Japan

Nice Japanese drama artists portrait illustration

. Japan

Japanese drama artists portrait illustration

Recently I stumbled upon this cool blog yanajun.com which contains the portrait illustrations of popular Japanese artists who acted in the drama series. It already has quite a big collection of illustration and the portraits looks really good and very close to the real person!

The owner of this blog, who has the same name as the website, Yanajun is a currently single man and his working profession involves manga and illustration. His hobby is watching dramas and tv shows so he has this idea of concentrating on illustrating the artists who appear in the dramas.

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3 smart tools to translate Japanese sites & words

. Japan

3 smart tools to translate Japanese sites & words

Sometimes the good and useful websites are not available in English or any language that we know, for example Japanese language. It could be very frustrating if you think that the information could be useful but you can’t even understand the article. So, translation tools comes in handy in this kind of situation. Here I found three smart ways and tools to help you translate Japanese to English.

Batch Translation

There is several translation engine out there, and by just using one it is not sufficient because it may translate badly. With batch translation tool, you can translate a paragraph with more than one translation engine at the same time. You can compare the translation results and be more clearer on what it actually means.

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Year of mouse, listen DE DE MOUSE!

. J-Pop, Japan

DE DE MOUSE

According to Chinese Zodiac, 2008 is the year of Mouse (or Rat). Well when relating mouse or rat to popular culture, people might think of cartoon character Mickey Mouse, or last year animation movie Ratatouille or even classic cartoon Tom and Jerry for example. Now please add another member to the list, introducing the unique music world of DE DE MOUSE!

Quoted from Last.fm, DE DE MOUSE is a Japanese Dance/Electronica artist from Tokyo. His musical output is closely linked to and often accompanied by matching artwork, helping to further carve out the respective musical theme. During live performances he relies heavily on the use of visual arts. His music can furthermore be characterised as having an oriental feel. De De Mouse has thus far released an album and an EP going by the names of “tide of stars” (2007) and “east end girl” (2007) respectively.

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Shokotan – idol, cosplayer, hardcore blogger

. Japan

Shokotan - idol, cosplayer, hardcore blogger

There is three kind of blogs that will impress me: blog that has nice contents, nice blog theme design and the third one is a dedicated blogger that update his or her blog regularly for a long time. Obviously Shoko Nakagawa’s blog falls under the third category, because it is very impressive that on how extremely fast she updates her blog! Averaging 20+ posts per day!

Shoko Nakagawa (中川翔子) or best known as nickname “Shokotan”, is a cute and multi talented Japanese idol. According to Wikipedia, she is active in a variety of field including acting, manga, singing and blogging. Her official blog “Shokotan*Blog” (しょこたん☆ぶろぐ), was started in year 2004 and she treated her blog as her dairy. She update her blog extremely regularly. Her daily best record is 86 updates on February 14, 2007. That means she update her blog every 17 minutes on that day!

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Entering the imaginative world of Aya Kato

. Art & Design, Inspiration, Japan

Entering the imaginative world of Aya Kato

Aya Kato is a young female artists from Japan that has a great talents and skills in creating one of the most stunning and original artworks I have seen so far. Born in 1982, she studied painting by self-study and graphic design at the Aichi University of Education. She graduated in 2004 and started work as an Illustrator in 2005. Her works is extremely colorful and rich in details, and her level of imagination to illustrate out her idea is truly outstanding too.

In her wishes of work, it stated that “I want to wake up a lot of souls that the person is sleeping in the innermost recesses of the heart as much as possible by using my maximum imagination.” Besides, she also hope to use her artworks to connect people, and believes that wonderful world is born from love: Mind that loves neighbors. All people who live in the earth are neighbors.

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J-pop songs & artists I enjoy the most in 2007

. J-Pop, Japan

J-pop songs & artists I enjoy the most in 2007

It’s been a great year for all the J-pop enjoyment, big thanks to the convenience of the web technology that let me easily access to the music that is never happened before. Because of this, I get to know more of the diversity of Japanese music industry, although I think that I’m just touching 5% of all. Plus, with the social music site Last.fm, I get to know which artists’ works I listened the most for the year 2007.

From the artist chart, the top 5 J-pop artists are: YUI (1,004 spins), Kimura Kaela (703), GReeeeN (658), Hamasaki Ayumi (547), and ERIKA (460). Can’t believe YUI get the number 1, which has 50% more spins than my “godly” idol Ayumi! About the Japan 4 new divas that I written back in May, Yuna Ito get 6th place but Ayaka did not even get into top 25 spot, well she had nice tunes but seems that I not really into her songs. Besides that, I also discovered some great new artists and groups that I would like to express, as well as some songs that I really like in 2007.

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Oricon: Whom are you going to spend Christmas with

. Japan

Oricon: Whom are you going to spend Christmas with?

Christmas is around the corner, and many people started to plan out their best Christmas celebration, and to celebrate with who. So, Oricon had conducted a survey targeting to audience from aged 10s to 20s on “Whom are you going to spend Christmas with?”. From the survey result, 25.2% of aged 20s male answered “lover”, however many responded with “alone” from 10s aged audiences due to busy preparing for upcoming exam.

On the 20s aged male that answered “lover”, a following questionnaire on “how to celebrate with your love one”, many of them still haven’t decided yet, while other replied “celebrate leisurely at home”, “going out having dinner” and many other celebration methods that is unique or simple, to spend the great moment with the love one.

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Celebrate Christmas with J-pop

. J-Pop, Japan

Celebrate Christmas with J-pop music

It is going to be a lonely Christmas celebration for me T.T, it has been like this for 22 years of my whole life. Fortunately I still have my best companion always by my side, and “she” is Japanese Pop music. During the Christmas celebration month, many Japan artists releasing songs and singles related to the wonderful Christmas Day. Here I collected some and share with you all :D.

There is 16 songs total in my Christmas J-pop playlist. Some of them are release this year, and some is older. Many popular artists sang songs related to Christmas or have Christmas feel for example L’Arc en Ciel, Namie Amuro, Ketsumeishi, Mai Kuraki, B’z and many more. Personally I think the Ketsumeishi’s song sounds the best. Continue reading to listen to the songs and more.

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4 Japan web design galleries that worth visiting

. Inspiration, Japan, Web Design

4 Japan web design galleries that worth visiting

There is so much nice web design galleries out there like CSS Beauty, The Best Designs, Best Web Gallery and many more for web designers everyday design inspiration. They showcases the great web design examples from all around the world which displays innovative web surfing experience and design aesthetics. But recently I ask myself, is there any gallery that showcases web designs from Japan? The answer is yes!

From little research on the net, I found four sites that is worth take a visit. Most of them are in Japanese language, but with the help of thumbnails and free translation services out there, I think the language is not the barrier anymore. Let us experience the beauty of Japanese web design!

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Typography + Ikebana = tenspace by WOW

. Art & Design, Inspiration, Japan

Typography + Ikebana = tenspace by WOW

When the first time I watch animation “tenspace” by WOW, it was truely amazing! By mixing numbers ranging from 0 – 10 with ikebana, a Japanese art of flower arrangement to create out this masterpiece. The ikebana mainly illustrated by ink, giving a traditional ink and wash painting style, and sitting on the characters. Each set was presented with different approach as it giving a feeling that the conventional characters are growing out some beautiful plants.

Quoted from Dezeen, tenspace is a:

motion graphics installation done by WOW, a Japanese motion graphic company featuring animation of plants and typography. We’ve interpreted the space between each number in a countdown and present it to you in a physical space. Experience a virtual landscape featuring 11 digitally rendered ikebana pieces which draw you in as you speed through time. Clinging to the camera you race through three dimensions viewing each piece one by one.

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