JapanSugoi

Branding is everything and Yubari Melons are premium produce in Japan. As with most products in Japan having Yubari Melon macots or anime type characters helps with brand recognition. Last year the city of Yubari hired Shinjuku based PR company BIKONKOMYUNIKESHONZU to create the “in debt” Mr. and Mrs. Yubari Melon 夕張夫妻 夕張市 to symbolize the city and also a karaoke song to sing while thinking of the delicious melons.

The cute branding worked as earlier this week, at the harvest season’s first auction held at the Sapporo City Central Wholesale Markets, a pair of Yubari melons sold for 2.5 million Yen surpassing the 2 million yen a pair fetched last year. The winning bidder was Ibi, a Sapporo-based dealer of seafood products and local souvenir goods. The two melons were among 100 put up for tender by farmers who started harvesting the fruit Monday in Yubari.

With this season’s good weather, this year’s harvest should have a higher sugar content and good quality, according to the Yubari agricultural cooperative. Melon shipments are scheduled to peak between mid-June and mid- July.

Creation of Mr. and Mrs Yubari Melon

Yua Aida あいだゆあ is a beautiful 24 year old gravure idol from Aichi prefecture who was formerly an AV superstar. From 2003-2007 she appeared in over 40 movies and had 5 photo books and due to her popularity was named number 1 AV actress in 2004 and was awarded the Japanese adult grand prix actress award for the year of 2005. In July last year, she announced she was quitting the AV world but would continue to be a bikini and lingerie model and do image videos. Perhaps like many Japanese AV actresses who built up large fan bases such as Ai Iijima 飯島 愛, Nao Oikawa 及川奈央, and Maria Ozawa 小澤マリア she is contemplating a move into mainstream Japanese television

Read more about Yua at her blog here.

Yua Aida Videos

sexy dance

Nozomi Sasaki 佐々木希 ささき のぞみ is a pretty 20 year Japanese fashion model and gravure idol from Akita prefecture. Nozomi-chan started as a teen model when she won two modeling competitions Young Jump’s GYARUKON Grand Prix 2005 and Princess Pinky Grand Prix 2006. She has been featured many times as fashion model for Pinky magazine though she has also been featured Young Jump, Up To Boy, Weekly Playboy, Sabra, Bidan and some fashion catalogs .

She has also appeared in several TV commercials for CHERICHE perfume, POLA cosmetics, Sokenbicha Tea 爽健美茶 (Coca Cola), NTT Do Co Mo, Sony Internet SO-Net and Kate Ruber jewellery, a music video for Jpop group Aqua Timez and besides wanting to be a successful model, her future plan is to have an acting or TV career. She co hosts TVMX’s Entertainment Audition show Garimpeiro ガリンペイロeX and Wowwow’s UEFA Euro 2008 soccer coverage.

If your Japanese girlfriend attended the Tokyo Girls Collection 2008 event, she would have told you that Nozomi Sasaki was one of the fashion models.

See more photos of beautiful Nozomi Sasaki here or read her blog here.

BTW, there is a seiyuu (voice actress) with the same name Nozomi Sasaki 望 佐々木 from Kanagaawa prefecture.

Sasaki Nozomi Videos

Happy Birthday

Japanese fashion model, actress and Jpop star Yu Yamada 山田優 released her 5th single Leave All Behind in April this year. She recently appeared in NHK’s TV show Music Japan and Fuji TV’s Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ and will release her debut album MyMusic today. The full length album contains 12 tracks and include all her other previously released singles, Eyes on Me, Real You, Fly So High and Fiesta Fiesta.

When Yu was much younger and living in Okinawa (1999-2001) , she was part of all all girl group y’z factory ワイズファクトリー. She used modeling for CanCam as a way to continue her first love - music.

Although we really like Yu’s new single, our all time favorite single by a Japanese model is the Lena Fujii, DJ Kawasaki collaboration Bright Like Light

Yu Yamada Video

Leave all behind

Like Yu Yamada’s music? We do! See more or purchase here.

Like the other festivals that make traveling to Japan so enjoyable, if you get a chance, you must try and visit Takayama 飛騨高山 population 65,000, a city in the mountainous Hida region of Gifu Prefecture, which has retained a traditional buildings especially in its beautifully preserved old town with its history-filled streets. The town was a source of high quality timber and highly skilled carpenters during the Edo Period (1603-1867)

The Takayama festival (matsuri) held in spring and fall in the old town of Takayama is known as one of the three most beautiful festivals of Japan (the other two are the Gion Festival of Kyoto and the Chichibu Night Festival of Saitama Prefecture).

The Spring Festival ( in April) is the annual festival of the Hie Shrine in the southern half of Takayama’s old town. While the shrine is also known as Sanno-sama, the spring festival is also called Sanno Festival. The Autumn Festival ( in October) is the annual festival of the Hachiman Shrine in the northern half of the old town, and the festival is also known as Hachiman Festival.

Both festivals have similar attractions with large festival floats (yatai).

Display of festival floats
From morning to late afternoon of both festival days, the festival floats (yatai) are displayed in the streets of Takayama. When the weather is bad, the floats remain in their storehouses, but the doors of the storehouses are opened so that visitors can still take a look at them.

Karakuri Performance
Several of the festival floats are decorated with so called karakuri ningyo, sophisticated mechanical dolls that can move and dance. Karakuri doll performances are held on both days of the festival at dedicated times and places. During bad weather, the performances take place in the floats’ storehouses.

Mikoshi Procession
A portable shrine (mikoshi) is carried around the town in a parade during the two days of the festival, starting and ending at the respective festival’s shrine. The mikoshi contains the shrine’s kami (Shinto deity). The festival is the only time of the year when the deity leaves the shrine to be carried around town.

Evening Festival
In the evening of the first day (starting around 18:30 in spring, around 18:00 in autumn), the festival floats (yatai) are pulled through the streets of Takayama’s old town. The evening festival (yomatsuri) is considered the festival’s highlight by many visitors. In case of bad weather, the evening festival may have to be canceled.

To get to Takayam from Tokyo, it takes about 5 hours to travel from by JR train. Take the Shinkansen super express from Tokyo to Nagoya and then change to the Hida express for Takayama. Please also remember to plan ahead and book hotels early as many of them are booked out many months in advance of the festival.

Takayama Matsuri Videos

Festival Float Hall

Did you know that since 2002 when Japan and South Korea co-hosted the football World Cup in 2002, both sides have been discussing building an undersea tunnel that would link the southwestern Japanese city of Karatsu and the major South Korean port of Busan through Japan’s Iki and Tsushima islands?

Although Tokyo and Seoul are just a quick 1.5 hour plane ride away, the ambitious project seeking to unite the former rivals much like the tunnel under the English Channel, has never taken off amid residual tensions between the two nations. If the two sides ever make this happen, the train and road tunnel would take 15-20 years to build, be between 200-230km long making it the longest undersea tunnel in the world and 4 times longer than the English Channel tunnel!

Source: Chosun and AFP

Former US bikini model Leah Dizon has used her success in Japan to build a Jpop career and has now become a familiar face on Japanese TV commercials. In addition to TV commercials for Playstation video game Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Lotte’s Yukimi Daifuku mochi ice cream with Yuko Ogura 小倉優子, she has done additional ads for Recruit magazine Anavi, Lotte’s Rich Fruits chocolate bars, Kao cosmetics and Coca Cola’s no calorie Coke. Not bad for a girl from Nevada.

Leah Dizon Japanese TV commercials

Recruit Magazine Anavi