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Tokyo Skytree will celebrate its first anniversary Wednesday but has not yet completed its prime mission of reliably broadcasting to households in the capital and its suburbs. Since December, the world’s tallest free-standing tower, at 634 meters high, has been making test broadcasts to ...
If you work in an office, you probably spend a fair part of your time sitting at a desk, which, of course, isn’t very healthy. To combat that the Pomodoro technique recommends that you work in intervals with regular breaks — for example, 25 ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
“Outsider art” is relatively new in Japan and, as a genre, works made by self-taught Japanese artists are still not very well known on the category-delineating, label-loving international art scene. Now, though, “Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan,” an exhibition on view (through June 30) ...
After all these years, Rafael Nadal still knows how to dominate Roger Federer. In the 30th meeting between the two tennis greats, Nadal controlled the final from start to finish to win 6-1, 6-3 Sunday for his seventh Italian Open title. “Rafa was just ...
Kansai-based trio √thumm’s music doesn’t just mix clashing styles together, but also touches on two cultural representations of Japan today. The group attracted attention around Kansai with two albums of maximalist techno-pop, futuristic numbers resembling the modern overload of Perfume, albeit without big-company money. ...
At this time last year, Tokyo’s Cuz Me Pain label was a collection of artists recording dark and dreamy dance tracks from their bedrooms, and that got them a smattering of overseas attention from various music blogs. In 2012, a lot has changed. Various ...
Please show sympathy to all those involved in tengal6. The six-person pop-rap group is “supported” by Tenga, a Japanese adult-toy company (first line of their online concept: “The future of masturbation is here!”). I can just imagine the members of tengal6 dreaming of pop ...
The biggest event of the year for AKB48, the 48-member pop group that’s the most popular music act in Japan today, arrives next Wednesday. Thousands of fans are expected to fill the historic Nippon Budokan to watch, while Fuji TV will broadcast the three-hour ...
It’s fitting that the leadup to Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s debut album has focused heavily on her image. She’s a fashion blogger and model now pursuing music, her clothes grabbing as much attention as her songs. Her savviest move was releasing three bonkers music videos ...
“Prolific” doesn’t even come close to describing Hideki Kaji’s career. Since the mid-90s, the Tokyo artist has been putting out albums and singles of upbeat indie-pop music at a constant clip. None of his releases are amazing, but his entire discography is still consistent. ...
“Mindful Beats Vol. 2″ has one of the most simultaneously accurate and misleading album names of the past year. On a literal level, the title tells no lies — it is a second volume of beats made by Osaka producer Masaki Konagai, who records ...
Last September, music magazine Spin wrote that America was experiencing an “electronica revolution.” Spearheaded by speaker-destroying producers such as Skrillex and Deadmau5, Spin wrote that a “new rave generation” has helped make electronic dance music an inescapable presence on the nation’s music scene, to ...
It has been a good year for Japanese pop music so far. The Oricon charts still house the likes of AKB48, Arashi and a slew of acts that make me want to bang my head against the wall, but a crop of J-pop artists ...
On the afternoon of the South By Southwest (SXSW) Music Conference And Festival’s second day, I sat on a shuttle bus with eight people who had been hustling between the countless concert venues in this city. True to the its slogan “Keep Austin Weird,” ...
Yuta Mitsuhashi says he spends a lot of time falling into “YouTube holes”: Watch a clip, click on a related link, repeat until the majority of your night has been spent staring at a computer screen. He isn’t scrolling through LOLcat videos though, he ...
Your Gold, My Pink’s decision to name its debut full-length album “Teenage Riot” shows some serious guts from the young quartet. It’s a title that has certain connotations, that either the band embraces the adolescent rebellion of punk — or just really likes Sonic ...