The question resurfaces... who's using J-Pop as their soundtrack? Personally, I think Japanese artists are easier to find than American artists (read: I am too lazy to turn on the radio, and besides, I can never listen to it loudly enough to actually hear it, because of the 'rents), so I generally tend to use J-Pop as my base songs for the duration of my writing.

So, who out there listens to/uses J-Pop/Rock? If you don't, but listen to foreign music, what are your favorite bands, and where are they from?

I do! Hehe, I love Japanese rock music and all other foreign stuff. Lately it just seems more real than what you hear on the radio. Plus, the languages spice it up!

I listen to:
Gackt (Japan)
Tokio Hotel (Germany)
t.A.t.U. (Russia)
Dir En Grey (Japan)
BUCK-TICK (Japan)
Malice Mizer (Japan)
Hyde (Japan)

Me too. I have a large collection of J-Pop (probably out dated now but still may faves.) I listen to J-pop when i write a lot. I even have some recordings made by a friend of mine and me of me singing in Japanese :D

Anne Marie

JanNo - Goal Winner 2009 - A life More Ordinary (Coming soon to Lulu :D)
FebNo – Goal Winner 2009 – Darkness and Light
EdMo – Goal Winner 2009

I've used J-Pop as a writing soundtrack during my NaNoWriMo experience last year. I've used everything from SunSet Swish to X JAPAN, though my choices were probably at least subconsciously dictated by the tone of the part I was writing at any given time. (I have yet to figure out what prompted using the Shoujo Kakumei Utena soundtrack on one particularly intense night of writing......)

Admittedly a number of my selections for writing music were from English-speaking bands (Journey and The Moody Blues come to mind), but a lot of it comes down to picking up a CD and deciding whether it fits the mood I'm in at the time. J-Pop seems to do that a lot more often than other music types.

I have a collection of J-pop as well as other songs from around the world. I find that it's not really were it's from that determines what I listen to just how much I like the song. Also some J-pop songs are easier for me to write to then others.

I'm not super deep into the genre (j-pop) so you've probably heard all the music I listen to. My J-pop exposure comes from browsing on iTunes and watching anime. But I've got a few russian songs, bollywood, spanish, celtic and some european pop songs in the mix as well. That makes up the bulk of my foreign music. Very exciting I know.

I tend to listen to all sorts of music when I write, mostly depending on the genre. But I do usually have a lot of J-pop in my playlist, mostly Morning Musume, especially for comedy screenplays =) And Utada Hikaru I have all the time too, considering her music is very inspiring to me.

Morning Musume, Mini MOni (some of their stuff anyway), AKB 48 , Namie Amuro and Emi Hinouchi are ones I listen to for writign romances

Anne Marie

JanNo - Goal Winner 2009 - A life More Ordinary (Coming soon to Lulu :D)
FebNo – Goal Winner 2009 – Darkness and Light
EdMo – Goal Winner 2009

I LOVE foreign music! Most the time, it's all I listen to.
Jpop/japanese music in general:
Cheiko Kawabe
Kanon Wakeshima
Nobue Umatsu (my hero)
German:
KMFDM
Peilomat
Wir Sind Helden
Rammstein
Irish (started listening to these for getting a soundtrack in my head):
Jekyl
Jung Turks
Ise
Mike Bartlett

Mainly,

UVERworld
Ikimono Gakari
Angela Aki (Especially Our Story)
Otsuka Ai
SnoW

Those are who I love listening to when writing.

I actually have some Jpop Karaoke files of me singing in Japanese. One of them is Cheiko Kawabe's "I Can't Wait." I love that song. A friend of mine just informer me she put them up on 4shared.com for download.

I'm actually listening to AnimeAMAZE (a radio station on iTunes) right now, for a bit of randomness and tracks I haven't heard.

If not, my playlist looks like:
Gackt
Malice Mizer
L'Arc-En-Ciel
Within Temptation (although they sing in English... T_T I start typing what they're saying, then!)
Okina Reika

And other random artists...