>6 Days until Space Battleship Yamato

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I don’t get excited about movies too often, especially those that have special childhood memories (ie. Star Wars), but the new Space Battleship Yamato coming out in a few days will hopefully be a good flick. While I don’t really care for Takuya Kimura’s acting (too one-dimensional in his J-drama roles), I do think he’ll play the role of Susumu Kodai (Derek Wildstar) well. At the very least, his hair will move the same way. Playing Yuki Mori (Nova) is Meisa Kuroki, and if you’ve read my previous posts I’m definitely a fan of hers.

Having grown up weekday mornings watching Star Blazers, I’m just sad that Star Blazers was completely Americanized, so I’m not familiar with the Japanese character names. This site will give you a heads up on the character names, if you’re like me.

Official Yamato English Site

>Uniqlo x Meisa Kuroki

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There’s only one thing I love more than my vast collection of Uniqlo clothes, and that’s Meisa Kuroki, actress/model from Okinawa. Some of her recent roles have included J-doramas Ninkyo Helper and Shinzanmono, and she also appears in the commercials for Kirin’s Cola Shock.

On Aug. 18th, Uniqlo announced a new type of jeans called leggings-pants and introduced Meisa Kuroki as the spokesperson/model. Here’s some video from the PR event:

In my e-mail this morning, I was delighted to find Uniqlo’s daily ad splattered with Meisa goodness. Check out some of the pictures:

You can probably see why Uniqlo chose her, she’s got some nice legs, she’s not just a pretty face 😉 Meisa Kuroki has a couple photobooks out, Love Meisa is very nice!

>Porco Rosso in da house!

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It’s been longer than I remember, since the last time I watched Hayao Miyazaki’s 紅の豚, a.k.a. Porco Rosso or Crimson Pig depending on which side of the Adriatic you live on. This month, 日テレ (Nihon TV) is presenting the ジブリ祭り (Ghibli Matsuri), a Ghibli movie each Friday night this month (except the 30th).

Since the family was watching something else downstairs, I got to put my Nintendo DS TV to work… don’t you just love 1seg? Here’s one of the beginning scenes where Porco is battling the pirates.

Next we have the maiden flight of the supped up Savoia S.21F.

Porco loves his new “boat”.

It was nice to take a break from JLPT study, thanks 日テレ! Here’s the great line up this month:

• July 9 – Mimi wo Sumaseba (1995)
• July 16 – Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
• July 23 – My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Aside from Totoro, I haven’t seen the other two flicks… so it’ll be nice to check them out on the cheap! The great thing is that when I first started watching Miyazaki’s films, I had just begun to study Japanese. It’s nice to finally understand what’s going on, without English subtitles.

If you’re interested in Porco Rosso, beNippon carries tons of authentic merchandise from the movie, our scale model kits have been especially popular.

>Playing with KeyHoleTV

>I heard about KeyHoleTV somewhere on the internets a long time ago, but somehow forgot about it. Recently, people have been tweeting about it so, I finally remembered to check it out.

KeyHoleTV/Video software allows anyone to broadcast his or her own content. But, the cool thing is that you can watch live Japanese TV and radio right on your ‘puter.

Just head over to the KeyHoleTV website to download the software. The software is available for all major operating systems. Since I’m using OS X at home, I downloaded that one.

Just clicked on the MacOSX directory, and then the 10.6 directory, and selected the DMG. Oh, shig… when you click on the dmg file (at least for me) it tried to open it up in my browser displaying 文字化け (moji-bake). I clicked the back button and right clicked the link to save the file to my download folder. Pop the dmg open, and drag the icon to your applications folder to install.

After you open the app, you get a list of stations… they’re all in Japanese so hopefully you can deal. I chose to watch Fuji TV, and they were showing a re-run of Voice from last year. The screen is small, not much bigger than watching 1Seg on my Nintendo DS lite, but with KeyHoleTV I don’t have to worry about the crappy reception in my house.

I wish I knew about KeyHoleTV back in the US. At least I’ll be able to forgo getting a new TV for a while longer.

>Interviews with Foreigners

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As of recent, part of my Saturday morning routine is waking up early enough to catch Yajiuma Plus (やじうまプラス) on the TV Asahi Network. They’ve got a fun segment where they interview foreigners in Japanese around Tokyo. Here’s a couple clips I was able to find on the internets:

Part 1:

And Part 2:

Unfortunately, I wish YouTube had this morning’s where the interviewer talked to God’s gift to the Japanese, which was quite hilarious.

>ピタゴラスイッチ！

>While starring at my computer yesterday, the TV was tuned to NHK for some reason. I heard some familiar whistling tune, and looked up to find one of my favorite programs PythagoraSwitch. I’m sure you’ve all seen that famous Honda commercial titled “The Cog” that was shown in the UK, and then spread across the internet, so if you think that’s cool, you’ll certainly enjoy the short “Rube Goldberg” machine segments like the ones below:

http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x2j7r2
Pitagora Suichi
by Maruk4

If you’d like to see more, denizens of J-land have uploaded vids to all the normal places. Wikipedia has some nice links and more info too.

>NHK gold.

>Are you looking for quality video content on the interwebs suitable for the whole family? You can thank NHK, aka Japan Broadcasting Corporation, because they’ve created a virtual goldmine of quality content from their video library. This morning while reading this blog (Japanese), I came across a post about NHK’s Creative Library, and spent the rest of the morning browsing it.

While NHK’s Creative Library content is not shared under the Creative Commons licenses, their copyright rules very much mimic Creative Commons’. I have not read through the whole agreement yet, but basically you’re allowed to download, copy, and share with friends or via the web through homepages, blogs, etc. Video is downloadable in MPEG4 (*.mp4) format at 640×360 resolution. Yay, widescreen. Boo, no high-res!

While the page is entirely in Japanese, navigation can be done using the neato icons:

(Click on the image for a readable image) Starting from the top we have:

• Living Things (land animals, aquatic animals, airborne animals, plants/fungi, and insects
• Scenes of Japan (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Japan towns/living)
• Scenes of the World (Asia, Europe, North America, Central/South America, Africa, Oceania, the Poles)
•  CG/Special Effects/Images (environmental problems, natural phenomena, space/heavenly bodies, natural environment)
• Transportation (land, aquatic, sky transportation)
• Colors (red, blue, green, white, black)
• Music, Sound Effects (music, sound effects)

Most interesting to me is the color concept. If you chose blue for example, you get different videos of water, sky, dusk or early morning, etc… it’s pretty interesting. If you like quality source video, NHK provides some of the best. They’re not high-res but they’re free to view and share. Yet another way to travel the world from your desk.

I’m sure some innovative hackers programmers out there will come up with some great applications for these videos. I wouldn’t mind having a these videos randomly streamed to a media interface like XBMC or something to act as a screensaver. That would be pretty sweet. Enjoy!

>Kocchi-Kame Live Action

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On August 1st, the longest running manga ever made it’s way onto TBS’s Saturday evening line-up. Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Koen-mae Hashutsujo, or Kocchi-Kame for short, stars Katori Shingo, Hayami Mokomichi, and the lovely Karina. As a huge fan of Japanese comedies, I’m really looking forward to watching this one, and with Shingo in the lead role of Ryo-san, it’s sure to be a hit. Judging from the first episode, he really brings Ryo-san to life.

Learn more about the Manga, or the Drama (English). The official TBS page is here (Japanese). If you’re interested in the show, you can check out the manga as well, start your historical collection today, volume 165 comes out this month!

>Japan returns to normal.

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Monday nights at 10pm, were reserved for SMAPxSMAP in my household, until Tsuyoshi Kusanagi screwed everything up by going into a naked drunken rage. After a month of living in solitude, he quickly returned to the TV screen last week, much to the delight of all his fans.

After a month of old recaps, special features, and Kimutaku interviews… we finally got a taste of the old SMAPxSMAP show last night. While I could care less about the crappy singing of the group’s “special live,” it was nice to have Bistro Smap back on the air. I’m sure all the Hollywood stars that visit Japan will be happy too.

Kusanagi and Shingo lose the battle to Kimutaku and Goro.