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.
Categories: Celebrity News
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.
{democracy:193}
[props to Danny Choo for discovering these cool videos!]
Categories: Films, Foreigners in Japan
Video: SpongeBob + Death Note
The popular Japanese manga Death Note performed by SpongeBob SquarePants:
[via Japanator]
Categories: Otaku & Anime
Blind High School Student Aiming At Enka Stardom
A clip of Hiromasa Shimuzu, a blind 17-year-old from Gunma Prefecture who has just released an Enka CD:
A few notes about Hiromasa Shimuzu:
- He has listened to enka music since he was a small child. When he was a second grader, his grandfather took him on a day trip to an onsen. At the onsen, Hiromasa sang some enka songs on a karaoke machine and the reaction of the people there gave him a desire to become a pro enka singer.
- He won N-H-K’s Nodo Jiman Competition last year [his championship performance is the clip in this post], and he was a special guest on yesterday’s broadcast of this year’s competition.
- According to the profile on his official website, one of his hobbies is surfing the net. A news video about him on YouTube includes some clips of him listening to his computer read the content of enka websites.
- He dreams of earning a spot on the New Year’s Eve Kohaku music special.
Categories: Celebrity News
