How were you introduced into Japanese Music?

[Tumain]

I'm guessing some people got introduced to Japanese Music in different ways, via friends or just randomly finding a song on YouTube.

I got into Japanese music by trying to find a song called Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence for a friend at the time by Ryuichi Sakamoto on YouTube. At the time I couldn't remember the exact name, but YouTube showed me FYI from Utada. Heard that song, then found out about her japanese songs. Listened to them, loved them then listened to some Japanese radio stations and Japanese stations on Last.fm. Then found some more singers I like. My interest in Japanese music just started to get bigger and bigger. =D

[TrainOfThought]

Well, I've had an interest in Japan since I was like 10 years old.
I didn't know much about Japan back then, but I knew I loved the sound of Japanese.
A couple of years later (I think I was 12) I started playing a game called "Shougun: Total War" on the PC, and after that I started looking up more things about Japanese culture and music online (56k modem, oh yeaah!).
There was something about the koto and shamisen that I couldn't get enough of.
After some time (a year? two years? not sure..) I found the Yoshida Brothers. They play awesome shamisen music with western influences, and I really liked what I heard.
Time passed, but I stopped doing research/looking for new bands (for some strange reason), and the only japanese band I really listened to at that point was Gazette. I did listen to a few other songs by other bands as well, but that's about it.
In late 2006 I Injured my knee, got depressed, and spent most of my time in front of the PC, and in early 2007 I thought "hmm, maybe I should give anime a try..." and I did. I haven't watched a lot of anime the last couple of years, but I've still watched over 4000 episodes, and during that time I found lots of great bands.
This has been one of my favourite songs for years now. I love the hip-hop/ska-core sound, and the vid is sooo funny!

Shounan no Kaze - Saboten

[Demitrichan]

Asian Kung Fu Generation was my first J-rock group. I wanted to know who sung my favorite Naruto theme, So I say there and looked through the credits and found their name. I did the same when I found out about Jinn, Orange Range, Flow, Maximum Hormone, Nightmare, and many others.

[RobinMask]

Gosh, it was so long ago I can't even remember how I got into it anymore . . . I think I first got into Japanese music via films and anime, and - if I remember rightly - it was most likely Battle Royale that did it, because I adored the song "Shizukana Hibi no Kaidan wo" by Dragon Ash. I know I had a lot of Morning Musume at the time too, but I can't remember how I found them, I think it was via a site when searching for this one song, and a few random downloads came up, and they were one of them.

After that I did what Demitrichan did, which is watch anime like Naruto or Death Note and go 'damn, I love this song!' - which is how I ended up with albums by Maximum the Hormone, Rie Fu and Nightmare. Since then I've found dozens of artists, and I'd say 90% of my digital music is Japanese. Oddly if you asked me how I got into English music I could tell you right away, but for some reason Japanese is a bit of a blur XD

[Demitrichan]

Puffy Ami Yumi was the first group I ever heard contrary to what I sad earlier

[WingsToDiscovery]

I don't really listen to Japanese music, but my actual introduction to it started with my introduction to Japanese (pop) culture itself. I was curious about a few things and one of them was music, so I just YouTubed something like "popular Japanese music." Morning Musume and AAA came up. I didn't like the music, but there was an amusing novelty of seeing cute Japanese girls dancing around singing god awful stuff. So I searched and searched and couldn't find anything I actually liked until I've finally settled on Capsule as a really cool electronica group.

Granted, I treat Japanese music just as fairly as other music. I don't really listed to a whole lot of music anyway, and normally I can't like more than a couple of songs from any given artist, so my iPod is full of singles. But there's something about Japanese music doesn't really appeal to me though. I'm not into the poppy stuff, and anything that might be considered rock or whatever I'd rather just listen to in English so I can at least understand and appreciate the lyrics. I'm sure Japanese rock has some really powerful stuff, but I don't find fun in forcing myself to try and like stuff I don't understand most of.

[Chess]

I was a kid back then, I love watching Rurouni Kenshin, and my first J-rock music was 1/3 Junjou na Kanjou by Siam Shade, then I started searching for more like Fourth Avenue Cafe and that's how I discovered L'Arc~en~Ciel. The rest was history.

EDIT:

Not to forget the Voltes V theme song.... ahhhh, pure nostalgia.

[SCIFFIX]

I always watched anime, till be 9 years I watched anime, sometimes liked anime musics, but never gave great importance. One day I saw a X Japan image on internet and their visual caused me a lot of curiosity, so I begin to search things about they, of course, I heard their musics and it caused to me very interest to japanese music. After that, I started to give more importance to the anime music and this made me know more artists and grow up my affection to j-music.

[wolfmom]

I really started listening after looking up images for my daughter and seeing visual kei mentioned. There were a few musicians mentioned in an article so I googled and liked. Before that it was mainly music from games and shows we looked for (a minor obsession with Persona 3 soundtrack)

[Anemone]

I always liked anime theme songs (Bluebird by Ikimonogakari and Closer by Joe Inoue were my favourites), and when I got my first ipod I wanted to look for them on itunes. The only one I found was Ready Steady Go by L'Arc~en~Ciel and I thought the cover of that cd (Smile) looked cool so I went to check out more by them. Then I expanded to other artists.