It seems that quite a few of you are fans of Japanese music in general (and not just Shiina Ringo/Tokyo Jihen). What I wanna know is:
1. What was the first Japanese song you heard?
2. Which artists got you interested in finding out more about Japanese music?
3. Are there any genres of Japanese music or artists you particularly like?
For me the first Japanese song that I could remember I heard was
Chage and Aska's "
Meguriai". It was the theme song for this super popular J-drama "Tokyo Cinderella Story" which was on TV when I was 8 years old (so long ago...). I remember looking forward to watching it every Saturday.
I still love the song till today.
The band that really got me into Japanese music was
Luna Sea. One of their songs ("I for You") was the theme song for another J-drama "Kamisama mou Sukoshi Dake" (something like that). It's safe to say that they're my favourite rock band ever. That was also when I realised that Japanese music was more than the overplayed radio friendly stuff of SPEED and Ayumi Hamasaki (which they played on the Mandarin radio stations).
I don't listen to as much Japanese music as some of you on this forum, but I'm particularly interested in the J-Jazz scene (SOIL&"PIMP"SESSIONS, Sunaga t Experience, Indigo Jam Unit). For some reason I like it more than "traditional" jazz. Maybe because there's less of that annoying Jazz improv thing (I'm possibly the only person who hated Jazz improv.) There's just a sore lack of information about J-Jazz on the Internet so I'm having a hard time finding new music to listen to. I also like a lot of the Shibuya-kei stuff too, but it's mainly the old Fantastic Plastic Machine and capsule stuff. I used to like Jrock, but not anymore since there isn't quite a great Jrock band to hold up the scene since LS disbanded.
So yeah, even though I've been listening to Japanese music for some time, my exposure to it is still quite limited I think. Hopefully this thread will bring out some rare Japanese music that's worth listening to.