White X'mas by Nakazawa Yuko

My gift to you this year is a trip back to 2004 in the form of a clip from Nakazawa Yuko singing White Christmas...

Life... and a little bit of D.O.M.

For anybody wondering what I've been up to, I tried my hand at making a casserole again this weekend. I went to a potluck with the people from the movie meetup group last night. Considering the ad-hoc nature of organizing a potluck, I'm amazed everything turned out as well as it did. The party room we booked was actually free because one of the members lives in that apartment building and it was arguably the nicest party room I've ever seen. In the heart of downtown, it was fully equipped with a kitchenette area, had a pool table and foosball table, and even opened up to a nice terrace (not that we used that feature much - it's still cold out these days.

Anyway, nobody died from my tuna casserole and that's all that matters. Somebody had a camera but since it wasn't me, I have nothing to share with you...

...so here is a shot of Kamei Eri (6th Gen member of Morning Musume).She like Yaguchi was known as "that other one" and they even poked fun at that in the beginning when the group released the auto-bio track "A Noisy Girls' Tale." But that was years ago and now she's made her mark as the comedian of the group.

Soccer team vid

Been a good long while since I did one of those silly DOM posts. But it's also been a while since I was genuinely entertained by a new single coming out of Hello!Project. What's interesting is that according to Hello!Online, this is the first song penned by the masterminds behind Morning Musume's biggest hits (Love Machine all the way to Renai Revolution 21).

Ongaku Gatas are a derivative group stemming out of Hello!Project's kickball team (if there's anything the Japanese have done well it's promoting compulsory athletics among their youth). But that's not what I care about - I'm happy to find Konno Asami is back in the biz!

Anyway, check out their latest single courtesy of Dohhhup!

new mistakes in the biz

It's not that I haven't been paying attention, but the headlines have been coming so damn fast in recent weeks I never even had time to gather my thoughts on Hello!Project getting turned upside down in the last month. I was actually due for another DOM j-pop idol post but... well, okay, let's see if I can make this a DOM post and an editorial all at the same time (I really need a life).

So yeah, a little while ago it seemed Kago was in the middle of working a desk job at Up Front Agency (UFA) and things were looking up - that she'd be back on stage if she earned her keep around the office. I suppose I can see the positive reinforcement theory there... but I can also see how humiliating this could be for a 19 year old. So it doesn't surprise me that she'd have run off and get caught hanging out with a man twice her age... leading to her permanent dismissal from UFA. And I'm thinking, what a waste...

Which left Tsuji Nozomi to finally get off her arse and get set up for a new group (which totally turned me off when I found out it'd be a "Ganguro" themed act. Which later was a moot point because she went and got herself pregnant! (and you thought Kago had made a big mistake). So she's out (not fired, miraculously) for the summer at least with plans to get married with some actor who plays Ultraman... and I'm like, Ultraman is my hero in more ways than one! ^_^;

Which left producer Tsunku in a pickle: what to do with that new project? So he goes ahead and replaces Tsuji with Abe Asami... sound familiar? She's Abe Natsumi's kid sister... I don't have a decent photo of Asami, so here's older sister Natsumi (who was originally going to be this month's DOM feature anyway).
But if you thought that was all crazy... then hang on to your hats because history has a tendency to repeat itself. Remember back when I posted about Yaguchi Mari many moons ago? Well to jog your memory, the short story is that Friday magazine published an exposé revealing that she'd been dating a prominent celebrity (and you know that's a strict no-no in the Japanese business of image control). She she quits, making her stint as team captain the shortest ever... a couple of months.

That was then...

...and this is now. Last week Friday (yes, the SAME magazine) broke the news that recently appointed "leader" Fujimoto Miki was seen on a 3-day romantic jaunt with this comedian friend. And had photographic evidence of her entering and leaving his apartment, etc... and all the while I'm thinking, "I'm a comedian; I make women laugh all the time... what could I be doing wrong?"

Anyway, so here's a Mikitty looking like there's absolutely nothing wrong (because there really shouldn't be). I guess what I'm trying to say is given the real-life ages of these girls, shouldn't the requirement to "graduate" Morning Musume be a little earlier, taking their civilian lives into account? It'd sure save on a lot of embarrassment for all parties concerned... I mean, really, Mikitty turns 22 this year... even if she hadn't been "Friday'ed" who wouldn't suspect she was looking for love (and possibly getting some)? No really, I mean it. Because coincidentally (or not) Yaguchi was also 22 when she was Friday'ed in 2005. In both cases their only true crime was getting caught.
I guess the saddest thing about that case, however, is the fact that Yaguchi and her boyfriend broke up a year and a bit later... which was probably just as well because she's started performing on stage again and was there at the 10th Anniversary concert.

But where does all this leave Morning Musume? Well for one thing, they have a new record: shortest tenure as team captain is now 25 days (Mikitty took over when Yossie officially graduated in early May). Oh, and of course, they get a new leader and subleader. That being Takahashi Ai (who I featured as the second ever DOM post) and Niigaki Risa... my how they've grown.

I'm just imagining both of them getting their butts fired in a year or two.

DOM12

Tsuji Nozomi joined Hello!Project way back during the "golden years" period as a member of the 4th generation of headliners Morning Musume... and to be honest, next to the likes of Yossie and Rika-chan, I didn't really take to this precocious child and her partner in crime, Kago Ai. I mean really these two kids were supposed to be idols? Serious?? And she was... what? 12 years old or something?

Well...

...she 19 going on 20 now. And is it just me, or does she still look like a little girl? Thankfully she's gotten pretty tho no matter what standard you hold her to. And she's carved a up a nice solo career for herself (particularly since Kago got herself fired from Hello!Project; let's not go into that). Actually, I'm rather looking forward to what might be coming in the near future for Nono-chan.

The 8thGen revisted

As I posted earlier, Producer Tsunku has dropped a bombshell on the JPop world by adding two foreigners to his Hello!Project headliners Morning Musume. Well, at the time I was still getting over the shock when I made my post so I didn't really have it in me to look up some pictures... so without further ado may I present the two "exchange student" members:

Li-Chun (aka: Jun-Jun)

And Qian-Lin (aka: Lin-Lin)

As a bonus - something I found floating on the RSS feed from Hello!Online: a link to a Youtube clip from this past weekend's episode of Hello!Morning. It shows how the girls reacted when they there told they'd be joining one of Japan's most successful pop groups and the reaction from the current members... They've even provided a translation of the clip! Link HERE!!

8th gen was incomplete?!

I don't know whether or not this is some kind of joke but it'd be amazing if it's true. Hello!Online reports that Tsunku has pulled a fast one on everyone and has decided to include a talent-search in Beigjing, China that running concurrent to the 8th Gen Morning Musume auditions in Japan!! That is, Mitsui Aika (who debuted on February's Egao YES! Nude single) will be joined by two new members ...Chinese members at that!!

One's the winner of the Chinese talent search and the other has already been recruited to the HEllo!Project Eggs development project. Read about it all here!!

"We're Alive MY ASIA" single

I haven't blogged this single because it was sort of passé when it finally arrived in the mail. That, plus I wasn't immediately taken by the material itself either. I had sort of hoped that the 10^th Anniversary unit would've released a disco-flavoured pop blend in the vein of "Love Machine' (arguably their most successful single, if not their most popular or well-known single, ever). But instead we got Bokura ga Ikiru My Asia, soft-rock pop ballad.

For the record, the disco-pop came of the last single Egao YES Nude by headliners Morning Musume a month later.

But you know, this single did wind up growing on me. And the cover did too... (yeah, I got the limited edition issue):

Something most people haven't seen though, is the insert. The interior of the cover folded out to show 5 portraits of the Morning Musume members past and present chosen for this 10^th Anniversary project. I wanted to share this with you...

D.O.M. 11

This post has nothing to do with anything except to point out that both Ikimasshoi News and Hello!Online reports that this week's issue of Friday magazine published a new interview and article about Kago Ai and it sounds like the parent company of Hello!Project, Up-Front Agency, is considering finally lifting the suspension on Aibon...

Let's celebrate with a DOM post using a shot from a simplier time ...something from before this whole scandal business occurred (thanks for nothing, Friday!).


Ok, let's just hurry up and put this behind us. Fine, underage smoking is illegal... but so is underage-drinking and I think we've all done that before.

pre-order for what?

Hmm... just a thought. I never pre-order anything figuring... why wait?

But for a place like YesAsia.com - they frequently sell-out their initial allotment (depends on what you're looking for, of course). A month and a half ago I ordered the two singles due out from Hello!Project this winter... the first one (celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the premiere J-Pop project) came out last month. My order didn't ship because I had also pre-ordered the one due out mid February (the latest Morning Musume single with a bonus DVD).

By now I probably could've downloaded both (including the DVD materials)... ah well. Such is the way of shopping on the web. But you'd think distributors would take this into account by now and allow retailers to ship a little earlier so that pre-order customers would get it around the same time as the locals who have access to brick-and-mortar stores.

So yeah, my CD singles arrived tonight. Very pleased with the 10th Anniversary single featuring Iida Kaori, Goto Maki, Abe Natsumi, Niigaki Risa, and Kusumi Koharu... came with some collectible cards... not sure what if anything I can do with them, but they're cool to have.

The second is sort of a mixed bag. "Egao Yes! Nude" is the newest single (translates something like "smiling-face, Yes, Nude"; and no, I have no idea what that means). I pleased to own it. It's place in history is that it will be the last single to feature Yoshizawa Hitomi, and the first to feature Mitsui Aika. The edition I chose came with a DVD - which of course is a Region 2 disc. That in itself is all part of the international-collector's frustrations... What does annoy me is that it's actually just a commemorative disc introducing Aika - with clips from her audition and interviews with the other members... what it DOES NOT include is a music video for the new single. And I'm like, "WTF?"

D.O.M.#10

Okay, so I'm reading on line that Aika was recently officially "introduced" to fandom at the a recent Wonderful Hearts concert. So if anything, that makes her fair game... (which in turn means her official promo photos are finally surfacing). Plus, I've been waiting forever to do a new DOM post.
Sadly, there's perhaps only 3 different portraits of her floating around the web at this time... This one being directly from somebody's update to Aika's Wikipedia page. The other one I've seen around (these promo shoots usually come in pairs) was a close-up and I wasn't thrilled with the angle the photograph chose. And of course, there's the costume shows for the new single that's due out in a couple of weeks but that photo's kinda old already.

Welcome aboard, Aika, and good luck!

Yossie, O-medettou!!!

It seems as if Hello!Project may be getting a little desperate to shake things up in light of their less than stellar sales figures over the last few years (at least 2 or 3 years have passed since the "golden age" platinum-selling singles of Morning Musume - it depends on which fans you ask, but it definitely ended some time when the likes of Abe Natsumi, Maki Goto, or Yaguchi Mari left).

But one wonders what the production staff behind MoMusu have in mind with the recent upswing... the disappearance of both Konno Asami and Ogawa Makoto in rapid-fire succession, and the official move from newbie to anime-theme-song idol of Koharu Kusumi, and last but not least, the hollywood-esque ambitions of Fujimoto Miki when she was involved with Matsuura Aya's movie theme act as a sexy new duo "GAM," what exactly is the medicine doctor Tsunku ordering anyway?

First he stunned fans by selecting only Mitsui Aika from the 8-gen auditions. And now just as suddenly, the mastermind has announced long-time member Yoshizawa Hitomi's graduation come May. I suppose he does manage an ounce of class by timing it all so that she graduates with her final performance in her hometown of Saitama.

Full translations of messages from Tsunku and Yo-chan herself here.
It's been a long 7 years with the crew. Been a good run up to now. I'll miss you, Yossie.

Happy 8 Auditions End!!

It's official - the 8th generation of Morning Musume will be Mitsui Aika (I've been rooting for her since the beginning). I don't know if it was her braces making her face like that, but she had the cutest smile of the 8 finalists...

Anyway, here's the Sanspo News site's article (if you can read Japanese)

And the fan-sites are already popping up. They posted a clip from the weekly Hello!Morning show showing when the winner was announced and the rest of Morning Musume's reactions. They must've just finished filming an "Aruiteru" performance because they're in their goofy "marching" costumes and hats.

Anyway, a hearty good luck and "gan-ba-te" to Aika!!

Reaction: Wonderful Hearts Land

Well there it is - I missed the initial pre-order on this ...er... tourbook? Photobook? I dunno. I'd compare it to a souvenir program you'd get at a fancy play - only much thicker and ridiculously expensive. It was backordered here and didn't even ship out until 3 weeks after I'd placed my order! And after all that waiting, I still wasn't 100% sure what it was I had just ordered.

The first treat I was pleasantly surprised with was a couple of neatly folded posters tucked into the front cover:

And here's a look at a typical set of pages. As you can see, beside a bunch of different shots of the Morning Musume members, each member also had a set of pages devoted to them. Starting with a studio shot of them in costume from the opening number (some kind of pseudo country-western theme), then pages with smaller shots of the actual performance (including the occasional candids from rehearsals), and finally another studio shot on their other major costume from the Morning Musume segment of the show.

That would be Gaki-san, if you recall her back in DOM5

There was one thing that surprised me about the book. Wonderful Hearts referred to a small subset of Hello!Project acts (the younger ones) during the 2006 touring season. In fact, although they did headline the concert, Morning Musume was only one of the acts appearing at the summer concert tour entitled Wonderful Hearts Land. This book however features only Morning Musume. And depending on your point of view, is both a good and a bad thing.
First of all, I really don't have much interest in seeing photos of the "munchkins" that make up the kid groups like Berry'z Koubo or C'ute. However, I'm still very much taken by Ishikawa Rika who, as a member of Vi-yu-den, also makes an appearance in the concert... and is sadly relagated to only a few behind-the-scenes shots in this book.

Still, it's one of those treats for my personal guilty pleasure. Take the concert at face value - we're talking tons of lip-synching going on. Lots of "we're Japanese so we suffer together and fans want to see us crying over Konkon's graduation speech." But hey, that's all part of the Musume experience, right? LOL! ^_^;;

The Happy 8 Audition finalists!!

I'm a day late but here you go...

http://ikimasshoi.jphip.net/index.php/?p=724

Ikimasshoi News has posted a round-up on the 6 finalists in the running for the 8th generation to join Morning Musume!

It's odd that the screen-caps posts are a little misleading - you really don't get a feel for the girls unless you go see their clips posted on Youtube. But a little training and they could all be great. The youngest one, Satou Sumire, however, could use a dose of valium... ^_^;

DOM9!! Reina!!

My brother once said that Tanaka Reina reminded him of a porn star. He said, "I don't know why, it's not like she looks slutty or anything - just something about her face that makes me think, 'hmm, is she a porn star?'"

I wasn't sure if I agreed with him or not, and besides, she wasn't one of my favourites anyway. But I eventually came around. I watched more concert footage and it occurs to me she always seems to be one who plays to the fans the most - frequently shouting "yay-YAY!" and doing her signature hands-to-face pose (a variation of which she's using in the photo I chose).

One thing's for sure, her wacky-looking widely-spaced eyes, although certainly very tempting, also creep me out a little. ^_^;;

Kon-Kon: not over yet!!

Ikimasshoi News reported this week that although Konno Asami's been gone for over a month, it seems the Hello!Project archives still haven't been emptied as a new portfolio will still be published!

Is that not a strange thing, ne, Kon-kon?

Okay, so actually these screens of Konno Asami have nothing to do with her new photobook but are actually from the latest release by the fine folks at Hello!Online. In this release, they've subtitled an English-Lesson episode of Hello-Morning and this scene caught my eye as Konno and friends try to figure out how to say "umbrella" in English... it's not as obvious as you'd think, I mean who came up with such a ridiculous word anyway?

D.O.M. 8 ...twice

If I ever felt "uncomfortable" with being a drooling fan-boy, it's now... but then I remember that this is some kind of engineered marketting going on and that Japan has a bizarre morality to its entertainment industry in the first place.

Like America's recent super-hero film franchises taking off, Japan has also had several comics adaptations hit the big screen. This year's was "Yo-yo girl-cop" Sukeban Deka (the fourth in a series dating back almost 20 years)... starring none other than idol cutie Matsuura Aya (a fellow Hello!Project talent with Morning Musume).

And in a cross-promoting effort, H!P producer Tsunku paired her up with current MoMusu member Fujimoto Miki forming a new act "G.A.M." to perform the theme song to the movie. Anyway, here's miss Matsuura on the left (my, how she's grown!) and "MiKitty" on the right:

And believe me the double-entendre in the name is not lost on me. This feels wrong some how... um, yeah - this is the only decent resoluction pic I could find after scouring the web. That's definitely wrong.

D.O.M. 7 ...and a news article

Mako-chan is one of those members who looks remarkably unchanged throughout the 5 years she's been with the Morning Musume crew. In fact that last time anybody noticed a "new look" on her was when she cut her hair short and dyed it within 6 months of her debut (before which it was unremarkably black).

That said, I've chosen a photo to represent with from the MoMusu promotional photo-shoot for the "Sexy ...Impatience" single featured some urban-style looks for the gals. They tweaked her look a bit then... sexy indeed.

...And now a bit of sad news...

Ikimashoi News reports on the event that I mentioned about a month ago in DOM6 - yes Konno officially graduates this week and they snuck in Ogawa's grad ceremony as well. *sigh* I'll miss them both so much...

D.O.M. 6

Keeping in spirit for World Cup running this month, here's another pic that makes me feel a little bit like a dirty old man. It's fifth generation Morning Musume member Konno Asami in her Gatas Brillantes uniform. She played goalkeep for the Hello!Project indoor-soccer team.

Kon-kon's claim to fame was that she was "mediocre" but was hired because she put "a lot of effort" into her audition. She even mocked herself by playing on that theme for a 2-hour Christmas special that year. Ah but the years have passed. And sadly, Kon-kon will be graduating from MoMusu in exactly one month from today. She plans to go to university and will thus also be one of the few who will leave the H!P entirely upon leaving Momusu...

...and I think if anything, that deserves a second pic... Here she is pimping a local pro baseball team... ^_^;