Hip Hop Meets Anime/Manga @ Kinokuniya!

Last week on Saturday I attended the Valentine's Day Manga/Anime event at Kinokuniya hosted by Hip Hop USA and Samurai Beat Radio.
I was most interested by this event because of it's anime/hip hop fusion. How many times do such "different" interests come together? There was even a sneaker designing contest that unfortunately I was unable to attend (the guy in front of me was the last person to get a shoe! >__<)

Although the idea as a whole was great, the execution wasn't. I was left pretty unsatisfied by the hip hop panel since their discussions of anime in American hip hop failed to include artists like Lupe Fiasco and Soulja Boy. Vice versa, they never mentioned contemporary Hip Hop Japanese artists like Crystal Kay, Exile, and Jero.  Besides sneakers and the panel, there wasn't much else that was very hip hop about the whole event. Most of the people that attended were yaoi-fan otakus or never-see-the-sun otakus and it was disheartening because I expected to meet other anime/hip hop fans like me. Still I found a way to have fun and forced Atomsk to volunteer in the maid dating game! :3

Check out some pictures of the event below and a video of what Atomsk won!

Hope you all enjoyed the post & stay tuned for more!

La Tenoli

EVENT: JapanNYC Festival

Music lovers - hi, hello - this is for you!

(Look at what I found in yesterday's AM NY!)

JapanNYC Festival

Broaden your cultural and musical horizons and experience the "Winds and Strings of Change: Glories of the Japanese Traditional Music Heritage" in the first of this two-part concert series. 

Thursday(12/16), 6PM., FREE, 

Miller Theatre at Columbia University 2960 Broadway

carnegiehall.org 

And this is why I love NYC.

Uniqlo is also running ads over the course of the holiday season in AM NY, so if you haven't checked that out already, do so! ( btw, I'm impressed with not only Uniqlo's increased advertising, but also the positive results! Go go Uniqlo - lol )

Till the next hook up! 

La Tenoli

[ Music ] Crystal Kay's FLASH

FINALLY!
I'm only about 3 months late with this review, but it was worth the wait. I spent the weekend in Washington DC with my best friend. Lt. Mowgli and I got together and made this video for you guys ~ we had a lot of fun making it, so we hope you guys have just as much fun watching it.



Check out Lt. Mowgli's music blog THE LYRICAL HOTNESS - it's pretty bare at the moment, but posts should be flooding in soon!

Check out these other Crystal Kay songs (mentioned in our review)
Crystal Kay's FLASH video
KIRAKUNI video
NAMIDA NO SAKI NI video

THIS WEEKEND: Yaz Band (Fri) & NYJapanTown Festival (Sun)!

If you find yourself looking for something to do this weekend in New York City, don't fret.  If you're a Jazz and food lover - here are two events you don't want to miss!

Lt. Mowgli & La Tenoli 2009

But before I begin, I want to say THANK YOU LT. MOWGLI for last week's guest post! I know I kinda threw him into the mix without warning - my apologies. He's a really close friend, a fellow japanophile, and a DC native. Check out his guest post from last week about the French clothing brand OTAKU!



Moving on ...

YAZ BAND - Japanese guy from Osaka + Saxophone = Beautiful  music <3
Yes indeed. Last week while I was rushing around Penn Station trying to get to work, I had to stop and check out who was playing. Lulled in by the amazing sax playing, I quickly grabbed a flyer and business card and was out the "door". Now, I'm a sucker for jazz and unfortunately I've never been to a live jazz performance, so I was excited to learn about this Friday's YAZ BAND performance.
Here are the deets:

Time:

Friday, August 20th, 2010 9:00 PM EDT
Location:

DAJEH RESTAURANT
919 Fulton St. (between Clinton Ave and Wavery Ave)
Brooklyn, NY (718) 857-1616 http://www.dajeh.com/

Subway:

Take C train to Washington-Clinton subway station.
Seats are limited. Reservations are strongly recommended.
PRICE: $25 includes dinner NOTE: YAZ BAND will be playing at Dajeh Restaurant
from 9:00pm to 9:45pm.
Yaz Takagi (sax)// Eric Smith (Keyboards)// Tetsuya Sato (bass)// Tomo Kanno (Drums)

So you've got the romantic jazz date with your honey-bunches-of-oats on Friday night and on Sunday you have the fun day time brunch at the 2nd NYJapanTown Festival of the summer! Theme? Healthy foods. Now, I know for most the words "healthy foods" and "festival" don't really go together, but leave it to the Japanese to find a way to make it happen!

Healthy Food & Green Festival

Time:

Sunday August 22nd 11AM-6PM (Rain or Shine!)

Location:
Madison Avenue between 43rd and 45th Streets (Map)
Subway:
4, 5, 6 to Grand Central - 42nd Street Station

So there you have it peeps, a whole weekend of Japanese inspired fun!
In the midst of setting up a giveaway so stay tuned!

ja ne ~ :3

La Tenoli

Happy Birthday Tenoli-face!

One piece of good news. One piece of bad news. & an FYI

So let's start off with the bad news - ABC CANCELED UGLY BETTY! This was very upsetting because I've been watching this show since Day 1 - I remember sitting in my room / much like the one I have now (downgrade!)/ and watching S01E01 my freshman year of College. Guess the show was only meant to keep me sane till graduation. Great. ( In case you didn't know, I feed off Betty's clumsiness and energy)

Okay, so on to the good news! - I entered a flavorpill contest earlier in the month to win a book called THE FAITH OF GRAFFITI. In order to enter you had to comment with a tag name you use or would use if you tagged. So I entered:

[Tenoli] (te-no-lee) - It's a word I once made up to mean "cute" that quickly became my trademark, nickname, and the only word that could sum up all the qualities that make me who I am. Someone unique. An anomaly. Random. A melting pot's creation.

Last night I got an email from Flavorpill congratulating me for being one of the winners of the contest! - Two things about this make me stupid happy:

1. It's my first time winning anything in an internet contest!
2. The word "Tenoli" is what got me the prize!

When I get the book, I'll definitely let you know what I think of it. So yeah, Thanks Flavorpill for the early Birthday present! :) (@flavorpill)

FYI pieces of info.
For all the NYC people (Sorry non-New Yorkers)

Tomorrow, January 29th ( Tenoli's Birthday ! ! )

1. ASOBI SEKUSU ("playful sex") is going to be playing in NYC. It's a Japanese band that I heard about a while back. I'm a googler and youtuber of things so I quickly went to youtube and checked out some of their music, not my kind of thing, but hey, maybe someone out there will want to know or check it out. >>INFO HERE <<
2. HIP-HOP KARAOKE CHAMPIONSHIP @ Irving Plaza.
   >>INFO HERE<<

(via @flavorpill_nyc)

So go out, have fun this weekend and check out next week's Tenoli Tuesday post!
Ciao

-La Tenoli

怪談レストラン／Thriller Restaurant

It's been awhile since I've been interested in an anime. Lately I've been watching dramas instead, but even a good once seems hard to find.
I figured coming to Japan would definitely expose me to a lot of new anime, but I find a lot of anime I already know is still popular here in Japan. - That's not such a bad thing though, at least I feel somewhat caught up and in "the know". (i.e. Naruto, Bleach, Pokemon, Higurashi, Lucky Star, etc.)
Here are the titles of two dramas I'm currently watching. マイガール ( My Girl ) and おひとりさま (Miss Alone?).
Just last week I discovered a new anime. It falls into the horror, mystery, kids category. I find it interesting (reminds me of a Goosebumps, Are You Afraid Of The Dark? type of show) it's called 怪談レストラン／Thriller Restaurant and I'm not sure if a subbed version exists yet, but here's the ending theme - I'm already trying to find a download of the song. I'll post a link for that as soon as I find it.

Placeholder

While I'm half awake and unable to post anything of greater importance, enjoy this.

(I don't know how I found this, but I'm really glad I did)

"I wanna be a Pop Star"

Wow.

There isn't much I'm going to post right now, but this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an8ZbPWCTqE

But don't watch it for to long, you might go brain dead.
Wow, no wonder they made fun of this song on TV.