Did Someone Say “Cake”? (Happy 4th Cake Day, International Wota!)
In Honor of International Wota’s FOURTH (holy crap!) anniversary… otherwise known as Cake Day 2011… a little revisit of the first time I commemorated Cake Day at Stuck In A Pagoda in 2008…
“Okashi Tsukutte Okasui” by MiniMoni – their harmonies on this song slay me everytime.
And in the interest of equal time, we also have pie:
And because I’m going to the special hell: I’m sure that in the four years since the first Cake Day, some lucky bastards have been getting a different kind of pie from all four ex-MiniMoni’s – not just Aibon and Nono in the months leading up to the first ever Cake Day! >:)
JAPAN EARTHQUAKE 3.11.11: Your Favorite Artists And Their Status
The following is a list of artists in Japan and their known condition since the earthquake. The list will be updated throughout the day.
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Dream Morning Musume – Am I Awake?
Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted already that I’m not CJ, so I’ll introduce myself nice and early. This is Kd, formerly of IroIro Aru Sa!, that old chestnut of a J-Pop blog which CJ mentions occasionally. Having recently gotten into a few lengthy discussions about J-Pop with him, I’ve been offered a guest contributor spot here at TGML and I’ve taken it with both hands. As a near complete contrast to CJ – I’m a Brit female in her early 20′s – I hope you’ll find my style and POV to be complementary but not identical. I give you… my first post. Enjoy!
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It’s Poll Time Once Again (With A Few Random Thoughts To Go With It)
Paul Thomas and his mad coding skills have struck again, and of course, I had to, had to take the poll, which this year came as a two-parter – one for individual members and one for groups. Some of the results as I filled them out should be of no surprise, others should not:
My fandom hasn’t changed very much. Reina is still on top for me, Takitty is right behind, but for whatever reason JunJun and LinLin have moved up in the ranks. Much of this ranking of individuals from #3 on down could change from day to day, though, so this is just what I was feeling tonight.
The group fandom was less hard to figure out. Morning Musume are still my favorite band, Buono! still rock, and I still like Berryz and C-ute even though I still can’t recognize some of the members on sight (obviously picking Miyabi, Momoko and Airi out thanks to their Buono! work isn’t hard, and I can recognize Risako and Chinami, but that’s about it at the moment) and C-ute’s new album hasn’t completely grabbed me yet like 10 My Me and We Are Buono! did.
I try never to let a day go by without playing some MoMusu music, no matter how many other musical mood swings I go through from day to day and week to week (In one example, for whatever reason, I went on quite the Minutemen/fIREHOSE jag the past week, as my last.fm page will attest). But, my listening habits have always been that way and that’s not likely to change, ever.
The bottom rows of both polls stayed the way they were from how Paul organized the default selections for a good reason: Erina Mano’s music hasn’t exactly grabbed me, and I’ve never listened to Guardians 4 or S/mileage so I can’t comment on them.
Other than that, I get married in 89 days (yikes – time’s flyin’!), which means that as that day looms forward I need my favorite band and their compatriots to keep me sane. That also means I have to cram in a lot of activity on here before then… and then cram in some more after the nuptials.
This Next Year Is Going To Be Crazy…
2010 is barely two days old, and already there’s new music to look forward to. Nothing on the Western music front yet, as far as I know. But by the time this post is less than a week old, a new Shonen Knife album will be on my desk. A new Koda Kumi album and new Buono! album will follow next month, followed by a new Morning Musume album the month after that – the latter just in time to define the final months of my bachelorhood. And there’s also singles from MoMusu, AKB48, Buono! and SCANDAL to deal with during that time period as well. The last time I recall looking forward to a new non-J-pop release at the beginning of the year, it was The Stooges’ The Weirdness album, which was scheduled within days of Morning Musume dropping Sexy 8 Beat – and those two albums dropping within weeks of each other early in 2007 made the rest of that year quite the anti-climax. By the end of the year, while I was trying to sum up the year in albums at MotokoAoyama.com, I was also planning to propose to my girlfriend.
Oh yeah, there’s that little interruption.
Truth be told, I’m already planning ahead, and not just for that. I’ve already anticipated that there’s going to be a short break in blogging action around the last week of June and going on for at least another week. Which only means one thing: I intend to stay as busy as possible, trying to post as much as possible here and at So Hot She Shits Fire (and whenever I can at My Sweet Meetan), while also going into final preparations for the wedding, getting the last scenes folded into Here Is The Wonderland in the immediate weeks to come, thus finishing that long-in-the-making first draft before plunging into the second, which should only take a minuscule fraction of the time it took to complete the first draft. And also upping my guitar skills.
What?
Yeah, I got a new electric guitar over the Christmas holidays. I don’t think I will be discussing it much here – this blog is meant for serious music discussion, and personal ramblings about trying to re-master the pentatonic scale or getting a better handle on sweep picking don’t really belong here, so there may be a little place somewhere where I’ll let those out of my system. (Updates about my personal life don’t belong here either, of course. I might refer to them in vague here or in “conversation” at SHSSF, but that’s another story, and I already have places for that.)
This, in a nutshell, is as personal as I intend to get, and I’m keeping it in topic: 2010 is going to see a lot more activity here. Beyond that, I’m not hard to find, as the list of “personal” links that has always existed here and at this blog’s predecessor will attest. With one of the series that I hinted at back in November (the Best Albums of 2009 series) out of the way, the other one will be starting next week to formally kick off blogging activity here at TGML for 2010. For now, I’m going to spend the rest of the weekend decompressing from New Year’s Eve/Day.
Other than that (and my wedding), I don’t know what’s going to take place in 2010. Hell, I didn’t know when 2009 started that Morning Musume were getting ready to announce their American debut and that Ron Asheton was going to be transferred from the Stooges to Rock N’Roll Heaven’s Helluva Band either.
Stay tuned. Things are only going to get insane here. But in a good way, of course.
Five Years Ago, I Fell In Love…
Five years ago on this day, I took a young woman named Tara Welsh out on our first date together. We went to see National Treasure.
I had first discovered her as the result of a bored-during-lunch-at-work search through LiveJournal for people in my area and my own age there in October of that year, communicated with her through Yahoo! Messenger for awhile, and first saw her face to face at the KMart photo lab she worked at on Black Friday. What is funny is, I had discovered the day before via one of her LJ posts that she lived three blocks down a side street from me.
Three years later, on Christmas Eve 2007, I proposed to her. In less than seven months, on June 26, 2010, we finally tie the knot.
Looking back to our first date itself, much of it resembled the lyrics of a certain Tanpopo song from what I consider to be their true classic lineup of Kaori Iida, Mari Yaguchi, Ai Kago and Rika Ishikawa or as I call it after close to six years of following Morning Musume, the Johnson/Marippe/Aibon/Charmy lineup (derived from each members’ nicknames). Tara is not a fan of J-pop by any stretch, but when I showed her the lyrics a little later on, she too was amused at how much the song’s storyline resembled our first night out. So, in honor of a night five years ago that altered both of our lives for the better, here’s that particular Tanpopo song, their classic “Koi Wo Shichaimashita” (“I Fell In Love”)
I love you, Tara. <3
Those Are Big Shoes To Fill…
This must be the year for Hello! Project to be doing the unpredictable. First, Morning Musume making their long-demanded debut in the United States, and now this:
Tsunku announced on his blog today that he’s reviving MiniMoni with an all-new lineup.
MiniMoni hasn’t exactly been far away from Tsunku’s – or fan’s – minds. Their first single, “MiniMoni Jankenpyon”, has turned up on set lists during the W/Berryz Koubou 2004 tour (sung by members of Berryz, despite the fact that two ex-MiniMonis were headlining) and during a Wonderful Hearts package tour a few years later with random MoMusu (one of which was Reina Tanaka, who had once cosplayed as a MiniMoni member in her pre-MoMusu days), Berryz and C-utes. Both times, the random members were dressed in the standard old-school MiniMoni covers.
So far, only one member has been confirmed for the new lineup: Hello! Project Egg Kanon Fukuda:
My initial presumption would be that Tsunku will be utilizing mostly H!P Eggs for the new lineup, rather than shoehorn existing Wonderful Hearts into the band, despite the original group’s origins as consisting of 3/4 Morning Musume. Whether the original 150cm and under rule concieved by Mari Yaguchi in 2000 is held to is also presently unknown. But whoever gets in the new lineup will have some big shoes to fill – especially vocally, since the group had four very distinctive voices in Ai Kago, Nozomi Tsuji, Mika Todd and Mari Yaguchi. Ai Takahashi’s later membership in the band in Marippe’s place did nothing to diminish that, thankfully.
The timing of this annoucement is interesting: Mari Yaguchi FINALLY issued a solo single earlier this spring, and was recently in the studio with fellow O.G. MoMusu Kei Yasuda. Meanwhile, Ai Kago’s first post-Hello! Project single is coming out in a few weeks. Nozomi Tsuji is concentrating on her “new” career as a designer of baby clothes at present, and it’s been awhile since anything new was heard about Mika Todd.
Also a mystery right now (give Tsunku a break, he’s only announced one band member so far!) is what the musical content will be like. MiniMoni’s original sound, however varied, was more youth-oriented, until 2003 when the group started turning towards a more mature R&B-oriented sound. An educated guess might surmise that a new lineup might hark back to MiniMoni’s original approach, but again, with only one horse in the starting gate it’s too early to tell.
More on this when there’s more to talk about.
BEST ALBUMS OF 2008: #10: ONGAKU GATAS “1st Goodsal”
ONGAKU GATAS
1st Goodsal
(Zetima)
Availablility: CD, iTunes Japan and US
Ongaku Gatas’ 1st album (and apparently their only full-length album, given the impending graduation of most of the senior members as well as Hitomi and Rika’s current involvement in Hangry&Angry) was an easily overlooked affair by some fans. This was definitely an unfair assessment of the CD, as the efforts of “Soccer Musume” on the long-player recalled everything from “Love Machine”-era MoMusu (“Dakishimete… Namida” and first single “Narihajimeta Koi no Bell”) to Evanescence (“Koi Uranai Douri niwa Naranai wa”). With the Elder Club graduation concerts happening at the beginning of 2009, plus Erina Mano’s solo career and the impending US live debut of Hangry&Angry, now is the best time for listeners to give a second chance to 1st Goodsal. The album simply seems to get better with every listen.
Elder Club: Binge and Purge
For a Sunday, I was up a bit early already – you can thank the anticipation of Colin Powell endorsing Barack Obama on Meet The Press this morning for that.
After watching Gen. Powell give his endorsement, I grabbed my laptop and started hitting up my usual news and political haunts to see the initial reactions, then started going to my usual other haunts to see what else was going on, to discover this statement from Tsunku:
I have important news to share.
All members of H!P Elder Club, namely Morning Musume OG (Nakazawa Yuko, Iida Kaori, Abe Natsumi, Yasuda Kei, Yaguchi Mari, Ishikawa Rika, Yoshizawa Hitomi, Tsuji Nozomi, Konno Asami, Ogawa Makoto, Fujimoto Miki), Inaba Atsuko, Satoda Mai(Country Musume), Melon Kinenbi, Maeda Yuki, Matsuura Aya, Miyoshi Erika, Okada Yui and Ongaku Gatas, will be graduating from Hello!Project on 31.3.2009.
Most of these girls have already graduated from Morning Musume and other groups. They have been appearing on stage since their teenage years.
After the 10th year anniversary had passed, they have realized that it is necessary to smash through the stereotypes they have built by now, and find courage to begin a new trip towards their future careers.
Personally, I have big expectations to see their future efforts, and I would like to announce my support for these girls.
I also hope you will keep supporting both current Hello!Project members and the members who are going to graduate.
(Translation from Hello! Online, grammar-nazied here by yours truly)
While there is some initial shock at reading of what seems like a mass purge, with the shock and bits of sadness comes the realization that this had to happen.
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REVIEW: BERRYZ KOUBOU “5 (FIVE)”
BERRYZ KOUBOU
5 (FIVE)
(Piccolo Town/King)
Available on CD, CD/DVD, and iTunes Japan
Rating: 
Five albums. That’s how long Berryz Koubou has been with us so far. OK, technically, one of those “albums”, 3 Natsu Natsu Mini Berryz, was actually a six-song mini-album, but it was numbered not much differently than a full-length release), but that makes then the only Hello! Project group other than Morning Musume to have more than four studio albums in their discography, and ties them with Aya Matsuura for number of studio releases released in their career to date – only Ayaya has been in the music business for a few years longer than Berryz, who only started making records in early 2004.
Berryz Koubou albums have been enjoyable yet imperfect affairs. Their debut long-player, 1st Cho Berryz (the only Berryz album to have the original 8-nin lineup) was a very good start, but their sophomore release, Dai 2 Seichouki didn’t have much memorable material besides its five previously released A-sides, all of which were recorded after founding member Mahia Ishimura left the group. The aforementioned 3 Natsu Natsu Mini Berryz, despite the inclusion of the band’s first mature-sounding single “Jiriri Kiteru”, is more notable for the three covers of summer-themed Hello! Project songs by various subclusters of the group (including fan favorite Risako Sugaya doing a fine solo turn on Aya Matsuura’s “Yeah! Meccha Holiday”). Last year’s 4th Ai no Nanchara Shisu was their best long-player since their debut, although I have to admit that the album’s closing two tracks, while OK, seem anti-climactic.
Thirteen months to the day their last album came out, Berryz Koubou released 5 (FIVE), and with it they manage to maintain the personal best they established on 4th Ai and then some.
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