Please check out the kulture jammin' on Gwen Stefani's new TV CM for TARGET's Harajuku Mini (which repurposes the “Harajuku Lovers” perfume ad that you posted in your article above) at: http://news.3yen.com/2011-11-12/oh-how-the-mighty-have-fallen/

"...thinking it'd be some nice traditional stuff, and maybe it is. What do I know. But it's bluesier and more guttural than what would be used to represent the traditional..." The traditional folk music is from Okinawa--aka the Kingdom of Ryukyu--until the butthead Japanese started raiding it 1600s. Japan only annexed Okinawa 1868, so the cultural feel of the music is quite different than mainstream Japanese. Okinawan music is "bluesier" for the same reason as the Blues: The Okinawan people have been subjugated for centuries (and in some ways continue to be). The upside-down photo on the right-hand portion of the CD reads something like 'Folksongs of Okinawa, various artists'. If you post a larger scan so that the bottom left corner of the CD cover is legible where it says "TBCI 1100-38"(???) and state the track number of the MP3 selection, I could tell you the name of the song, artist, etc.

---"...I have not heard all of Nordine's recordings, so I don't know how much of this speech may contain elements of things he later released..."--- I've heard Nordine do the "I'm Double" riff in 1-SetUp(MP3) several times on his NPR WordJazz show---It's one his favorite shticks.

Why do you think that the cute robot Keepon dancing to " You Evah," which already was hyper-popular in the first half of 2007, all of a sudden is trending again on Twitter and YouTube? Weird. http://news.3yen.com/2007-08-18/beat-bot-bopping-in-akiba/

I would love to say that Hello Kitty Water was the fault of some "Hollywood company" but actually Fillico is a Japanese company that set up a shell company in Hollywood. Fillico never even bothered to post an engRish version of their Hello Kitty Water website.

As Chris Kuan said, "the space between the knees and ankles of a person who has "O-legs", the shape is a little bit like a mango." Additionally, the Americans who were calling them "mango legs" may have known the Japanese word for 'lady bits' that results if the unvoiced consonant "G" in mango is replaced with a voiced consonant.

After climbing Fuji san 3 times, I can attest that Mount Fuji already BLOWS! http://ta.gd/Fuji-blows!

mari wrote: "I think our prime minister has strange taste for shirts...orz.!" I like how Prime Minister Hatoyama is ironically-wearing 1990 vintage Versace, which is normally reserved for hipsters like Lada Gaga. http://news.3yen.com/2010-04-05/less-than-ideal-cherry-blossom-time-in-tokyo/

Yes, yes, I understand that these guys the ‘Small World’ Cavemen. Still, it's very strange thing that there were at least three pro groups of "Caveman" recording ALL IN THE SAME YEAR, 1966. ---New Jersey’s Cavemen (‘Small World’) in the YouTube ---Buffalo’s Cavemen (‘All About Love’) at Fine Recording Studios --- Florida's Cavemen ('It's Trash') whose singers, Jabour and Rey, came from the Coachmen and Jabour finally went on to the Vanilla Fudge

I found one website with an odd factoid about Cavemen groups... Not to be confused with New Jersey’s Cavemen (‘Small World’), Buffalo’s Cavemen recorded the great ‘All About Love’ at Fine Recording Studios in 1966. --via http://www.60sgaragebands.com/cavemen.html