madara_blog's Journal

Aibon in New Jersey, Part 2...
A couple of the nicer closeups I took:

And then the fans with the red tickets came up for their handshakes:

And Usako got to give Aibon a bag of gifts (including some Godiva chocolate and a little coat for Aibon's dog):

(Usako gives a full list of the goodies in the thread on this subject at MM-BBS.)

And...uh-oh, how'd this guy get past security?

And what's he showing her?

A copy of his book!

Signed, and with an inscription that reads, "To Aibon, my favorite entertainer. Keep singing, dancing and making us laugh! I love you so much." Which I read to her. (Could it get any sappier? Hey, in the heat of the moment this is what comes out.) She took my hand in both her hands and said, "Arigato," quite warmly. On my way out, I blurted out one more thing to her, "You're the best to come out of Hello! Project!" And she smiled. (I completely forgot to add that I mentioned Morning Musume twice in the book, although I'm not so sure she would have considered that particularly relevant anymore.)

Thanks to "Daisuke," one of the crew hired locally for the event, for taking these pictures and sending them to me. And thanks to him for alerting us in the first place to her presence in New York and New Jersey.

Earlier, while we were all waiting, Daisuke had offered to ask Aibon any question I had, so I proffered two:
"Are you still in touch with Nono?"
and
"Have you seen Nono's baby?"
He came back at some point and told me she said she was definitely in touch with Nono and she had given him a look like, "Why wouldn't I be?" He didn't get to ask the other question.

Anyway, after getting the handshake, I circled around and noticed that the press was still in the enclosed area, this time peppering her with questions. (Oh, how I wish I'd brought my press pass from Anime Expo.) So I pulled out my digital audio recorder and went back, insisting I was a member of the press. In fact, I'd already shown Yuki, the KDDI staff member coordinating the whole event, my copy of Otaku USA with the Morning Musume interview I'd done, just to prove I was legit. But the lady who would have to let me in insisted I needed to have registered as a member of the press prior to the event. So I waved Yuki over and he let me in, just as they were winding things down. The questions I'd written down were in my notebook and I didn't have time to pull them out. I had to struggle to get the little earphones in for the digital recorder and the first thing I could think to ask her was if she was planning on making any more movies like KUNG FU CHEFS. She needed the question translated by Yuki. She'd apparently already addressed that and indicated so, but did mention the JU-ON horror sequel she's in and I acknowledged that. Then I asked if she and Nono would ever reunite. She didn't quite get the question, so I repeated it another way, "Will you and Nono ever sing and dance together again?" And Yuki translated it for her. At this point, they were trying to pull her away and she simply shook her head and said, in English, something like, "I don't think so." (I believe that's what she said, but I'll have to listen to the recording when I get a chance and confirm it.) And then they ushered her out.

So I went back and joined some of the other fans, who were pretty ecstatic over the whole thing, especially Usako. (Aibon's entire appearance lasted an hour.)

I met "Mozinator," the one fan who was there on Thursday night when Aibon went to Lucky Jack's on Orchard Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side (instead of Webster Hall, where I sat for two hours in vain, since that's where she was originally scheduled to go) and I heard his account of how she wore a red satin dress and got up and sang two American standards in English, Bart Howard's "Fly Me to the Moon" and George and Ira Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me." Man, I'm still kicking myself for not giving my cellphone number to Daisuke and asking him to call me on Thursday if there'd be a change. That's what Mozinator did and that's how he got the last-minute notification of the change in plans. So he was the only fan to show up and he got to spend a little time with Aibon and tell her how much her performances over the years had meant to him. Nice.

That's "Mozinator" in the gray cap in the back of the group:

It's always great to meet other fans.

I should add that when I checked my dream journal over the weekend (for something entirely unrelated), I found that on October 29, less than a month ago, I'd dreamed that I encountered Aibon on a street in Manhattan and we conversed--in English. Okay, so it happened to be New Jersey, just across the river, and not Manhattan, which could have been the case had I played my cards better last Thursday. The important part of the dream still came true. Amazing.

And what a year it's been, what with Morning Musume and Yossi in July, AKB48 in September, and Aibon in November. Can Nono and Rika be far behind? (Wouldn't that be just stupendous, to meet all four from 4th Gen?!) Okay, maybe I'm getting carried away here. Let me just enjoy what I've got.

I have other photos, but my Flickr account is full for the month, so I'll have to wait till next week to post some more.

I have some other thoughts...about how I feel the Japanese ought to handle events like this in the U.S. and mixed feelings about what the future holds for Aibon/Nono fandom. But I'll save it for after Thanksgiving.

Aibon in New Jersey...Pt. 1
She was here. The great Aibon blessed us with her presence. Ai Kago appeared at a promotional event for KDDI mobile phones at the Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater, New Jersey on Sunday, November 22, 2009 (yesterday). And some of us got to see her and greet her. I'll post a few pictures here, with minimum description for now, but with a full report to be supplied hopefully on Wednesday of this week. Fans learned about the event through someone's blog and they spread the word. I don't think the Japanese organizers had even taken this possibility into consideration.

The enclosed area where Kago would appear (seating about 35) held special guests, corporate reps and the press, all holders of blue tickets. As you can see, the fans are gathering around, anticipating the need for ringside positions to take pictures from. We had red tickets that we had to get in advance from a KDDI booth in the mall.

One "fan" came prepared:

(This is Usako, from MM-BBS)

Here's one set of fans:

And here are three girls from Hello Online doing their best "Kago-chan desu" routine:

(The one in the center in the green Hello Online t-shirt is "Berikyu.")

There wasn't a lot of clear info about exactly what would happen, but we all waited with baited breath anyway. First and foremost, we wanted to see Aibon. Second and third, we wanted to meet her and take pictures with her. Fourth, some of us had gifts for her. Fifth, at least one of us wanted to interview her.

Anyway, after a long introduction in Japanese only, they brought her out.

Here's my first clear shot of her after she entered the staging area:

And here's my second:

And here they are wrestling her into a KDDI jacket:

Not quite as fashionable, but still cute, huh?

(Nice boots!)

They spoke mostly in Japanese throughout. Aibon supplied a few endearing English stock phrases like "I love America" and "I love New York." She asked where we were from and I yelled out, "The Bronx!" and got a laugh out of her.

Mostly what she was called on to do was pull out raffle tickets and call out numbers to give out prizes:

Eventually, they explained, in both Japanese and English what the blue and red tickets got you. The blue tickets meant you could shake her hand and take a picture with her. The red tickets meant you could just shake her hand.

Here's what some lucky blue ticket holders got:

To be continued...

Hibari Misora – the very first J-pop star?
As my J-pop research takes me back further and further into Japanese history, I’ve recently become fascinated with Hibari Misora. She was a recording star in Japan in the postwar era, releasing her first record in 1949 at the age of 12, a song called "Kappa Boogie-woogie." I have a CD that has her first major hit, "Tokyo Kid," from 1950, when she was 13 (the age that C-ute’s Mai Hagiwara is right now.) She became the voice of the soul of postwar Japan as it struggled to emerge from the destruction of its cities and defeat at the hands of the Allied Powers and regain its confidence and sense of self. Misora gradually matured over the years into the leading proponent of "enka" music, which is described by Mark Schilling in “The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture” as "sad, soulful Japanese ballads."

I have three of Misora’s CDs, one of which is a Tribute album with 15 of her hits from the full run of her career. She sang a lot of different types of songs, some clearly "enka," and others based on different forms of popular music in the postwar era, including some backed by big band, jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll-type bands. And some are songs I simply can't categorize. I just don't have enough knowledge of the music of that period to do so. But I know what I like and some of these songs are just beautiful. Her music is a window into popular Japanese music of the pre-J-pop era. Her song, "Omatsuri Mambo" is a festival song that clearly influenced the 2001 Hello! Project Shuffle Unit number, "Dancing Natsu Matsuri."

In the mid-1950s, Misora starred in a series of movie musicals as part of a trio called Sannin Musume. The three films in the series are:

JANKEN MUSUME (1955)
ROMANSU MUSUME (1956)
OATARI SANSHOKU MUSUME (1957).

The first two are in color; the third is in black-and-white but is apparently the first Japanese film in "Tohoscope," a widescreen process patented by Toho Studios which followed on American movie theaters' adoption of Cinemascope.

Here’s what Mark Schilling says of the films in his chapter on Misora in the aforementioned "Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture":

"Harmless fluff that were little more than showcases for the singing talents of the three stars, the Sannin Musume movies were wildly popular, especially among teenage girls. Izumi Yukimura played a with-it rock ‘n’ roller who sprinkled her conversation with English words. Chiemi Eri was a good-natured, tomboyish country girl who sang Japanized versions of American pop tunes. Hibari was the old-fashioned Japanese girl, who betrayed no hint of foreign influence in speech or song and stood foursquare for traditional values."

I’m determined to see these movies and just ordered the first one from CDJapan. A check of Misora’s film career on Internet Movie Database (IMDB) reveals that she made a movie with Hollywood star Margaret O’Brien (best known for MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS and LITTLE WOMEN). It was called FUTARI NO HITOMI (1952), aka GIRLS HAND IN HAND. I would like to see that one, too. O'Brien, who is still alive as of this writing, was only five months older than Misora. I have the song, "Futari no Hitomi" on one of my Misora CDs.

Further in his chapter on Misora, Schilling writes:

"After her comeback, in July 1957, [Misora] told columnist Al Ricketts that she would rather sing in English than Japanese and expressed a liking for the music of Julie London and Nat King Cole. Her dream, she said, was to have an American screenwriter write a real Hollywood-style musical for her. ‘I know it isn’t possible,’ she said, ‘But I’d like to read one just to see what it’s like.’"

This is something I wish had happened. One of the great missed opportunities in pop culture history. Imagine if Elvis Presley had brought her over to Hollywood to co-star with him in a movie. How great would that have been? Or Frank Sinatra. And what if she’d appeared on Nat "King" Cole’s TV show with him? (Cole was the first black performer to have his own network TV show in the U.S.) I have an album of Misora’s in which she sings twelve of Cole’s hits, some in English and some in Japanese. (Cole, who died in 1965, just happens to be one of my favorite singers.)

I first heard about Misora from a Japanese friend I met last year, a young woman who had auditioned for Morning Musume the year Maki Goto won. I later came across mentions of Misora in "A Drifting Life," by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, an autobiographical manga volume published this year (2009) that includes lots of touchstones of postwar Japanese pop culture history. This manga is where I first heard about Sannin Musume.

Hibari Misora was born on May 29, 1937 and died at the age of 52 on June 24, 1989 (less than a month before Morning Musume’s Sayumi Michishige was born).

So that’s where my journey’s been taking me.

More Aibon pix from KUNG FU CHEFS...
I got a new DVD of KUNG FU CHEFS, complete with a half-hour "Making of" featurette. So I made some new, improved screen grabs.

Aibon is put through her paces by legendary Hong Kong action director Yuen Cheung-Yan (of the famed Yuen Clan).

Aibon rigged with wires for her supermarket stunt leap. Hey, is there a new production of "Peter Pan" she can audition for?

Aibon in full flight.

Aibon pleads for sympathy from the camera as they clean her up after the watermelon bit.

Back to the film proper:

Aibon's first appearance in the film.

Aibon's first closeup.

Does the camera love her or what?

Aibon is none too pleased with reactions to her sauce.

Master chef Sammo Hung offers some tips for improving it.

In the supermarket fight scene, Aibon ducks to avoid a blow. She is clearly a worthy and devoted student of the great Mr. Yuen.

Once again, Aibon in flight.

And finally, how could we leave without one more shot of Aibon doing what she loves most?

Ayumi Hamasaki reaches the “Next Level”
Ayumi Hamasaki’s newest CD album, “Next Level,” has one disc of new songs, one disc of live recordings from her “Premium Countdown Live 2008-2009” concert, and one DVD containing six music videos and the corresponding “Making of” clips. I’ll admit I’m not that crazy about the newest songs, at least in comparison to her older stuff, but I sure like the second disc with the live recordings. Makes me wonder why more J-pop artists don’t put out concert recordings as CD albums. They sometimes sound better than the studio recordings. And they usually mix older and newer stuff, just the way I like it.

Anyway, I was really impressed with the music videos on Disc 3 from this album. Avex evidently puts real money into these things and packs them with solid production value. Even if the songs are only so-so, the videos are exciting to watch and revel in. “Green” takes place in Shanghai in the 1920s and posits Ayumi as a major nightclub star of the time. We get street scenes that are quite spectacular and were shot on a sprawling backlot set built for Ang Lee’s wartime period movie, “Lust, Caution” (2007), at the Shanghai Film Studio at Chedun, on the outskirts of Shanghai. These shots bustle with life, streetcars and dozens of costumed extras. And Ayumi’s image emblazoned on billboards around them all. Plus there are lots of costume changes for Ayumi and an assortment of costumed dancers and lavish nightclub sets.

Here, check out "Green" for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFKBoHexv0M
(Not the greatest copy, but the only one I could find)

And here's the “Making of” clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8S2fd4YaWs

“Rule” takes place in a Japanese dojo and features a lineup of male dancers in demon masks and Ayumi in a pretty sexy made-for-action black outfit. This was shot on a studio set.

Here’s the "Rule" video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaBbIxwVRzY&feature=related
(The only version I could find has Spanish subtitles.)

Here’s the “Making of” (which shows poor Ayumi with her hand bandaged up at one point):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXo050DtjPI
She seems to me to be doing a lot of the directing herself.

("Rule" was apparently the end song used in the horrible Hollywood film based on "Dragon Ball"--"Dragonball Evolution"--that came out earlier this year. Fortunately, the video has no connection to the movie.)

“Next Level” was filmed along the Pacific Coast Highway in California, with some scenes shot in desert country. It shows Ayumi driving the highway in a red Mustang. I sent the YouTube link to my family in California and my brother-in-law reports that:

“The ocean shots are along Highway #1 (Pacific Coast Highway) just north of Sycamore Canyon Rd., between Pt. Mugu and Malibu. If you Google map this area, you'll see the large sandy looking wash on the north side of Highway #1, just north of Sycamore Canyon Road that shows in the video. The video blends ocean shots with high desert terrain, probably in the Joshua Tree National Park area. Hard to tell on that one.”

Here’s the "Next Level" video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOToTjo4Yxo&feature=related

Here’s the “Making of” clip (watch for Ayumi banging her head on a metal pole and listen for her speaking a little English: "I'm ready!"):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i-jOAhg23U

Finally, the last of the videos that I want to highlight is “Curtain Call,” which was filmed on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, home of Columbia Pictures and once the MGM studio back in the fabled days of the Golden Age of Hollywood’s studio era. A friend of mine from film school days works at Sony and I was there for a visit during my trip to L.A. for Anime Expo and Morning Musume back in July. My friend recalls the shoot of this video back in January of this year and says, “Yes, the entire thing was shot on the Sony lot. I remember it well. Big pain in the ass with lots of studio streets blocked off.”

I get a good feeling knowing that the studio streets that were once home to such great movie actresses and glamour queens of the big screen as Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Jean Harlow, and Norma Shearer would, some 60-to-70 years later, play host to the most glamorous of J-pop stars. One of the few divas worthy of the name today walks in the footsteps of great divas of the past. A fitting tribute, either way.

Here’s the "Curtain Call" video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSvfEO7k7U8&feature=related

And here’s the "Making of":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49GSjmu40N8

A lot of crew members in both the "Curtain Call" and "Next Level" Making of clips speak English to her as if she understands perfectly. Does she?

What I like about these videos, as evident from the Making of clips, is that they're all shot with 35mm film cameras and not digital video cameras the way the Hello! Project videos are. So they look like movies.

For some reason, good copies of the actual music videos are hard to find on YouTube, while good copies of the "Making of" clips are much easier to find. I don't get it. In any event, I urge you to just buy the album for the DVD.

I like Hello! Project's "Making of" clips because they're so entertaining. You don't learn much about the process of shooting a video, but you get to see the girls be delightful, funny, and charming for long stretches (sometimes for over 20 minutes). The Ayumi "Making of" clips are more educational and show you the basic nuts-and-bolts of filming videos. But, at three-to-four minutes each, they're all kind of short. I'd like a little more.

Maki Goto – first glimpse of her new Avex self
The only Avex-period Maki I’ve seen before getting her new CD was that horribly brief clip of her in the a-Nation ’08 concert DVD. Now I’ve got “Sweet Black,” her new mini-album (eight tracks/plus a DVD with four videos), and I have a better sense of where she’s going with her career. They’re definitely playing her up as more of a sex symbol solo artist, along the general lines of what the label has done with Namie Amuro and Koda Kumi, although not quite as extreme. But definitely, an older, more mature, sexier image than Maki got during her Hello! Project tenure. Esp. the “Lady Rise” video, where she gets to dance a little sexier and wear an array of sexier outfits than she got at H!P. I miss her H!P self, but if I was a 24-year-old J-pop singer with Maki’s looks, I’d want to go in the Avex direction myself. I can’t blame her. And she’s got the looks for it. Certainly much prettier than Koda Kumi, and a tad prettier than Namie (who bests her in the overall sexy department). And a better voice, if you ask me. I just hope she doesn’t forget to sing a good song now and then. I understand that Avex has given her the opportunity to write her own lyrics and I see that five of the songs on this CD credit her with the "words," but I've never necessarily subscribed to the notion that good singers make good songwriters.

Of the album’s eight tracks, I like four of them—“Lady-Rise,” “Candy,” “Tear Drops with KG,” and “with…” Of those four, three (all except “Candy”) have videos on the accompanying DVD. None are classics, but they’re nice to listen to. And I can tolerate the other four. “Fly Away” is the other video and I like that video and “Lady-Rise” more than the other two, which are more serious and go off on tangents with scenes of other people in little dramas that I didn't understand--teachers and children in "with..." and a pair of lovers in "Tear Drops." “Fly Away” is more my speed, with Maki and two very good back-up dancers wearing sexy black outfits and dancing on a nighttime street corner somewhere. “Lady-Rise” has Maki mulling over and trying on different clothes and appearing in some sexy outfits (including an appetizing pink-and-black number) before deciding on a cute, but slightly clunky black ensemble to wear for a walk outside, but, hey, it’s what she wanted to wear. She’s having some fun with clothes, which is always nice to watch. And she's having fun with the lyrics, which is always nice to listen to, and perhaps a byproduct of the fact that she wrote them. Overall, the videos have more production value than the ones she did for Hello! Project. But I don't understand why they didn't include the "Queen Bee" video on the DVD. That's the one that everyone was talking about on MM-BBS (and which I still haven't seen). In any event, Avex Maki is better than no Maki at all. I just wish that after two years, it had been a full-length album and not a measly eight tracks.

Anyway, I love hearing her voice pretty much no matter what she sings and I listen to all her CDs regularly. I also seek out her segments on "Uta Doki Pop Classics" for re-viewing. I recently watched Vol. 4 again, which contains one of the best things she's ever done, a duet with older male singer Sugita Jirou of a song called "Imujin Gawa."
What I wouldn't give for a collection of just her segments from the show. Any reason why she couldn't just go into the studio now and do an album of covers of classic J-pop?

Here's a link to the "Lady-Rise" video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YRmr4AusRg

ADDENDUM (October 22):
Okay, I finally watched the Queen Bee video and I'm REALLY irked that it's not on the DVD that came with the CD. I really like it and I think Maki looks just absolutely gorgeous in it. I love the outfit she's wearing in the car shots. If you push me, I may just say that she's getting to the point where she's not only prettier than Namie, but sexier, too. She also seems to be having a better time than Namie's been having in her recent videos. Maki seems to be having FUN! Always a good thing in a J-pop video. The song is nice, too, now that I've seen the video. I used to think that if anyone in the Avex stable could cross over to the western market, it would be Namie. Now I'm thinking Maki has a better chance. (Oh, and I find Bigga Raiji amusing, too.)

Here's the link to "Queen Bee":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfhgBWjPs6A

Aibon at the movies…“Kung Fu Chefs”
I finally got hold of the DVD of “Kung Fu Chefs,” the movie Ai Kago made in Hong Kong in 2008, and I watched it. As far as I can tell, this was Aibon’s first high-profile show biz project after being unceremoniously expelled from Hello! Project back in February 2007. I was looking forward to this movie for two reasons:
1) The chance to see Aibon perform again, even if only in a non-singing acting role;
2) The chance to see kung fu great Sammo Hung in a lead role that involved his kung fu skills.

Plus, I like Hong Kong cooking movies, especially the ones that are done with great, showy flair, along the lines of their kung fu movies. (Think “God of Cookery,” starring Stephen Chow, of “Shaolin Soccer” and “Kung Fu Hustle” fame.)

Anyway, this one’s no “God of Cookery.” Nor does it come anywhere near to being one of Sammo Hung’s greatest films. (For that, check out “Shanghai Express,” aka “Millionaire’s Express,” from 1986, an all-star kung fu period comedy, which Sammo both starred in and directed.) The plot has to do with a discredited master chef finding employment at a failing Cantonese restaurant and taking on a newly graduated kung fu/cooking student as his assistant. The kung fu comes in when the master chef’s nephew (played by STORY OF RICKY’s Fan Siu Wong), a gang leader bearing a grudge against his uncle, takes some aggressive moves against the chef and his new restaurant and its staff.

The film has its moments, nearly all of them provided by either Sammo or Aibon. Sammo plays the master chef and has some great cooking scenes where he gets to show off some style as a cook. In fact, I could have done without the fighting scenes, since they interfere with the cooking scenes, which are the real meat of this film, so to speak. The dishes look delicious, particularly “Four Stuffed Treasures,” the one that gets the heroes’ team into the final “King of Chinese Cooking” competition. It consists of a quail stuffed into a pigeon stuffed into a chicken stuffed into a duck, like so:

Yum, yum!

Then there’s Sammo’s skill with a freshly killed pig early in the film where he does some swift cutting maneuvers and removes the pig’s entire skin in one pull to reveal the ready-to-cook pork underneath. But my favorite scene is one in which he whips up scrambled eggs using a method that makes them look absolutely delicious, like so:

Hmmm, d'ya think the cook at my local diner would watch this DVD and learn something from it if I lent it to him?

Aibon is fourth-billed and has a good-sized part as Ying, the sister of the restaurant owner played by Taiwanese actress Cherrie Ying. Aibon gets to eat, make sauce, fight, and run. Unfortunately, she basically has one scene each for these activities. The rest of the time, she's browbeating co-workers, commenting on others' behavior, or cheering her restaurant's team on in the final competition. She also flirts quite a bit with the young lead, Ken, played by American-born-and-raised Taiwanese pop star Vanness Wu, and is the closest thing to a love interest for him. Her one eating scene took me back to the days when she and Nono used to chow down together on "Hello Morning." Of course, I wanted to see her do more, but I’m grateful for what there is of her, as evidenced in the screen grabs below. She seemed to be having a good time making the film and I enjoyed watching her. (Frame-by-frame searches reveal her breaking into smiles when she was supposedly in danger. Which is fine with me since I love to see Aibon laugh and smile.)

I was hoping the movie would do something for Aibon’s career, but it apparently got very little theatrical release in Asia and didn’t make any kind of a mark.

The DVD I have has no Japanese track, only Mandarin and Cantonese language tracks. I sampled both and opted for the Mandarin track, since the voice actress dubbing Aibon on that track sounded more like her than the one on the Cantonese track. CDJapan is offering a DVD that has a Japanese track, but no subtitles. Given its high price (over $50), I’m mulling over whether I want to pay that much just to hear her actual voice (and how do I know the Japanese dub even USED her real voice?).

A word about the pictures below. The DVD was in the PAL standard, which meant it wouldn’t play properly on the DVD player connected to my big-screen TV. (The image came out only in black-and-white there.) So I had to play it on the PAL-friendly DVD player connected to a 13-inch TV monitor in another room, because it's a lot of trouble to disconnect one DVD player from the Sony Bravia and connect another one. (I may eventually do that anyway, just to get better screen grabs from this DVD and replace the ones below. But until then, please accept these efforts.) As a result the screen grabs are much less clear than the ones I got from the Hello! Project 2004 Winter concert in previous blog entries. Plus, whenever I hit pause or frame-by-frame, a “pause” or “step” tag would appear on screen, although I figured out how to crop that out of most of these.

But here are a few of the useable ones anyway:

Aibon as she anticipates Sammo's roast duck:

Cherrie Ying, as the older sister, watches Aibon as she reaches for the food (and where have we seen THAT before?):

Aibon as she eats:

Aibon as she slowly chews:

Aibon gets to flirt, although in a distinctly girlish way, with young hero Vanness Wu:

Aibon with Sammo after he's shared some sauce making tips with her:

Aibon in fighting mode:

(Of course, she hasn't quite mastered the grim fighting visage Hong Kong kung fu queens are supposed to display in the midst of combat. Where was Angela Mao when Aibon needed fighting tips?)

And Aibon in flight (yes, that's really her!), still smiling:

Anyway, all these shots of Aibon eating have made me hungry. Maybe it's time to see if my local Chinese takeout serves up "Four Stuffed Treasures."

AKB48 in New York, Part 3…The Concert revs up
Back to the concert.

The last of the “unit songs” was a rock number entitled “Blue Rose,” sung by four of the girls, who came out in sexy black outfits. The four are: Yuko Oshima, Sayaka Akimoto, Rie Kitahara, and Sae Miyazawa. Here they are early in the song:

Near the end, Sayaka took off her coat to show some skin and the crowd went wild. Here they are at the end of the number:

It was the biggest hit of the night and got by far the best reactions. Rock is definitely a direction they should exploit in future overseas tours.

Here, Sayaka charms the crowd with some more words in English:

After this, the rest of the girls came out in the last major costume change of the concert to do a final set together. Here they do “Boku no Taiyo”:

They were joined midway by the four who’d done the rock song. They followed with two songs in English (which is two songs in English more than Morning Musume gave us at AX): “Bingo” and “Oogoe Diamond.”

After one more song, they did their big group hit, “Sakura no Hanabiratachi,” which has a high school graduation theme. It’s a very powerful, uplifting song and here they are in the middle of it:

And at the end of it:

They left the stage after this song, provoking cries of “En-cor-u!” from the crowd (who got it right this time). They came back out with the delightful added touch of “I Love New York” T-shirts worn over their plaid outfits:

That's Atsuko up front, Sae closest to the upper right hand corner, Haruna and Tomomi in the back, Takamina on the far left and in between Takamina and Sae, I believe that's Rie and Yuko.

They wound up doing three more songs and then left the stage again, only to come back for another song, making it four in the encore and 17 total.

Here’s Sayaka addressing the audience in English once more:

Unfortunately, I didn’t jot down her final remarks. During the course of the concert, though, she did insist that “We will come to New York again.” She also asserted that this was the “Best time of my life just so.” (At least that’s what my notes seem to indicate.) Needless to say, she was a real hit with the crowd.

And here they are bowing to the audience after their final song.

And their last wave to the crowd before leaving the stage:

Afterwards, on the street outside, I was interviewed by a Japanese TV crew, one of whom had a big spiral pad with questions written out on boards in black marker in both English and Japanese. What did I think of the concert? How is AKB48 different from and similar to other J-pop groups? What do they have to do to make it in the U.S.? I told them I enjoyed it and that it was lively, energetic, and joyful. I compared them to Morning Musume, pointing out that MM had more diverse personalities within the group (although I may yet conclude differently on that point), but that AKB48 had more diverse songs in its repertoire, at least as evident from this concert. For them to make it here, more of them would have to learn English and they’d have to adapt their musical styles to fit American tastes.

So, that was my second “close encounter” with a Japanese pop group. Life just keeps getting better, doesn’t it? If I have any regrets about this one, it was that I would have preferred not to take pictures at all and just watch the concert. The picture-taking got very distracting. I wish I'd brought along a guest who could have taken the pix and allowed me to just watch and take notes. My daughter said she could have done it--if she didn't have school assignments to complete that day. Oh well...

AKB48 in New York, Part 2…The Concert begins
On Sun., Sept. 27, 2009, I got to Webster Hall on E. 11th St. in Manhattan at 4PM, when the doors were supposed to open for the AKB48 concert and I found a long line snaking down 11th St. and getting longer by the minute. (They wouldn’t let us in till about 4:45 PM.)

A little drama occurred after I learned I was on the wrong line and moved to the press line on the other side of the entrance. Unfortunately, I was joined by some friends and was talking to them and didn’t have the journalistic presence of mind to snap pix of the drama as it was unfolding. (The difference between a great journalist and a merely adequate one.) However, I did find shots of the two principals among the ones I took.

In this shot of the line, take a look at the tall balding man in the blue shirt with his face visible and looking down.

He was there with two children, a boy of about five and a girl of about four. You can see some of the girl’s blond hair and pink dress in the lower left hand corner between the man on the far left and the woman in the black jacket.

In this shot, you can see the bouncer at the head of the “public” line.

He had a big, booming voice and at some point he announced that Webster Hall had a strict policy of allowing no one under 18 in. This prompted the father, his two children in tow, to go up and protest to the bouncer that a Japanese TV crew had already interviewed the two children and it would be quite embarrassing to the organizers if the news got out that the two young devoted fans were barred from the event. All to no avail. The dictates of the Webster Hall security crew prevailed. (Truth to tell, the flyer for the event did say “Free 18+ event with RSVP,” but that’s not quite as clear as announcing in advance that no one under 18 would be admitted.)

Anyway, once inside, my friends and I got jerked around as to where we could sit in the balcony and finally camped out in a VIP section overlooking stage right, after staff had warned us they would move us if any actual "VIP's" showed up. (What, I'M not a VIP? Just ask Morning Musume!) So, to cut to the chase, the 5:00 PM concert started around 5:20 PM when the girls came out, in the same outfits they had on the day before, to do one of their earliest hits, “Aitakatta.” Here’s a shot:

Their first MC segment:

Back row: Tomomi Itano, Sae Miyazawa, Miho Miyazaki
Next row: Haruna Kojima, Yuko Oshima, Minami Minegishi and Reina Fujie
Front: Aki Takajo, Atsuko Maeda, Minami Takahashi

Four of the last five doing their intros, while the others are backstage changing into new costumes:

L-R: Sayaka Akimoto, Tomomi Itano, Sae Miyazawa, Miho Miyazaki

They then broke up into smaller units to do “unit songs,” starting with Atsuko Maeda and three others in party dresses doing “Nagisa no Cherry”:

The next unit song, “ByeByeBye,” featured a trio in plaid:

L-R: Minami Minegishi, Minami Takahashi ("Takamina") and Haruna Kojima

In the next one, “Ame no Dobutsu-en,” eight girls came out in animal costumes:

Too bad the kids weren’t there to see it.

The 7th song was another unit number, “Nageki no Figure,” a really nice, fast-paced dance song performed by four of them in new party dresses:

And here’s a better shot of two of them:

That’s Minami Takahashi on the left and Atsuko Maeda in the center.

These numbers really only served to warm up the crowd before the next number, which would be the real crowd favorite. Here’s a shot of the crowd on the main floor:

This is most of the crowd there that night. (There were only a few dozen on the balcony.) A far cry from the “official” count of 700.

One of the big problems taking pictures there was that we couldn’t use flash. And I still haven't figured out how to set my digital camera properly for action shots. So I got a great many blurred shots because every time I clicked the shutter, the camera would take time to adjust before taking the shot. If I wanted to catch them while they held a pose, I clicked the shutter and they would invariably start to move again before the camera actually took the shot. Oh, well… I tried picking out the best to include here.

More shots next week in Part 3, as we see Sayaka, Sae, Rie and Yuko rock out with “Blue Rose.”

October Birthdays, starting with Ayumi Hamasaki...
Ayumi Hamasaki turns 31 today. I’m playing her music on my office computer all day.

Other October birthdays in the J-pop/J-celeb world:

Aki Takajo (AKB48)......................................................................Oct. 3, 1991
Aya Hirano (singer, seiyuu, “Haruhi Suzumiya”)...........................Oct. 8, 1987
Chiaki Kuriyama (actress, GoGo Yubari in “Kill Bill, Vol. 1”)............Oct. 10, 1984
Amina Sato (AKB48)....................................................................Oct. 16, 1990
Yuko Oshima (AKB48)..................................................................Oct. 17, 1988
Risa Niigaki (Morning Musume).....................................................Oct. 20, 1988
Makoto Ogawa (Morning Musume)................................................Oct. 29, 1987
Ayaka Kimura (Coconuts Musume)................................................Oct. 30, 1981
Hitomi Saito (Melon Kinenbi).........................................................Oct. 31, 1981

Notice that Ayaka and Hitomi were born a day apart.
There are others in AKB48 with birthdays in October, but I picked only those who were in the contingent that came to New York last month. Interestingly, Yuko Oshima is ten years to the day younger than my oldest niece, Noelle (who's going to have a baby any day now, making me a great-uncle for the first time).

I looked up other illustrious names who share Ayumi Hamasaki’s birthday. I had to go back quite a few decades to find them.
Ayu was born on the 50th birthday of George “Spanky” McFarland, short, chubby Spanky in the old “Our Gang”/“Little Rascals” comedy shorts. He died June 30, 1993, two weeks after C-ute’s Kanna Arihara was born.

Also sharing Ayu’s birthday:
Groucho Marx, comic icon of Marx Bros. fame, born 1890, died August 19, 1977, three days after Elvis Presley died, and a month before Namie Amuro was born.
Bud Abbott, the abusive half of the Abbott and Costello comedy team, born 1895, died April 24, 1974, a month after Atsuko Inaba was born.
Graham Greene, celebrated English novelist (“Confidential Agent,” “The Quiet American”), born 1904, died April 3, 1991, a week before Erina Mano was born.
Mahatma Gandhi, pioneering Indian peace activist who used nonviolence as a strategy to win India’s independence from Great Britain, born 1869 (140 years ago today), died Jan. 30, 1948 and I'm sorry, but I can't find a J-pop name born around that time.

ADDENDUM (added on October 19): I am remiss in neglecting to include a birthday connection in the above birthday roundup. While Ayumi Hamasaki was born on October 2, 1978, someone close to me was born only 15 days later, on October 17, 1978-- none other than my oldest niece Noelle, who just had a baby (on October 10), making me a great-uncle for the first time! I also recently discovered that a new co-worker of mine was born that same month, on October 27, 1978. Not a bad month to be born in. (Another co-worker was born October 28, 1982, just about two weeks before Koda Kumi was born.)

AKB48 in New York, Part 1
All-girl J-pop group AKB48 came to New York for the New York Anime Festival this past weekend. It was their first trip to the U.S. They did a Q&A for fans at the Festival on Sat., Sept. 26, 2009, as well as a 16-minute performance on a stage in the dealers’ room billed as a Concert Preview. Then, on Sun., Sept. 27, they did a full-fledged concert at Webster Hall in Manhattan.

It was basically my first exposure to AKB48, after, that is, doing some research during the week, including watching select videos and listening to their “Set List” album, which features most of their early singles. Given my experience in covering Morning Musume’s trip to Anime Expo, I was asked by Otaku USA to cover this trip as well. It was quite a different animal since, 1) I didn’t know much about AKB48 and 2) Neither did anyone else I know. They simply don’t have the fanbase in America (or at least the New York area) that Morning Musume did. Plus, NYAF is a much smaller event than Anime Expo and all the venues in which the members of AKB48 found themselves were way smaller than the venues that hosted Morning Musume.

Sixteen of the group’s 48 (or 66, depending on who’s counting) members came to New York, ten from Team A, four from Team K, and two “trainees.” Six of them appeared at the Q&A on Saturday and these six, joined by six more, performed at the Concert Preview that afternoon.

Here are some pix from the Q&A:

The Q&A, L-R: Sayaka Akimoto, Haruna Kojima, Sae Miyazawa, Yuko Oshima, Atsuko Maeda, Minami Takahashi

L-R: Sayaka Akimoto, Haruna Kojima, Sae Miyazawa

Each of the girls spoke a little English in their introductions. Sayaka is clearly making a committed effort to learn the language and she spoke the most. The questions were generally softball, e.g. "What do you do in your spare time when not performing?" and the answers equally so ("Sleeping," "Eating," "Playing videogames"), but still, it was a good opportunity to get to see some of the girls up close and to get to know them just a little. And I daresay these six were among the most charismatic and distinct of the members who made the trip. Sayaka, Atsuko and Minami were especially beautiful in person.

Later on, the girls showed up at a stage in the dealers' room (in full view and earshot of all sorts of other activities going on around them) to perform five songs, lip-sync'd, in 16 minutes. Twelve of the girls showed up, including the two others I consider among the most charismatic of the ones who came, Tomomi Itano and Minami Minegishi. The songs included some I'd heard on their CD.

Here are some pix:

This is the stage where they performed the Concert Preview, just before they came out. I had a good spot, but then I left to see if there was a press area and there wasn't, so I lost my good spot.

That's Tomomi Itano with the light-colored hair. I can't identify the others who are visible.

That's Yuko Oshima up front, Sae Miyazawa in the beret, and Haruna Kojima over on the right.

I talked to a pair of major American AKB48 fangirls and interviewed them. They gave me a lot of insights and information, but I have to transcribe the interview before I can share any of it. They were big Hello! Project fans at one time, but asserted they now like AKB48 better, although they did go out to AX for MM's appearance. (One of them recognized me from the famous picture!)

Overall, I was quite impressed with what I saw. There's something vaguely Hello! Project-ish about the whole AKB enterprise, but also something different and I'm not quite sure I can really articulate it quite yet. I need to see and hear more. One thing that immediately jumps out at me is, of course, Sayaka Akimoto, who's got stardom written all over her. And it was quite evident at the concert, which I'll talk about in my next entry. She stands out from the others, partly because she looks significantly different, thanks to her half-Filipino ancestry, and partly because she's got that essential hunger to be a star, a quality I find generally lacking in the Hello! Project performers. It would be interesting to compare Sayaka with Aya Matsuura on that score. Maybe on another day...

Generational order in MM: a brief note
In the year after 5th Gen joined Morning Musume and Maki Goto was still in the group (2001-2002), all five of the first five generations were represented in the group. When Maki left in 2002 (seven years ago today), the continuity was broken. There were generations 1-2 and 4-5. When 6th Gen joined in 2003 there were generations 1-2 and 4-6, five generations represented, but not in consecutive order. After Kaori and Mari left in early 2005, there were no more members of the first two generations in the group. There were now only three generations, but in consecutive order, 4-6. When Koharu joined, there were four generations represented, 4-7. When 8th Gen joined in early 2007, Yossi was still the leader, so they were back to five generations in consecutive order, 4-8, the first time since Maki left. But not for long. Yossi left in May 2007 and they were back to four generations in order: 5-8. With Koharu leaving, the continuity is broken again: 5-6, 8. It will be a long time, maybe never, before there are four generations in a row again in MM, let alone five.

Koharu is leaving...
So, word is out that Koharu Kusumi is leaving Morning Musume and Hello! Project. When I became a fan, she was the newest member and had only been in the group for about three months. It took a few weeks before I figured out the then-current lineup because I was so busy catching up with pre-2005 concerts. And then I got hold of episodes of the TV show, “Hello Morning,” particularly the one that showed how she got welcomed as the sole 7th Gen member. There she was in her track suit along with a few dozen other 7th graders at her school when Morning Musume came out on the stage in the gym and made it official. She stands there dumbfounded, holding flowers with one hand and placing her other hand over her gaping mouth. It didn’t take long for her to get over her sweet, endearing innocent act. There’s a backstage shot on YouTube or somewhere of the girls in their “Iroppoi Jettai” costumes, either for a concert or shooting the video, the first MM song she participated in, and Koharu pointedly declares she wants to be “in charge of cuteness” for the group. A bit presumptuous, esp. with Sayumi there, but I didn’t mind that at all. She’s mighty welcome to the position, if you ask me.

She’s come a long way since then. Voice-acting, solo albums, special units with other girls (Milky Way), and stuff I probably haven’t even noticed. She’s had some albums connected to her anime series, “Kirarin Revolution,” but I haven’t listened to any of those. According to the news item posted on MM-BBS, she’s declared that she wants to be a model. I always thought that would be a good route for her. Judging from the high-quality photos of her found in the photo pamphlets that accompany some of the special edition CD releases, as opposed to the low-quality, bordering-on-sleazy shots found in the photobooks released by UFA, Koharu has the right stuff to be a fashion model. I think she could succeed on the international circuit. (Provided she can stand still long enough to actually model, and provided she can hide those teeth—or, better yet, get them FIXED!) I especially liked her in the “My Fair Lady/Ascot Gavotte” shots in the “Rainbow 7” photo booklet. That was the first MM album she was featured on.

To bolster my case, here are posed shots of her from the Spring 2009 concert opening credits:

Not bad, huh?

When I asked the one question I was allotted to her in my brief interview with MM at Anime Expo in July, I asked about her career aspirations and I’d even planned to ask her if she wanted to be a model. But, in the heat of the moment, I forgot that part of it.

Here’s the transcript of the Koharu section of the interview:

Q.: Koharu, in five years, on July 15, 2014, you’ll be Ai-chan’s age, you’ll be 22. Where do you see your career? You’ve done so much in terms of anime voice acting, solo albums, singing with other people. What do you want to have accomplished by the time you’re her age? Where would you like to see your career?

Translation as given by interpreter:
A: I can’t really imagine what I’ll be doing in a year from now, so it’s very hard to say what I’ll be doing in five years, but having said that, I would like to have every one of my years from now on be fulfilling and accomplished. And when you think of what it’s like to be 21, it’s over the age of 20, the legal drinking age, and I would like to grow up mentally. I would also like to preserve a piece of myself, of who I am right now, as well as be a mature person who has the maturity of a 21-year-old.

Alternate translation (provided by a native Japanese speaker who listened to the audio recording):
A: Huh? [Ai-chan coaches her] [some of the girls laugh as Koharu answers]
I can’t really imagine what I’ll be doing in a year from now, so it’s very hard to say what in five years, but despite having said that, I would like to have every one of my years from now on to be fulfilling and to be something in which I always do something fun for me…and when you think of what it’s like to be 21, it’s over the age of 20, the legal drinking age, and I would like to grow up mentally. I would also like to preserve a piece of myself of who I am right now as well as be a mature person who has the maturity of a 21-year-old.

(Koharu in a duet with JunJun at the Spring 2009 concert)

So the interpreter at AX appeared to have simplified it a bit. Her spoken answer certainly seemed longer than his translation. Not surprisingly, Koharu said not a word about leaving H!P. Unless you read between the lines. But, as the story unfolds over at MM-BBS, it becomes obvious that Koharu didn't know about this coming move at the time of AX. Still, one can speculate that she might have known intuitively that she might not be with the group for much longer. Or that she was considering a move of her own without really being fully aware of it. Sometimes the subconscious has its own agenda.

Still, I wish she had a decent manager who knew how to capitalize on her best qualities and ignore or underplay her worst. There are certain kinds of songs she sings very well. (Check out her first album: tracks 4, 5, 8, 9, 10.) Let her sing that type of song. And she'd make a great model. And, possibly, a passable actress. Maybe even a comic actress. Give her a chance.

In any event, I'm going to miss her. Somehow I doubt she'll be as visible to her overseas fans next year. If, on the other hand, she comes out with a new solo album, I'll certainly buy it. No matter what it sounds like. I'm always hoping.

September Birthdays
Ai Takahashi turns 23 tomorrow (Sept. 14). She's the third oldest group leader in Morning Musume’s history. (Yuko Nakazawa was 24 when she joined and 27 when she graduated. Kaori Iida was 19 when she became group leader and 23 when she graduated. Ai-chan was 20 when she became group leader.) If Ai-chan lasts another year, she'll be the second oldest group leader. I kind of hope she does. I don't see any of the others as quite ready to take on the group leader role. Speaking of which, notice whose picture has been added to the blog header.

Other September J-pop birthdays:

Sept. 18: Ami Onuki (Ami in Puffy Ami Yumi) turns 36 (Yuko’s age).

Sept. 20 is a big day:
Namie Amuro turns 32.
Yuna Ito, an American singer of Japanese and Korean ancestry who plays Reira Serizawa in the live-action NANA movies, turns 26.
Also on that date, though not in the J-pop realm, my favorite kung fu actress, Taiwan-born Angela Mao (BROKEN OATH, WHEN TAEKWONDO STRIKES, LADY WHIRLWIND) turns 59. Italian actress Asia Argento turns 34. (I don’t know what her best-known role is, but she played Madame DuBarry in Sofia Coppola’s MARIE ANTOINETTE.) And Maggie Cheung, the great actress of Hong Kong cinema (THE HEROIC TRIO, GREEN SNAKE, COMRADES: ALMOST A LOVE STORY), turns 45.

Sept. 22: Eriko Imai, of Speed, turns 26.

Sept. 23: Maki Goto turns 24. She’s got a new album coming out. Finally. I don't know what it'll be like, given Avex's track record with her, but it's Maki, so I'll get it.

Happy Birthday to them all.

Airi Suzuki on CNN
The Hello! Project invasion of the USA continues!

Here's a YouTube link to a CNN segment on the new First Lady of Japan showing clips from her interview on Japanese TV, in which she said she knew Tom Cruise in a previous life and in which she revealed that she'd traveled to Venus on a UFO. The interviewer? None other than C-ute's own Airi Suzuki! Quick, when will CNN International hire her?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N2zrDLmlAA

And, besides, what's so wrong with Miyuki Hatoyama traveling to Venus? She did it for a heck of a lot cheaper than NASA can do it. Cost to taxpayers? Zero. And she came back with a full report, too. I say send her out on more missions!

Erina Mano’s Debut Concert – short and sweet
I watched “Erina Mano’s Debut Concert,” which is how it’s labeled on the DVD. She sings nine songs. It’s a short concert—68 min. Just about right, given the high sugar content of this stuff. It’s not the most high-energy concert either. She sits down a lot because she plays the piano in two numbers and the Yamaha keyboard to varying degrees in the rest. Four Hello! Pro Eggs come out and join her as backup dancers for one number, “Sekai wa Summer Party,” and two more Eggs join them for four more numbers. The songs all sound pretty similar. Some are catchier than others. Two, in particular, stood out for me—“Lucky Aura” and “Hajimete no Keiken.” I would enjoy a CD album of her songs. In fact, I think I’d enjoy listening to them more than watching them. The simplicity and sameness of the songs work better on a CD. In a concert you want a little more variety. I liked her piano playing in the first two songs, but the recorded music nearly drowned it out in some parts. Kind of defeats the purpose. Just let her play the piano!

The six H!P Eggs recruited for the concert—Saki Ogawa, Yuuka Maeda, Ayaka Wada, Kanon Fukuda, Azusa Sekine, Momoka Komine—are all exceedingly charming and do a fine job as backup dancers, punching up the proceedings when necessary. They wear matching black and white outfits—tank tops with horizontal stripes and matching stockings and white shorts and sneakers. Cute but functional and quite comfortable for dancing. They all seem to enjoy being there.

The MC sequences are a bit wearying. Erina is joined in these by Noriko Kato, whom I’ve seen once before when she co-MC’d the Hello! Project Winter 2003 concert. (Six years between gigs…?) In one long sequence (11 min.), they sit on two couches that are covered in huge sheets (as if they were closing a house for a long absence) and go over Erina’s “History” – in three segments. Seen on a big video screen behind them are clips from Erina’s videos, TV appearances, backstage footage, etc. What’s on the video screen is also shown in a tiny box on the lower left-hand corner of the DVD screen. Not once do these clips fill the entire DVD screen as they should have. Instead the predominant image during these segments is the two of them chatting on those covered sofas. (They couldn’t take the sheets off?) At the end of it, they introduce the “Summer Party” video and that fills the screen and we see the whole video. Which was kind of redundant, since we'd already seen Erina and four of the Eggs perform the song quite capably just before the MC sequence. (The song doesn't actually appear to be about a party, but about a vacation trip.)

If it was anybody else, I don’t know how bearable I’d find this concert. But the whole thing is made somewhat compelling by Erina’s terminal cuteness. She’s an Idol Extraordinaire, almost an anime character come to life. And always adorned in tasteful dresses that are elegant and attractive. And always smiling. Plus she plays the piano. How many idols have that on their resume? Wikipedia says she’s been learning the piano since Kindergarten—so that’s around 13 years of playing. She’s competent but I’m not gonna pronounce her a virtuoso until I see her banging out Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. And who says the Wotas wouldn’t embrace it? I would buy a DVD of an Erina Mano classical music concert--even if she wasn’t any good, just for the sheer novelty of it. And if she turned out to be genuinely skilled, all the better.

She doesn’t have the most powerful voice among H!P performers. In fact, when she does an old Maki Goto song in this concert, all I could think was how much better Maki is. If Miss Mano wants to branch out, I’m not sure what direction she should take. She’s 18 now, so I’d like to see her do some more mature stuff, but I’m not sure what she can handle. I like to see her singing more at the piano rather than the keyboard. There’s something so..."music student"...about a keyboard, whereas the piano signifies professionalism and a level of skill and experience. Maybe something softer, sadder, more melancholy, songs that go against her “kawaii” image a bit. I don’t know. The idol thing, though, is not built to last. If you’ve got any real talent or skill, Miss Mano, the time to start pushing it to the next level is coming sooner than you think.

ADDENDUM: Man, that “Hajimete no Keiken” is seriously addictive. It’s been rolling around in my head all day. I even watched the concert a third time just to get the chapter numbers and order of songs so I could listen to them by playing the DVD. And the great thing about this concert is that so little goes on in it to demand one’s full attention that I can have it playing while doing something else just so I can hear the songs. Any other H!P concert is so riveting and so involving that I can’t do anything else while it’s on. I definitely need an album from this girl. I may even have to buy some of the singles while I’m waiting for the album to get made.

More pics from the historic concert...
Okay. I added more screen grabs to my Flickr account. This will be my last installment of these. It's getting a little tired. I've got some new concerts I want to cover.

The exuberance of "Ai Araba, It's All Right"

A nice long shot

Nono's endearing schtick

Risa does "Roboto Niigaki"

My first exposure to the timeless "Souda, We're Alive" - "Doryoku! Mirai! A Beautiful Star!"
It was this song and "Ai Araba" that got me hooked.

Unforgettable dancing in "Souda, We're Alive"

During Nacchi's graduation ceremony, Nono breaks down. A heartbreaking moment.

They end up having to help her out and she doesn't make it back for the encore...

The last ones on stage at the very end: three of the founding members of MM and the one remaining member from 2nd Gen.

They don't make 'em like this anymore.

Back to the concert that started it all...
I'm having a problem with Flickr. They won't let me upload any more photos until next month (Tues.) without my paying them something. The nerve... And I figured (erroneously) that if I deleted photos that I'd already used, it would clear up room for more. Nope, it doesn't work that way. And not only that, but those photos I deleted then disappeared from where I'd originally posted them (this blog, MM-BBS, etc.). D'uuuhhhh. Bear with me, folks, I'm on a learning curve here.

Anyway, in commemoration of tomorrow being the fourth anniversary of my MM fandom, here are the last four screen grabs I have available from the winter 2004 H!P concert that marked the start of it all for me.

More Ai-chan awesomeness:

Ai Takahashi's greatness was evident from my first glimpses of her.

Miki Fujimoto works the crowd:

One of the best all-around talents (and beauties) to have ever graced Morning Musume.

This was probably the first long shot of the entire lineup at the concert:

Morning Musume, Country Musume, Coconuts Musume, Melon Kinenbi, all the Hello! Project Kids, several solo stars (Yuko, Maki, Aya, etc.), and the MCs. Incredible array of talent on one stage. At the time I first saw this, I wasn't yet primed for it all. It was a bit overwhelming. It took a few viewings and a few more all-star H!P concerts for it all to sink in. Of course, I was jealous of MC Makoto right from the start. "That's the job I want!" I remember thinking.

And here's a moment from what is arguably the finest number in the concert, "Ai Araba, It's All Right":

Who knew that in a little over three years after seeing this, I'd be performing this song in karaoke in front of a crowd of "civilians" who would swear I was reading the Japanese lyrics appearing on the screen as I was singing?

And who knew that less than four years after seeing this concert on tape, I'd actually be MEETING Morning Musume and posing for a photo with them?

It's comparable to getting into anime and then meeting and interviewing Hayao Miyazaki. (Which I've done also.)

What a journey it's been.

The original Tanpopo – what a find!
It took me ten years but I’ve finally latched onto the original Tanpopo, which consisted of Aya Ishiguro, Kaori Iida, and Mari Yaguchi. I bought their 1999 CD, Tanpopo 1, at Book Off last week and finally realized that the Tanpopo on the softer Tanpopo songs I like had Aya on them and not Rika and Aibon, who both joined Tanpopo in 2000 after Aya left Hello! Project. Why did I not make that connection sooner? I’ve been listening to the first four Tanpopo singles on various compilations since 2006. I only vaguely connected the songs to Tanpopo because one of the songs was named, coincidentally enough, “Tanpopo.” But I never stopped to ask why they sounded so DIFFERENT from the Tanpopo songs I saw performed on videos and in concerts by the four-member 2nd Gen version consisting of Rika, Aibon, Kaori and Mari. I mean, you’d KNOW it if you didn’t hear Aibon and Rika on something. And I believe it’s because I never saw the videos by Tanpopo’s first gen, nor did I ever see the three perform in concert as Tanpopo (at least I don't THINK I did--now I've gotta go back to the older concerts I have and check).

So it all came home to me with the Tanpopo 1 album, which I love. It’s a whole different style from the rest of H!P, with a softer, jazzy quality, not unlike some of MM’s early singles, but with more of a downbeat touch. And once it struck me that I’d never seen the videos for Tanpopo’s first four singles, I remembered that I’d noticed the Tanpopo/Petit Moni Megabest CD/DVD album at Asahiya Books, so I headed there after work last Friday to see if it was still there and it was, so I bought it. And all four of the 1st Gen Tanpopo videos are there. Along with four later Tanpopo videos and five Petit Moni (Pucchimoni) videos. I already had the other nine videos, which is why I’d held off on buying this collection, but once I realized it had four I’d never seen, it became a must-buy.

I love the early Tanpopo videos. They’re among the best-produced H!P videos I’ve seen outside of the classic MM ones (1999-2004). They’ve got three distinctive and striking-looking women in stylish outfits in scenes staged on actual locations. “Motto” was shot in San Francisco, the only example I know of Morning Musume members filming on the continental U.S. before their recent AX trip. The three basically stand around against interesting backgrounds in dramatic, often melancholy poses. There’s a languid, sexy quality to them. In the first, “Last Kiss,” they pose in a forest setting in long white coats, hats and boots and then in similar black outfits, in addition to other costumes and settings. In “Motto,” they wear beautiful outfits on the streets and subway platforms of San Francisco and then wear satin lingerie-type dresses in a hotel room. In “Tanpopo,” they’re in some kind of rural resort with sculpture gardens and a chapel. I wish I knew where it was because it looks so un-Japanese. In “Seinaru Kane ga Hibiku Yoru,” they’re video-matted into a lavish miniature dollhouse-type Christmas village setting with Christmas lights and toy figures of people all over. All the videos have great closeups of the three performers. Kaori, especially, is just mesmerizing. There’s something about her. She’s got that spacy quality I always like, slightly on a different plane from the others, plus a down-to-earth beauty that’s completely natural.

I found three of the videos on YouTube:

Here’s “Last Kiss”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7sspFL2mtw&feature=related

Here’s “Motto”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMkXVgVpER8&feature=related

Here’s “Tanpopo”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrxMM87iqO0&feature=related

I don’t dislike the 2nd Gen Tanpopo songs/videos at all, but they are so completely different from what the 1st Gen did, which just happens to be a lot more interesting to me at this point. I guess I'm just not in the mood for "cutesy" Tanpopo these days. A lot of it has to do with the weird costumes and hats 2nd Gen wore in those videos, not to mention the obvious studio backgrounds and computer animation (in one of them), in contrast to all the location shots in the 1st Gen videos.

I've also been listening to the "All of Tanpopo" CD album from 2002, which doesn't include the last Tanpopo single, which was released a few weeks after the CD and happens to be...my absolute favorite--3rd Gen Tanpopo's “Be Happy Koi no Yajirobee,” the video of which I first saw on the Petit Best 3 video collection. 3rd Gen retained Rika, but added Risa Niigaki, Asami Konno and Melon Kinenbi's Ayumi Shibata. The "Be Happy" video is comparable to the most exhilarating videos of Morning Musume. It has such great dancing in it that I'm dismayed to learn that the alternate version is a Close-up version, not a Dance Shot version. Dancing like Rika does here (one of the best things I've seen her do) deserves a Dance Shot version. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDisWtX4ZRc&feature=related

1st Gen Tanpopo and 3rd Gen Tanpopo are the Yin and Yang of Tanpopo, two extremes, melancholy and joy, both of which I can relate to and identify with. 2nd Gen Tanpopo is somewhere in the middle, but their videos seem forced, displaying a constricted, staged quality that's harder to embrace, despite the efforts of Rika and Aibon to transcend it. There's something slightly unsettling about it. It could just be those ridiculous costumes and umbrellas.

Remembering the concert that started it all…
The end of this month (Aug. 29) will mark my fourth year as a Morning Musume fan. To commemorate the occasion, I used my digital camera to take some screen grabs from the very first concert I watched, “Hello! Project 2004 Winter – C’MON! Dance World.” I wanted to try and capture those moments that crystallized what really grabbed me on that first viewing. I took 66 pictures, too many for one entry, so I decided to spread this throughout the rest of the month. Besides, I can’t get any more screen grabs from anything else since I dropped my new camera on the pavement on my birthday (eight days ago) and bent the lens and have sent it out to see if Canon can fix it.

I love the falling snowman from the opening title sequence:

My first glimpse of Morning Musume:

My first live glimpse of any of them as Otome Gumi rushes out to sing “Ai no Sono ~ Touch My Heart”:

A wide shot of the seven of them - "Hey, every time, I'm so proud of you...":

Sakura Gumi comes out to sing “Hare Ame Nochi Suki”:

And are those costumes awesome or what?

Why is Ai-chan crying?:

When I first saw this, I assumed it was because the song was very emotional. But after seeing it a second (or third) time, I figured out why. Just before Ai-chan sang her verse, Nacchi came out and sang hers:

...and the crowd began chanting her name, which served as a reminder to Ai-chan that Nacchi’s graduation was approaching later in the concert and it would the last time they’d be performing together in Morning Musume. So Ai-chan cried...

This was getting more profound than I expected...

All 14 of them (minus Asami Konno) come out for “Go Girl ~ Koi no Victory”:

(Notice anyone familiar up on top there?)

Three great songs, one right after the other, performed by 14 girls who looked and sounded like no Japanese women I’d ever encountered before and who looked and sounded nothing like each other. Wow. And one song was fast and rock-like, one was soft and emotional, and one was just a flat-out exhilarating '60s-style pop number of the kind that thrilled me once upon a time.

On top of it all, there’s Nono’s look of sheer, infectious joy:

All I can do now is wonder if Nono’s burst of laughter during that third number wasn’t the perfect lure. "Look how much fun they’re having. I want to be part of it." And now, in some small way, I am.

More to come…

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