With a bit of cash, a suitcase weighed 15 kg, my passport, and a tired body, this blogger took a 2-week vacation to Japan. The trip is mainly for personal reasons (see the girlfriend, be a tour guide for family members), but this blog did not stray far away in my mind. Then again, even Variety Asia took a vacation, and a lot of box office updating sites did as well, so there wasn’t going to be much to report anyway.

Anyway, here are some observations to current Japanese pop culture:

Celebrities selling stupid things:

Celebrities spokesmanship is huge in Asia, and I usually don’t mind that (The Tommy Lee Jones coffee commercial is one of my favorite set of commercials in recent years. However, there are some things that I wonder really needs to be sold by certain celebrities:

Of course, everyone knows about Cameron Diaz and the cell phone service provider Softbank (which is not a bank, contrary to certain beliefs).

But there’s also Kiyoshi Hikawa (I call him the Bae Yong-Joon of enka) selling what seems to be life insurance.

The one that takes the cake, though, has to be the Japanese Horse Racing Association. Not only did I see that these guys got Yu Aoi and Yo Oizumi selling horse racing to the train-riding public:

They even dragged Yuji Oda into this mess:

“If Tsubaki Sanjuro didn’t flop, I wouldn’t have had to do this!”

What can I say? I spent a lot of time on the train.

I also got to go one movie in Japan, but sadly it was National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I know I could’ve spent 1500 yen on a better movie, but then I wouldn’t have been able to do it at a theater with this view:

I did manage to go to a lot of theaters and grab different chirashi (small Japanese movie poster that can be picked up for free) - about 10-20 at a time. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

A lot of these are self-explanatory. I almost went to see The Rebirth because I knew it had almost no dialogue. I especially like the poster for Fine, Totally Fine, and of course, Persepolis.

From top to bottom: American Gangster, Sweeney Todd, and No Country for Old Men

The two L Spinoff movie posters and Lust, Caution. Both versions are not that great in my opinion, though.

In terms of purchases, I spent about 5000 yen at my favorite second-hand CD shop in Shibuya on these (and this is after giving up two CDs I really wanted):

I bought Zazen Boys because I really like their song Kimochi (even better with Shiina Ringo), so I figure I would check it out:

Honestly, I know it won’t be that good.

The Casshern soundtrack is something I always liked after I rented it during my time in Japan. With it being a double CD (one with a lot of the songs in the movie, and the other with the instrumentals):

The Music Menu is a mix of old jazz tracks that was a risk because I had no idea how it would turn out. But the several tracks I’ve heard so far is quite good.

I also broke down and bought Sakuran on DVD, but I’m too lazy to take out the memory card and take a picture of it now.

All in all, I’d say it was a good trip because I managed to avoid movies. I’ve been burnt out, and was somewhat glad to be away from it all for 2 weeks. Of course, the length of the post means I wasn’t that far away from them after all.

My biggest regret? I’m missing this on Japanese TV.

At least neither of them are selling horse racing.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 11:48 pm and is filed under feature, music, Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.