Japan

Where to find J-Pop and Entertainment news?

. J-Pop, Japan

Where to find J-Pop and Entertainment news?

One of Japan biggest attraction is the blooming Japan Pop and Entertainment business, where it has a lot of popular artists, movie works, music releases, gossips and more. As a J-Pop lover, it will be so good if able to keep track and follow the latest news and updates. Well certainly you can read the latest news by newspapers or visiting Japanese News sites. But are there any sites that is in English?

I found a couple of websites that dedicated to bringing the latest news from Japan Entertainment industries to the J-Pop fans! Hurray! All of these sites are very up to date and talks variety of topics like music reviews, drama ratings, happenings and more. Here I present you the J-Pop websites that you can check it out and follow!

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Interesting Manner Poster of Tokyo Metro Subway

. Japan

Interesting Manner Poster of Tokyo Metro Subway

When think of Japan, besides the delicious food and culture, another thing that might comes to mind is the convenient of the public transport especially train system. In capital city of Japan, Tokyo, there are huge amount of train lines that connects to many destinations. One of them is the Tokyo Metro subway. I think if you plan to travel around Tokyo area, the Tokyo Metro will be your best friend.

Well when taking public transports like train, the users have to behave and think of other passengers as well. But there are a lot of situations that might happen too which will lead to unhappy train ride. So to counter such situation, Tokyo Metro created a series of poster to educate the users on what makes a good train passenger.

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Learn Japanese with Twitter

. Japan

Learn Japanese via Twitter

As many of you guys already know, Twitter let us to express in less than 140 characters, then connect and meet new friends. And in Japan, Twitter is really a hit and many of the Japanese tweets are “mumbles“. But besides that, despite of limited characters, we can also find some Twitterers that actually educational and teach Japanese!

There are a few of notable Twitter accounts that teaches Japanese via Tweets. This is really recommended for the people who learn Japanese. Links after the jump.

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TokyoGenso: Illustrations of imaginative ruined Tokyo

. Art & Design, Inspiration, Japan

TokyoGenso: Illustrations of imaginative ruined Tokyo

TokyoGenso is a series of amazing illustrations based on real locations in Tokyo but in ruined condition. It looks like the places has been abandoned for many years and become some sort of a dead city after an apocalyptic event. The artist of this series actually paint the illustration on an actual photo, thus the creation of this highly detailed, surrealistic illustrations.

TokyoGenso provides a very good imagination on how Tokyo will look like when abandoned. Well I think in real life this will not actually happen but it will not stop the illustrator’s imagination. Below are some of his works, and to see more please check out his deviantART gallery, Pixiv gallery (in Japanese and requires log in) or his Ameba blog.

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Interesting Time-lapse/Stop Motion videos of Japan

. Inspiration, Japan

Interesting Time-lapse/Stop Motion videos of Japan

Japan definitely one destination that everyone loves to visit. Besides sight-seeing and taking memorable pictures, tourists are also getting more creative with the pictures taken by digital cameras or DSLRs and turning them into movie! The moving images normally constructed in two ways: Time-lapse and Stop Motion.

Because of using digital device, we can snap as many photos as we want (if the memory space is no issue). The characteristics of these kind of movies is that the animation is not very smooth, but it is interesting to watch: For stop motion, is to see how the creator stacks the photos, while time-lapse video, is to see the morphing movement. Below are the videos. Please enjoy!

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Amazing Illustrations from Zain7, a Japanese Illustrator

. Art & Design, Inspiration, Japan

Amazing Illustrations from Zain7, a Japanese Illustrator

When I look at Zain7 (恖恄悓) artworks, my eyes went big. Her illustrations are very rich in color and vivid, with a bit mix of texture and 3D space, which making her illustration really unique. I really like the illustrations of urban environment and structure with a girl character in it. Below are some of her works and check out the links posted below for more artworks!

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Japan web gallery – 2010 edition

. Inspiration, Japan, Web Design

Japan web gallery - 2010 edition

Previously I wrote two posts introducing the web galleries from Japan that is worth visiting. And now in year 2010, I found more galleries and recompile all of them and make it into a year 2010 edition. These galleries showcased the best of XHTML/CSS and Flash web designs from Japan and you should really check them out.

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The common characteristics of Japan web design

. Inspiration, Japan, Web Design

The common characteristics of Japan web design

As you guys might have know, I’m a Japan design lover. I really like their sense of design in architecture, product as well as web designs. I always go and search inspiration from Japanese Web Design directories, and through out the years I found out that their designs are unique and having a few common characteristics which I would like to share it to you guys today.

After a few hours of mind-map and research, I categorizes the common characteristics into nine different categories with two web screenshots as example. Note that I write this article from an foreigner point of view and I might get wrong. Please do notify me there’s something needs improvement. Enjoy reading!

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Beautiful cherry blossoms

. Inspiration, Japan

Beautiful cherry blossoms

When comes March and April, first thing that will spring to my mind is Cherry Blossoms! When Spring season arrives, the temperature is getting warmer and warmer which leads to the flower blossoming of Sakura trees. The color of Sakura are normally in shades of pink or snow white, and it is really beautiful when it is in full bloom!

The Cherry Blossom Viewing is an annual big event for the Japanese as they gather with friends, families or colleagues and sit under the Sakura trees, enjoying the beauty of Sakura, chit-chatting and drinking beers. There are several popular viewing spots in Japan and to reserve a nice place, the Japanese even need to stay overnight just to secure it. Besides Japan, other countries like United States, UK and China etc also having Sakura trees and the people can enjoy viewing without having going to Japan.

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Japan – The Strange Country

. Japan

Japan is one of the most technology advanced and interesting country in the world. It’s a country that preserved the traditional culture and yet trendy and modern. From the sources from the Internet, we always read a lot of articles saying that Japan is a strange country with unique sense of lifestyle. But how well we know actually? Thanks to Kenichi, he put up an interesting info-graphic video of how he think that Japan is indeed a strange country!

Instead of using Japanese point of view, he narrated the video with foreigners’ viewpoint. He briefly summarize it into eight categories. The points are really interesting and I certainly can feel that what he said is definitely correct because I experienced it when I was in Japan last year! Please watch the video and enjoy. Perhaps after watching, your perception towards Japan changed?

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