I did a quick audit of my Japanese cultural input and came up with the following : 
 MOVIES 
 Tokyo Story - beautiful acknowledged masterpiece 
 Nobody Knows - great indy 
 Kikujiro - worth watching 
 Love Exposure - quite insane, probably brilliant, unmissable, but you should be warned that it's quite insane 
 Visitor Q - er, probably avoid this one! Really gross. 
 Seven Samurai - may be the greatest film ever, if there is such a thing 
 WESTERN PERSPECTIVES 
 Babel - brilliant film, but the Tokyo part is strange & uncomfortable 
 Lost in Translation - what planet was everyone else on? This was a snoozefest. If you haven't seen it, count yourself fortunate 
 NOVELS 
 In the Miso Soup - Ryu Murakami - yeah, I liked this 
 A Personal matter - Oe - yeah, I HATED this 
 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by the other Marukami guy - I LOVED this because it was so easy to parody and gave me my top scoring review (While I was reading it was a different story) 
 MUSIC 
 Absolutely NOTHING 
 And now to add to this very small Japanese input, Kitchen, a tender sprig of a novel. It was kind of goofy, kind of nice, kind of weirdly translated. Kind of sad. Had a transgendered person and a transvestite. Had a lot of food. If I write any more of this review it'll be longer than the novel. But basically, I need more Japanese stuff. Recommendations welcome.