You're Easy Breezy and I'm Japanese-y

Although I enjoy more than the occasional Japanese film, I must say the music in these parts has failed to capture my interest in any way. The closest thing I've found to a decent Japanese indie-rock group is Eastern Youth, but they, like almost all Japanese bands I've stumbled upon, are a bit over produced for my tastes and pale in comparison to the American bands they list as their influences. The singer does get points for dressing up like Enid from Ghost World for no apparent reason, though.

My students are no help. In various classes I've given out "about me" surveys where the students are supposed to list their favorite Japanese and international bands. In the international category all but one student listed Michael Jackson's "Thriller" as their favorite song. The one that differed? He picked NOFX's "Bob", so he is my new favorite simply because he has the exact same taste in music as I did when I was a freshman in high school. There is always one and only one kid who differs from the crowd in each class. In another class when I surveyed students about their favorite movies I got 29 Harry Potter's and one "The Godfather parts 1 and 2 but not 3." Guess who my favorite kid in that class is?

The other interesting thing about these surveys is getting to know the completely nonsensical names of various Japanese bands. Here are a few:

Funky Monkey Babys

GReeeeN (capitalization and number of e's has been crosschecked)

Glay (a purposefully Japan-ized version of the word "gray")

SMAP

Porno Graffitti

And my personal favorite, Mr. Children, which is an incredibly popular band fronted by men in their 40s and not, to my surprise, Pedobear.

P.S. The title of this post comes from a very popular song with hilariously terrible English lyrics, although admittedly not as terrible as this awful "I almost didn't realize that's supposed to be English" heavy metal song.