Aki Urara, what can I say? What an amazing B Side, I find it far more appealing than Nanchatte Renai itself! It feels like the golden days of Morning Musume, which I think the current group of girls is getting closer and closer to reaching. I remember when I was in 9th grade I used to listen to Morning Musume all of lunch almost everyday, their songs helped me cope with high school life. And now this new group is helping cope with the real world; life after high school, working two jobs and not going to college. I think a lot of people misunderstand Morning Musume, the majority usually see it as a bunch of talentless, shallow girls that are only popular due to their looks. I completely disagree. I think what they have to give us is their energy. Call it an aura, call it good chi, whatever it is they have it. They give off strong positive energy. For anyone who has actually seen them live (most of the AX crew) you know what I'm talking about. After leaving that concert I couldn't stop smiling till I left LA and fell asleep on the car ride home. And now with the release of their newest single "Nanchatte Renai" the group of girls are full of life! They all seem to be very close and they all work very hard, its like their energies are synchronized which is good when they give it off!

I can only hope that this current set of girls stay together just a little bit longer, I know Ai and Risa have been in the group for seven years now, but I can only hope maybe just a single or two more.

I really like live performances! A lot of times I like live audio as well. When I listen to some songs its fun to hear the energy of the crowd and the reaction of the artist as well. I decided to take a break from the T-Shirt work and rest today. I was browsing through the Reina forum on Hello!Online and I saw someone requesting The Bigaku (Reina Solo) from the Platinum 9 Concert DVD. I wanted to help him, but I just decided to rip the whole concert, its a favorite of mine anyway.

The audio rip is 320kbps MP3. And the MC is removed.



You can find the torrent here:TORRENT

I'll most likely be ripping the Berryz concert tomorrow, I'm probably enjoy it with some tea before I pick it to pieces! Hahaha.

Hahaha I've been reading up on my second favorite H!P girl Mano Erina. I didn't think there was so much dislike of her! It's too bad, I really like her overall. I don't really see her as boring or overexposed, well be a little overexposed. Not boring but simplistic.　Besides who can deny the cuteness!

I just saw her live performances from Dohhh Up. The "Sekai wa summer party" it put the biggest smile on my face that did not go away for the whole song. I like her singing and dancing, very simple, very cute. It might just be my fan bias but whatever. Sometimes being simple and down to earth is a good thing. When I mean down to earth, I mean as an idol, because obviously its rare to find any idol thats down the earth. I hope Erina will continue to put a smile on my face as I throw my money at her. (through buying cd, dvds, and books.)

Two nights I got one of those random inspiration bursts. I'd have them a lot in life, especially in my room; its very inspiring. Anyway lets talk about my breakthrough into apparel design. I was thinking how much fun Hello!Project Tour shirts are, but they are very pricey to get in the US ($40-$80+) And some designs aren't even nice! I had an idea to make a shirt, It started as just a Reina fan shirt, but then I look at the design and thought to myself "This design is pretty versatile" so I started making one for Eri and now Ai. I spent about eighteen nearly straight hours, and went through about twelve drafts before coming to the final design. You can find them here at my spread shirt store. I kinda liked it, but I have to charge a bit more so I can get a little personal commission. Of course 100% of that design commission goes right back into Hello!Project. I have a ton of ideas, once I'm done with this "Musume Debut" series of shirts, I plan on making a Mano Erina shirt, and the a Reina 20th Birthday shirt. I can only ask the readers that are fans to support me with your support I can open up my own online shop and give everyone better prices! But for know I have to stick with spreadshirt until my ticket is paid off. If you readers have any suggestions on a shirt (or any apparel) You can send me ideas through one of my contact methods below.

(Left: Kame Eri shirt, Right: Tanaka Reina shirt)

I guess I'll talk a bit about the design process for those who are interested. I started to get ideas sitting in chair look out my window. And I guess all I ended up daydreaming about was a giant Musume (娘。). Wrapped around my chair is a hoodie, and then it snapped. Since summer is ending it would be great to have a type of outerwear themed of Morning Musume. I went to spreadshirt after visiting a few other sites, something about that one drew me to it. I saw the options they had and it was free so I jumped onto Photoshop CS3 and created a graphic to put on the back of a Red track jacket. I was really excited, but when it was all done I was unhappy; It was cool to look at but it was just dull. And my friend brought up the fact the Hello!Online had alread made a similar design for their Anime Expo shirts. Even so I wanted to use the Musume (娘。) for my design. I started playing around in photo shop and came up with my first draft graphic after a few hours:

I used a blue stroke effect on the Musume (娘。) and the I noticed the amount of space with the font, I decided to squeeze Reina's name in Japanese curving the shape of the dot. I decided after to type it horizontally in English. I was really happy with the results, but something still seemed a bit bland about it. I thought about different things, but the one idea I had about themeing it about the members debut won me over. So next came this:

I was pretty happy I got to use the vector I made of Reina's signature, and it started to feel like an official shirt. With this I thought I was finally complete with the back half of the shirt, but once I applied it felt weird. If you were to view the shit from a distance it would look very bad (If you walk a distance from your screen you can understand what I mean). I had plenty of space below the graphic. I decided to transfer the "2002 DEBUT" and "Shabondama" below the Musume (娘。) And I did some sizing and spacing adjustments which brought me to Beta 3:

Once again I was happy for the progress; I applied it to the shirt once more, I stared and I started to notice another error, it probably wouldn't be a big deal to most of you. Do you notice how close Reina's signature and subgroup names are to the Musume? That was bothering me, a lot. I decided to make two separate graphics, spacing the subgroups and the Musume out. (Because there is a 3000x3000px limit on the site for graphics I had no choice but to make them two separate.) I also wanted to change the layout the subgroup names were placed around the signature. When I was all finished I was very very happy. I felt finally I reached the end. Indeed it was. But it was just the back the was over!

Hahaha did anyone catch that the year of Reina's debut was 2003 and not 2002!? Don't worry it already fixed on the shirt you would buy. Anyway I tried various different styles for the front, I don't really want to post them all up because I have to get back to work. I did go about four different designs: A heart with Reina's name in it, A music note vector with Morning Musume, that same graphic but with her name and signature in the note as well. Then finally I stopped and said, hey lets use that dot from the back and place it on the front left! So I did, and I wrapped Morning Musume around the bottom.

Other than that my shirt design was done, Its easy to adjust the design for each member but it's still time consuming. I really hope you all enjoy it. If your favorite member isn't up yet it will be sometime within these few weeks.

Once again its time for my four day break off work. Today at Yo Sushi was much like a Tsunami, around three in the afternoon there was hardly anyone in the restaurant for a good two hours. Once six came around it was a nonstop onslaught of customers till closing, more than a typical busy Sunday. I think this helps prove my point that "It's only slow on Saturday because its really busy on Sunday" I knew this would happen because of how I saw Jay's Garden (A Chinese restaurant across from my employer) from my old job at Safeway. Though its busy, and a bit stressful its fun for me, and a great step up from Safeway, where I went to work knowing I was taking a step into hell. Well, that was today, I'll be uploading the updated menu to the facebook page, its been request by a few people.

I think I'll start going back through Final Fantasy X I did have an old save, but when I load it freezes and my disc is mint; probably corrupted on the memory card. So I'll have to start from square one, should be fun. I put in pre-orders for Morning Musume's "Nanchatte Renai", I pre-ordered two versions actually, one is CD+DVD Jacket B and the other is the 40th Commemorative edition. If the finally hit number one on Oricon I'll know I did my part in supporting them.


I guess I should talk a little bit about Morning Musume currently, any fans reading this should remember the glory days? Goto Maki, Fujimoto Miki, Yasuda Kei, Yaguchi Mari, etc... The generations that defined a generation for Japanese Pop (opinon). I think where Morning Musume is at now with its current members: Takahashi Ai, Niigaki Risa, Michishige Sayumi, Tanaka Reina, Kamei Eri, Kasumi Koharu, Mitsui Aika, JunJun, and LinLin.(above)They have reached a point where they are becoming a powerful force. If you look back in 2005 when some of the current members started they weren't too great. They needed a lot of work, and they did work. You can see a lot of the members improvements over the past few years, and the newer members from 2006 on up will get there as well. I think since "Shouganai Yume Oibito", (which got them the number 3 spot on the Oricon charts) they have proved the fruits of their labor. I grew up with Morning Musume, but the current group of girls is my Musume. Since the single "Mikan" I've really gotten involved with the group, buying cds, dvds, etc. and actually making the trek to seeing them live in LA (RARE!) I support my girls and I don't think I would like it any other way, I can only wish them good luck in August! (A chance to have their "Nanchatte Renai" singe hit number one?!)

I just found, I guess it was a Nanchatte Renai event in Shibuya, but its a treasure to me; Current Musume, Nanchatte Renai outfit, LOVEmachine!? *melts* I have to share.

There isn't much that I love more than music.With the exception of Reina and Erina of course!. For the past few months I have been having trouble with the digital media. You see for about three or four years now I've been getting quite a bit of it, but never organizing it. I was sick of have ten different variations of one genre! [ex. J-pop Jpop J_pop J POP] It wasn't just genre either variations of artist names and even song titles were complicating things. I finally decided to do some cleaning. I started by wiping everything out and started from scratch. Everything was going smoothly until I ran into a little bug. Some of my tracks are named in Japanese characters, but when I dropped it into WMP11 it turned into ???? or strange Kana. So I spent a lot of time renaming tracks and artist names individually! After about nine hours! I noticed something else was happening. After I renamed a song and the played it the song reverted back to ??? or Kana. It wasn't until two hours later I found it that an option in the WMP11 library setting was turned off, its usually on by default. That was my culprit I finished everything the next day, because at the time it was 3AM (I started the work at 3:45PM!) So about twelve hours of hell, it was definatley all worth it. Everything is easy to find and organize, plus every album has its art (before most of my albums had no art)



I also got to take a look at what WMP11 thinks my favorite singles and albums are, now that I finally gave songs ratings as I uploaded them!

Top 5 Singles (according to WMP):

1. LOVE&TRUTH - YUI
2. Sekai Wa Summer Party - Mano Erina
3. CAROLS - Hamasaki Ayumi
4. Namidairo - YUI
5. Daikishimete - Berryz Koubou

Hmm, that doesn't seem too far off, but I don't think CAROLS or Daikishimete should be in the top five, I still like the singles, but I have others that I have a bigger heart for! Lets take a look at the Albums.

Top 5 Albums (according to WMP):

1. Soffio di vento～Best of IZUMI SAKAI Sellection～ - ZARD
2. I LOVED YESTERDAY - YUI
3. First Time - Morning Musume
4. Best! Morning Musume 1 - Morning Musume
5. Platnium 9 Disc - Morning Musume

That makes more sense! I love Jpop in the 90's especially 95-98. Zard, Glay, The beginning of Morning Musume! Judy and Mary? See-Saw! There was a lot of greatness in that time! I'll have to talk about 90s Jpop another time I have to get sleep for work tomorrow!

I pre-ordered Mano Erina's Single + DVD "Sekai wa Summer Party" I really liked the "Jacket B" (above) version better the other. I've been a big fan of Mano since I saw her performing "lalalasososo" at the Hello!Project 2009 Concert. The song was quite simple but I was captivated by her as a whole.

It's not really well known that I like girls that play piano. Not only can she play piano but she is quite beautiful and can sing and dance, not exceptionally well, but she can do it. As I followed her single after singe I noticed the development of her songs, they are growing more exciting as each one is released. I have to admit "lalalasososo" isn't the most exciting song I've heard, the piano is good though. What really sold me is her single "Hajimete no Keiken" the PV was really cute, especially when she plays with the small turtle! Yet its still not incredibly exciting, but the simplicity gets to me, the song is cute.

All this Erina fandom has brought upon me a clash of idol fandom. I really enjoy Tanaka Reina from Morning Musume, lucky for me Mano Erina is just Hello!Project and not Morning Musume or there could be problems on who was my favorite member! My love for Erina and Reina...Did you notice they have the same exact letter in their names?! Anyone my fandom for the each idol is pretty close I think Reina is only at the top currently because I've know her longer, we'll have to see over the next few years how each girl handles things and then I can decide who will be my personal favorite. My devotion will be strong for both girls either way!

Who will come out on top? Tanaka VS. Mano begins!

Today was rough!

A friend I have is going through a lot and I can't produce any advice, I really hate when I can't offer help to people who should have my help. Work was surprisingly easy today, though I wish I was working more! I had a lot of time after work so I started to play Dragon Quest again, I wish I could play with Yaguchi! (Yaguchi Mari a ex-member of Morning Musume。 loves Dragon Quest)but as I was playing I got the idea to thoroughly wash my car; it turned out decent, I didn't really clean the windows well.

I can't stop listening to the radio rip of Morning Musume。's 40th single "Nanchatte Renai" Its pretty catchy, and if you compare to the older Morning Musume style its quite different. It is pretty similar to their last single "Shoganai Yume Oibito" Which I think is a great song. But the direction of the two songs are clearly different from the old style, which isn't a bad thing of course! I'm excited for both the 40th single release and the Hello!Project group album. (which has already been leaked ^_^)

Nanchatte Renai -> Here
Shoganai Yumeoibito -> Here

Its been some time since I made a post, almost two months? I tried holding two jobs, but I ended up quitting my job at Safeway which was my first job. It wasn't because I was stressed out or anything Its because I wanted to see Morning Musume in LA. I'll get into detail of each day tomorrow hopefully, as for now its hot and I'm tired. But now that I have four days off a week I'll be able to blog again.