蟹股) which means 'Crab crotch'. LOL!
But yeah...you can probably see that it's like how crab's legs are, especially in that picture with the scissor hands and everything. More people in Japan get this than other countries because of the traditionally polite way to sit on the floor, which is to sit on your bent legs like so:

 If you do it for too long it's bad for you as it cuts of blood circulation to the legs. Your legs get paralyzed from this and when you try to stand up you usually end up toppling over. If you do it too much for many years, it can cause your leg bones to bend and curve.

 So be careful not to do it too much, unless if you want bowed legs later on in life. Although I've heard before that it's desirable to have in some cultures.....

Anyway that's it for today's lecture. Class dismissed!