For years I have been an avid music consumer, with my current rate of consumption hovering around at least one new album every day. Although the bands/musicians I listen to cover a wide range of sound, they tend to hover around a similar genre and usually come from only a few regions of the world. The bulk of my music collection consists of bands native to either the U.S. or Europe.

The site created for my midterm project in "Japan in Real Time" was a site on Japanese toys which served as an accompanimen to StarFestival Site 17 (The Model Shop). I was quite pleased with the outcome of this site and felt that it served as a strong resource for outside exploration of a topic germane to the class. The use of the up-to-date information drawn from the Internet in addition to links providing further exploration seemed to fit perfectly with the theme of the class-- an investigation of the ever-changing present Japanese culture. I knew I wanted to somehow integrate Japanese music into my final presentation and deciding to do a similar site became an obvious choice following the success of my first one. Hopefully the consistency in design and navigation of this site with the Japanese toy site will provide my fellow students (and perhaps future Star Festival users) with a sense of the shared goal and function of the two sites.

This site is broken down into three main sections. In the first, we'll discuss some of the more popular genres of Japanese music, in the second we'll take a look at a few particularly interesting bands/artists falling within the various genres, and in the third I provide a comprehensive list of useful links for exploring the world of Japanese pop music.