Smiley Ohara & Skyliners

I don't have a clue what this is all about, but I like it. If anyone can enlighten me, please do.


update: this one's even better. I believe it's the same orchestra, and according to Babelfish it's The Peanuts.

Haunting Japanese Kleenex© commercials

See here.

May the Meat in a Can Be With You.

After a week of being laid low by a horrible cold and various other personal travails, nothing hits the spot like a wild intersection of classic "Star Wars" and Japanese TV. Thank you, Japan, for renewing my faith in humanity.

[via Monkeys4Helping.]

Takeda puppets are go!

from astroboy1960:
Osamu Tezuka's "Galaxy Boy Troop" (aka Le Commando De La Voie Lactee) was co-produced by Mushi Studios and the Takeda marionettes. Although very popular in its time and running nearly 100 episodes, only a few fragments of the series survive. The only surviving episodes are bi-lingual; Japanese with french narration and subtitles. I took my hand at translating a segment of the French subtitles to English, so enjoy Le Commando De La Voie Lactee (roughly translated "Commandos Of The Milky Way")
The Story: Aliens have begun bombing earth from their base on the dark side of the Moon. A group of heroes led by Commander Rop & Mister 6 (his intelligent computer car) have embarked for the moon, using the last surviving spacecraft, on a mission to find and destroy the lunar base.
BTW the musical score is by Isao Tomita, his first work for Tezuka.

Strike!

Go Go Go!

The best 48 seconds of my day, so far....though it is only 5:20am...

Driving the Mean Streets of Japan.

The uber-ginchy TV in Japan blog appears to finally be back on a regular posting schedule. One of the new goodies Gavin has brought us is this piece of computer game-based stand-up comedy by Jinnai Tomonori:


Tomonori-san has made a niche for himself with this kind of comedy. Here he is tackling a zombie first-person-shooter game: