FamilyMart Remix
Posted by harvey in Culture, Music on 27. Nov, 2010 | 2 Comments
If you’ve ever walked into a FamilyMart, these clips will either make you break it down, or break down in tears. Why you ask? Why not??? – Harvey
Live from Tokyo Movie in NYC Oct 29th
Posted by harvey in Culture, Media, Movies, Music on 26. Oct, 2010 | Comments Off
Looks good! If you’re in NYC on Oct 29th you should clear your schedule and go check it out. Live From Tokyo Trailer from Lewis Rapkin on Vimeo. Got this email the other day through the JapanNewbie contact form. Good info, passing it along. LIVE FROM TOKYO – a documentary about indie music in Tokyo [...]
A Musical Afternoon with Shakuhachi and Koto
Posted by harvey in Art, Culture, Music on 18. Oct, 2010 | 2 Comments
So as you may have heard from my twitter feed, @maryag came down from NYC and we spent some quality Japan-geek time together. On Sunday we went down to a local university and watched an excellent shakuhachi and koto performance by Akikazu Nakamura and Toshiko Kuto. Here’s a clip that I recorded of the encore [...]
LITE
Posted by harvey in Media, Music on 07. Jul, 2010 | Comments Off
More great music from Japan. This one is all instrumental so it won’t do much for your Japanese language abilities, but who knows, maybe the Japanese vibe will help get you in your Kanji grinding groove. I know I sure can study to this! Check it out. The band is called LITE and this, their [...]
JRock Distortion with Hanumaan
Posted by harvey in Media, Music on 03. Jul, 2010 | 4 Comments
HearJapan turned me on to this Japanese band called Hanumaan. I picked up their album and it’s really good stuff. Energetic. Fun. Fast. Somehow rustic (maybe it’s the grainy video). They recently toured with Asian Kung-fu Generation, another band that I really like. Yup. These guys are hot. distortion Go ahead, tell me you don’t [...]
Kuzuboshi
Posted by harvey in Media, Music on 22. May, 2010 | 3 Comments
Some fresh music on HearJapan. I like Kuzoboshi’s sound. Lots of piano. A mix of male and female vocals. The kind of music that will calm you down after a hard day of writing Kanji over and over again… Kuzuboshi – Kankou The description from HearJapan. Kankou is a piano infused indies album from Hiroshima. [...]
Love in Translation
Posted by harvey in Books, Culture, Media, Music on 18. May, 2010 | 2 Comments
I just finished Wendy Tokunaga’s book Love in Translation, and it was great! I normally stay away from “love” stories, because you know – I’m manly… but Wendy’s book has such a direct connection to Japan and Japanese culture that I thought I would give it a try, and I’m glad I did! Wendy has [...]
Tottara Akan Yo! Osaka-ben Music
Posted by harvey in Humor, Media, Music, Osaka on 04. May, 2010 | 2 Comments
You need more Kansai-ben in your life, and I’m here to help. とったらあかんよ♬~ JapanNewbie here introducing a random song called Tottara Akan Yo とったらアカンよ, by a group named Atarime. Atarime – Tottara Akan Yo This song has direct Osaka and Kansai culture references, traditional Japanese background music, and Kansai-ben to make it fun. Not something [...]
