Yamatologic

Miku Fan dot Com

Yep, 初音ミク (Hatsune Miku), the fantastic character developed for the Vocaloid software singing voice has her own fan blog, Mikufan.com. This place is awesome… I dunno if they saw the ゆっくりしてね (yukkuri shite ne) video yet, but that’s going to be my first submission.

I’m excited to find this blog because they have a lot of good ミク stuff (way more than I do), including a link to this awesome 初音ミク cosplay. At the same time though, I’m a little sad. I was hoping that ミク was relatively unknown in the English speaking world. And now I know better.

I was kind of like when I first saw a friend put up a 東方 Project character on their AIM icon. It shocked me. “Whoa, they know about 東方 too?!” But, really, I think it is just that I’m late entering this game. The two year hiatus from JP culture has made me feel like a total n00b!

Oh well. I should swallow my pride and you should go check out Miku Fan for more Vocaloid goodness.

Technorati Tags: blogs, cosplay, fans, girls, Hatsune Miku, Internet, Japanese girls, miku, mikufan, mikufan.com, music, project shrine maiden, touhou, vocaloid, 初音ミク, 東方

Google Pays Off JASRAC

Japan Today is reporting that Google will now be paying royalties to JASRAC for Japanese music they have domain over on YouTube. They also claim, and this is the kicker, that users are now free to upload JASRAC managed music to YouTube.

マジっすか？！ I am really skeptical. I mean, for one, I am generally distasteful of the recording industry. And in the above video, they are called more of a collections agency than a copyright holding group. They apparently are generally unfair, but that sounds like any copyright collections agency. But at the same time, if we really can use JASRAC music however we want, this could be an amazing deal. And, this does seem like a very good move on JASRAC’s part to show they are with the times and not a dinosaur.

So, by using the JASRAC music search, you can find songs they own the rights to. They will have a blue circled “J” under the various columns when you click on the song name. I can’t tell which column would be the right one to use (there is musical performance, audio, video, film, commercial… @_@), so as long as they all have the J’s, it should be okay, right? (BTW, I am not a lawyer, so anything you put up is at your own risk!)

Anyway, I guess we will know if the Japanese music on YouTube starts sticking around instead of getting insta-deleted. Stay tuned!

Technorati Tags: copyfight, copyright, 音楽, google, Internet, JASRAC, music, nicovideo, rights, web, youtube

Give Thanks, Yatta!

ニッポン救急! 世界救急! DEMO!!!! 明日はWonderful!!!!

It is Thanksgiving in America today. And I can’t think of any better way to celebrate it than with this video. I mean, seriously, with the way people are talking about hard times, you’d think it was Blamesgiving day. Just listen to Happa-tai and reflect on all we do have to be thankful for!

This is the 7th most popular video on ニコニコ動画 (Nico Nico Douga) is a retrospective of YATTA!. YATTA! is one of those videos/songs that has been going around since the early 00′s (say “double-aughts”). And it was so popular around the world, that this retrospective was made to celebrate it’s positive message and way of bringing the world together.

On the video, at around 1:59, are my dorky friends and I in 2002 doing the Yatta Box skit at Fanime. I got a message on YouTube asking for a higher quality version, and this is the result. It must have been a lot of work to make the video.

Visit the official site of this retrospective.

And remember these simple words:

君が変われば、世界も変わる。

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Technorati Tags: はっぱ隊, やった, comedy, fan video, happa-tai, happatai, happy, Japanese guys, music, NicoNicoDouga, nicovideo, retrospective, video, yatta

Perfume Confirmed for Kohaku

YES! The 紅白 (Kouhaku) teams have been announced (in English here), and Perfume has been selected for the Red team!

For those unfamiliar with 紅白歌合戦 (Kouhaku utagassen), it is a yearly show on New Year’s Eve where the red team (mostly female music artists) goes up against the white team (mostly male music artists) to put on the best performance. Really, it is just a giant music show with a meaningless contest, but it is fun nonetheless.

I haven’t rooted for the red team in a long time due to the overabundance of Hello! Project shit that has been clogging it, but with しょこたん performing last year, I had to take pause and think about my priorities. (Speaking of しょこたん, she doesn’t seem to be on the list this year, despite 中日スポーツ quoting her as wanting to go really bad…)

Now, with Perfume on the red team, coupled with the fact that no team has won more than three in a row ever, I’m putting my money on red this time.

But the white team has quite the lineup this year… Mr. Children, Porno Graffiti, EXILE… It’s going to be a good show.

Technorati Tags: しょこたん, ポルノグラフィティ, 紅白, 紅白歌合戦, electronic music, electropop, exile, girls, Japanese girls, kohaku, mr. children, perfume, porno graffiti, shokotan, ystk, 中川翔子

Gmail’s Japan-Themed… er… Themes

If you are a Gmail user, you may have noticed the recent ability to add themes! I was all over it as a loyal Gmailian. I first went to the Terminal one for some old skool text mail fun, but then I noticed “Ninja” and “Tea House.” Yes!

Ninja is a theme where there are little ninja guys sticking out everywhere. The stars are of course 手裏剣 (shuriken, aka “Ninja Stars”) and there are little things going on at the bottom between a ninja and a geisha. Sometimes they are courting each other, and other times they are quarreling. The background message is もしもし (moshimoshi), which is what people say for hello over the phone. Not exactly sure how that relates to ninjas or even Gmail, but it is interesting.

The tea house theme features an asian looking house and garden where various cute animals have tea with each other. It looks like the fox is the proprietor of the tea house and it seems to be tied to the season or time of day or something. Not quite sure. It is very Animal Crossing/SnoogleZoo. If you are into either of those, you’ll probably like it.

I’m personally partial to the ninja one since the cartoons at the bottom of messages are just so awesome and slightly less girly than the whole tea house one. Apparently these Japan-related ones were designed in house at Google, so I don’t have the name of the designers/artists. Too bad, I’d love to see more by them!

There is another vaguely Japanese one called Cherry Blossom. It was designed by Vania Sofandi. But it is hard to really call it Japan-themed for sure.

Technorati Tags: animal crossing, art, どうぶつの森, computers, cute, design, e-mail, email, gmail, google, ninja, snoogle zoo, software, tea, tea house, web, websites

Emoji on iPhone, for reals this time.

Emoji are a go. Like I was saying, 絵文字 (emoji) are now available with the 2.2 update.

There is a catch however. You have to be a Softbank user sending things to other Softbank users.

And we cry…

UNLESS you are a l33t haxor. If you phone is jailbroken, you can tweak a file or just download the springboard update by searching for “emoji” in Cydia (what I did, cause I’m lazy). After that, you go into Settings ⇒ General ⇒ International ⇒ Keyboards ⇒ Japanese ⇒ Emoji (turn in ON). After that, when you hit the little globy thing, it will cycle to 絵文字 eventually. It even has a commonly used 絵文字 section!

And it works. I sent the mail shown in the image to my gmail and got this:

「えもじ」

If you see 絵文字 above, you are a mad haxor with 絵文字 fonts. Reveal your secrets! I see little squares (on PC, when browsing on my iPhone, the above showed up as their 絵文字 counterparts). However, on my iPhone, they arrived safe and sound, even when I sent those boxes copied and sent from gmail.

In anycase, if that isn’t reason to jailbreak your iPhone, I don’t know what is.  (It’s a 絵文字, I swear.)

Technorati Tags: Apple, cell phones, cydia, 絵文字, email, emoji, firmware, hacking, iPhone, jailbreak, jailbreaking, Japanese language, pwnage, smilies, technology, texting

Fish and Cat!

Yay for web toons. I just found a silly little web toon known as さかな＆ねこ (sakana & neko). If you look at the picture to the right, you have the entire premise of the show. Cat + Cat = 2 Cats. Cat + Fish = Cat. This is a very important theorem to understanding these videos.

Really, it’s short gags about what happens when anthropomorphic cats and fish live together in the world. And one of them even features 初音ミク!

Without further ado, you can see the videos after the jump or on 森井ケンシロウ’s livedoor anime site. His homepage is here.

Read more »

Technorati Tags: animation, anime, さかな, ねこ, cats, comedy, cute, 猫, 魚, fish, Kenshiro Morii, video, 森井ケンシロウ

GS Wonderland

GSワンダーランド (GS Wonderland) comes out today in Japan. I want to see this movie so bad for so many reasons. The retro feel makes me yearn for a simper time when you could wear tights and have girls screaming for you.

Next time I’m in Japan, I’m so buying the DVD. Maybe it’ll show up on mysoju…

Go visit the official site.

Technorati Tags: Group Sound, GS, j-movies, Japanese movies, movies, music, retro, video

Yamato Damacy @ Yamatologic

So, I finally finished making all the pages for Yamato Damacy here on Yamatologic. I will be trying to get a redirect script up at the old domain, but for the time being, if you have an episode of Yamato Damacy you want to link to or share, please use the http://yamatologic.com/yamato-damacy/ link please! [Update] A redirect script is up on the old site, so you can link to http://yamato.revecess.com/ or http://yamatologic.com/yamato-damacy/! Yay!

There is also a torrent link for the avi files on that main page. So feel free to download those. I have my torrent seeding as we speak and will try to keep it up as much as I can.

Sorry again to all the old fans… I shouldn’t have taken so long to do this! But it is getting done, albeit slowly. Makes me wonder when I’ll actually get around to digging out the old footage for the lost episode(s). Hmmm…

[Update] Hmmm… comments don’t seem to be showing up for the pages… I’ll have to fix that. ><;

[Update] Comments work! Now to import the comments from the old site!

Technorati Tags: blast from the past, blogs, jeshii, rahman, video, video podcast, yamato damacy

loltastic Fanta commercials

This video has been very popular on my facebook, so I may as well post it to the ol’ blog. I saw it on a random blog a million years ago, so I’m very sorry I can’t credit it. ><;

I think my favorite is ツッパリ先生 (Tsuppari-sensei) because he puts 「吐露非狩古鬱」 (toropikarufurutsuu, “Tropical Fruits”) on the board. I’m a big fan of crazy 当て字 (ateji) like that.

BTW, the poor kids! And watch for the “orz” in the Chinese subs. XD

Technorati Tags: Ateji, ツッパリ, ツッパリ先生, commercials, fanta, food, japanese commercials, lol, school, soda, teacher, teachers, Tropical Fruits, tsuppari, video, 吐露非狩古鬱, 当て字