Notice to All Those Who Still Have “www.stylejapan.wordpress.com” on Their Blogrolls

It’s just about time you figured out that StyleJapan has moved here, yes, there’s a difference between the two, and if you had a link to the StyleJapan Report, that’s here. If you still haven’t changed your link, please do it now. 

StyleJapan Moves

Bye bye WordPress, hello unchained.nu! pengie kindly offered to give me space on her server, and now it has come true: StyleJapan and the StyleJapan Report have moved: new StyleJapan and new StyleJapan Report.

Change Has Come

No, I am not having a Barack Obama moment, nor am I feeling inspired by peace and change. Right now the issue would be the format of my writings and the fact that I am S-I-C-K A-N-D T-I-R-E-D of them. There you go. I’ve said it now. Track-by-track reviews are only fun to write when I actually feel terribly inspired, and that’s not exactly too often. It’s hard to express my feelings about entire albums in the short block I give the overall review at the end; the only advantage I could give the TBT format would be that I can hate songs that I hated when I first heard them even more because reviewing them makes me so entirely sick of them it makes me want to click on the little “x” on the side of the tab’s name and switch to Facebook or some other meaningless waste of time.

So now that I’ve ranted it about it and made myself a little bit irritable, I make the official proclamation: from now on, posts on StyleJapan will be written under the original reviewing format, as text, and I will simultaneously work on changing the format of any previous reviews. The order of switching reviews I have no idea of, and I will proceed to change reviews randomly. There will be a sidebar to notify you on any redone reviews. This is an irrevocable decision; I don’t care what you think about it.

News: the StyleJapan Report

I’ve been holding back on this since there isn’t all that much news to write about, but I’ve now made it come true. I just started a blog called the StyleJapan Report (horrible name, sorry), which will have the most recent news on the artists featured on this blog. The blog isn’t even an hour old as I write this, so I’ve only written one article, but there will be more coming. Go see…

I’m going to delete the “artist news” posts on this blog soon enough, and I will not transfer them. There will be weekly PVs, artist spotlights (so biographies of some sort), discussion posts, and more, in all to make the site more diverse than this one. I think I can make this blog into something good, so if you check this site every once in a while, please do the same for the other blog. Thank you for your support!

New Artists

I’m really thankful to pengie for introducing me to this group, because they’re pretty damn amazing. They debuted in October 2008 and quickly released their debut mini-album (which isn’t that mini) in November 2008, and are coming out with another single, Hoshi ni Negai wo, this month. I won’t review their singles because they’re digital, but I will review Unreal before Hoshi ni Negai wo comes out on the 25th. Check them out too!

Secondly comes someone I’ve been listening to for a while. Although I wasn’t quite sure whether I sure add her or not considering at that point I had only heard her material from PROMiSE. But I’m quite sure I want to feature her here after hearing ChaNge the WoRLd. So, between now and the 25th, I will review PROMiSE as well as flumpool’s Unreal. By the way, MiChi sideways was on purpose. Because I think she’s nuts. She’s got all the capitals messed up xD.

Coming in February

Nichika was going to be the featured artist for February, but, once again, I changed my mind last-minute and went for Mika Nakashima. I’m slightly disappointed with the banner and I might change it later, but it’s better than what I had made for Nichika. The reason I changed is that I have found myself recently obsessed by the title track of her second mini-album, Oborozukiyo~Inori (the kanji in the back say “oborozukiyo”). I can already tell you that alan is coming back for March, and depending on just how “usable” the cover for Voice of EARTH will be, it might be the picture I use.

SITE UPDATES AND NEWS

After a mere four months of running, StyleJapan (or stylejapan or Style Japan, but not STYLEJAPAN or STYLE JAPAN, I really don’t know exactly how I should write it, but I prefer StyleJapan) made it to the second rank on International Wota’s “judges’ choice” category. Of course, congratulations to everyone else who won. But OMG come on, I actually made it! After four months! Thank you to all those who visit my site, keep coming~

So that’s pretty much it. For the next two weeks, until the 18th, I’ll review #5, TRICK and Gunjou no Tani, and I’m going to pop in two features.

The Weekly Download

So you could call this an initiative to get more views. But today’s sink of under a hundred is sort of alarming (doubtlessly caused by the fact that my before-last review was five days ago), so I’ve decided to give this blog another little edge, called the weekly download. Go to the top of the post which is permanently on the front page of this blog, the “upcoming releases” post, and you’ll notice that there’s a download link. This is a download link which will be changed once every week, and will feature primarily underrated artists or hard-to-find singles, notably Nichika. This week’s is the Utada’s first English single since EXODUS, Come Back to Me. It’s quite different, more like a modern version of the stuff on First Love and Distance, but I like it. Before I review Gackt’s GHOST (out tomorrow, after a three-week period of no one releasing anything), I’m going to review it. Hope you enjoy the song as much as me!

Coming in January

I apologize for being late on this post, but the yearly reviews kept me from it until now. First of all, the banner and featured artist will not change until February because of my change of computer and I’m still trying to fight my way through to Adobe Illustrator CS4. The featured artist might be Asian Kung-Fu Generation, but whatever people release usually make me change my mind (when I first heard Rie fu’s romantic, it made me go crazy for her, so I changed the featured artist to her).

NEW ARTISTS

I probably won’t be adding artists this month, although I am considering a few, in particular Nanase Aikawa. But I wasn’t really impressed by PRISM, so I made back off.

VIEWS

December was another rise in views, and I have now passed the 200 views a day mark, although I haven’t done it many times after that. I got around 150 views a day in December, and January is already looking very promising with a new record of 246 views on the 7th. I’m stopping the whole complex week-by-week display because it’s annoying and pointless.

THEME CHANGE

A new theme called “Grid Focus” is out on WordPress, and I want to see if I can switch to it because I like it a lot. I’m hesitating because of the two sidebars, but it may be that in a few days I change the theme.

 

…so that was a very short recap. And now to the little surprise: it’s called Chi Bi – Da Jiang Dong Qu -, and it’s the Chinese version of Kyuuen no Kawa, alan’s single slated for (I’m supposing) this summer, after her debut album. Download here. Enjoy, because it’s even better than RED CLIFF – Shin, Sen -.

Happy New Year!

Happy new year everyone! I hope you’ve enjoyed 2008 (I’ll be honest—it was the worst year of my life until Christmas), and all I really wanted to do with this post was give a few updates on new stuff that I just discovered.

• The four reviews of the year are coming tomorrow (the 2nd of January), and reviews of Nichika’s Aijou (love—because it is unavailable on the internet, a download will be available for three days) and GIRL NEXT DOOR’s self-titled debut album are also coming.
• Nichika has a new single coming out on February 18th, and it’s called River’s Edge. It’s getting a decent amount of promotion, so I hope they’ll actually chart this time. A download will be available on that review for three days just like for Aijou. And the cover looks fantastic, a lot better than Aijou’s.

• Tommy heavenly6’s single Unlimited Sky’s PV has been released (link coming soon, but it’s available on jpopasia), and is set for release on the 25th of February.
• I haven’t changed my banner or my featured artist yet because I’m not on my computer, and I won’t be until this evening, but I will try to review something tonight, probably Aijou. The banner and featured artist will be changed later next week because friends are staying at are place for this week, and my computer is creating one problem after another for me.
• Kaori Mochida, Every Little Thing’s singer, is debuting this year, and her debut single, Ame no Waltz (rain waltz), will be released on January 28th. I haven’t heard it yet, but I will probably be reviewing it, even though I may change my opinion once I hear the song.

One bit of bad news: avex refuses to post information on alan. Still.

The Vote 2008

Instead of the four reviews of advent, I will simply be doing a “vote 2008″. The concept is the same, except that it is entirely based on user feedback. I’d appreciate your votes, so please go to the “The Vote 2008″ tab on the extreme right, above, and select among the options given your favorite: PV, single, album and artist. Please select the artist based on the artist’s performance this year, and not by being subjective. Utada Hikaru is not present in this year’s lineup for that reason.