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Enjoy Namie Amuro’s “60s 70s 80s” beautiful album cover art
Namie Amuro’s latest (and very awesome) single, “60s 70s 80s,” hits stores a week from today but we can already enjoy the beautiful album cover art which is available here and here. (Via International Wota.)
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Golden Arrow Awards: Aragaki wins big – Tokyograph
The 45th Golden Arrow Awards, which cover a wide range of media, were handed out on Monday. The biggest story was the Film prize won by young actress Yui Aragaki, who starred in her first three movies last year. This is her sixth major film award during this awards season, though the previous ones were…
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Nakama continues reign as CM queen – Tokyograph
Video Research Ltd. has released its TV commercial data for 2007, which revealed that for the third year in a row, actress Yukie Nakama is the ‘CM queen’ of the Kanto region. Nakama, whose work includes ads for KDDI, Daihatsu, and Lotte, racked up more than 54 hours of TV time with over 12,000 commercials…
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3-4 Day Special: Kajadifuu Bushi
In celebration of Sanshin Day, March 4, I’m featuring a Ryūkyū Koten Ongaku (Ryūkyū classical music) song called “Kajadifū Bushi (かぎやで風節).” It has a bit of history for myself as the first song I learned on uta-sanshin from Katsumi Shinsato-sensei some fifteen years ago and I’ve been playing it ever since. Here’s a little background…
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Happy Sanshin Day!
The following is from a 1993 Okinawa Times article: Keeping tradition alive Did anyone hear the sound of sanshin on March 4th, or perhaps someone may have played it? The sanshin is a fretless 3-stringed musical instrument very much intertwined with Okinawan traditional music. March 4th was Sanshin Day, which the Ryukyus Broadcasting Corporation has…
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Quick review of Namie Amuro’s “60s 70s 80s” single
Continuing onto 2008 with a very successful 2007, Namie Amuro’s new Triple A-Side single (to be released on 3/12/08), “60s 70s 80s,” is simply amazing so far. The first song, “New Look,” (PV below) samples The Supremes’ hit song from 1964 “Baby Love” to great effect. Hearing the original on the radio yesterday, I found…
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melody. blogs release date for her forthcoming album ‘Lei Aloha’
J-pop artist and Karakui.com favorite, melody., blogged the release date of 4/9/08 for her upcoming album, “Lei Aloha.” According to her blog post, the theme for “Lei Aloha” is kizuna (bonds) and it will be melody.’s 4th album following 2007’s “READY TO GO!” The album will feature 14 songs (track titles are already up on…
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Amuse forms new company, gives Emi Tawata major label debut – Tokyograph
Management agency Amuse is establishing a new company called AZEAL. Within the first three years, the company aims to sign three music artists who have the potential for nationwide tours that will attract hundreds of thousands of fans. The first artist signed to the firm is 23-year-old singer Emi Tawata. Originally from Okinawa, she was…
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Ways to find Karakui.com: ‘nude okinawan’
Nope, I’m not the “nude okinawan” (and that’s probably a good thing too) but it’s interesting that we were found with those keywords. Actually, maybe it’s something worth exploring (I’m joking here). Not sure what that person was searching for as it could be a male or female and I have yet to hear about…
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Desktop: The One Pound Gospel (1 paundo no fukuin)
The Good: free desktop available for download from my favorite J-drama of this season, “The One Pound Gospel.” The Bad: you don’t get the beautiful Meisa Kuroki who plays Sister Angela in the show. But not to fret as there are four more wallpapers coming to the site soon. Of course, we’ll be posting about…
Karakui 