A very familiar face has taken home the best actress honors at the California Independent Film Festival in Moraga, California this year. Hiromi Nagasaku will be familiar to fans of Japanese movies and dramas. She won the award for her role in the film “Cast Me If You Can” in which she stars with Toru…
There are not a lot of performers from Japan who make it big in Hollywood. Now with the addition of Yoji “Pop” Asano, that number remains exactly the same. He did however get a lot of unintentional laughs for his interview style (teachers of English in Japan will not be surprised), and praise for his…
If you are a resident of Osaka and would like to read some opinion papers written by your governor, Toru Hashimoto, you now have the option of reading them at a bite-sized pace. New to twitter, it seems that Hashimoto (whose twitter profile shows he follows no one) jumped in feet first without testing the…
Employees of the Kobe love hotel “Swing” were arrested in a recent police sting for lending Wii and PlayStation 3 to customers. Yes, they let guests of the hotel use their Wiis for entertainment without permission of copyright holders of games such as Mario Cart and BioHazard 5. With all that may or may not…
This is a commercial for an energy bar called Ippon Manzoku. “Even though it’s chocolate it’s healthy.” Ippon Manzoku is supposed to fill you up with just one. The commercial stars Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, one of the members of the singing group SMAP, who seems to have fully recovered from a little scandal a year or…
Coca cola has released press releases about a new commercial set to be released on February 2nd, 2011. The commercial is set to be part of the Coca-cola Zero “Wild Health” ad campaign. The “Wild Health” campaign also uses other actors and famous people including Amuro Namie. The commercials are made with high production values…
Watching this Japanese McDonald’s commercial for the new Sponge Bob Happy Meals, one has to think there are adults just off screen standing around with still-dripping syringes. Maybe they were shown one of the old school “Pokemon” psychedelic episodes. Although frightened by the commercial, I’m intrigued enough to break out my “ransel (randoseru)” elementary school…
Through all the scandals, Mona Yamamoto has remained strong and true to herself. Vilified by some after being photographed going to a love hotel with married baseball player, Tomohiro Nioka in 2008. In some media Yamamoto was treated as a femme fatale while Nioka escaped too much consternation. She refused to take all the blame…
UPDATE: Sadly Confessions was not nominated, but I still hope it finds a U.S. distributor. It looks like a really interesting film. The only Japanese movie that made the short list for an Academy Award (Oscar) this year is the film “Confessions”. I haven’t seen it yet so if anyone has, please feel free to…
As a sort of counterpart to my previous post about what sports impress Japanese women, Gendai Business recently came out with a list of the Japanese athletes who are highest paid for commercials. This list mixes pro and amateur athletes. 1. Ryo Ishikawa – (golf) – 120 million yen 2. Ichiro Suzuki (baseball, Seattle Mariners)…
Japanese Announcer Miku Natsume has recently lost her job over photos released which show her, fully clothed, holding up an unopened condom box. Other photos in the set showed her with a man, her boyfriend at the time. Rumors are that an ex-boyfriend released the pictures. She is a very good announcer with an atypical,…
We mentioned that JPop superidol Ayumi Hamasaki would wed her boyfriend Manuel Schwarz in the new year (Ayumi Hamasaki to Marry Manuel Schwarz), and it seems they have done it. Photos of the couple returning to Narita airport after their wedding in Las Vegas showed up on the internet and in the news recently.