Japanese Pop Culture

I really don't have a clue as to what the names of any of Japan's most popular pop culture symbols are, besides perhaps SMAP and KREVA. And I've never understood why all (or most) of the English letters in band names have to be all CAPITAL LETTERS. It's a little bothersome to me, like the group members didn't realize they left the keyboard in caps lock when they emailed the band name to the label.

Despite my lack of knowledge in the realm of pop music culture, I've been watching a lot more TV and listening to this one girl... Utada Hikaru... do you know her?

Apparently she's quite famous here in Japan, although she lives in New York right now, making albums for the other hemisphere... in English! This week you can download her music video, "Come Back to Me," for free. I believe it's because she's trying to get more popular in America, but to me her English albums aren't so hot. It's almost helpful not to fully understand what she sings when I hear the Japanese albums, because truthfully, her views of love, loneliness, and cheating make her come off as superficial.

Also, the interactive media industry, more commonly known as the 'video games' industry, in Japan has been losing to America nowadays; the franchises that the companies have depended on for so long are starting to lose their appeal, and rehashed versions of the same games are starting to starting to appear on store shelves.

Gone is the time when having a brand new experience for a weekend or two consists of owning one system hooked up to a television set, with game cartridges, their boxes, their manuals, and a strategy guide. With the advent of high speed Internet, our cartridges, which have been already turned into DVDs at this point, are becoming downloadable, losing the box and any proof of its existence.

No more occasions for your friends to come over, see your Final Fantasy collection, and reminisce deeply about beating the final boss of the seventh iteration. It's all on your computer, or at least it's getting there.

This is critical to Japanese pop culture because this is telling the companies that yes, it's okay for me to spend money on something that I'll have to buy again and again if I can't have a physical copy. But maybe this is the only way to progress, since we have limited space and resources here.

For any of the commenters out there, what do you think about this? Is it better to spend money on something that's not physical (DVD movies, music CDs, video game discs, cartridges, etc.) or is it better to have these things for the sake of sentiment? Tell me why!

Here's a link: kotaku.com