Base Ball Bear – Fresh and inspiring Japanese indie

Well, I’ve decided to start featuring music on the site by Japanese bands that I feel deserve recognition for their talents. There is a lot of music that has achieved mainstream success over here in Japan but by artists that I frankly just don’t like, to put it bluntly I just don’t like their music. They maybe good singers but their style of music just doesn’t appeal to me whatsoever (my friends will obviously know what I’m going on about, I can’t stand rap, hip hop or r’n'b, and most Japanese pop is well… like any pop music, it’s shit!)

So I’m going to start with a band that I did not mention in my previous music posts. They are Base Ball Bear, and while I’ve been here in Japan they have slowly been growing on me. I will be posting some of their music throughout the week, so be sure to check back! First off we’ll begin with Girlfriend, enjoy!!

Tokyo International Anime Fair 2008 – The Lowdown!

Oh hell yes…. the one event any anime fan should attend if they happen to be in Tokyo at the right time!! I got my ass over to the famous Tokyo Big Sight, excited like a little child at Christmas time, ready for some anime awesomeness! I thought I had left early but unfortunately just not early enough, yep, I was a total idiot and didn’t get my ticket in advance, so my queue was a bitch to get through, it took about an hour just for me to finally get into the exhibition hall. Anyway, I’m not gonna go into any detailed analysis of the show, I’m just gonna write down my favourite highlights – here you go:

Macross is alive and kicking! Yep, I didn’t know before but was happy to find out that there was a new Macross series being released! It’s being shown on TV right now but unfortunately I’m normally too busy to remember to actually watch it, and besides my TV is kinda crappy, most of the time the channels don’t come on properly :s

More Hokuto no Ken awesomeness coming our way! Yeah, I’m a big fan of Hokuto no Ken, so it was good to see some coverage at the show. There wasn’t really much to see but I saw the newly released Toki Den DVD which is an OVA based around Toki. There is also a new anime about Raoh in the works, it looks like a movie to me, I should have asked one of the people at the stand for more info about it.

Detroit Metal City – looking good I don’t actually know much about Detroit Metal City but the anime is coming out soon and oh boy does it look good! There’s also a live action movie in the works and at the booth there were some promotional photos from the film. This definitely looks good, can’t wait to see both the movie and the anime! By the way, the lead character is being played by Ken’ichi Matsuyama in the movie, if you’re a Japanese film fan you will recognise him from Nana, L: Change the World and the Death Note movies, he’s become one of my favourite actors.

Speaking of Death Note… Well, there obviously had to be a Death Note stand at the show! An awesome lifesize Ryuk model was there but not much to report really, I think the stand was there mainly just for the promotion of the newly released Death Note anime DVD, I believe it’s the special feature length edition which features a different ending to the original series.

And the favourite product of the show award goes to…. the incredibly cool Death Note figurines which I found at one of the stalls, they look pretty neat… ya just gotta love L!

Here are the pictures, hope they’re not too small for ya!

More Cherry Blossom for ya!

As promised here are more pics of the cherry blossom for you guys…. well I have to say I was looking through all the photos I had taken and I’m pretty disappointed with most of ‘em, the sakura season came and went so quickly and I was very busy with work so I couldn’t actually travel to the more rural areas to get some good pictures.  Ah well,  try to enjoy ‘em anyway, next time I’m in Japan I’ll have to take some better pics!

Cherry Blossom… at night :)

During the cherry blossom season there was some pretty awesome lighting set up around some of the cherry blossom hot spots so that people could enjoy the beauty of cherry blossom at night! At various parks people also throw hanami (flower viewing) parties each year when the cherry blossom season hits the area. This picture was taken near Zojoji Temple, which is also near Shiba Park, a popular place for hanami parties. Anyway, you can actually see Zojoji in the distance. More blossom pictures will be up soon!!

Traditional Shinto Wedding at Meiji Jingu

Last month I was chilling out in another one of my favourite areas of Tokyo – Yoyogi Park. The Meiji Jingu shrine is right next to the park and it’s an awesome area to visit for a pleasant walk on a sunny day. The weather was fantastic on that particular day but I was also very fortunate to visit the shrine at just the right time – as soon as I arrived I caught glimpse of a traditional Shinto wedding ceremony in full swing. Apparently many people would like to get married at the shrine and it’s easy to see why – it has a great atmosphere and is easily one of the must-visit sites of Tokyo. Personally I have to say that I find this type of ceremony much more interesting compared with the traditional western style. Be sure to check out the pictures below, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to catch a traditional wedding if you visit the shrine yourself!!

…..He’s back!!!

Oh yeah, now I know I’ve been a bad boy and I haven’t been updating the site lately but hopefully that will change from now on… hopefully I’ll get back into the swing of things!! Well, work has been keeping me busy but I’ve done a few fun things lately, namely going to the Anime Fair at Tokyo Big Sight (apparently the largest anime convention in the world, the queue was a royal bitch but the convention itself wasn’t all that big I thought, anyway I might write about it later) and also I took my first ever purikura…. which was an experience to say the least, if you don’t know what one is… well, I’m not going to describe it because it’s a tad bit embarrassing ! (for a foreign guy like myself anyway). Lastly as you would all know it was sakura (cherry blossom) season in Japan just recently, it came and went pretty damn fast but I took a few good pictures, I will post some of em soon. The first new photo, which you can see below, is from one of my favourite places in Tokyo, Zojoji Temple. That is all for now, be sure to check back!