Happy news: I had made a remix for Love And Hates' remix contest that ended Feb. 7, handing it in almost at the last minute, and it received the "Toy Pop Award"!!! This made me smile all week! :) Check it out, and also the other great remixes!

- Btw, to enter the remix contest I opened a Soundcloud account, so I took the opportunity to upload Glad En Mono's old albums from 1998 and 2000, all tracks can be downloaded for free.

New music: I got Takanami K-taro's new album with new unit Playtime Rock. This is a lot more pop than his other recent albums with Nangasaki Five. great stuff! Nearly half of the album is instrumental jazz by trombonist Shibata Kenichi, also very good.
- I also got hold of 3 albums from 2011 that I had missed checking out but was still curious about: Harvard "Hahvahd", Macdonald Duck Eclair "kono tokimeki imasugu", and Merpeoples "Metropolis", all of which I felt should grow on me after a few listens.

Live music reports: (M)otocompo vs The Aprils (Feb. 4) and Love And Hates' release party (Feb. 5).

Music release news: Kinbara Chieko, Calmera, YMO, Okamura Yasuyuki remastered by Sunahara Yoshinori, Negicco, Shinohara Tomoe, ... see Tokyo's Coolest Sound for all the info.

TV: I got to watch Kyary Pamyu Pamyu of SMAPxSMAP, sang "tsukematsukeru" together (skip to 1:20). SMAP were really singing, but how about her?!

Fun stuff: Special site where Nomiya Maki revisits 30 outfits from her 30-year career.
- U.S. TV show The BJ Rubin Show featured bits of Mark Robinson (from 2:35) and Cotton Candy (from 13:30). Fun stuff but this show makes me quite dizzy! This show gets aired on Manhattan local channel MNN2, it seems.

Tech: I made a user script that creates a "." (dot) keyboard shortcut on the Facebook home page to go back to the top and load any new entries. I often found myself wanting to go to the top and hit e "Home" key, but sometimes it doesn't work, probably because of the chat panel or other features. The "." shortcut works just like Twitter's so that's great! Get it here. (Firefox users need the Greasemonkey add-on first.)

I'll try to post like this every weekend, and a week's span starts on the previous Saturday. Usually it will probably be a bit shorter.