Holy Sh*t! Man Who Was Swept 15 Kilometers Out to Sea by Tsunami Survives Floating on His House!?

It's nearly one year since the terrible earthquake and tsunami disaster of March 11, 2011. There are probably many memorial services going on that day. I will go to Ishinomaki that morning.

Here's a story I just found from the Telegraph UK: The man who floated out to sea on his house remembers the tragedy:

Nearly one year after he was rescued floating on the roof of his destroyed home 10 miles out to sea, Hiromitsu Shinkawa says all that he wants now is a peaceful life. Shinkawa, 61, moved to an apartment in the city of Kawasaki in August of last year to be closer to his daughter and 2-year-old grandson, but will be returning to the town of Minami Soma for the anniversary of the event that made his miraculous escape front-page news around the world.

When he was rescued by a passing warship on March 13 - 43 hours after he was swept out to sea by the retreating tsunami - Hiromitsu gulped down an energy drink and immediately burst into tears. "I thought today was the last day of my life," he told his rescuers.

Shinkawa and his wife, Yuuko, had returned to their home after Japan's magnitude-9 earthquake on March 11 to try to save some of their possessions, but were caught by the tsunami. Shinkawa was on the second floor of the house when the wave crashed through the windows. (Read more here.)


What's also incredible is that, don't forget, it was winter and snowing when this disaster hit so it was freezing cold. It's a miracle that this guy didn't die from exposure.

By the way, my friends Michio Hashimoto and Ken Nishikawa who went with me to Ishinomaki right after the disaster last year (and Ken and I made the documentary) will be going up again on March 11 this year. We are going to go look for the Japanese couple who were in our documentary (below) and take them gifts and see how they are doing. We also plan to shoot another documentary about "one year after."


The original documentary, "Ishinomaki - The Black Water" is here:

Police Raid Clubs in Tokyo Hosted by Porn Stars and Arrest Managers - More Nonsense From the Police and Wasting Tax Money - Yes, There are Photos. Why Do You Ask?

The headlines read: Japanese Big Bust! Cops Raid Shinjuku and Roppongi Clubs Staffed by AV Actresses, Idols (AV means "Adult Video"). Here we go again....

Adult video star and extremely sexy Japanese idol Shoko Akiyama worked 

as a waitress. Hell, a girl has to live, pay rent and bills and eat, right?

Here I am once again on a wonderfully bright Saturday morning and I get more news across my desk about how the idiots in the Japanese police are wasting time and tax monies busting clubs that ostensibly make their money offering services to clients.


In this case, are you sitting down? The police arrested club owners because the girls actually sat down and talked with their customers! Heavens!

Japanese Sex Star Rio Natsume owned one of the other clubs

On the job as always, the Tokyo Reporter has the asinine story:

TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police raided two hostess clubs staffed by adult video (AV) actresses and pin-up models for licensing violations, reports Nikkan Gendai (Feb. 28).

On February 24, officers took managers Yuji Isa, 51, and Hiroaki Kato, 30, and two other employees of club Pippi, located in the Roppongi and Shinjuku entertainment areas, into custody for allowing female staff members to sit and serve at the same table as customers — a violation of the Law Regulating Adult Entertainment Businesses.

Pippi is a variation of a hostess club and termed a “girl's bar” which are clubs legally registered as eating-and-drinking establishments that under the adult-entertainment law are not allowed to offer personal one-on-one companionship. (Read more here).

Can you believe this idiocy? The police raided this place and arrested the owners because the staff sat at the same tables as customers? Someone kill me, will ya?


Yes, I know that there is "something behind girls sitting at a table with customers" (meaning prostitution). But so what? If some guy wants to pay some girl some money to pull his yang, why should you or I care?


Do you realize how much money it costs to plan and raid one of these places with a dozen police and arrest people? For what? For sitting at tables!?


When, oh when will people wake up and put a stop to this? This is a victimless crime. Hell, it's not even a crime. What is the problem with the waitresses sitting at the table with the customers and talking fer Chrissakes? If anything the bar owner should be mad for his staff sitting on their duffs and not doing any work and drinking the profits.

Sexy Japanese AV star Asami Tada was a founder of one of the clubs

I feel like a broken record: We are nearly bankrupt. Our national debt is over 299% of GDP and the idiot police are out chasing skirts.


What a bunch of jerks. You know that these police are getting their jollies by intentionally targeting these places because they want to see these adult video actresses! Hell, I do and you do too! That's why I wrote this post and that's why you clicked the link to read it. But we don't act like we're looking at these girls because we think it is bad or because of "research" (unless, of course, our wives catch us viewing!... Chuckle!)... 


The cops actually spending time and tax money planning and executing arrests and raids like this is complete and total madness. Like I said, if some guy wants to pay some girl some money to do him "a favor," do you care? On a different level, does making it a crime stop the behavior? No it doesn't.


The government legislating morality is just pointless, nonsense and a waste of tax money (yours and mine). 


This isn't even prostitution! But that is the inferred suggestion here is that the police are stopping prostitution before it can happen. What a crock of BS!


We don't need laws against victimless crimes like prostitution, gambling, drugs and we especially don't need laws against waitresses sitting at table with customers. If I run an establishment I think it is my right to decide whether or not my staff are allowed to sit with customers or not.


This is a good example how laws on morality twist common sense and logic:


I certainly shouldn't be raided because my staff are not running around waiting on ten tables at once or taking orders. Those girls are doing what they were hired to do. It's their job... You know, as in "gainful employment." Like contributing to the economy of society rather than the cops who are tax feeders and obstructing business?


If the girls aren't doing their jobs, it's the duty of the manager to make them do their jobs. As a taxpayer I certainly shouldn't be paying the police to stop it.


What next? Police raids on Denny's for staff who are goofing off and aren't doing their jobs?

"Japan's children of the tsunami " BBC program in full. First aired 1st March 2012

Thanks to EK-SKF Blogspot

Dead Sushi - Soon to Be "Classic" Japanese Cinema

Oh, modern Japanese cinema has outdone itself this time.... For the first time this week! 

Dead Sushi. Attack of the Killer Sushi. Here's the trailer for Noboru Iguchi's newest! Another low-grade splatter horror film from Japan! 

Rina Takeda will kick your a*s... 

Actually she probably could as she really can do karate!

It's sushi erotica starring Rina Takeda Japan's real karate girl actress!

Japan has been coming out with a lot of this gore type of b-grade horror flick.

Yukie Kawamura is HOT! HOT! HOT!

Who could forget the hit "Vampire Girl Versus Frankenstein Girl" starring hot and sexy Japanese star Yuki Kawamura?

Thanks to film critic, Ken Nishikawa

Corporate Rock Music is Terribly Boring - Fuji Rock is For Old People - Had Kenny Rogers Been Born 20 Years Later, He'd Be a Rock Musician and Probably Appearing at Fuji Rock

Rock music, for the most part, is totally and completely boring. No wonder many young people under 35 don't listen to it. Today's corporate Rock music is for old people.

Average Fuji Rock fan

I just saw the news release for this year's artist line up at Japan's famous summer festival, Fuji Rock. May I say, "Boring!" No. Make that BORING! B-O-R-I-N-G! There's not one new and exciting artist on the top lineup at all... Here's the announced line up for Fuji Rock 2012 so far:


Beady Eye (Oasis retreads - Oasis were OK 20 years ago)
Elvis Costello and the Attractions (Loved Elvis... in 1979!)
Stone Roses (Loved them in the 80s & early 90s - but that's more than 20 years ago)
Radiohead (Ditto to above)
Jack White (White Stripes, Dead Weather, ho hum... At least Dead Weather has been in the last decade)
The Specials (Loved them - When I was a university student)
Buddy Guy (Buddy Guy? Wait! What?) 


I said there were no cool new artists on the bill, but I take that back. Galactic is playing. Galactic is cool. Galactic is relatively new and doing something fresh with music.

Galactic - Heart of Steel

But that's about it; Galactic. 


Look, I like(d?) rock music as much as the next guy but this playing old artists all the time is just killing rock music (it's already dead?) I certainly loved Elvis Costello and the Attractions. I went to see them in 79 (or was it 80?) in Santa Barbara. The Specials, Stone Roses? Sure. A long time ago. I even saw Buddy Guy play at a 300 person venue in Shibuya called Club Quattro in the late 80s...


I know that Fuji needs to draw an audience and I know that older people are the ones that have the most money, but Jeez Louise, how about at least trying to propagate new artists and new music for the future? There's tons of good new artists... How about playing one or two of them? 


I liked these other artists that Fuji has lined up. I've played them all on the radio - a lot. Still do sometimes. But there's no way I am going to pay $1000 USD to spend a weekend with my girlfriend at Fuji Rock watching artists that should be playing in cozy 500 seater venues in downtown Tokyo. Especially since the sound at outdoor festivals is terrible and seeing any band at Fuji Rock is about as fun as lining up at Disneyland for an hour and a half just to ride Dumbo for two minutes. 


No thanks.


With a boring line up of old artists that they have set up for this year's Fuji Rock, I'm surprised The Who aren't playing. At least with the Who, you know you'll be getting a tired band on stage that hasn't written any new songs in 35 years. No surprises there...

♫ People try to put us down... 

Talking about our ge...ge...geriatrics ♫

I'll make a prediction here: 


No more Fuji Rock in 15 years. They can't survive. At this rate their average audience will be on Social Security by then.


With this type of line up, the Fuji Rock fan appeal is, let me put this nicely (or as Spinal Tap's Ian Faith would say) "the band's appeal is not waining... it's becoming 'more selective.'" 


Yeah, more selective to people over 45-years-old... Or is that exaggerating? OK. More selective for people over 55!


I'm not a particularly big fan of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson or Adele (actually Adele is okay) but at least these artists appeal to people under 30. The Fuji Rock lineup? What? Is this designed for the geriatric crowd? 


Maybe this year's Fuji Rock can get sponsorships from companies that make and sell products that do things like lower cholesterol levels or other companies that sell adult diapers or medicine for constipation.


Oh, did I mention that Fuji Rock's lineup this year is boring?


I also have Kenny Rogers's name in the title of this article. Most people know who Kenny Rogers is. Kenny Rogers is a very famous country music artist in the USA. He might even be the most famous country music artist in history. He has had more than 120 hit singles in his career. What Michael Jackson was to Pop Music, Kenny Rogers was to country music.


But one thing many people don't know was that, at the start of his career, Kenny Rogers was the lead vocalist for a late sixties psychedelic rock band named the First Edition. In fact, the First Edition was a famous group that had several smash hits - on the pop/rock and country music charts in the sixties psychedelic era! 

Kenny Rogers' band, the First Edition was formed in 1967 and broke up in 1976. It was then that Kenny Rogers made an important career decision: He dropped pop and rock music for a career in country music because of his age. He thought that rock music was music for young people (it was) and at his age, if he was going to continue in music, he'd have to go the route of country music that found it acceptable to have older artists. Rock was a young person's arena. Country and Western had many popular artists who were in their late sixties, like Ernest Tubb, and some, like Earl Scruggs, who is in his eighties and still performing country music today!  


Too bad for Japan's rock music fans that Kenny Rogers quit pop and rock music for a career in country. Now, at his ripe old age of 74 years old, Kenny would fit quite well on the main stage of Fuji Rock....


In fact, Kenny wouldn't even be the oldest one to perform on stage if he were invited to Fuji Rock this year. That would be reserved for Buddy Guy, who is two years older than Kenny Rogers.


Fuji Rock? My what a cool and cutting edge lineup up... If you were born in the 1950s. Pretty soon they'll be having to give senior citizen's discounts for Fuji Rock.


Don't forget to get in line for that... Oh and don't forget, senior citizens get a 20% discount.

Why Good UK and USA (Western) Independent and Alternative Artists Cannot Get Record or Publishing Deals in Japan

In the last month, I've had three different artists' managers and agents from the USA, Ireland and Britain ask me for help in getting them a release deal or a music publishing deal in Japan. These people ask me because I play a lot of new and independent music on the FM radio. Perhaps they also know I used to run one of Japan's most successful Indies labels (in the late 80s & early 90s) and I have been involved with alternative music and the promotion of that kind of music since the late 70s.

Today, I'd like to write a short post about why it is next to impossible for an unsigned independent artist in the west to get a record or publishing deal in Japan in the year 2012. I do this to help people and I do this to help myself because I've written this explanation more times than I care to and don't want to do it anymore. 


This example though, I'm sure, is not just limited to the music industry. I think this example is a microcosm for all industries across the board in Japan when it comes to subsidiaries and licencing product across international boundaries.


Let me give you specifics.


I can think of three artists that I really like and have been playing on our nightly FM radio show. These artists have also hit the Top 5 Japan countdown. You can see that chart here.
Because of this support and these efforts to bring new music to Japan, I have earned the reputation for being the guy who finds these new artists and plays them years before they break even in the west. May I pat myself on the back? Recent examples were Amy Winehouse who we began playing heavily in 2006, a full two years before she she broke big and, more recently, Adele who was introduced to me by Rodney Bingenheimer. I was the first one to play these artists in Japan years before they got popular even in the west. Over the years there were hundreds. Guns and Roses was another notable one way back when. 


Like I said, this is an example, a microcosm, of how other businesses in Japan work also. If there is a parent company and a subsidiary involved you can be sure that politics play a big part in all decisions that are made... This point is obvious but many artists fail to grasp this.


In the past, I have also introduced independent artists to Japanese record labels and music publishers and have gotten them contracts. But that was well before the year 2000. Japanese labels and music publishers today are not interested in signing new western acts for the Japanese market and here's why...


Let's take the example of a world-wide label like Warner music. Warner in the USA releases hundreds of albums annually. Of those hundreds of albums, only a handful get released in Japan. It is unclear how the process for deciding which artists' albums get released in Japan is made. Ostensibly, it would be a decision founded on which artists' album the local label people believe would be most popular and sell the best, but I would be a fool to tell you that is exactly how it is done. I have been in Japan long enough to know that politics and favors are quite important in the decision room. I know that sometimes the good of the company is sacrificed in order to placate some employees' desires and wishes. 


I have witnessed, more than five times in my life, adult Japanese men over 40-years-old of age, actually crying or pouting like little children at business meetings because they didn't get their way. I've seen this in the last month, actually! Grown men crying like children! It was astounding. 


So remember that, perhaps, sometimes an album is released just because Mr. Tanaka is a fan of that artist even though the rest of the staff don't feel that it will sell well... And when it doesn't sell well? Does Mr. Tanaka suffer any penalty? Not immediately and perhaps never. In a few years he might be transferred to another section.


Ever heard of the Peter Principle? If you haven't you should. The Peter Principle says that, "In a hierarchy, every employee will rise to their highest level of incompetence." That, in a nutshell is one of the biggest reasons I can see why business is bad in today's Japan.


But I digress.


The western arm of the label releases hundreds of artists a year. In Japan, only a few of those are released. Politics play a big part. Now, when hundreds are not released, what would happen if the Japanese side arbitrarily picked up an artist from, say, London who wasn't signed to the sister or parent label and released that artist in Japan? Well, you can bet that the sister or parent company would soon find out about it and they would be very pissed off. It would become a major political problem for the western label (destroy their credibility in the local market) and it would then become a major political problem for the Japanese side too.


The western arm of the label would say (of course), "Hey! We have all these other artists that we released. Why don't you release one of those? Why don't you help us promote our artists?" A big row would ensue. And people would be angry and relationships frayed or destroyed.


The Japanese, not being ones to want to make trouble, would rather decline unilaterally signing an artist from the west - one that, by the way, doesn't even have management that the Japanese side has a relation with - so if there is trouble, they have no one to blame. 


The Japanese just won't do it.

Suddyn, one of the best bands in the world today? Not signed in Japan.

There is one more problem. In spite of what you've heard, western artist CDs and album sales have dropped off a cliff in this country. Even Lady Gaga and Coldplay are second rate in this country compared to Japanese artists. 


In the west, you have the Billboard charts. In Japan, we have the Oricon charts. They are both corrupted by payola but they are what we use. To see the most recent Oricon charts, we have to subscribe and pay money. There's no way I'm going to pay money for that so here's the most recent Oricon Chart Top 30 chart that we can see for free. It's from Nov. 11, 2011. See if you recognize any names on the Top 30:

See any Adele? Lady Gaga? Katy Perry or Flo Rida? No? Neither do I and you will rarely, if ever, see them on any Japanese charts. Like I said, sales of western artists have dropped off a cliff in Japan. 


There won't be any recovery of those sales anytime soon, either.


Understanding these things, then you can see why your band, unsigned in the west, has a basically zero chance of getting signed here in Japan. I hate to break this news to you good folks and great musicians but it is what it is. Don't take it personally at all if a Japanese label or publisher doesn't answer your inquiries about your music. It's not about the music anymore.


Imagine if there were a time slip and your band were the Beatles, as yet undiscovered in 2012 and unsigned to a label in the west, there's no way a Japanese label will sign you for release in Japan. It has nothing to do with your music and your talent and gift; it has everything to do with intra-company politics.


John Lennon and Paul McCartney, if they were 18 years old today, would have a major problem. And that's why the major music industry is dying.


Good riddance?




For Linda, Margaret, Jp and Allison

Wazoo TV Commercials - Funny Japanese TV Commercials

My good friend and partner in video and cinema, Ken Nishikawa, recently finished several TV commercials for an online ticketing service in Japan called Wazoo.jp.

George Williams (top) Sheena Rogers (bottom)

I directed the commercials and camera work was by Ken Nishikawa and we both edited them together with Ken doing all the hard work and me sleeping on the sofa.


The commercials are all in Japanese (duh! This is Japan) but hopefully you can enjoy them.


The first one is a play on words and makes fun of game shows.


The main character, George Williams, says, 
"What is the best thing for your life's prosperity?"
"Cheese?"
"Kazu?" (meaning King Kazu a famous soccer player)
"Mazu?" (meaning Mazui - tastes bad)
"Wazoo!"

Starring, in order: George Williams, Wray Rogers. Michio Hashimoto, Sheena Rogers

The second in the series is a parody of a very famous 80's TV commercial. In the original TV commercial, Japanese businessmen used a stop smoking aid called "Paipo." Here is the original commercial:

The first guy holds up the Paipo and says, "With this I stopped smoking." The second guy does and says the same thing. The third guy holds up his pinky finger and says, "With this, I quit my job." In Japan, holding up a pinky finger means "having a girlfriend" or "woman." The joke is that it insinuates he is married and was having an affair at work so he was forced to quit (by his wife or boss, we don't know).


Here is our commercial parody:

We parody the same commercial, but, at the end, the third gentlemen holds up three fingers like a "W" meaning Wazoo. And he says, "With this I made an event!"  Wazoo is an D.I.Y. online social media ticketing service for events and allows regular people to sell advanced tickets for all their events, get-togethers, and seminars without having to pay outrageous sums to the standard ticket agencies. It also allows for companies to do data mining so that they can research their users. See Wazoo's site here: http://www.wazoo.jp/ (Sorry Japanese only for now). 


There's a few more commercials in the series. I hope to have some more perhaps later this year or next year. Making TV commercials is fun.


NOTE: The first TV commercial began running on the TV Tokyo network on Feb. 1, 2012. The Paipo parody was, unfortunately, banned because of political correctness as the stations said some women's group complained that the upright pinky finger is discriminatory to women.