海雪／ジェロ

So this kid made a lot of headlines when he first hit the Japanese music scene.
His grandmother is Japanese, from Okinawa I think. So she used to listen to this style of Japanese ballad, called enka.
It's a popular style still, since about 20% of the Japanese population is over 65 years old.
It's unusual for a younger person to want to sing enka, and even stranger for a foreigner who is not a native Japanese speaker to want to try.
He's pretty good too - if you closed your eyes you wouldn't even know he's not Japanese.
His name is JERO, and this was his first single, called UmiYuki, which was released back in February of this year, where it entered the Japanese charts at #4.

more info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jero

-JCH