A little late became…. March?! Well 2021 has been pretty hectic, and better late than never I suppose. After watching the Keyaki documentary I’m finally motivated into completing the logical follow-on to my favorite artists of 2020, my favorite songs of 2020! Like last year’s list, this one is determined Read more
A little late, but I’ve finally compiled the second annual ranking of my favorite songs and artists of the year 2020! Like last year’s list, this one is determined by local play count since I still haven’t surrendered to the streaming services. With the pandemic-related lockdowns and reduced in-office hours Read more
With announcement of the annual Stage 48 member ranking, I though it would be interesting to put together another list this year. It feels like Japanese idol culture is all about rankings, and it is interesting to go through the exercise of which members are standing out to me, even Read more
I already covered my top artists of the year, and my top songs released in 2019. Now I’ll conclude with my top-played songs that I acquired in 2019 but weren’t released in 2019! (This is using the same metrics to determine the ranking as my previous 2019 top-songs list.) Some Read more
My top-played artists of 2019 were swept by J-Pop, so it’s no surprise that my top songs of the year would follow a similar fate. Exactly what metric to use though turned out to be the big question. Since I’m stuck with using the limited data I can gather from Read more
Since I don’t use any streaming music services, I haven’t been able to generate any of those fancy year-end summaries I see posted on Twitter. But I have been thinking about what my top songs and artists of the year are anyway. So I decided to put something together based Read more
The Senbatsu System Strikes Back Sunday Keyakizaka46 announced the member line-up for their 9th single, due out sometime this winter. Up to now, they have had all members* participate in the A-side senbatsu for every release. However, for the 9th single they have reduced the senbatsu size to 17, meaning Read more
The “digital voice actress idol group” 22/7 (nana bun ni juu ni) released their 4th single last week, and I finally got my copies in the mail. I thought I’d mention it since I don’t think I’ve done anything about 22/7 here, in part because they already have a good Read more
So here’s one I’ve been turning over for a while. My favorite song, J-pop or not, is Little Glee Monster’s cover of ファイト! (Fight!). I do have to be in the mood for an 8-minute long rock ballad-turned-soul ballad sort of tune, but it’s good enough to earn that playtime. Read more
Following on with my search for subbed J-dramas, after Daigoro I wasn’t having any luck on Amazon or Netflix. Even though I’ve never been able to get into anime (despite some past roommates’ best efforts), I thought back to some Crunchyroll ads I’d seen recently [insert shameless plug for Giant Read more