Peter's Japan blog

Danny Choo, you may know him better as the Dancing Storm Trooper, but also as an active blogger about Japan and Otaku culture (he no longer sees it as a sub-culture). He has been networking a lot, many collaborations and his company is gaining more and more momentum. He has come so far now that he started his own animation studio called Mirai Fusion. They will be producing their first anime called "Chinka".
The story is about a fire brigade of cute girls who will fight with water against an evil fire devil.
And of course, Mirai Suenaga makes an appearance as well. You can read more about the story on his blog: http://www.dannychoo.com/post/en/25532/Chinka+Illustrations.html

And here is the first preview of the new anime, enjoy:

And yet another new PV (I think this is the last one), and we now also have the full song of Lady Dynamite, and I really like it :) I'm sooo looking forward for the concert!!

Enjoy!

And the updates keep coming in as PV's keep on airing! Another quite strange PV, but cool ;p Is nicely glued to the Microphone PV at the end.

Here's the PV for Sexy Little Things:

Lady Dynamite PV looks and sounds nice ;p
A crazy director though ^^. Also, it seems that the album will only have 1 intro and 2 interludes, that is only 3 non-full songs on the album, usually there are 4 of them lately. So that means more new songs! ;p

Enjoy this new trailer for the third season of Black Lagoon, known to be an OVA called "El Baile de la Muerte" about Roberta, to be released somewhere this year. Let's hope there's enough Revy action left though ;p
And if this is the new title song, it's awesome, even if it's just an instrumental version.
Can't wait!

Another song has 'leaked' from Ayumi Hamasaki's new album Rock'n'Roll Circus, this time it is "Don't Look Back". It's got a very unexpected musical style that we're not used to with Ayu, although we could say we can expect it as she's practically done any style before. A very oriental/arabic feeling, enjoy:

This awesome song gets an awesome PV !
Microphone from the new album Rock'n'Roll Circus!

It's finally there, the first new full song from the new album: Microphone.
This song is a bomb, it's EPIC with a capital E! I think this has to be the heaviest song she's ever done. I'm so looking forward to the PV and the rest of the album!

Enjoy the song, no PV yet!

Update March 18th 2010: yes another update, cover for the Next Level Tour DVD and the Rock'n'Roll Circus Limited Box Set!

Update March 17th 2010: the updates seem to be flowing in, the track listing has been disclosed! Apparently 15 tracks in stead of the 14 announced earlier. And she really went crazy again, loving Lady Dynamite :D

Update March 14th 2010: ALBUM COVERS ! Really loving those covers! And this explains why we weren't allowed to take any pictures that day :)
I waited for real info to become available to write this post, so here it is. Today the title of Ayumi's 11th studio album was announced, being: Rock'n'Roll Circus (as was the title of this year's concert tour). So even though it seemed like a strange name, it did actually become the album title :)

The Arena Tour 2009 DVD will be released at the same time. In all there will be 4 variations, including a very special limited box with a tea cup and some black tea :) No covers yet though. Let me list all the versions:

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Here is the long-awaited TeamAyu tutorial guide thing that I've made. This is to help people from outside of Japan to enter and enjoy the official Ayumi Hamasaki TeamAyu fanclub.
I just made this in a few hours and it is bound to contain some spelling mistakes and stuff. And I need to clean up the styling a bit more as well, but it's 2am now and I wanted to get it out quickly, so there's bound to be more version to follow ^^. So here it is, enjoy, and feel free to ask questions :-)

TeamAyu Tutorial Guide PDF (version 1.0) (846k)

You may distribute it freely as long as you keep the PDF as a whole and/or link back to this page, as there will be updates following.

After having used (and tried to use) some forwarding services, I can do some recommendations and where to stay away. I will only talk about the ones that I have experience with. (so I don't know for example for Celga)

First you have to see what you want to use it for:

1. you want to bid on Yahoo Auctions (JapanToDoor, Akibado; Celga also does this, but no experience with)

2. you want to buy stuff from online shops which don't ship overseas (99.9% don't)

   1. You cannot read Japanese, but can find the product page (JapanToDoor, Akibado)
   2. You can read some Japanese and can register on the online shop yourself, but you need an address in Japan: Tenso, JapanToDoor
3. You want to join the official fan club of your favorite artist: Tenso, JapanToDoor

First up, the ones to stay away from:
- Mail Box Japan (www.mailbox1.jp): complete hoax, at least it was for me, tested it with a magazine a year ago, got nothing, no mail of arrival.
- Akibado (www.akibado.com): they used to be good for both online buying and bidding on YAJ (even a real-time automated bidding service), but they were a bit slow, and got slower and slower, and now I've been mailing for more than a year, to have them send my last items which had not been shipped to me yet.

That leaves the last 2 which I have also used and were successful and reliable. Both were advertised on DannyChoo.com, which usually means they are reliable. Both have free registration.

• JapanToDoor (www.japantodoor.com):
  Rather expensive, they have three different account types with different service fee systems depending on your needs, but they do offer a very complete service, from online shopping, auction bidding and providing an address in Japan to send mail to. But, they are rather expensive... And one downside to the provided address in Japan, you have to inform them within 2 weeks in advance, that a letter or package will arrive at your address, or they won't accept it... Read their website for all service fee systems.
  Ideal for: online shopping (without Japanese knowledge), auction bidding
• Tenso (tenso.com):
  Basicly provides you with an address in Japan and low service fees. They can also consolidate some items. For what I have used them at this time, they charge 490yen per item forwarded, plus shipping to your country of course. They also have a handy tool for copying your japanese address in parts.
  Ideal for: online shopping (with ability to use or decipher Japanese websites including YAJ), artist fan club

Both sites accept PayPal, and JapanToDoor also accepts credit cards.

NOTE: I know there are other 3rd-party service provider that are known to be trustable like Celga, fdjp, etc. but I have not used them before, so I cannot say anything about them. These two don't provide you an address in Japan though, just online shopping and bidding.

Today I've gotten my first TeamAyu and P.T.A. stuff in the mail!! After I saw other fans in London that also had TeamAyu membership cards, I just had to do it too. I had put it off for too long while all the means were there. And also last year, when I was at the Perfume concert "Disco!Disco!Disco" they sold fanclub-exclusive t-shirts, which I liked much more than the regular t-shirt!
So, when I got back home between the 2 weekends in London, I looked up a good mail forwarding service which was easy, simple, not too expensive and good for receiving mail. There are two that are very good and trusted (tenso.com and japantodoor.com), but JapanToDoor requires you to notify them when something will arrive within 2 weeks prior. Although afterwards, you do get emails when the fan clubs are going to send you something, but tenso.com is easier and cheaper. But I'll go more into detail about that in a later post about actually using them.

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