Posts from — June 2008

Cool, funny, and refreshing is just what this new music video by Mika Nakashima (中島美嘉) is. Very different from the recent pop idols and hip hopping tracks that have taken over the Japan music scenes, this new single by Mika gets rough and rugged with its punkish flow and a note of indifference in every utterance of the line, “I don’t know“. The video track features the almost gorgeous pop idol jamming it live on stage, smokes coming out of her nostrils, and dressed up like a real hard rock singer.

But the real stuff that made this music video cool is the appearance of Mori 3 Chu (森三中), the three chubby princesses of Japanese comedy. They did it all - beat the drums hard, played the guitar like Angus Young, made the rock finger gesture, slugged Jack Daniels, and even kick each other up. ‘guess they’re doing it all for fun and excercise, but Mika seems to enjoy the new company very much and joined in on the fun.

Maybe some of you have been licking your lips for the arrival of iPhone. Well Softbank has good news for you. The company just announced a “low” price target for those of you who can’t wait to get your hands on the i-thingy. 23 thousand and change will be its price, or $215. And that price is only for new subscribers - that is, for those who are not already Softbank subscribers.

Well that’s a bit high for most of us who just gets our phones for zero yen, but mr.SoftB here says you could pay for it in 2 years time. It’s a bit early to comment on the device now, and there may be some issues with Japanese character inputting capabilities - imagine inputting Japanese texts two-handedly, one holding the phone the other inputting the message. Maybe that’s why only few Japanese are excited about the coming of the iPhone in Japan. Meanwhile, Docomo is still continuing its battle to get a piece of the iphone candy. Next month will be pretty exciting for the Japan mobile industry.

Oman put considerably more pressure on Japan than they did a couple of days ago to get a deserved draw while Japanese striker Okubo got a straight red card for kicking the Omani goalkeeper in the second half. Pretty stupid move. Japan stays on second place behind Bahrain.