All Things Japan - J-pop

The other day someone asked me to recommend some good Japanese rock music to listen to. I was stuck for a bit, because really, so much of "mainstream" Japanese music, played on the radio and as soundtracks for anime, and on the Japanese music countdowns - are pretty similar.
It's called "J-Pop" and it means "popular music" "J" bening for "Japanese". Hence in "K-Pop", the meaning is the same, with the "K" meaning "Korean".

Here are some sites that tell you a bit more about J-pop and K-pop.

The current big names in J-Pop in terms of female groups, that I remember from when I was living there last year are probably AKB48 (The whole business of AKB48 is a massive conglomerate), and Perfume. I'm sure there are many more big names, but those two stood out for different reasons. I had to perform the AKB48 song 'Surprise tears" with my class



 for the school festival, and the Perfume song "Laserbeam"



for my HPE dance assessment. The boys and girls had separate subjects, which was backwards as -.-

So when my friend asked me to suggest a "rock" song, I had trouble thinking of many female-voiced songs (there definately are female rock bands in Japanese music, but they weren't on the itunes lists my freinds had offered to my ipod to autofill haha).

Which leaves male voiced songs. And the first one's I thought of were "GReeeN", "SMAP" and "EXILE". Of these, none are rock. hahaha, they were my first thoughts ok!
I do love some of their songs though haha,
so here's GReeeeN's "Kiseki" as sung by a 'gaijin' (foreigner) :D




And after hunting some down, here is some info on Japanese Rock music in manga:

NANA the hit ongoing manga, turned anime, turned live action movie, with Rock singer lead and featuring several bands.
image courtesy of this photobucket site

"Rock You" is an original song, performed in the story by lead character NANA's rival rock group "Trapnest":



If you're interested in the anime a bit now - and even if you aren't haha - here's an AMV "A little Pain" no subs, rolling clips of the anime featuring the painful love relationships between the two title NANA characters (two girls with the same name meet by coincidence and despite living very different lives, by sharing a new room in Tokyo, come to be tied closer and closer together, their complicated lives pulling them forward into deeper depths of love and sadness with the people around them.):



Another rock manga is of course, Princess AI,

Princess Ai, lyrics to "Angel Back in Heaven".
Image courtesy of anime wallpapers

(Princess Love) created by Courtney Love (yes - Kurt Cobain fame Courtney Love) and artist DJ Milky. Beautifully drawn, it's a crime it's not an anime yet, and the lateset set of books has crawled to a very slow production schedule (I'mm not sure why, whether the whole project is on hold, or like NANA's creator, someone integral to Princess Ai is sick at the moment). A manga which also heavily features a rock and roll storyline and original music tracks; like "Suicide Ride", "Broken Leash", "Daughter of Death".

'Suicide Ride', sung by Skye Marsden


'Broken Leash', live performance (really not the best performance) BUT features some anime clips specifically created : D (there is no source anime. So this is pretty special!!)


'Look out for Love' AMV


So there you go. Next time I'll actually have some Rock to recommend :) Awesome.
Hahaha, have a happy ending of Uni Session guys!!