Things in Japan

My brother is coming for a visit soon! Super exciting. He keeps asking what things are popular in Japan right now... Not entirely sure how to answer that one but I decided to do a post dedicated to random things in Japan. And by that I mean I'm mostly just going to put videos up of my favorite commercials.

This is a Pocky Commercial, featuring a guy from the boyband Arashi. The way boybands work in Japan is pretty intense because once these guys get popular they are literally everywhere. (TV, movies, singing, commercials, advertisements, you name it.) It's constantly being shown on one of the big screens in Shibuya Crossing, very catchy though. The bit at the end that sounds like 'Tabe-time' is actually 'Tabe-tai'. It's a clever play on words! (Tabe-tai means I want to eat.)

This song is always sung at Karaoke (well, at least the two times that I've been.) AKB48 is huge in Japan! They are a girl group, the AKB stands for Akihabara (place in Tokyo) where the group was formed. There are technically 48 members in the group but they get divided into subgroups, and I think fans can vote for the 20 or so girls they want to participate in the next song. I'm actually not really sure how it works, but anywhere you go in Tokyo you will at least hear one of their songs. Apparently there are other groups formed in the same fashion - SKE48 (Sakae area of Nagoya), SDN48 (Saturday Night, they're intended for a more mature audience), and NMB48 (Namba, Osaka).

This is a commercial for instant noodles! Quite possibly my favorite one.

This is another song you hear often in Japan. It's a group called Girls Generation. The best part of this video though is the parody video done by a bunch of old Japanese men.