On this Memorial Day, remember the fallen, the ones who gave everything for us, and remember the ones who have served and who are serving now, at home and far away.
Thank you!
David Lee Roth, hitman?
Well, yeah, he was a “hit, man” back in the 80’s as part of Van Halen, but he’s been in Japan filming a supposed “trailer” for a supposed Japanese yakuza (gangster) film. He’s gotten older (as have we all) and more craggy, almost alien in this trailer. Which I guess is appropriate, since Japanese consider everyone else “aliens” (gaijin). If this is going to be a real movie, which I doubt, it could be pretty good, especially if it’s actually more of a spoof. I mean, an American hitman taking out yakuza in a Japanese bath house, while quoting “Sailor Moon”? And taking the bath he paid for afterwards? Way over the top! And no on-screen violence, either, which is a welcome change.
While it lasts, here’s the “trailer”.
Enjoy!
Nerdtour 2012 quickie: Enoshima Girls
Be grateful you can’t hear me singing this! And I only did one verse so you can be even more thankful!
Enoshima Girls
(sung to the tune of “California Girls” by the Beach Boys)
Well Tokyo girls are hip, I really dig those styles they wear,
And Osaka girls with the way they talk, they knock me out when I’m back there.
The Tohoku farmer’s daughters really make you feel all right,
And Hokkaido girls with they way they kiss they keep their boyfriends warm at night.
I wish they all could be Enoshima
I wish they all could be Enoshima
I wish they all could be Enoshima girls!
Sun, sand, surf and cute girls, the Beach Boys would have loved Enoshima! =^_^=
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Assassin’s Creed 3 and parkour – whoa!
Okay, disclaimer: I know next to nothing about the Assassin’s Creed series of games, other than that number 3 is supposedly set in the British Colonies around the time of the American Revolution, and the character doesn’t like the British. So, this video might be even more interesting to you gamers who know about it, and you may or may not be as impressed as I am by the athletic ability of the guy, Ronnie Shalvis, who performs the parkour moves in this video. He does quite a few flashy and most likely unnecessary moves, but daggone they’re amazing nonetheless! The cinematography is fantastic, and the scenery is breathtakingly beautiful.
I will let you all judge the skill of the performer, and how “Assassin’s Creed”-worthy the video is. It impressed the heck out of me.
Nerdtour 2012 quickie: Parking
So, what do you do when you have to park a lot of cars, but land is very expensive and hard to come by? If you live in Japan, there’s only one way to go: grab a bit of space and double up!
Here are two examples of how people in Tokyo deal with parking, one a parking garage in an apartment building, the other a space for a fleet of company cars. If you don’t have the space to put up a dedicated parking garage, if you have room in your space for two cars, all you have to do is get one of these things, hook up your electricity, and boom, now you’ve got room for four! A little corner that would hold 4 cars in a US neighborhood can now hold all 8 company cars just as easily. I’ve heard there are some clever ways of using space in New York City and probably in other cramped US cities, plus there’d be no need of them in the rest of the US, but it seems like these things were everywhere in Japan. Like a lot of Japan, it’s simple, efficient and convenient!
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Coolest. Astronaut. Ever!
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has been using his time on the International Space Station to show that space is not just for scientists, but also for artists and creators. He’s been posting some beautiful photos of the Earth from space, and now he’s made a music video of his cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” with a few revised lyrics! He apparently recorded the video and audio of his song on the station, which the producers on the ground mixed with the music track and edited together into this video. He recorded this with new lyrics having to do with his return from the ISS, which you can tell he’s going to miss. It’s really a great job that he’s done, and I hope others get to follow the musical and artistic trail he’s blazed!
Now, by definition (mine), astronauts and cosmonauts are cool people, but I have to say that, after the Apollo astronauts, Chris Hadfield is on my list of The Coolest Astronauts Ever!
Enjoy!
A little boogie-woogie from Japan!
Courtesy of the Japanese girl duo “Puffy” (in the US, “Puffy Amiyumi” to avoid confusion with the rapper). here is a video of their song “Boogie Woogie #5”, a really upbeat swing song from one of their older albums. Puffy made it big in the early 2000’s by doing the theme to a kid’s show, “Teen Titans” (even doing a Japanese version) as well as having their own animated show on Cartoon Network. They kind of faded away though, which is a shame because they were very good at high-energy J-Pop songs.
See for yourself! (unfortunately the video quality isn’t that good, but the sound is fine!)
A little enka music
So, the last post I talked about enka music, but didn’t bother to link to any examples. Well, this time I’m going to show you what I mean by “Japanese blues”.
This one is one of my all-time favorites, “Sake yo” by Ikuzo Yoshi. I even learned enough to sing it fairly well, and sang it in one of my Japanese classes. It was easier to learn once I could know that he was singing about the friends he had when he was young, and that are long gone, leaving him with his one friend, sake, and listening to enka.
This one is about a man living far from his home up north, remembering his girl, his father and mother, as the cold wind and snow reminds him of home. He drinks sake to help.
And lest you think that only men drown their sorrows in sake, this lady is singing about “lonely sake” (ã²ã¨ã‚Šé…’) in an izakaya bar.
And even not all enka are sad songs, my favorite singer (the one I knew when I went to the enka store the first time), Ishikawa Sayuri is known for singing both sad and upbeat enka songs, as you can hear here:
So, that’s just a tiny tiny sample of what enka is. It’s not to everyone’s taste, and in fact it’s considered “middle-aged peoples’ music” or even “old folks’ music” in Japan. Uh, oh, since I’m middle-aged…
=^o^=