The relation between "Hatsune Miku" and Finnish "Loituma"

Let´s me share some more findings about "Hatsune Miku".
1. Basic fact
Hatsune Miku is a virtual singer using the synthesizer application called Vocaloid2 which was originally developed by Yamaha. In January 2007, Crypton Future Media, Japan has released Hatsune Miku with license and sold 15,000 units in less than 2 months. It was a big hit in this category of product.

2. What´s the relation between Hatsune Miku and Finnish music group, Loituma? It started with a video clip of Japanese animation "Bleach" featuring Loitumas music. Characteristic sounds of Ieva´s Polka became popular among video & graphic creators and variety of videos featuring the music have been uploaded on the community networks like YouTube and Japanese Niconico Douga. Hatsune Miku is one of them singing Ieva´s Polka with a leek in hand.

3. The girl spinning a leek, later named "Loituma girl", comes from an episode from Japanese animation "Bleach". For your information, leeks (purjolök) recently distributed to bloggers in Sweden by a swedish publisher in order to promote their new book, seems to have nothing to do with this leek spinning phenomena. Photos are here.

4. When a Japanese company started to sell a small (100 mm high ) figure of Hatsune Miku, the company instantly received more than 10,000 orders through Amazon.

5. Newly introduced virtual singers are twins called Kagamine Rin & Len.


6. Two original songs by Hatsune Miku are now on sale as Karaoke through JoySound.

7. Opening of the new community site, PiaPro was announced today. There you can present your own music or graphics using Hatsune Miku and the new twin characters.
Unfortunately the application programs are only available in Japan.
Source of info and related links are here.