Today was Johnny's Mail Day at my house.  My anniversary present came: it's smaller than I thought but so cute.  Tickets also came!!  We're on the 3rd baseline and pretty near the back of the dome, but we're halfway up the front block.  It's going to be great!

The guy who killed that Nova teacher 2 years ago is on the news again.  They are saying he's changed his look so many times which is why he hasn't been caught yet.  He's had (or is going to have) surgery so that's making it hard.  I wonder if that's the whole reason.

Anyway!

( Some expected and unexpected answers. )

Nino's 100Q / Aiba's 100Q

+ I've turned off emailing of comments, so my inbox doesn't get spammed. 
++ If you want to translate this into another language, you don't have to ask. Just credit properly and send me a PM with the link when you're done.

Smart man. I need to invest in some great power underwear. The rest of the article is here. I think he is one of the artists I would most like to meet. Not only is m-flo amazing and I love Verbal's raps, but he's not even Japanese. People say that BoA was one of the first Korean artists to open the door in 2002 but people always forget that Verbal and m-flo have been rocking out since before 1999.

I want to see more groups like Monkey Majik and Def Tech here in Japan. More (visibly) foreign artists making music in Japanese. There's Jero doin' his Enka and that's great but he's also part Japanese. The only other non-Japanese artist I can think of now, Himeka, was tapped for her appeal to anime fans: not that she can't sing, but I don't really see her getting a big foothold in the Japanese market. And then there's this girl from Britian that I can't even find the words for. If only we could all get famous by posting videos of ourself jumping around our bedrooms. Wouldn't life be grand?

So, this is what I spent my entire night two nights doing: compiling all the regular activities done by each group as of right now. I was curious as to how many things Kimutaku actually advertises because I can't go anywhere or watch 5 minutes of TV without seeing his face. So here are all the TV shows, radio programs, commercial campaigns and magazine spots. It's kind of weird cuz I translated some titles but transliterated some others. Whatever. This doesn't include special magazine articles, features, dramas or appearances that are one-time things, only regular work. Otherwise, Arashi would have seriously killed me.

( I bet you won't waste nearly as much time reading as I did doing this. )

Here are some of the tallies:
Most TV shows (group): Arashi (3)
Most TV shows (individual): Kokubun Taichi (6) -- I thought it would be Nakai but he only had 5.
Least TV shows (group): Tackey & Tsubasa (0), NEWS (0)
Most CM campaigns (group): NEWS (3)
Most CM campaigns (individual): Kimura Takuya (9)
Least CM campaigns: Kanjani 8 (0), Imai Tsubasa (0)
Most regular magazine features: Arashi (8)

Take leftover chicken, rice and kimchi. Fry it all up, season with some ketchup. Fry up an egg and tada! Kimchi omuraisu. I still have some cheddar so I threw some of that in as well. So delicious. I think even Andrew could eat this, it's hardly spicy at all.

I'm watching the final episode of Rescue and man, I just can't get into. I can't even remember what the hell was going on. So I got thinking about the dramas that are wrapping up soon and

Dramas I'm really looking forward to (like a virgin on prom night):
-- My Girl with Aiba Masaki & Yuuka (Oct 9 start; 11:15pm Fri, Asahi)
-- Tokyo DOGS with Oguri Shun & Mizushima Hiro (Oct start; 9:00pm Mon, Fuji) [Though I don't know why Hiro isn't the cop from America since he can, you know, actually speak English.]
-- Samurai Seventeen with Miura Haruma (Oct start; 9:00pm Sat, NTV)
-- Tengoku de Kimi ni Aetara with Ninomiya Kazunari & Inoue Mao (Sept 24; 9:00pm, TBS)
-- Reijigo no Kyaku with Ohno Satoshi and others (Oct 23 start; 1:05am, Fuji)

And Shige's in a drama SP? With Aibu Saki, no less. Girl sure gets around. Chichi yo, Anata wa Erakatta will be on TBS at some point this fall. I also saw somewhere that they're doing Bloody Monday 2 (in Jan?). !!! I hope that Hiroki reprises his role as J.

Now that this season is wrapping up, last season's dramas should be finished being subbed. I've heard great things about Mr. Brain (and I have never actually seen a Kimutaku drama :X) and I wanted to watch Atashinchi no Danshi for Yamada Yusuke and Horikitty. Anyone have any others to recommend?

Here's the cross-talk from the FC bulletin this month. I'm going to do last month's one next.

Family Club Bulletin #45: Late Summer Issue

The ARS Times: volume.02
Today’s Arashi Free Talk about…

( Read more... )

PS: Yuckie-chan has scanned this so if you want to see what it looks like, look for it on her community (if you're a member).

I had hoped it was an email from the concert dept saying the hotlines were live... it was this instead:


So cute! But it looks so ghetto with shitty Docomo emojis.

Who's eating bran cereal with yogurt for dinner? I am. Although it's more like... brany-yogurt-mush now.

The new issue of the fan club pamphlete came in the mail today. I bring you Aiba's 100Q! It was so much faster than last time since I already had the questions translated. Does anyone know where I can find AU/Docomo emoji gifs? Much appreciated. I also made some edits to Nino's 100Q and fixed some mistakes I found. Aiba's interview was at times more enjoyable than Ninos. I definitely had some laughs.

Translation notes at the end.

( Aiba is genki, even on paper. )

Nino's 100Q

Aso is out. The Liberal Democratic Party is out.

I don't really know what the difference between the "Liberal" Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan is, but it's a change from the the last few decades of power so there should be some changes.

Holy shit.

I'm just seeing the votes now, the LDP has 93 seats while the DPJ has 283 so far! And Sho-chan looks hot despite having held a concert tonight. I hope he has a day off tomorrow. I wonder which way he voted (cuz you know he did). I wonder if the rest of Arashi voted. Apparently, this year was expected to have the highest reported voter turn-out. I wonder when this will be over; this news coverage has been going on since 9pm. When will they all get to go home?

I finally caught up with my RL Sho-chan and his girlfriend and had dinner and went to some karaoke. Good times! His gf is such a cutie. She wants to meet up once a month (I guess she likes me that much), but I'll wait for her to contact me. She's a hair stylist so maybe I can get her to do my hair from now on?

Time to sleep! Stupid typhoon looks like it's going to ruin my plans for tmrw.

(I'm just going to edit this entry again. Save your flists.)

So the theme of this years 24hr TV is "Start! Take the first step~" and so Shige learned to play the steel drums. He went to Trinidad & Tabago to meet these two girls who play and made his own drum. The girls came to Japan for the performance and they did a medley and ahh~! It was so good! I want that on video! Shige was so moved by his own performance, he cried. Aww~ And I agree with Yamapi, he better continue to play. I'd try to get to a News concert just to see that!

So they've raised some 800,000,000 yen so far but seriously, I wonder how much they spend on this charity event. They've got Matsushima from Othello going all over Japan visiting World Heritege sites (though that's probably by a network-owned car), they've sent Shige off to Jamaica, they've got a few boats up in Aomori/Hokkaido for the girl swimming the channel, they've got Oshima and another guy and a bunch of kids in Sri Lanka searching for jewels. Not to mention renting out the Tokyo Big Site location and paying all the staff... I really wonder if there is much to donate to charity after all is said and done. Maybe Lydia can enlighten me since she knows more about television production than I do.

I'm going to have to start watching Newsfan's releases more closely for 24hr releases. I want that Shige part! And his English was totally adorable.

And I think this is becoming my favourite icon of all time. :D

Nagura Jun of Neptune went to Fukushima prefecture on his darts tour. I love how people greet each other in Japan! And I notice it all the time in daily life here, just saying hello to people on the street. And they have no shame about asking your age. It's a lot different from western culture. I heard somewhere recently that in Japan, asking someones age is a way of showing that you are interested or care about them and you want to be more familiar with them. One granny said the thing she wants to start is learning how to use a computer. So cute!

It's time for Ryo's dart tour of Japan and he's off to Nagano prefecture somewhere. I think this is the first time I've actually heart his Kansai accent. I think it suits him more than standard Japanese. His face was priceless when he met some jr high students who were Yamapi/Koyama fans. Poor guy. XD And none of the old folks know who he is. Haha.


Thoughts on 24Hr TV 32 so far...
It's not as tear inducing as last year's was. Of course there are a lot of "I was in a terrible accident/got cancer/was born with this disease/disability" stories that have been touching but each of the News member's tasks aren't so moving. I guess with a theme like "Take the first step," it's more happy.

News is also a kind of boring personality... from what I can tell, they're just standing around a lot. And they are so obviously not used to this kind of job. They miss their cues a lot and talk over each people on the video feeds a lot but they have gotten visibly better as the show's gone on. For a while this afternoon, all they did was check in with the swimmer (Yamapi's job) and the runner (Tegoshi's job) and played the plea for donation video.

I guess I should take a shower while there's nothing interesting going on. They're going to do the Dance Koshien contest now. I see some MJ inspired groups.

3:10p
Daigo and Keila are leading a blind boy who wants to climb Mt. Fuji. I always enjoy Daigo's antics. Especially when he's doing air guitar with sounds in the middle of a forest. Poor kid.. he's so exhausted and they are already half way up. He got altitude sickness! They climbed the mountain the same day as that big earthquake recently. The plants were shaking so much... and they showed footage of an office in Shizuoka. Damn. I've never seen/felt such a big quake. The guide says that Fuji hardly ever shakes during a quake, so it really was a big one.

Ahh~ I feel like crying again. T___T

3:50p
Horiuchi Ken's task was to go to India and teach a village to make paper! These kids had never seen paper before and wanted to write and draw. It was really intersting seeing how they could make paper with things they've got. I remember trying to make paper from newspaper with my friend when I was a kid. The kids looked so happy! And they drew a picture on a big sheet that they made and sent it over.

Coming up is Koyama's task, I think. He went to learn sign language and is going to perform a shadow show with some kids. :D I need to pay more attention to Koyama. ♥

There's some discussion going on about the ethics of arguably the largest charity event in Japan (at least that I know of) on aramathedidnt. After hearing about DBSK's court happenings on Asian Pop Addict and how they're trying to get out of their exclusivity clause and just how much money they probably make (10-15% of all revenue??), it makes me wonder about Japan. And suddenly it makes sense why half of Arashi still live at home. Hell, it's why I'm moving back home.

4:00p
Speed is on again this year? Boo.

4:45p
Koyama and the kids were amazing. Japanese sign language looks much easier than American and he's gotten really good at it. He's crying too as are all the parents... I'm really touched. That's another video for the collection. I recommend everyone to watch that cut if you can find it.

5:45p
They've got Shoten doing a 24hr TV special? Boo. I guess even NTV can't pre-empt something as institutionalized as Shoten.

7:15p (but actually written at midnight and drunk so pardon)
FINALLY Yamapi's task! Of course, they left the best for last. Yamapi decided to start scuba diving because of a promise he made to his childhood friend who was in an accident that left him in a wheel chair. They promised to go scuba diving so his friend could take a picture of a manta ray. Okay, so to be honest, Yamapi has always been kind of dull to me (despite being fucking hot) but here... he just shone. He really cares about his friends. And him calling his friend Shu-chan, and being called Tomo by his friend was just heart-warming. And omg, as if I didn't want to go to Okinawa before... just gorgeous. The pictures Shu took in the water with Yamapi are going to be treasured forever.

After the VTR his friend read a letter he wrote to Yamapi, thanking him for the opportunity to go diving and that he knows he's busy but he should try and get his diving lisence so they can go again and take a picture of a manta ray (what Shu wanted to do originally) and Yamapi's trembling lip and his cheeks turning pink as he tried not to cry was just priceless! And then afterwards, his comment... as if I had any doubt he was straight before. xD

Oh, and Kame had shown up before--like, WTF. But it was so they could sing Seishun Amigo for Shu-chan. Touching!

And then I went drinking so I don't know how it ended, but I don't think Imoto made it to the end of her marathon. And it looks like the Democratic Party of Japan is out!