Until recently, only the hippest, most avant-garde American 8-year-olds have been down with J-pop (that's Japanese pop, for us old fogies) stars Puffy AmiYumi's peppy, contagious blend of punk, garage rock, ska, surf, and their own sugar-coated pop sass.

Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura hooked up when they both auditioned for an artist's-management company. From the beginning, their music was guided by former Jellyfish member Andy Strummer and producer Tamio Okuda, who, according to Onuki, "is just a music master a lot of people in America may not know yet, but you will soon."

Puffy AmiYumi became synonymous with the kind of kitschy, catchy, kitchen-sink pop that Americans associate with Japanese music — part Monkees, part Pizzicato 5, part Shonen Knife meets the Spice Girls performed by bubbly, tremendously fashionable young girls — only America hadn't gotten its tushy on the Puffy bandwagon yet.

Now, with the success of a Cartoon Network show ("Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi") loosely based on their career, Puffy AmiYumi is on the verge of U.S. superstardom (at least among the tween and pre-tween set) to match the runaway celebrity they've enjoyed in Japan for the past nine years.

On the phone from Tokyo, Onuki and Yoshimura (with the help of a translator) gave me the lowdown on girl power, being a rock star and "the Puffy way."

Q: Describe your music in your own words.

Yumi: Puffy can be anything. So we don't want to pigeonhole ourselves. There's rock, there's soul, there's all kinds of music — if you listen to our records, there're all kinds of influences there. So anything goes. If it's fun, we'll do it. That's the Puffy way.

Q: What's it like to be women playing music? Puffy AmiYumi gets described as having this fun, girl-power aesthetic to it. Is that something that you try to make a part of your music?

Yumi: When people describe us as girl power, that's great. But us personally, Ami and Yumi, that's not a message necessarily that we're trying to portray. Whatever people listen to our music and take from our music, we're happy with that. Puffy AmiYumi is basically about having a good time and kind of staying true to ourselves. About the difficulty of being a female in music ... because there's the two of us, the bad or the difficult parts of the business are halved and the fun parts are doubled.

Q: How has the Cartoon Network show, "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi," affected your music career?

Yumi: I guess with the cartoon show we were challenged to sing English songs, number one. Number two, probably the age range of the people who listen to our music has changed — more younger people listen because of the show.

Q: What do you think about so many of your U.S. fans being kids?

Ami: Even in Japan, some of our songs are used at the kindergarten level, in music classes, and so we have fans that are, uh, smaller, in primary school, too. [laughs]. So we're not that surprised of that, but we'll see [what it's like] when we actually visit you in America.

Q: So what's the best part about being a rock star?

Yumi: I guess that feeling of being onstage in front of people, playing in front of, you know, people in other countries, having the opportunity to do that — that's the best feeling that we have.

Q: What should we expect to see on this tour and at your show in Seattle?

Ami: Actually, right after we get off the phone with you, we're going into rehearsal for the U.S. tour. We want to make it a great show for people who only maybe have seen the "Hi Hi" show and have only seen a part or have heard only some of our songs yet, to look back and say, you know, "That song was great, this song was great."