Japanese music is fairly popular here in Singapore, mostly among the local Chinese - a demographic I'm not a part of. I'd heard of artistes like Hamasaki Ayumi and L'Arc~en~ciel, from TV or in the showbiz section of the paper, but otherwise I never paid much attention to Japanese music. I was young and thick - I had my Avril and Simple Plan and was actually satisfied with that. And really, how can you truly enjoy a song when you don't even understand a word that's being sung?

I'm really glad I never said those words to anyone who could make me eat them. So, so wrong.

Ironically, it all began with five English words: Can you keep a secret?

It was, maybe, five years ago. I was flicking through the TV channels when something caught my eye.

It was a music video, a Japanese one. Not my kind of thing, but, it wasn't a bad song and...there was something interesting going on there. It featured the singer being very affectionate with, of all things, a little robot. Weird...what the heck's going on here? In my quest to find out, I ended up watching through the whole thing.

Then there was a twist at the end. It made me a bit sad, but at the same time it brought a grin to my face. Cool. Too bad I didn't find out who the singer was - maybe they did show it, but I just couldn't read it.

I kept thinking about that video for weeks after that. If anyone had asked I'd have said that it was the way the video ended that made such an impression. But really, even as the scenes began to fade from memory, I'd catch myself humming to the song. It was stuck in my head - the singer's compelling voice, the catchy tune, and the one line in the song that I understood. Can you keep a secret? Can you keep a secret?

I never did try to find out more about the song though the way I would have now - I wasn't much of an Internet person, and and I didn't want to ask around - why would I look up a Japanese song anyway?

It wasn't very long after that that Gundam SEED started showing on a local channel.

Gundam SEED was one of the first anime I fell in love with. But the first thing about it that actually caught my attention? The opening song. It had a techno-y sound, yet was somehow kind of melancholic, and fit perfectly with the animation. Very different from the kind of music I was used to listening to. And the ending song, too, was a powerful one that appealed to me. And I found myself thinking, "Japanese songs aren't too bad, huh?"

This time I was interested enough to turn to the internet.

T.M Revolution's Invoke. See-Saw's Anna ni Issho Datta no ni. Thanks to Yahoo, it didn't take me long to find this out. And my mind drifted back to that lady with the robot.

Ah. Utada Hikaru, huh?

That year was also the year that Hikki released Single Collection Volume 1. And guess what I came across while reading the paper one day, in the "Asian Music" section of the music reviews page? It was like fate.

The reviewer recommended it, but I didn't really care about that. At that point, I would have gladly paid the price of an album just for that song - it'd caught hold of me and refused to let go. And this was the perfect opportunity.

Thankfully, unlike T.M Revolution or See-Saw, Utada Hikaru was popular enough that I could have walked into any CD store and bought her album. Which I did.

I'm not exaggerating when I say it opened up a whole new world for me.

The album itself was amazing. RnB-infused pop, catchy songs with inspired arrangements, powerful ballads - impressive range. The same thing could be said about her voice...And under the title of each song in the lyrics booklet I couldn't read, where the credits for the music and lyrics would be, the same six characters I'd learned to recognize appeared almost every time. Very talented, this woman.

I already had one Japanese album on my shelf, and it rocked. What was stopping me? I gave Laruku a shot. I stumbled across the Gundam SEED Complete Best CD and bought it without a second thought. Someone had put up See-Saw's Dream Field album for sale at the unbelievably low price of of SGD15 (USD10.60), and say, the Kajiura lady who writes their songs is pretty good... Shiina Ringo blew my mind. The internet introduced me to Gackt, then his former band Malice Mizer - and now I don't care what anyone says about it, I love Visual Kei. And why stop at Japanese songs? Korean dramas were pretty popular, and some of them had very nice opening songs...I sought out translations if they were available, but fact that I couldn't understand the lyrics had ceased to become an issue. Good music transcended language.

I think less than 20% of my playlist is in English these days, and maybe around 70% of it is Japanese music. Quite a change, huh?

If you ask me what my favourite Japanese song is, though, I think I'm almost always going to give the same answer. Go on, you take a wild guess at it.

Ah. Been paying attention, haven't you?