On a recent trip to Tokyo, I was drinking in Golden Gai with a friend of a friend. The tiny bar played great song after great song, and all of it vintage Japanese rock. I mentioned how much I was enjoying learning about all the great bands from back in the day that never got any exposure in the US, but lamented that—Juain Cope’s book Japrocksampler not withstanding—finding a good English-language source for information on these bands was tough.

That’s when my friend told me about Jrawk. Run by an obviously knowledgeable and dedicated fan, the site intends to be nothing less than a repository (or database if you will) for Japanese rock music. It has interviews, album reviews, live show reports, and more, and all of the music covered is at least worth a listen. If bands like Flower Travellin’ Band, Nagisa Ni Te, or Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her is your thing, or if all you know about Japanese rock is Cornelius or Boris, you should really check it out.

(The site is pretty new, but it’s filling fast with content, so don’t let the sparseness deter you.)

The folks over at BoingBoing TV have written in to alert us to something called TOKYOLOGY, a new documentary exploring contemporary Japanese pop-culture hosted by Carrie Ann Inaba.

Oh, what adventures await: sneak behind the scenes at a Japanese Rock TV show that pretends it’s shot in Los Angeles, cruise Harajuku, go clubbing with goth girls in Shinjuku, shop for shoes with Lolitas, experience the madness of the Tokyo Anime Fair, visit a video game company, browse the streets of Akihabara, and meet anime creator Yoshitoshi Abe.

DVDs are available in retail stores and online, tokyology.tv has details.

If Japanese castles are your thing, and you don’t know about it already, head over to jcastle.info, which provides an in-depth guide to all Japanese castles.

The site provides as much information as you would need before visiting, including 5-star ratings, maps and access info, photos, links, and some historical notes.

And in that spirit, here’s a picture of Kumamoto castle, taken during a recent hanami. Kumamoto celebrates the castle’s 400th anniversary this year, with a newly restored section opening to the public at the beginning of Golden Week.

The site cubo.cc has only one page. It features a Japanese woman following your mouse pointer with her eyes. While I’m sure this will bring out the peeping Tom in some of you, I couldn’t help not to notice how red her eyes are.

The site itself doesn’t offer any further information other than an e-mail address and a link to another site. However, inspecting the source code, the technology seems to originate from motionportrait.com.

Seen on Mixx.

You might want to check out the latest addition to our Japan blogroll, jDonuts, a blog by an Australian living in Japan.

Be sure to check out Overoften’s Kumamoto Diary for a fabulous account of the life and times of an Englishman residing at the foot of Mt. Aso.

japundits, as human beings, symbiotic fish, and the transcendent beings known as /4/chans, we must all, to truly live, at some point in our lives be dedicated to a higher purpose. whilst scanning the internet i came upon a website, which along with the recent spat with fg inspired me.

now go forth…and conquer

jk
hat tip to xkcd

“A 200-strong army of beady-eyed, ball-shaped robots” is being deployed nationwide, says Pink Tentacle.

Not quite as scary as they might sound, these spherical chaps are “Pollen Robots” and are to be employed by Weathernews.jp to monitor the pollen count. And this being Japan, they have built-in Cute – the ‘eyes’ light up different colours as the level changes.

As the Asahi reports, when the Japanese cedar and cypress get that lovin’ feelin’ and go into their springtime overdrive, data on the pollen count will be sent from these robots to the site. They’ll be stationed outside the homes of a couple of hundred volunteers, all hay-fever sufferers, who will also be reporting on their symptoms.

As the Asahi gravely intones, “Pollen levels from Japanese cedar and cypress are expected to be higher than last year in many parts of the country.” Oh joy.

Japundit has drawn reference to this site before. But if no one is looking at Japanese and other Asian movies (I saw The Maid the other day there…) on the Crunchyroll site, then that is a shame. It’s free and if you choose “bigger” the streaming video will be about twice as big as YouTube and quite good.

The cadillac solution is to pay them about $4/month to be a member and the extra bandwidth and size is definitely worth it. After all–what does it cost to go to the movies downtown? I don’t think Crunchyroll is getting rich, but they do have bills to pay.

Veoh.com is a good alternative but there you must join formally and download their Veoh player–maybe it’s worth it though–but there are lots of good Asian movies on that site.

As always, you find some things on one or the other–like this gem on YouTube. Still, the best montage of Studio Ghibli stuff with Beatles soundtrack is only on Veoh.com. Multiple sources is best.

But for an example here is a Crunchyroll rock video by Chage and Aska from Ghibli Studios about their angel movie–which sadly I have not seen and don’t even know what its title is. But you can figure out the story pretty well from this vid. I must say I didn’t like this video at first and found it repetitive–but it kind of grows on you. Be sure to click “bigger” to start!

Anyway–there are lots more great movies and anime on the Crunchyroll site so do check it (them) out!

It’s starting to get cold and I’ve been dreaming of ramen (or more correctly raamen). Problem is, there’s no good ramen in NYC and I’m not going to be in Japan for a couple months.

What to do? Hmm. I’ll make a ramen website!

Here it is: TastyRamen.com

For all the ramen lovers out there, it will get you in the mood.