Though I have been raised in somewhat of a Japanese household, I'm not too in touch with Japanese popular culture. I don't really know about the aspects of it that tend to reach the United States, namely anime, manga, video games, etc (although I admit to a bit of a Hello Kitty thing when I was younger). However, I have one Japanese fixation and that is the movies of Miyazaki Hayao (ok maybe that's anime). A few years ago my dad bought me a Chinese bootlegged boxset of them on eBay, so between that and my Japanese friends, I'm pretty sure I've seen almost all of the Miyazaki/Ghibli movies (there are some that are unavailable with English subtitles though). I've even seen that TV show about the spies...

Anyway I thought I'd bring this up since this past weekend for some reason I ended up watching two of them, 天空の城ラピュタ ("Laputa") and 耳をすませば ("Whisper of the Heart"). I didn't end up finishing either, but I've seen them both before so it's okay. I think that these two films represent the two directions Miyazaki movies tend to take: Laputa is in the fantastical style that Miyazaki is most well known for (at least in the USA), while Whisper of the Heart is a junior high love story (he's actually made quite a few of those as well). At any rate I enjoyed both of them and would recommend either...