Author Archive

What is Getsu 9 drama?

. Japan

What is Getsu 9 drama?

If you have watched quite some Japanese Dramas probably you will heard of this “Getsu 9” term. Getsu 9 or 月9 (pronounce as Gekku), is the prime time ‘golden hour’ drama series on Fuji TV, and normally it will be the spotlight drama of the season. It was named “Getsu 9” because the drama was aired on Monday from 9.00pm to 9.54pm, and it was very popular because of the high rating achievements too.

The term “Getsu 9” was created in 1995, when an author who compiled the drama profiles that aired on Monday 9pm, and announced it on a TV Forum of NIFTY-Serve. And during that time, there was no “Getsu 9” to be heard but a potential recognition of “Nine o’clock of Monday is interesting (月曜９時が面白い)“. After then, Monday 9pm was recognized as “Getsu 9”, and become the prosperous name for Fuji TV dramas that aired on that time frame.

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Japan culture, design, tech, entame ALL ACCESS!

. Japan

These few days I had been collecting websites and blogs that talks about Japan, and the result is a lot! Maybe because it is so much to talk about Japan like entertainment, interesting stuff, trends, tech, designs, culture and many more.

Well, I successfully collected almost 30 sites of them, so just glance through all of them and pick the sites you like, bookmark, subscribe to RSS or delicious them. With all these sites, you can know Japan even better. This is going to be a long post.

3yen

News, Lifestyle, Tech, Entertainment, Trend

http://www.3yen.com/

Blogs on Japan

RSS, Culture, Funny

Welcome to Blogs on Japan. Here I hope to share with you some of the best/interesting articles relating to Japan. Be aware, some links are NSFW (not safe for work).

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FUNKY MONKEY BABYS – Mou kimi ga inai

. J-Pop, Japan, Lyrics

FUNKY MONKEY BABYS - Mou kimi ga inai

Eh, why is Toda Erika on the cover? Well, I will explain it later. Introducing FUNKY MONKEY BABYS with their 6th and latest single “Mou kimi ga inai (もう君がいない)”. The title means you are not there anymore, this suggests that this is a sad love song but its warmhearted melody is perfect for the current opening winter season.

Who is FUNKY MONKEY BABYS

FUNKY MONKEY BABYS is a Japanese hip-hop band grouped in 2004 under the record company DREAMUSIC Inc. All members in the group are from Hachiôji, Japan. There are three members in this unit: Funky Katô (MC), Monn-kichi (MC) and DJ Chemical (DJ) who joined later. Clearly, “BABYS” is an intentional spelling error for “BABIES.” Known as fann-mon(ファンモン) in short.

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Fight Fat! – keep yourself fit & healthy

. Nice Ads

Fight Fat!

Obesity is one of the serious issues out there as human are getting fatter and fatter! Well, people nowadays are too lazy to go for a exercise and having a bad eating habit lifestyle, which lead them to overweight problems especially the kids. Being overweight is no good, because it brings a lot bad effects to body for example high blood pressure and more. So we have to use the power of advertising to warn people about the seriousness of overweight problem by having a better eating lifestyle and go exercise!

The award winning ad shown above is one good example of using effective image and straight forward copywriting. It shows a healthy fit man fighting with the fat version of himself. The tagline is just a simple “Fight Fat”. I think it is very making sense because we always says that to keep fit is by fighting the fat! This is an advertising to promote kick boxing for Xtreme Martial Arts. There is another two variation shown below. By the way, the ad was done by Malaysian.

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Graffiti on the streets of KL

. Art & Design

Graffiti on the streets of Kuala Lumpur

Last week, when I went to Petaling Streets of Kuala Lumpur with my colleagues to have our lunch, on the way to the restaurant, we saw a lot of new graffiti appeared in many corners. It is really surprising and happy to see them appeared and some of them are meaningful, so I decided to grab my camera and capture some of them.

There are quite a lot of graffiti in streets of Kuala Lumpur actually, from stencil graffiti, throw ups to magnificent masterpieces. The stencils mainly describing the kids with messages like “Rape the wall, not the kids”, “Kidnap cars, not kid” … It reflected the current social issues that happened in Malaysia currently, because brutal rape and kidnap cases was happened frequently which is very sad.

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Tutorial: How to create colorful stripes in Illustrator

. Tutorial

Tutorial: How to create colorful stripes in Illustrator

Probably you had seen these color stripes in many websites like Veerle’s blog and others, these stripes are beautiful elements for web design and even other applications like brochures and flyers. Maybe you think that have to create the color squares one by one and it could be a time consuming process, but here I will teach you the easy way.

First of all, you need to have Adobe Illustrator (recommended CS2 and above) installed on your computer. Launch it and open a new document. Then, head on to select the Rectangular Grid Tool, which is hiding under the Line Segment Tool group. Next, click on the blank canvas (not drag), a Rectangular Grid Tool Options windows appeared. Fill in the options shown in the picture below. Make sure the two options at the bottom of the Options are checked. Click “OK” and the skeleton Rectangular Grid is created.

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Stunning Japanese Foliage Photoshop brushes

. Art & Design, Japan, Resources

Japanese Foliage brushes by DesignFruit

Probably you already know this, but I still want to take an opportunity to write about it. The post banner above is done by wonderful Japanese Foliage™ brushes brought to you by DesignFruit. In fact that I used this stunning sets of brushed for my several previous banner designs. The brushes are very high resolution and has a variety of different brushes to play with.

The creator, Jason Gaylor created these designs after being inspired by Japanese-style prints. He offered the Photoshop brushes and PNG free for download, however you need to purchase for the vector file. Feel free to use it for personal stuff, but be sure to read about the license agreements for non personal projects. Below is the example pictures uploaded by himself.

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Yuna Ito – Urban Mermaid

. J-Pop, Japan, Lyrics

Yuna Ito - Urban Mermaid

Today, Yuna Ito is back with her latest single “Urban Mermaid” after the collaboration song “Mahaloha” with Micro of Def Tech. From the song name probably you can guess that this song is dedicated for the women with its cheer-up tune! The song is very nice and the promotional video is also very beautiful too. Yuna Ito looks gorgeous in it.

I’ve been a fan of Yuna Ito since her debut song “Endless Story”, she is a professional singer. As mentioned earlier, this is a song for the women, to support and cheer for them. So, in the PV for this song also featured a lot of women walking behind Yuna Ito and gather together in a room with Yuna Ito singing at the center, shown in the picture below.

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Yui Aragaki debut songs preview!

. J-Pop, Japan

Yui Aragaki debut songs preview!

Can’t believe nowadays, many idols to start their singing career, for example Sawajiri Erika and now Yui Aragaki! But instead of debut single, she will release her debut album named “Sora” on December 5, 2007, which contains a total of ten songs including “heavenly days” and “Memories”. You can listen to the song preview right here!

Besides, she will have her first live performance at Nippon Budokan, in front of 10,000 fans. According to Tokyograph, Gakky is only the third artist (and first for female idol) to debut at the Nippon Budokan. She is preceded by TOKIO in 1994 and rock singer Michiyo in 1997. The song “heavenly days” is the insert song for movie Koizora (恋空), while “Memories” will be the theme song for movie Koisuru Madori (恋するマドリ). Yui Aragaki acted in both of these movies.

Both of the preview of the songs are soft ballad and emphasize on the sweet and soft voice of Yui Aragaki. I think the song suits her voice well and it actually sound not bad. You can listen to the preview of the song below.

What do you guys think of her songs? I think with her refreshing image and sunshine smiles, her debut will be a success! 😀

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Oricon: Fukuyama & Nagasawa to wake you up in the morning.

. Japan

Fukuyama Masaharu & Nagasawa Masami to wake you up in the morning

What is the most important thing when you wake up from bed in a brand new day? Yes, it’s the refreshing start that kicks out with full of energy. So, Oricon conducted a research on men and women about “Which talent you wish to wake you up in the morning”, and the research result is, women’s no.1 spot is Fukuyama Masaharu while men’s no.1 choice is Nagasawa Masami.

Women’s choice: Fukuyama Masaharu
The comments for no.1 selection Fukuyama Masaharu are “His voice is wonderful”, “He has the sexy voice which I wish to hear!” , “With his good wake up voice, I’m able to spend the day with good feeling”. Well indeed, Fukuyama has great and sexy voice that any man wish to have. Try listen to his song or watch his latest drama Galileo, then you will know.

While taking the no.2 spot is Koike Teppei (member of WaT), who show his refreshing smiles and singing voice in “Morinaga Aloe Yogurt” Commercial. Comments from women are “I wish to hear that voice and smiles”, and “because it’s refreshing”. This shows that the Teppei’s image in that commercial has make an impact in women’s world.

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