#204 - red & white

*WARNING* Only click to watch the videos if you are prepared for utter japanese dorkiness.

new year's is the most japanesie day of the year for me, i think. i guess i don't really do that many traditional japanesie things, but one thing i do is watch the red & white every year (and consequently blog about it because of its sheer ridiculosity, i know that's not a word, but i had to make one up to explain how beyond crazy this event is). if you haven't seen it before, basically it's a competition between the most popular male (white) and female (red) singers (and groups) in japan. it's pretty much a 5 hour long, live concert where the performances alternate between male and female and the singers sing their best songs from the year or whatever. at the end a panel of japanese celebrity judges (usually actors/actresses, olympic athletes, other people who made japanese headlines the past year) pick one team and they get bragging rights until the next year. what's really great about it is that they have one every year and pretty much all the big-name japanese singers actually show up (y'know how conformist japan is, you could never do this in america) and sing live (no lip-syncing). not that japanese singers are really that good (or good at all actually, most of them sound very amateur, like one hour of american idol probably has more talent than 5 hours of this stuff), but i like listening to all the enka (that's the traditional japanese singing, like the kind you hear at bon dances). and the singers consider being chosen to be in it an honor, so they're not all egotistical about it or anything. i'm not actually sure how big this thing is in japan, who knows, it could be really popular or it could be like watching the cmt awards, y'know? anyway, like i said, it's 5 hours long and not subtitled at all, so i'll be watching and providing running commentary, just in case you're at all interested in what crazy japanese people do on new years day.

- the first thing you notice is the cutesiness. japanese people love being cutesy. even the men. watching this show makes me so embarrassed to be japanese, i mean, they're just not cool for anything. and then the singers that try to be cool and act tough while they're singing revert right back to smiling and waving as soon as their song is done. too much hello kitty, too little man vs. wild. they even devote a whole long block to children's music, there's a movie company called studio ghibli that's pretty much like disney, they make hit animated movies with great songs actually that both kids and adults like (like totoro, laputa, princess mononoke, spirited away, howl's moving castle, etc.)... actually, they make really good music, orchestral music that is, i have a bunch of piano books from these movies and it's good stuff. still, i don't know what the songs are about, i can only pick out words and phrases, but everyone smiles WAY too much when they're singing, like not ALL songs are all sunshine and roses right? grr... makes me angry.


- the man-lady and the lady-man. japanese people apparently love crossdressers. but the fun thing about these two weirdos is that even though they completely act cross-gendered, they sing in their normal voices, the lady-man makes absolutely no effort to sing high and the man-lady sings rough and low like a man. but while the man-lady dresses in pants-suits, the lady-man has the MOST elaborate costumes, between both the men AND the women.


- horrible dancing. it's like watching rejects from "so you think you can dance." the big group choreographed stuff is like watching 2nd graders at may day and even the hip-hop stuff looks totally weak. hard to imagine because japanese people have some great bboys/bgirl stuff, so why doesn't that translate? maybe this show isn't as popular in japan as it is here (and therefore not exactly quality stuff?)?

- korean imports. whatever more contemporary sounding music/dancing they have usually come from korean imports. which usually are a welcome distraction from the generic-ness of japanese singing (koreans at least use harmony and aren't so nasal), but it's still not great, i'm guessing because the koreans who come to japan probably couldn't make it in korea, so they ship themselves across seas to stand out. still, one year i saw joe's finkl girls and that boa girl too. weird.

- extreme poppiness. every single song sounds like a stage on dance dance revolution. besides the enka music (which i like), everything else is extreme pop. worse, it's not only the young people who sing it. any old people who do not sing enka (and i think that old people should ONLY sing enka) sing super bubble-gum pop, it's gross. and to top it off... they also try to dance... shudder...


- okinawan music. i like traditional okinawan music too, y'know the kind that's all high and twangy with the shaminsen, that kind. here's a bonus shamisen with a GREAT okinawan singer, rimi natsukawa, her voice is super clear, sweet, and cool okinawan melodies.


- enya. enya was on, live via satellite from ireland... huh. well, at least they're branching out. what's funnier is that during each performance they run the karaoke words (or kanjis) on the bottom of the screen, and during the enya song (it was that "sail away" song) they ran japanese words, couldn't they have at least written the english? and they insert all kinds of lyrics too, like this one part enya sang "this is the night, they say..." and the japanese was "konya, kono toki, hito ni itteiru," which doesn't look very long when i type it out, but it was written like all across the bottom of the screen for just a few english words.

- hair. holy crap. japanese people's hairdos are inexplicable. espeically the guys. yes, i am embarrassed for my race.


- jero. here's a new one, there's this half-black/half-japanese guy, his name is jerome or something (his singing name is jero, y'know how japanese people like to abbreviate everything), he's dressed up all with a 59fifty cap and big baggy two-toned shirt with huge CZs in both ears, he comes on stage looking pretty much gangsta (at least in a room full of old japanese people), he explains that his mom or someone was japanese, then they show his mom or grandma in the audience, she starts crying and says "ganbatte jero, utamasho!" or something. then the guy walks to the middle of the stage and starts singing enka! haha, it was great. he was actually pretty good too, still, he did all the japanesie mannerisms and everything, i wished he was little more ghetto, but i guess he really was born and raised japanese. if you closed your eyes he sounded like an old japanese man though. oh well. and, like any good japanese mama's boy, he cried at the end.

- crying at the end of your song. or even during your song, is the very best thing you can do. of course, you have to wait your turn, usually only the last singer is allowed to cry because they are so honored at being chosen to be the last team representative. but if you have another good reason to cry, you should do it, because the judges with think that you've sacrificed so much for your team and you're so passionate about this contest that you absolutely should win.


- angela aki. i like this girl's style. i don't know why, it just seems like if i ever met her i'd like her. plus, she plays the piano, so bonus! she's got a huge-o schnoz though, haha. that's the hapa-ness, well her father is japanese and her mother is american, she even moved to hawaii for a little bit and went to 'iolani high school and then college in washington, dc. here's a bonus:


- reading inspirational letters. i don't understand a lot of it because there's no subtitles, but every once in awhile between songs one of the singers will read a letter from some kid or someone inspirational, and they read it all sappy-like with this tone and rate of speech that is so horridly annoying! i hate it.


- reach and grab. similar to the cry-at-end-of-song, the reach and grab is another dramatic device that is used expertly by some middle aged enka singer named sayuri something. she sings a song of longing or something while looking completely torn and distraught the whole time, then on her very last note she reaches her hand out to grasp some invisible lover or something, but alas! no one is there! and she stumbles forward as her hand grasps at the empty air with tears in her eyes and stares straight into the camera! haha, the funny thing is she does it like every year... the exact same way.


- tendo yoshimi. okay, this lady is good. also, you can't see her eyes ever. she has like all pupil, there's no whites to her eyes, it makes her look uber-cool.


so after 5 hours the very last performer was my sister's favorite, hikawa kiyoshi, a young guy who all the teen girls and old housewives love because he looks like a mama's boy and sings enka. okay, so he sings enka very well, but he's probably comparable to a japanese clay aiken. he even does the hideous hip shakes when he sings, cringe. but, he went last, and he cried at the end, so the men won. as always.

so sad to be japanese...

had to add this on though... jake shimabukuro on the show like 2 years ago? he's pretty awesome i gotta admit, and i love this girl's voice, but not her weird-ass hand motions.