関西弁は全世界共通やで！

yakitori across the nation found shaking

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 14:57:52 GMT

I'm almost done packing... it's so close... that's why I have to take a break just to procrastinate >.>

August is almost half over?! I want to dead. Well... at least if it's Day 14, that means it's time to talk about a song that deserves a music video hehehe

My first thought was Pride. Of course, how could it be anything other than Pride? Pride changed my life. But I know it'll definitely be on people's minds, so I thought about some of the other Ae songs and I like, so for today, I pick Firebird!

I love Firebird for a lot of reasons. It's one of the first Ae songs that really made an impression on me. And everyone always has so much fun performing it!! The energy!! The choreo!! Seiya's SCREAMO!!! I'm so grateful I got to see it live, the energy of the crowd during this song is UNBELIEVABLE.

Firebird is also great for a casual listen for me because it doesn't get heavy the way Pride does haha. I think a fun video would make it so great to throw at people casually! The symbol of the firebird and the lyrics!!

君が炎なら僕は焼かれよう

If you are a flame, I will burn

そしたら宇宙まで飛んでいこうぜ Firebird

So, let’s fly into space, Firebird

The MV concept is RIGHT THERE! GIVE ME THE MV, JOHKURA!!!

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You can now dream~

Sun, 13 Aug 2023 13:47:50 GMT

Taking a brief break from packing to knock today's post out! It's going pretty well, but you know that special kind of stress that comes with seeing all your stuff on the floor BEFORE it's in boxes... lolsob

Anyway, my pick for Day 13: A song with the number in the title is One Day, One Dream!

For anime watchers, this song may be familiar—it was used as a theme in Inuyasha, my other childhood hyperfixation! But I have no memory of hearing this song back in the day, I only really know it from T&T's discography after I became a fan. It's a nice song! I think it has a nice cheerful beat, they sound good together, it's a good time.

But the real reason I like this song is because of this one specific performance 😂

It's from the original Dream Boy and as you can see, it starts out as a Takki solo with all the butai fixings (dramatic props, dancers who are not Johnnys, a live band—that's baby Eito!). But then like half a minute in, there's chaos. Tsubasa shows up out of nowhere IN SWEATS LOL 😭 He was across the street practicing for his own butai and was like lololol wouldn't it be funny if I crashed DB and so... he did LOL

I love how quickly they fall into their two person harmony and choreo, but I also love how BAFFLED Takki looks while Tsubasa is like 😌 of course I'm supposed to be here and just CHEESING for the cameras LOL. I also love how the backdancers all just laugh and shrug at Takki like, well! You married him!

What a great perf, easily in my Top 10 in JE of All Time 😂

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いつも忘れないスタートラインのfeeling

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 20:57:31 GMT

I jinxed myself, huh 😂

I traveled back to my apartment earlier this week and the change in work schedule threw me off, alas. Anyway, I had fun comment spamming everyone! It really felt like I had to returned to the old LJ days of going on a vacation and then spending an entire night replying to 50 comments and catching up on my return, so nostalgic! Here's my round up for the last couple of days~

It's also past midnight here, so I will use this as an opportunity to get ahead 😌

( Day 8: A song you like to show non-fans )

( Day 9: A song you don't like anymore )

( Day 10: A song you don't understand )

( Day 11: A song you want your favs to cover )

( Day 12: A song by your favs you want other people to cover )

Gosh, that was long! But now I'm safe until tomorrow 😂

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da da da da da yey yey~

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 15:30:50 GMT

One week of posts!! I am so proud of myself lmao

A short blog today because I'm wiped out from running around the city for errands tomorrow. I almost fell asleep two hours ago, but I'm stubbornly staying up until midnight or I'll be awake way too early zzz

Anyway, for Day 7, a song that makes you move, please enjoy BACKBORN!

BACKBORN was Tsubasa's only solo single from back when T&T were divorced. I think watching this single handedly converted me into a T&T fan 🤔 I still don't know what BACKBORN means... I can read Japanese now, I should go look that up 😂 I'm listening to the B-side off this single [ASAP] as I type this and I can't really pick between the two. They're both really upbeat and cheerful and great at getting me moving... literally! I use music/podcasts to manage executive dysfunction 😂

Tsubasa's music in general tends to be this genre of upbeat and dancey. As a person, he's struggled with a lot of insecurity and what sounded like depression, but dancing always helped him find himself again. It's very much the reason for his existence, the way singing is for Subaru. It's interesting because Takki, who famously refuses to show emotion, always did sad, emotional ballads. But Tsubasa, who struggled with so many feelings and lives with his heart on his sleeve chose to go with dance songs instead. It's just interesting for me to think about.

Another thing I love about Taubasa as an artist is he didn't actually sound super great at debut. But he's a dancer, so it's fine, right? ...is what one would think, but he decided he wanted to do vocal lessons so he seriously started training his voice. The jump in quality is SO clear LOL his singing voice got so much deeper and it sounds so rich and full, I love it SO much. BACKBORN is a great example of this - it fully capitalizes on his lower register (usually the part he sang in T&T songs) but you also get a great sense of his range! I'm so proud of him, good job, Imai-san 😌

I don't know if his current relapse will put a real stop on his dancing career but... I guess let's wait and see.

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love me, love me not, love me, love me not

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 16:15:12 GMT

I'm a toxic Funky8 stan.

At all times, including right now, I'm thinking of Funky8. I didn't pay attention to them when they were active (I was rewatching Last Friends, don't ask) so everything I know is pieced together from friends' stories (from seeing them backdance at their senpai's cons), old magazine interviews and... new updates. Because it looks the members of Funky8 never stopped loving Funky8 either 🥲

The members who left JE still keep in touch with the guys who didn't and post their support on SNS! The ones who went on to become quite famous after a decade of obscurity constantly talk about the group or the members in interviews even now! A few months ago, when Seiya and Richa guested on Imae-chan's radio show, Seiya mentioned offhand that the Funky8 groupchat was still active?? PLEASE. They unofficially disbanded in late 2017, before Nanidan was even formed!! I love this family 😭

But as always, I have a favourite. Actually, in this case, I have four LOL I lovingly call them Funky4 even though those aren't their official numbers. Whatever, they're Funky4 now 😂

Johashi and RichaSue are my top favourites in their individual groups, but I also ship all four of them together lol Jo is the lynchpin of this squad, as always. Childhood best friends with RichaSue, the only person outside of each other that they'll both willingly hang out with at any time?? Seiya sharing that JoRicha, who were both more popular (in relative terms, anyway) than him kept pushing him and drawing attention to him because they wanted everyone to notice him too?? JoRichaSue going climbing mountains together in their youth and talking about their hopes and dreams along the way?? The shounen manga of it all!!

And their cutie bouncy cheerful Kazuya who they all LOVE to bully (so much teasing in the old mags 😂) but also respect in equal measure. RichaSue often comment on what an amazing dancer he is and tbh that's really high praise coming from them, especially since they're not the type to say stuff just for the sake of it. It's so cute and something like fate that Hassun and Seiya are douki! They're outwardly very different, but it seems like they're both similar in how they approach life, which is very interesting to me. And Jo is, of course, obsessed with Hassun lol this soup was really created in a lab, just for me.

So today, for favourite senpai/kouhai cover, please enjoy my little funky boyfriend squad performing together 🥹

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死にかけた青春一匹飛んで行く

Sat, 05 Aug 2023 18:02:43 GMT

Let's go, Day 5! A song you know all the lyrics to 🎤

gdgdbaby picked a TOKIO song for the meme recently, which got me thinking of my fav TOKIO songs so my pick for today is 青春 (Seishun)! I couldn't find the PV (tbh I don't think I've ever seen it myself lol), but shockingly, this HQ perf was up on YT so let's go with that. Everyone be cool, no one tell JE 🤫

Seishun was the theme for Utahime, one of my fav jdramas to this day. It traumatized me so much that I get emotional when I run into the insert song (Eric Clapton's Change The World) in the wild 🥲

At that point, I didn't really have an opinion on Nagase as an actor yet, nor did I know of TOKIO beyond, "oh, senpai". But ladedida had Utahime on her Top 10 Jdramas To Watch pinned post and Ohkura was in it, so I was like, oh okay I have time. Nothing could have prepared me for the absolute ROLLER COASTER that was this drama or how I'd fall in love with EVERY SINGLE CAST MEMBER. GOD. I recently rewatched it after 10+ years and it was just as good as I remembered 🥲🥲🥲 My poor heart... I'm still recovering...

Anyway, that's why I know Seishun by heart LOL because it's the theme for Utahime AND it's stupidly catchy, so I accidentally memorized it. Highly recommend, beef baby never disappoints 💯

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「優しさってなんだろう？」って聞かれた君を想う sunny days ☀️

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 14:45:24 GMT

Day four and I'm still going strong! Today's theme is a song with a colour in the title 🌈

Okay, I was originally going to post T&T for today (I'm more than just a toxic Eighter, okay! I'm also a toxic T&T stan!), but Yellow Pansy Street came up on shuffle and I couldn't resist. It's a really nice band song and I've always loved the melody because it's fun to sing along to! It also gets stuck in my head for days at a time, but it's okay because I enjoy it. Some songs are made to be hummed under your breath incessantly, I guess 😂

It's a good song, but the real reason I picked it is because I accidentally uncovered some lore: Yellow Pansy Street was a double A-side with T.W.L back in 2011. Who wrote T.W.L? Kitagawa Yujin from Yuzu, who also wrote Sachiare for Naniwachan last year 🥹 I knew Yuzu had been on Kanjam before, but I must have forgotten Yujin worked on this single too. Either way, wah! I need to find the Potato this Wiki translation is sourced from, but apparently Ohkura was SUPER excited to work with him. He really held on to that phone number for 11 years, huh 💚

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It's cool magic~

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 15:41:01 GMT

Yay, day 3! A song about a place ☆

Okay, as we all know, Kanjani8 cannot shut up about Osaka 🤣 And while I love the classics, I wanted to pick something slightly more niche because this way we all get to check out new-to-us music, right?

My original choice was F.T.O, from their first full-length album. It stands for Funky Town Osaka aka the name of this DW! F.T.O is a banger, it always puts me in a good mood! Idk why, it's not a funny song like Sukiyanen, Osaka or their million other nonsense A-sides. It's just... a jam that makes me feel good. A feel good jam for me, personally? 😂 Unfortunately, F.T.O didn't have an MV and it's old enough that I couldn't find any fun perfs of it. Don't worry, fam, I gotchu 🐙 Worth the dl and listen, I promise!

Maybe it's been on my mind more than usual lately because of the 90s Eurobeat parody that recently went viral lolol

But while I was looking for F.T.O, I stumbled on this debut era perf of Cool Magic City and hey, that works too!

Cool Magic City is the B-side on their debut single, Naniwa Iroha Bushi (you'll never convince me Ohkura didn't literally name his children after himself). Cool Magic City is ALSO a song I love for no reason other than that it makes me smile. And look, they still had their taller-than-them baby too :')

This is my first time watching this perf and they're awfully cute. Finally debuted after everything! All their fans here to cheer for them! Their smiles are just so full of hope and happiness and it makes me emo ;_; I also love that they're surrounded by Kanjuu because of course. (No, I didn't look for Jo and you can't prove that I did). Just something about how bright-eyed and excited they all look ;_; All the media from that time, the interviews, the mangas, they always talk about how excited they were for the future despite the hand they were dealt (enka pop!? about Osaka?!).

It's a little bittersweet. But they all do eventually get their happy endings, just not the way they planned it. But what matters is they made it, one way or another <8

On a less feelings note, the lyrics in this perf are like, "don't worry, don't worry, if you ride a VESPA~" and I'm LAUGHING because no, that isn't in the original. What is this random VESPA collab LOL

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「東通りで３時頃」待ち合わせはいつもそこ

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 16:47:12 GMT

I was born in my hometown, but with any luck, I won't die there.

I lived there for nineteen and a half years before I packed two suitcases and moved away. There are a lot of things I appreciate about that city, but I can't imagine living there anymore. Maybe I'll change my mind next summer when I hit the five year anniversary of my last visit, but at this point, it feels like a place I knew in a different life.

I lived in my next city for five years, one of the few "outsiders" in my circle of friends. Everyone else had grown up there and had SO much hometown pride. Honestly, it was a pretty great city. My parents had lived there for a few years before I was born. In an alternate universe, maybe that would've my hometown too.

I tried to love it like it was mine. I didn't grow up there, but it was filled with people I loved and that was enough. They took me to fifty year old ice cream stands in the old part of town where the flavours didn't quite live up to my friends' memories, but their childlike delight made up for it. They brought me thermoses filled with the city's famous milk tea when I had migraines, took me out shopping in the night markets and invited me into their grandparents' homes for family dinner when I missed my own. It became my hometown too, at least in spirit.

Then I left. My adopted hometown had more love than my heart could hold, but it wasn't big enough for my dreams. I was also nursing a broken heart and figured hey, maybe a fresh start could fix that.

I'll visit all the time! I promised. And I did! I visited every time I was in the country, a grand total of two times. Once in May before I went to the US and then once in July the next year before I moved to Japan. Between those two visits, my little found family scattered too. We went in different directions. Some left the continent, others the country, others still just moved to the big, bustling metropolitan city one state over.

On my next visit to the country, how much time will I spend in my adopted hometown? I don't know. Will I still love it the same without my friends' fierce loyalty to shape my feelings? I really don't know. It's been ten years since I moved there, five years since I left.

I bounced around for a couple of years and then Tokyo happened. I didn't plan on it, I fully expected to hate it. I had already lived one shitty year in Japan and felt trapped in my job, in the country and even my social circle. But once again, I ended up with a new little family of friends. And, perhaps more importantly, my own little life.

The old dinky coin laundry I wrote fic in, the dress shop across the road from my apartment built the year Seiya was born that I never bought anything from, the conbini I ran to in the middle of the night to pay for my Naniwachan and Snow Man FC memberships so my registration would be confirmed in time for the nengajou... they're all stupid memories, but they're my memories. (Here's my thinly veiled love letter to my neighbourhood if you want to hear more, haha.)

I didn't learn about my neighbourhood from anyone and I didn't have to share my feelings with anyone either. I put down roots just for myself. That was my home.

Work sent me all over Japan after that. Some places I grew to really love, some places I could not wait to get out of. But with every passing week, I realized just how heartsick I was for my life in Tokyo. I visited every so often just to meet my friends and grew sadder and sadder when it came time to leave. Go "home"? But this is my home!

Things came to a breaking point last month.

If everyone left, would I still want to go back? I asked myself. Even if it was just the stupid little coin laundry and the conbini and the too expensive dress shop I will never shop at?

Yeah, I realized. Yeah.

There's a happy ending to this, I promise! I'm going back! Not to that exact same neighbourhood, but close enough. For the first time in my life, I'm moving back to a city I already lived a full life in. I guess that means it's home.

How does that connect to my meme entry for today? Well, I finally understand how Eito feel when they talk about Osaka. My entry for today is Puzzle!

Puzzle is a mini-documentary style video that shows them wandering around Osaka, eating their favourite foods, taking their old train line, hanging out in their old haunts. It's the title track for their third studio album and everything about it is the opposite of subtle lol

Most of the packaging was pink (one version was blue iirc) highlighting one (1) missing pink coloured puzzle piece. Hey, what could that be about...

This album came out in 2009.

In 2008, Uchi got to co-star with Ryo and talk openly about his suspension. He also did Osen and started getting steady work. He wrote and performed a song called Niji iro no sora e (To the Rainbow Coloured Sky) and it felt like the end of a long, painful journey. (Lyrics translated here.)

So when Eito released this album in 2009... With this song and these lyrics...

あの頃抱いてた夢
近づいてるの？　遠ざかってるの？
The dream you held onto back then
Are you near it? Are you far away from it?

さよなら　迷いなきあの日よ
いつの日かまた会えるよね
Goodbye to the day where I had no doubts
Someday we’ll be able to meet again, right?

That meant Uchi was coming home, right? Clearly they still openly, fiercely, loudly wanted him back.

We (both Eito and the fandom lol) didn't get a conclusion to the Uchi saga until a year later.

I watched this video over and over. At the time, I loved Puzzle for what it was: old friends celebrating a place they love, reminiscing about their (mis)adventures and stubbornly holding out for their missing comrade.

Today, I love it for what it means to me: a celebration that I can make myself a new hometown from scratch. Home is where your heart is, after all.

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きばってこ－ぜ！イェイ！イェイ！イェイ！

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 15:10:50 GMT

Yay, it's Day 1! The advantage of writing out the meme myself is I made it very easy for myself 😎 ...well, at least for today 😂

My JE origin story is I'm an animanga fan who went from 2D to 3D overnight. At the time, I was both extremely into Death Note and too young to know that live actions are almost always a disappointment, so after I finished the source material, I download the new Death Note movie. Long story short, it sucked, but the actor who played L was incredible so I decided to watch his entire filmography! I only got as far as One Litre of Tears. Ryo happened 😂

Back in 2008, JE didn't share any official content online but they also hadn't started cracking down on reuploads either (at least in international fandom). So even a cursory Google was enough to find random concert clips and variety show episodes on YouTube and Dailymotion.

The first thing I ever watched was a NEWS con MC clip in which Kusano egged Ryo and Uchi on to kiss (not that they needed encouragement lol). I watched a bunch of things but nothing really stuck until this music video autoplayed somewhere (did we even have autoplay back then??) and took over my life:

Did that embed work? I'm fiddling around with various things on my phone, so if it didn't, you can watch the MV here!

The song, the stupid choreo, the ridiculous outfits, everyone just clowning around and having a great time... it made me laugh so much LOL that's really it. At that time in my life, I really just needed things that made me laugh, so I watched this PV (that's what we called MVs back then!) a stupid amount, talked about it to all my real life friends and then when they got tired of me, I crashed online fandom and I've been an Eighter ever since.

I'd love to say that and then she lived happily ever after, the end! but my fan journey was a lot more convoluted than that 😂 I went through a period of hating Uchi, then did a 180 and adopted him as one of my favourites (he had just completed his two year suspension, but was a ~junior~ again lmao), spent at least two years viciously hating T&T before waking up having become a T&T superfan overnight?? It was wild times. It's like how I swore I'd never get into "the babies" (which meant anyone after KAT-TUN, because even KAT-TUN felt too young for me then <— expert clownery, they're all older than me)... look at me now!!!

I no longer make dramatic proclamations. I just simply assume I'll eat my words in like six months 😂

It's super hot in Japan recently and my water bottle is empty again, so I'm going to refill it and get into bed. If you've read this entry so far, thanks! Remember to stay hydrated too! 🧊

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Ho, summer~ Ho ho, summer~

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 04:03:28 GMT

It's been a long time since I sat down to write a fandom blog post! The last time was probably 2013, which is wild to think about now. Time is a circle~

Anyway, I'm super excited to blog every day next month! Life is quite busy, so I probably won't have time to write super long posts BUT I do love rambling about idols, so who knows! Just doing one post a day would be pretty cool ☺️

ladedida and I also been talking about making Johnnys History Posts. At this point, idk if it'll be a full series from the beginning of JE to modern day juniors, or something more focused on SMAP & Golden Era and how they directly influenced modern Johnnys, or even an even narrower focus on the history and development of Kansai idols (there were so many Kanjuu who didn't debut with Eito) and why NaniAe are shocking in their successes. Idk, there's a lot to talk about, I can't make up my mind LOL is there anything in particular you guys would like to hear about?

While I think about that, I'm going to do this music meme! Lemme know if you're doing it too so I can subscribe and follow along on your music adventures!

( Here's a text-only version if that's easier to copy/paste! )

I think that’s it for now! ほなまた♪

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