Takanaka Naoto is especially good as the eccentric lech / famous conductor Strausburg. The supporting cast is great (lots of funny characters) and the story is charming and draws you in despite being filled with silly moments. All of this also occurs while Chiaki discovers a deeper love of music and begins conducting a student orchestra (of misfits) of which Nodame plays a large part. They meet by accident (don't they always?) and Nodame quickly falls for Chiaki while he takes much longer to come around. She also is eccentric, lazy and pretty strange.
Megumi Noda (Noda Megumi = Nodame) is a piano student who wishes only to use her talent to become a kindergarten teacher. Chiaki is a serious, arrogant and impatient piano student who wishes to become a conductor. Nodame Cantabile is primarily a comedy / drama following the love story between two very different people set in the backdrop of a school for music in Japan. There are some dramas that are almost iconic in nature to the foreigners (like me) who follow Japanese dramas and Nodame definitely falls into this category. Nodame Cantabile is a very successful Japanese manga (and later anime) that was made into a very popular Japanese drama. I highly recommend you check out this talented act as they continue on their way up and up. Ikimono-gakari keeps getting better and better. Ikimono-gakari - Kimagure Romantic (Subtitled): Another great example of their songs with a very fun and upbeat song with a great video. The song is about saying (Yelling) goodbye as you move on to other things in your life, graduating (literally and figuratively) to new things. Ikimono-gakari - Yell (Subtitled): Great example of their songs, a very moving ballad that captures the spirit of the younger people in Japan. Their version of YELL during this year's Kohaku was a high point of the show and garnered them a lot of recognition.
They have been popular for a few years but seem on the verge of becoming huge stars. They are very grounded individuals, even now after 4 albums and a ton of hit singles. The first time I ever saw her (and the band) was during a New Years special where they seemed absolutely overwhelmed to meet the other artists in the show and seemed overjoyed to be allowed to participate. She does not have the greatest voice, but she makes up for it in terms of feeling and attitude. It's a good name for a band that is very playful but also makes very moving pop songs. Ikimono-gakari is a term used for a child who looks after the plants and animals that belong to the class. (The other two members would sing occasionally as well back when they were indie, but only Kiyoe really sings now.) All three members participate in the writing of the music. Kiyoe, the singer is female while the other two members are male. Ikimono-gakari is a three piece pop-rock band that came onto the scene in Japan in 2007 after a few years performing on the street and releasing albums on independent labels. I was rooting against her (Mao-chan all the way!), yet I was amazed by her performance. I was also proud of the american, Mirai Nagasu who was CLEARLY (inarguably) the third best skater out there, cheated out of a medal by judges who mistook a heroic performance for a medal worthy one.Īs for Yu-Na Kim, what else can you say? (Besides a big FU to the Korean Media, who needs to chill and let her live her life, and a bigger FU to the haters, people who desparately want her to fall.) She was magnificient.
It's not gold, but that silver medal represents great heart and determination for what is a very young girl. Note: The figure skating was great! I was so proud of Mao-Chan (Mao Asada) as she showed great poise in pretty difficult circumstances (her second performance, coming after Yu-Na Kim basically finished the greatest showing in Olympic histor had to be terribly hard). There will still be no downloads, but maybe a more liberal video site. So I'm taking a brief hiatus to figure out another way to get the videos up. I do nothing but provide information and help others discover some talents they might not yet know about. I don't provide even a smidgen of anything that would hurt an artist.
Note to stalker (and to Japanese music companies being b*tchy here), I don't provide download links. This makes a lot of my introductions to artists kind of pointless, as you can't really get the flavor. Ok, I have a stalker from a Japanese site who is getting my videos removed.