Posts Tagged ‘entertainment’

Japanese rock concert held on the USS Missouri

Japanese rock group VAMPS recently held a special concert on the deck of the USS Missouri, a battleship best known for hosting Japan’s war surrender ceremony on September 2, 1945.

Flanked by the ship’s 16-inch guns and with the stars and stripes flying behind them, the band performed 20 songs, including the upcoming release “Sweet Dreams.” About 600 fans paid $150 each to see the unique show. Vamps was formed in 2008 around L’Arc en Ciel frontman Hyde and Oblivion Dust guitarist K.A.Z. The lineup also includes bassist Ju-ken, who has performed with Gackt and X Japan’s Yoshiki. They have released one album and three singles. The tour took in 60 shows in Japan and the U.S. and finishing off in Hawaii, which is in more than one way the meeting point between the two countries, was heavily symbolic. Hyde said, “I think it’s great that an instrument of war can be used to send out a message of peace like this.”

According to the “Mezamashi TV” clip, about 600 Japanese and American fans attended the concert.

[hat tip to The Other East]

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Related video clip: a newsreel from 1945 showing the surrender ceremony:

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Visiting research vessel saved Japan from sinking

Until Thursday the 9th, the US scientific drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution (JR) is docked up at Yokohama daikoku warf (大黒埠頭). Via some nifty CG effects, this ship made a cameo appearance in the not particularly good, 2006 remake of Nippon Chinbotsu. In the original, Japan sank. However, In the remake, thanks to the wise spending decisions of Monka-sho, Japan is saved from a watery demise by the JR and her sister ship, the Chikyu.

Scene from Nippon Chinbotsu in which the JR has just completed a hole.

Actually, that is not quite correct; these ships simply drilled the holes into which a daring (and fully clothed) Kusanagi-kun detonated explosives while piloting the Wadatsumi 2000 submersible (another excellent national expenditure) well below its rated depth (due to top-notch engineering).

But in reality, this is the first time that these two ships have been in the same vicinity. The JR arrived on Friday after completing a climate change expedition to the Bearing Sea, hours before the Chikyu departed to continue earthquake research in the Nankai Trough off the coast of the Kii Peninsula.

These two ships are the primary platforms of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, which is headquartered in Sapporo and jointly lead by Japan and the US.

[Update: Thanks to John Beck of Texas AM University for this great photo of the ship!]

The JR is essentially a floating city at sea that operated continuously (24/7/365) in a scientific capacity, except for mandatory dry dock inspection every 5 years, from 1984 to 2003. She has just undergone a 3-year retrofit and recently returned to service. In total, the JR has traversed nearly 400 thousand nautical miles on scientific expeditions.

Unfortunately, it is too late to take a tour of the ship, but if you are in the area, it might be interesting to stop by and have a look. The Yokohama Bay Bridge Skywalk (Japanese only) offers great views of the ship and Yokohama harbor.

Access by bus to Skywalk (skywalk-mae bus stop):
From Yokohama station, take city bus 109.
From Tsurumi station, take city bus 17.
Entrance fee: ¥600

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Contributor Bio: Steve has been splitting time between the US and Japan for the past 10 years or so and is now a post doctorate fellow at a large, lumbering University in Tokyo, where he gets paid to play with dirt.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Odd Japanese fashion

Some video from a national competition for high school fashion design clubs (“the Koshien of fashion”):

241 schools competed, and 40 made it into the final round. In the video clip we can see one girl dressed like a textbook, an anti-nuclear weapons protest dress, a freakish strawberry thing, and a girl who seems to have come straight out of the Derelict fashion line from Zoolander. The winner was a team from Aomori prefecture that created the puzzle outfit seen in the above screen capture.
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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Japanese Harry Potter fangirl interviews Emma Watson

Since so many of you are enjoying the Harry Potter and the Japanese fangirl post, here’s a clip of Kana’s interview with Emma Watson (which didn’t make the cut for the original post, since it wasn’t crazy enough):

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Aki Hoshino Photos

April 14th was Orange Day, a quasi-holiday created by the fruit industry in Japan to celebrate the greater consumption of oranges. Central to this year’s promotional activities was an ‘Orange Day Princess’ event that honored 31-year-old gravure idol Aki Hoshino:

Hoshino told reporters that she planned on continuing her swimsuit modeling career, adding that she hopes to get married before she turned 40. Much like the oranges she was promoting, she considers herself best eaten when ripe.

New Movie: Kung Fu-kun

Chinese child martial artist Zhang Zhuang will be hitting Japanese theaters tomorrow with the release of Kung Fu-kun, a wacky action comedy that teams the kid up with al all-star cast of Japanese celebrities and comedians. Here’s the official film trailer and a plot summary from Eigapedia:

A young shaolin martial arts student defeats a series of foes and is told his final enemy is located in Japan. When he arrives he befriends a middle-aged woman who manages a Chinese restaraunt called Koraku. Together they get mixed up in various kung fu mayhem.

And a video of Zhang Zhuang showing off some cool moves on a morning news program:

If you’re interested in this movie, you might want to check out Mark Schilling’s review of it over at the Japan Times.

[props to Danny Choo for discovering these cool videos!]