Musician Introduction: ULFULS

Musician Introduction:
                            ULFULS    ウルフルズ

Hello again, and welcome to J Burogu. I'd like to do my second Musician introduction, this time being the rock band Ulfuls.

Ulfuls generally play standard Rock'n'Roll, and Beatles type music as well as some Funk. The members are all from the Kansai area of Japan, which is a place well known for people with upbeat and cheerful personalities compared to the rest of Japan. This is translated onto their music, and you can hear that these guys are having genuine fun playing their music. The lyrics to their songs are simple but powerful, and the feelings and thoughts expressed are really relate-able even to the average person. They also have many songs that express hope and courage, and to live your life to the fullest, which can be quite inspirational at times when you are feeling down. Furthermore, these lyrics are delivered spectacularly by the soulful voice of Tortoise Matsumoto, who sings his songs with utmost sincerity, and you can feel the emotions he's trying to convey.

Another thing I like about Ulfuls is their energy. These guys are great live, and their PV's (Promotional Videos **What Japanese people call 'music videos') are usually quite funny. I suppose thanks to their heritage as people from Kansai, they like to joke around and laugh, and this kind of warm atmosphere is present in many of their songs. Some of their songs are even all about just being stupid and having fun.

Also, I think that they're songs would be great to listen to if you are studying Japanese since they are simple, and are good for singing at Karaoke.

 However, Tortoise Matsumoto does sing a lot in Kansai-ben (Kansai dialect) so you may need to be familiar with this way of speaking. Alternatively it may be a good way of studying that too.        

They broke up in 2007 but have left 11 great albums, and a few 'best of albums' to listen to, and the members have embarked on other projects, most notable being  Tortoise Matsumoto's solo career (he's released 2 pretty nice albums so far).

Members:

-Tortoise Matsumoto (トータス松本) Vocalist. Actual name is Matsumoto Atsushi.

-Ulful Keisuke, Guitar, actual name Keisuke Iwamato, usually wears a cowboy hat

- John B. Chopper, Bass, aka Toshihiro Kuroda

Their most famous songs would be

Gatsu daze! ガッツだぜ！
  --Translates to 'It's Guts!' (Guts as in "you need guts to do such a thing")

Ashita ga Aru sa (明日があるさ）
---Translates to 'There is Tomorrow' . This is a cover of Sakamoto Kyu, the only Japanese person to chart No.1 in America (with the song 'Sukiyaki'). It has since been covered by members of comedic duo Downtown.

Some of My Favourite Songs:


Ulfuls A.A.P Theme
---I think A.A.P stands for (アホアホパワー Aho Aho Power, "Idiot Idiot power")

Eenen (ええねん)
---Kind of like "it's alright" or "it's fine" in the Kansai dialect

Baka Survivor (バカサバイバー)
---Idiot Survivor

Banzai -Suki de Yokatta-   (バンザイ - 好きで良かった-)

---Banzai (hooray) - It Was Good that I Loved You

The next are others that don't have PV/ can't be bothered uploading..but you can probably find on youtube if you search using the Japanese names.

僕の人生は今は何章目ぐらいだろう (Boku no Jinsei wa Ima Nanshoume Guraidarou)

----I Wonder What Chapter My Life Is At Now

すっとばす (Suttobasu)          -This one has a PV but not on youtube. Search Dailymotion instead

---mm....kinda like "I'll beat you up"

借金大王 (Shakkin Daiou)      -This one has a PV

---Debt King

手をつないで (Te wo Tsunaide)

---Hold Hands

おやすみ東京 (Oyasumi Tokyo)

---Goodnight Tokyo

心 (Kokoro)

--- Heart (as in spirit/soul kind of thing)

夢 (Yume)

--Dream

いい女 (Ii Onna)   -This one has a PV

A Good Woman      

And many others but won't write anymore....

Thanks for reading,.... hopefully you liked some of the songs I've posted and you'll start listening to these guys as well.

JAPANESE STUFF: INOUE TAKEHIKO SHISEIDO ADVERTISTMENT

JAPANESE STUFF: 
SLAM DUNK 
       SHISEIDO ADVERTISTMENT




This is an advertisement for some sort of hair styling product. It's drawn by Inoue Takehiko, who I posted a blog on about not too long ago. I saw this ad from a Japanese TV show called Ametalk, which is basically a variety talk show where they have some sort of theme and get certain comedians to talk about it. They have themes all the way from, 'Shy comedians', 'High school loser comedians'. Once in a while they also talk about their favourite animes; some animes that have been past themes are 'Gundam' ,'Neon genesis Evangelion', 'Grappler Baki' and others. One such episode had a Slam Dunk themed session, and they showed this advertisement to try and show the greatness of Slam Dunk.

JAPANESE STUFF: "MASA NI GEDOU" BABY 「まさに外道」赤ちゃん

JAPANESE STUFF: 
"MASA NI GEDOU" BABY　
                                   「まさに外道」赤ちゃん

Hello again I've got some more weird Japanese Stuff of the internet for you to see. This time its the "Masa ni Gedou"  baby. Its basically a picture of a cute baby that someone has found, and decided to make it say "gedou" stuff.
--Gedou (外道) was originally a term given to religions other than buddhism. The kanji make up means outside path (outside=外 path=道), so basically a path outside the norm. It has since been made to have several other meanings (i suppose based on the kanji). It is now also used to refer to people who speaks rudely of/ verbally abuses people.
~~~ but anyway~~~
There had been a boom of posts a while back with people writing black humour jokes using this baby.
I've translated some of them for you to read.

Read from the RIGHT speech bubble first!!!

 If you don't understand this one a Deathnote is a notebook in which if you write someones name in it that person dies...---from anime 'Deathnote'

 **Masami is a Japanese girls name

A 'NEET' is the term given to people who have no motivation to find a job. Many of the people on Japanese 2channel threads are Neets (well seems that way from what I've read). They usually spend their time watching anime and porn, playing video games, reading manga and posting weird things like this on the net.

I;ve got more and will post them up some other time when I can be bothered so stay tuned

JAPANESE STUFF: TOKYO METRO MANNER POSTERS

JAPANESE STUFF:
TOKYO METRO MANNER POSTERS

These are some posters that I saw on Tokyo metro (subway) trains and stations last time I went to Japan about 2 years ago. I don't know if they're still there but I hope they are because they're pretty funny. I'm not sure if these are all but they were the only ones I could find. Tokyo trains are full of advertisements hanging of ceilings and plastered on walls. These can be found there also....

That one might be kind of hard  to understand. People often try to run onto trains just before the doors close when they're late. This poster is actually telling you to not do that. I'd just like to say now that Japanese people don't actually get stuck in doors and start pretending to swim.

Others are more easier to understand....

And the last one is a joke one made by someone and posted on the internet. I found it off a Japanese 2channel thread with other weird and wonderful posts and signs.

 Don't look if you don't like Shimoneta "下ネタ"  (dirty jokes)

-----'下' means down. This kanji has a lot of different ways of reading it. The most common way is 'shita' and thats the usual way you'd say down....  

-----ネタ means material 

Anyway here you go

JAPANESE STUFF: KAOEMOJI (Japanese Emoticons)

KAOEMOJI　顔絵文字
　----Japanese Emoticons----　　
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　                    


Konbanwa~ ! (good evening)  ( ﾟ▽ﾟ)/ｺﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊ


Welcome again, this time I've decided to write about Japanese emoticons!
We all (well most) would already know about emoticons, those weird little faces that we create by using different symbols on the keyboard. 


Things like:
                     :)      :(      ;)     :p


........ yeah they're super lame.......and can hardly be recognised as faces.


Well you can always count on the Japanese to come up with better versions of things, and thats certainly the case this time as well.  
                HOORAYY! やった～～～


The thing is, as you would also expect from them, they take things to the extreme and outrageous and confusing.

 I'm assuming its somewhat hard to figure out whats going on............but still cool. Especially if you know whats going on. They guy on the right is actually aiming and shooting a gun  at another dude thats running for his/her life. The バキュン ("bakyun") is the sound of a gun shot in Japanese haha.......they have many sound words that are quite different to English. Actually that would be a good idea for a post hmmm...


They also have maaannny different variations of emoticons for many different types of emotions, gestures, actions. They even have animals

⊂(・(ェ)・)⊃ﾍﾞｱ      U^ｪ^U ﾜﾝ!   ((≡ﾟ♀ﾟ≡))                        


                        Bear                                  Dog ('WAN!' is barking noise)           .....Doraemon


......................and people going to the toilet haha. 


                ∥wc∥ ヽ( ´ｰ`)ﾉ ﾌｳ♪




( フゥッ "Fuu" is like when you breath out when you feel relief. I this case from the comfort of ejecting faeces from anus. 
Basically this if its a close up:: 


C= (-。 -)　フゥ

There's  a ridiculous amount of these things and impossible to remember them all. I even have trouble remembering the easiest ones so usually end up using those lame ones I was talking about at the start..........cry
                         。゜゜(´□｀｡)°゜。




But I suppose it can't really be helped since most some of these may be impossible to do if your computer can't write in Japanese, or some symbols are so obscure that it would take ages to even search for the damn things. I'll just stick to my favourite (-_-) face. Although it would be cool to be able to bust out things like


凸(｀Д´メ)FUCK YOU！！


or digitally punch idiots


┏┫*｀ｰ´┣━━━━━━━━━●)ﾟOﾟ).｡ﾟｸﾞﾊｯ!!




anyway enough joking around  ＼(￣ｰ￣;)ﾅﾝﾃﾞﾔﾈﾝ 


 In short, the world Japanese emoticons is a wonderland of new possibilities for text conversations...........


You can check out more on this link
http://www.facemark.jp/facemark.htm
and click on the various tabs on the left for different categories... 
This site is in Japanese so if you don't understand you can kinda just click random places and figure it out.....if you reallly need it you can ask me for help..
I'll just be chillin with mah ciggarette
                            (´ｰ`)y-~~


actually i don;t smoke so would probably daydreaming 
                                      （ ﾟ ρ ﾟ )ﾎﾞｰｰｰｰ 
   




Anyway I'll leave the rest up to you who are interested to discover new and exciting emoticons and wow your freinds......heh


 ばいばい(⌒ー⌒)ﾉ~~~

BECK: MONGOLIAN CHOPSQUAD

MANGA + ANIME INTRODUCTION
BECK: THE MONGOLIAN CHOP SQUAD

Today I  decided to write about BECK: The Mongolian Chop Squad, a manga by Harold Sakuishi. I have just recently finished reading BECK in manga form after watching the anime adaptation about a year back. It follows the story of a young rock band in Japan, and their struggle to make it big. Although all of the members are touted as being undoubtedly talented and destined to change the music industry, but several powerful forces constantly stand in their way to stardom. I won't go heavily into the story so as not to spoil it, but I'll just explain the beginning.

Basically it starts off with Yukio Tanaka aka Koyuki, a loser Japanese high schooler, who is bored and fed up with his stale life and seemingly dull future. One day, he sees a weird stitched up dog being beaten up by a gang of kids. He scares the kids off and is approached by its owner, Ryusuke Minami. Ryusuke is an extremely gifted for a fairly popular amateur rock band. The two become friends, and Koyuki is introduce the world of Rock music. He is presented a guitar by Ryusuke, and becomes determined to be able to play it after seeing his friends insane skills at playing the instrument.

After messing up a chance at being scouted by a record company, Ryusuke has a fight with his bandmate, which causes the band to break up. Ryusuke decides to create his own band with the dream of being a band that can compete worldwide and sets out to recruit members for a new band. He gathers Tsunetomi Chiba (rap/vocal), Yoshiyuki Taira (bass) and the drummer from his previous band (can't remember his name... because he leaves early on). Koyuki is later invited to the group after they hear him singing, as well as his friend Yuji "Saku" Sakurai on drums. The band steadily improves, and seems destined to make it big. However, many obstacles stand in their way.......

Okay well thats about as much as I am going to bother writing, plus any more would be too much spoiler. The story also includes the high school drama of Koyuki and his growing relationship with Ryusuke's sister. There are many comedic moments, emotional scenes, and references to American and Japanese pop culture so keep an eye out for these, such as on the shirts people wear or people in the background. If you read the manga, then at the start of every volume, there's one or two mock versions of covers from popular albums which adds to the excitement if you are somewhat familiar with such things. Many of the characters are inspired by real life people, a memorable one for me was a guy that resembled famous actor Samuel L. Jackson.

Mock cover of "Ready to Die" by Notorious B.I.G.

Theres plenty more as there are 34 volumes in the manga. There is also an anime version, which is pretty good, but doesn't completely follow the whole series. Because of lack of funds and popularity when airing, the  animation company decided to end the series after the first arc, and making the ending quite a let down. On the plus side, it is interesting while it lasts, and also includes some good music. I very much recommend that you give it a listen, although I've only listened to the Japanese versions, the dubbed versions seem to be well received as well, mainly due to the lack of Engrish. I'm satisfied with the Japanese versions especially since the trouble the vocalists have with pronouncing words in their songs (which are mainly in English) is a prominent theme in the series. Anyway, these are my picks:

***"I've Got A Feeling" is a cover of the Beatles

  

This one is not actually a song by the "band" Beck. Its a song that Koyuki sings at his school festival with some other schoolmates, but I really like the sound of the guitar here. Its also actually a cover of an old anime series called Youkai Ningen Bem (Youkai refers spirit/monsters from Japanese folklore, Ningen=Human, Bem is the character's name).


The others a also pretty good but I figured that you could go take a look by yourselves if you're interested, or just start watching the anime. Either ways good enough for me yo.





Last year a live adaptation film was released in Japan. I haven't watched it yet, but the story seems somewhat altered from trailers obviously so that they don't make the movie run for over 10 hours. The music seems decent from what I've heard (not much) and the actor choices seem okay.

Cast:

• Takeru Satoh (佐藤 健) as Koyuki. He's probably most well known for his parts in popular dramas such as Rookies and Bloody Monday.
• Hiro Mizushima (水嶋 ヒロ) who starred in Gokusen, and as Kamen Rider Kabuto, played the role of Ryusuke.
• Aoi Nakamura (中村 蒼) played drummer Saku, Don't know much about this guy
• Osamu Mukai (向井 理) as Taira. He had a part as a cellist in Nodame Cantabile and more recently as the author Shigeru Mizuki of famous manga Gegege no Kitaro in GeGeGe no Nyōbō (ゲゲゲの女房).
• Kenta Kiritani (桐谷健太) as Chiba. He also starred in Rookies, and was also a fairly prominent character in the two CROWS movies.

 If you're interested then I don't think it would be a bad movie but not great like the manga. Even so I intend to watch it at some point when I get my hands on it, only because I liked the manga and the hope that the music is as good as the tunes from the anime. Heres a trailer for you to look at.....

Aaaaaand thats it from me on BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad for now. I was thinking of looking at the mock albums covers and other musical and pop culture references and writing posts about them but we'll see hey? Depends how bored I am and how lazy I feel....I;m pretty lazy by the way (-_-) sigh

Thanks for reading.....

Manga Artist: Inoue Takehiko

MANGA ARTIST PROFILE:
               INOUE TAKEHIKO

This time I'd like to introduce the manga artist Inoue Takehiko. Best known for creating the High School Basketball manga series Slam Dunk, and more recently Vagabond, a manga that follows the trials and tribulations of legendary Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. Actually, the background for this blog is Miyamoto Musashi from this manga, so obviously I'm a big fan of his artwork. I've even got an awesome artwork book of his of pictures of characters from Vagabond painted using water colours. Theres supposed to be another book (which I defnititly will by the next time I visit Japan) where he uses in "Sumi-e" style, a traditional way of painting with black ink and brush.

He recently (past few years)...? well I have often heard of him painting murals of his characters using black ink and opening exhibitions of them. I find it amazing how well he is able to do this especially since you can't just rub out mistakes like pencils, and yet he finishes them perfectly. I guess he's just one of those guys you call Tensai (geniuses).

Personally I think his character designs are extremely cool. He has a good balance with how to make characters not too cartoony but not too real so that it still passes as artwork for manga. His background artwork is also quite detailed making the worlds he creates that much more believable.

He's a big fan of basketball....and its obvious if you look at the body of his work, which is often based on the sport. First of was Slam Dunk, a story a high school basketball team of misfits and their struggle to become Japan's number1 high school team. Its one of the most popular manga ever in Japan, and definitely one of my favourites, if not my most favourite one ever. At first you would think it would be pretty boring from just reading a brief description of it but its actually extremely good, as I have found out.Well it is in Japanese at least...I don't know what its like in English. It has a great mix of comedy, exciting basketball matches and emotional scenes. Its one of those stories where you actually come to care about the characters and hope that they succeed in the end, which i find quite rare. It also made me appreciate the sport much more, and I'm absolutely not the only one, as this manga created a basketball boom back when it was serialised (early 90's), and basically turned
 basketball from an small, relatively unknown sport, to one of the most popular in the country. If you are interested in Slam Dunk, I would recommend reading the manga, and not the Anime. The anime was made in the early/mid 90's so its not the greatest quality show you would see. I found that (the parts that I've seen anyway, which is not much) to be slowly paced, and static, and use repetitive uses of various scenes, typically of the general anime from that era. Anyway, the point is is that Slam Dunk is awesome and you should experience its greatness also. 
His following mangas also were basketball related, Buzzer Beater (haven't read yet) and is apparently about an intergalactic basketball competition...yeaahh haha. Weird plot, but probably still good and worth a shot when I remember. Its only 4 volumes and not very well known, since he originally released it on the web.

Slam Dunk team of Shohoku High
(From left) Hisashi Mitsui, Ryota Miyagi, Kiminobu Kogure,
 Hanamichi Sakuragi, Takenori Akagi, Kaede Rukawa
  

The other basketball manga is called 'Real'. 10 volumes have been released so far and it hasn't finished yet so I can't really say how great it is as a whole but so far it has been very interesting and pleasant experience. This time its about wheelchair basketball, and also explores the various struggles that are faced by the disabled/handicapped people, such as the inferiority that they feel as a result of their physical impairments.It mainly follows 3 young adults/ teenagers, one a high school dropout with nothing left in his life but basketball, a disabled guy who once had a dream of becoming a sprinter, and another guy who starts off as a free walking teenager but is hit by a truck after a few volumes (was his own fault by the way (-_-)\), which results in him being unable to use his legs anymore. The transformation of this character, who was originally a popular jerk after his accident is interesting and a very unusual but important (in my opinion) topic to be drawn on manga. This is another manga that I highly recommend.

Miyamoto Musashi

The most recent manga that he's been working is Vagabond, which as mentioned before, is the story of the legendary of Miyamoto Musashi swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi is famous for writing the Book of Five Rings, basically a text book on how to be a bad ass warrior. I've read very little snippets of it before, and vaguely remember a part explaining how to correctly stare down opponents, which is pretty cool. I haven't read all of the series yet...in fact I haven't read most of it although I really should. The main reason for this is that I don't like starting to read unfinished manga, as I hate waiting for the latest volume/chapter to come out. When I start reading a series and find that I like it, I tend to blaze through the manga not stop until it ends.....so when I can't get to the next part of the story ...fuu#**k!! is basically what i think. I find it way more satisfying to be able to go through the whole series without this feeling, so I will probably wait till the series finishes, which is quite frustrating as well..although I think i won't have to wait too much longer since theirs already over 30 volumes. Mangas usually start ending around then. Unless if its some insane series like Golgo 13 (160 volumes!!!wtf?) or Kochikame (171!! even crazier).

Ahhh yepp thanks for reading the post. If you did...well done and stay tuned for the next post ..if there is one ..........