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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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
Survey Says…
Paul at Hello!Blog has done it again with his annual desire to combine his love of Hello! Project with some mad coding skills. This time around, the survey incorporates all of Hello! Project, including the Elder Club, making for what should be some rather interesting results. Here’s the “tall” version of my survey graphic (the long version I’m going to use as the basis for a future header).
Now I get to explain myself again… Continue reading
BEST ALBUMS OF 2009: #4: HANGRY & ANGRY “Kill Me Kiss Me”
HANGRY & ANGRY
Kill Me Kiss Me
(Gothuall [Japan]/JapanFiles.com [North America])
Available on CD, iTunes US and Japan, and through JapanFiles.com
Ooof.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when this EP came out, but since this album has pretty much been my regular car music for the past two months, apparently the formula didn’t miss: Take two 4th-gen MoMusu’s, give them some great rock/goth/punk hybrid tunes, wrap them in a bizarre image inspired by a Japanese boutique’s mascots, issue on CD and mp3, and knock thousands of MoMusu/H!P fans on their asses. “GIZA GIZA” recalls Evanescence somewhat (not as closely as that album track on 1st Goodsal, though), but the rest of the five-song EP has a style all of its own. A bigger independent label like Matador or Merge could give this album a better shot at American success, but JapanFiles.com put their nuts on the line to make sure this album came out simutaneously with its Japanese counterpart and did a better job in that department than The End did with Dir en grey’s new album.
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.
Continue reading
