Wednesday, December 30, 2015

This year's Kohaku Uta Gassen is the 66th installment of this long-running New Year's Eve institution, which is watched by millions of viewers across the nation.

Kohaku is a male-vs-female singing face-off between famous entertainers in Japan run by Japan's public broadcaster, NHK.

"Ko" is the kanji for "red" and stands for the women; "haku" is for white and represents the men.

This year's Kohaku will have a Star Wars theme as "boy" band Arashi will perform with an assorted of characters from the hit movie.

The White (men's) team is led by V6 singer while Haruka Ayase "captains" the Red (women's) team. Veteran Akiko Wada will making her 39th appearance for the Red team while there are debuts for Nogizaka46, Rebecca, Sakurako Ohara, Superfly and μ's (from LoveLive!). For the White team SMAP are making their 23rd appearance but trail Shinichi Mori with 48 and Hiroshi Itsuki with 45 appearances!

Kohaku will air on December 31 2015 from 7:15 pm to 11:45 pm on both NHK TV and radio. The venue is NHK Hall in Tokyo's Shibuya district.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Hachioji Shrine in the middle of nowhere in Mizunami in Gifu Prefecture claims to have the largest komainu statues in Japan, confirmed by the Guinness Book of Records.

Komainu are the pair of guardians seen at the entrance to many Japanese shrines. The komainu at Hachioji Shrine are 3.3m tall, 1.56m wide and 2.4m in depth. The combined weight of the two komainu is 15 tons.

The nearby area which includes Mino and further to the south Seto