April 26, 2008

happy Irea = looong entry

山下翔央, Yamashita Shoon, Ya-Ya-yah
photograph by ggriffit1 - click to see this picture in full sizeI'm afraid this entry is not going to be very coherent because I can't be very coherent nor orderly when I'm in a good mood, and today I'm in a great mood. =) This morning was fun. According to the wheather forecast we were going to have a cloudy, grey Sunday, but before midday the wind blew the clouds away and we've had a beautiful sunny, Spring-like Sunday. My eldest sis and I decided to go for a walk along the Paseo del Prado, and we ended up visiting the Archeological Museum (click on the pic on the right to see bigger image). The entrance is free these days as the museum is undergoing renovation works and some parts are closed to the public, and we hadn't been there in ages (me since my last year of highschool!).

photograph by varekai1 - click to see this picture in full sizeIsn't it a shame that we usually think that the monuments and museums in our city are just for tourists? Of course I visited all of Madrid's tourist sites with my parents or the school when I was younger. But being taken to a place is not the same as going there of your own will. Just like I hated studying History at school, but now I love reading history books. I was going to say that you also enjoy those things more when you grow up, but... Well, this morning we saw a couple with their kids at the museum and the father sat on one of the benches and told his oldest son: "Go with your mother and look at those jars [some ancient Roman jars]; they're really interesting". ... LOL Fortunately we saw good dads too. Oh, and we saw Alex de la Iglesia when we entered the museum's shop! O_O He's a Spanish film director - you might have heard of his latest film, The Oxford Crimes, starring Elijah Wood and John Hurt. He was with a woman and two little girls, but I don't know if his married, so I can't say they were his wife and daughters.

Monumento al Descubrimiento de América - click to see this picture in full sizeThe pic in the paragraph above, on the left, is another view of the Archeological Museum's building from a different angle of Colon's Square (Christopher Colombus square). The concrete blocks on the photograph are a modernistic monument to the discovery of America. It has several inscriptions carved on it, like the names of different people who played a part in Columbus journey, and among them there's the name one of my ancestors, a nobleman. Those of you who know my surname should be able to find it on the pic on the right. ;-) That's a photo of the monument from the back part. Unfortunately none of these beautiful pictures are mine, but taken from the Internet. I want a digital camera! *pouts* =(

Later we had lunch at an Italian restaurant and... Anyway, it was fun. =) I don't talk about my private life often, and this is not a personal blog, but I felt like writing about it, perhaps because it added up to the good mood I've been in lately thanks in part to all the pimping Shoon is getting these days because of Full House:

TV appearances:
+ February 27th - Sweet Den of Premiere - they showed a clip of Shoon on his own promoting the play. =)


+ March 18th - Sweet Den of Premiere again. This time he was on the studio with Machida and Yonehana, and they show clips of Kazama and Murakami, the play director.


+ March 22nd - Shoon appears in Hadaka no Shounen with Uesato Ryota. He hadn't been on this show since 2004, during the promotion of West Side Story. He was adorably talkative and hyper in this. ^3^


+ March 29th - Shoon appears in Hadaka no Shounen with Ryota again. (not posting a clip of this because nobody has uploaded a HQ version yet and the one I have is crappy =_=)
+ April 8th - Shoon appears in Hyakushiki. He gets quite a lot of screentime too: 2 funny skits with Fujigaya, he explains the meaning of the kanji that make up his name, and at the end of the show they air a promotional clip of Shoon inviting viewers to go and see Full House. =)


+ April 15th - Hyakushiki again. In this one he didn't have that much screentime.
+ April 22nd - Sweet Den of Premiere yet again. This time they showed a clip of Kazama, Machida, Yonehana, and Shoon rehearsing and talking about the play. =)


+ April 22nd - Hyakushiki once more. Lots of screentime again. ^__^ And he'll be on the show next Tuesday as well - outside the studio too. =D


Also, speaking of Hyakushiki... Shoon appears in the June issue of Myojo on a page about the show with Fujigaya, Sanada, and Kato Kan. This is not a minor thing either, because he hasn't been featured in Myojo since December of last year! It makes me wonder if he's going to become a regular in the show, and he'll be featured again in Myojo - properly, I mean, with his own page. Mabel has bought the magazine and took a picture of that page. Click here to see it.

Written media:
+ Full House article in the April issue of Potato (apart from his solo page)
+ solo interview in the Hokkaido evening newspaper (北海道夕刊新聞) (2008.04.21) [click to see a picture]
+ solo interview in the Gunma newspaper (群馬新聞) - April
+ solo interview in the Jômô newspaper(上毛新聞) - April
+ Full House article in the May issue of Duet (apart from his solo page)
+ Full House article in the May issue of BiDan, a fashion magazine
+ Full House article in the May issue of Look at Star
+ Full House article in the May issue of The Theatre Guide (I haven't yet been able to get clippings of this). ;__;
+ Full House article in the June issue of Look at Star
+ Full House article in the June issue of Top Stage

All this attention he's getting makes me sooooo happy. ^___^ It makes me worry a bit too about what will happen when the play ends, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. I've set up a counter on the menu bar that will count down to the first night of Full House - May 2nd, at 7 in the evening. Time does fly. It seems it was yesterday when we found out he was going to be in a play.

For Shoon scans and downloads, please visit the fansite I'm building or the LJ community. =)

On to other things now, today I'm fulfilling a promise I made to Mandy (beargirl86). She asked me to put together the previous headers I've had for this site, and they can be found here now: Ya-Ya-yah Obse-shoon headers set. There have been more, but I've only uploaded those that are significant or took some work. There are a couple you haven't seen before because I never got to use them, and if you read the description that accompanies each header you'll learn what I wanted to convey with them. And speaking of headers... I made a new one. =) *points to the header*

The text is from the fic I'm writing about Ya-Ya-yah's break-up (Maybe your Love), like last time, and I intend to make a header for each of the Ya-Ya-yah members. Taiyô's and Shoon's will come after Full House ends, though, because I want to have a Full House header for the time the play is being staged. =)

Moving on to something different, a few days ago I scanned some old Ya-Ya-yah clippings. One is a rare page from 2002 about the rehearsal for the filming of one of Ya-Ya-yah's PVs: Winter Wonderland.

Everybody was so cute in that PV. ^3^ You can find the scan here, with other random/unsorted scans: various/unsorted folder. I've also uploaded the clip for those of you who might not have watched it and perhaps want to download it.




download this clip [2002 Winter Wonderland (17.48 MB)]

I also scanned two old sets from 2002 magazines: 2002.05 duet and 2002.04 wink up, of which you can see previews below. Taiyô looks sooo young in the Wink Up one! That one if you notice has only Taiyô, Akama, and Yabu, so it's a bit of a rarity as well. To dowload them click on the links above. Feel free to use them for icons, graphics, and translations (no need to credit). If you want to repost them somewhere else, just credit me, and no hotlinking, please. Thanks ~ =)




The 2002.05 Duet set has a bit (see pic on the left) in which Shoon explains the reason for one of his childhood nicknames. If you've read Shoon's profile in the Ya-Ya-yah LJ community, you probably have read this: "Nickname: Shot, Yama, Shoon, Koon-kun (by his classmates) Mayo (childhood nickname)" Well, I had always wondered why on earth anybody would call him Shot. O__o??? It seems the nickname wasn't "Shot", but "Shô-T", the explanation for that being that the T is for "tea" because as we all know he loves tea. ^^ One mystery solved. =)

And to finish this weird mish-mash of an entry, I'm going to go against what I said in a previous entry and post a Yabu and Hikaru livestage from HHS. Blame Yabu and Hikaru - and Fiona too for uploading a HQ version of it too to her Gogobox. I just wish they hadn't sung you-know-what-song at the end. =_=




2008.04.19 [HHS] LS.vob (192 MB) .001 .002 [credits: HAPPYTOWN]


And for those who still think Yabu is not handsome, well... an image is worth a thousand words, or however that goes. Here go two screencaps from this performance. The second one made me LOL because at first I thought his T-shirt said "YABOO". XD That's the way an LJ friend of mine calls him.

click for full size click for full size


PS: same old, same old ~ meaning I'm still in the process of replying comments. Please bear with me. ^^
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April 20, 2008

I'm the white rabbit

山下翔央, Yamashita Shoon, Ya-Ya-yah
Clocks and watches should be banned. I spend my days like Alice in Wonderland's white rabbit, always in a hurry, trying to catch up with everything I have to do and want to do. =__=;;; What bothers me the most is that I never have enough time for all the things I want to do. I don't want to be a slave of work, I want more time for myself! D:

Okay, enough ranting. ^^ Last Sunday there was Shounen Club, and I didn't find the time to post an entry about it, but I NEED to comment on at least two things: Shoon singing Miso Soup with MAD's Kosaka, and Yabu's solo.

Miso Soup... I'm sure Kosaka is a very nice guy, and there's no doubt he can sing, but I wish he hadn't performed this song as if he were at a karaoke place. ^^;;;

ABC's Kawai can make great impersonations of different people, but when ABC performs an Arashi song on SC he doesn't mimic Matsumoto Jun's gestures. Funnily enough -and I guess this was unintended-, while Kosaka's hand gestures were a perfect imitation of Massu's, his singing at certain moments reminded me of Tegoshi. So if he had been at a karaoke place or taking part in an impersonations contest I'd say he did great.

However, since that was not the case, the result was a rather unbalanced performance. Shoon was calmly doing his own thing, because he is, as the Japanese say, a very "my-pace" guy, while Kosaka was too busy mimicking Massu to remember it was a duo and not a solo. Speaking of which, he sang so loud it was hard to hear Shoon at all, and I don't think it's a question of voice potency because in the last lines he toned down his voice a bit without a problem.

Somebody who has problems controlling his voice is Yabu, but it seems his voice trainer is finally trying to help him. I'm not an expert in music; I can only judge somebody's singing on whether it sounds good or bad. You don't have to be an expert to notice when a singer goes off key, though. Yabu has a nasal, distinct voice that can sound very nice sometimes, but others... well, sometimes I find myself grimacing. And it's such a shame. Well, it looks like his vocal trainer has decided to resort to Yabu's falsetto as a way of avoiding Yabu's off-key moments. A falsetto is "a technique in singing using a voice pitched higher than the singer's natural range" (Webster's Online Dictionary). It is "breathy and flute-like" and it "enables the singer to sing notes beyond the vocal range of the normal or modal voice" (Wikipedia). The most beautiful example of falsetto singing I can think of right now is the theme song of the movie Mononoke Hime, sung by the Japanese countertenor Yoshikazu Mera. I'm totally in love with that song and with the movie and Shoon would make a wonderful Ashitaka in a real image movie.


Yabu had used this technique before, though it was more noticeable in Rain Dance, and in his new solo, My Everything, he makes an extensive use of it. It was very interesting, even for someone like me, who doesn't know much about music, to see him battling with his voice. He was trying so hard it made me love him even more. 頑張って下さいね, やぶっち! [The clip on the left was uploaded to YouTube by sshoonn] He needs to improve his English pronounciation too, but well, one thing at time, right? ^^

And now it's Ya-Ya-yah time. =D I've scanned two sets today. One is from the very first time Ya-Ya-yah was featured in Popolo, back in 2003. It's an article about Stand by Me, the first time they staged the play. I wish there were fancams of the 2003 version and the 2004 one to compare the boys performances and the differences in each version. Judging from the photographs at least, I'd say Shoon's take on Chris in the 2003 version was too naive when Chris is supposed to be a bit of a rebel, the kind of guy who acts like he's very tough even though he's very intelligent and sensitive. Just look at the pic on the right. He looks too sweet! ^3^ And this scene he had with Yabu (who played the part of Gordie) on the tree-house is so much love. XD *squee*

sybm sybm3_____ sybm2

And if Shoon looked sweet, Taiyô looked plain angelic. I would have loved to see what his acting skills were like in this, because he was pretty good in Kinpachi Sensei. I so hope groink will upload the last subbed episodes of the series to D-Addicts. T___T Re-watching it and being able to understand everything is so much better. It's just a few more. *begs groink* m(_ _)m

Anyway, the other set I've scanned is from a 2005 Kindai issue that has an article about the dodgeball Ya-Ya-yah episode (see pic below), and another about that onigokko game (Onigokko Reverse) they played in this sort of Wild West theme park. This one has some really funny pics (see the pic of Hikaru below riding a... giant plush bear? XD). It also has Yabu striking a sexy pose in that hideous black outfit they wore and the mushroom haircut just made it worse. =_= You know, I blame Yabu's hair stylist for how long it took Ya-Ya-yah to leave behind the kiddy-group look. XP

Oh, and there's even a group pic on one page with Ya-Ya-yah, Shige and Kusano, and I just couldn't resist making a wallpaper. XD




Links ~ 2003.10 Popolo || 2005.07 Kindai || wallpaper (5 screen sizes)

PS: the header is an official pic of Yabu from DreamBoys. The text is a little excerpt from a Ya-Ya-yah fic I'm writing, a fic about Ya-Ya-yah's break up.

PS2: Once again, please bear with me. I still have lots of comments to reply, but I will reply them all. Ganbarimasu!

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April 06, 2008

when Shoon held the Sun

山下翔央, Yamashita Shoon, Ya-Ya-yah
I felt a bit cheated by the so-called "solo" the handsome guy on the left performed on today's Shônen Club, Way of Life. Not because of Shoon, of course - he was just wonderful, as always ^3^ -, and not because of the coreography, which I think was very nice. I enjoyed every single second of it, but I wasn't expecting him to have 8 juniors no less backsinging for him. =( Sometimes I hate my favourite number for appearing this randomly to annoy me. I wanted to listen to Shoon's voice only, not to Shoon's voice mingled with other 8 voices. *pouts* Oh, well, at least he had a solo line at the end. *sigh* And what a beautiful line that was. *__* Ah, I want to hear Shoon sing a whole song on his own again. ;__;

I must say his entrance and the lighting were great though. And gosh, I loved how the audience screamed in delight when they saw it was him. ^___^ When he was coming forward in the shadows and it was hard to see him well I was wondering what outfit he was wearing and squinting at the screen. In just a few secongs my first thought upon seeing it was "oh, man, not that outfit again!, this is like a curse -_-". Some people call it "the Sgt. Pepper outfit", while in an affectionate way I call it "the puppet outfit". I love and hate that outfit at the same time. Love it because it's so Ya-Ya-yah. Hate it because it's the most uncool outfit possible, and the damn SC staff have the annoying habit of making him wear it on the performances I look forward to the most. ;__; Yes, it's still fresh on my mind when he last performed his solo, Bad★Nice, on the SC he produced, and he had to wear it.

The second thought I had was "I thought we wouldn't see him wearing that one anymore". As I said... it just screams Ya-Ya-yah. Well, looks like I was wrong. JE just doesn't stop surprising us, does it. ^^

My third thought: "ZOMG!! That's not his jacket, that's Taiyô's!! O__O". Now, this is something that most likely only us, Ya-Ya-yah fans, noticed because it's just the tiny difference that in Shoon's the colour of the jacket's body was gold and not silver.

Obviously it's not the boys who choose which outfit they're going to wear for the performances, but the staff. They all have to match with the other boys on the stage. However, the fan in me wants to believe that Shoon chose to wear Taiyô's jacket instead of his own as a little tribute to him, or at least as a way of having Taiyô on the stage with him, in a way, when he realized he had the chance.

Of course there's the boring and plausible possibility that the staff thought the silver one would match better with the other boys outfits, but I choose to believe Shoon had a reason for wearing Taiyô's jacket and not his own.

I think Shoon is the type of person for whom symbolism is important. Just take for instance those Native American Indian accesories he wears, like the eagle one. Apparently in the May issue of BiDan, in which he's featured with Kazama, Yonehana, and Machida, he speaks for the first time about his love for this kind of accesories.

So, whichever the reason, I was very much moved when I realized Shoon was wearing Taiyô's jacket. I wonder if Taiyô watches SC. I wonder if he watched this SC and saw Shoon wearing his jacket. I wonder if he smiled. He probably did. =] I did.

In fact, I always thought the silver one would fit Shoon better and the golden one would have fitted Taiyô better too. After all Taiyô means "sun", and Shoon... well, I sort of associate Shoon with the moon, and hence with silver. I think it's because he's so elfish. ^^


[download this clip] [download mp3]

And speaking of outfits... I really must learn not to mind seeing other juniors wearing Ya-Ya-yah outfits, because it's going to happen whether I like it or not, and I don't mind much seeing Hasshi and others wearing those cowboy-like black and red outfits, but seeing this Nakata Daichi from Hey!Say!West wearing the white Ya-Ya-yah outfit, which happens to be one of my faves, was a bit too much. Okay, I guess they just gave him that one so he would match with the others and at the same time stand out because he's from another unit and a Kansai junior too, but... -_-;;;

Other things put a smile on my face, though, like seeing the moment I've captured below. It amused me so much. XD Two fans taking notes for the Shokura reports they'd type later on their blogs, and the two next to them totally oblivious to anything that wasn't Shoon. I'm a blogger myself, but I would have been one of the latter. LOL


I'm also going to post here a clip of the performance that closed the show, of Takki with all the juniors, firstly because Shoon was in it, and secondly because it was very cute. <3


PS: Random note - in the Junior ni Q segment, the camera focused for a moment on Shoon's answer to the day's question: "The origin of my name!" (ぼくの名前の由来 - boku no namae no yurai). Shoon's paper says his came out of a Sean Penn (ショーン・ペン) movie. O__o ... Um... okay. XD??? Eto... Shoon... Your mother watched a Sean Penn movie and thought Sean would be good name for you? Well, I would have liked it better if it had been a Sean Connery movie. ^^

PS2: As Tina, Kel, and others of you have noticed, I changed the header to congratulate Akama on his 17th birthday. I was thinking of writing an entry, but in the end I didn't find the time. I think he was a sweet kid, and I would have liked to have seen more of him to get to know him better. He had a good voice when he was a child, and what I liked best about him was how fond he was of Yabu, and in general what a loving and respectful guy he seemed. =]

PS3: Still replying comments. I'm a very slow replier, sorry. m(_ _)m

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April 01, 2008

言葉より大切なもの

山下翔央, Yamashita Shoon, Ya-Ya-yah
EDIT: awesome news flash for Shoon fans ~ Shoon is going to be on the next Hyakushiki show. Looks like the juniors are getting this show back? Hope so. =D

A couple of days ago I was filing some of my Ya-Ya-yah/Shoon clippings and noticed something I had read but missed in the 2008.02 Duet Shoon article. They ask him the usual questions: "favourite food", "favourite colour", and so on, which I imagine he's fed up with and when he's asked "favorite song" (「好きな曲」), he replies it's Arashi's Kotoba yori taisetsu na mono (「言葉より大切なもの」).

Now, when it comes to songs sometimes I'd rather not know what the lyrics are about, because, say you're listening to a really cool song, like Des'ree's Life (watch clip below), which is one of my favourite songs, and your understanding of English is limited. It may seem a very phylosophycal song because of the "life, oh, life" in the refrain, but the lyrics are plain nonsense: I'm afraid of the dark. Especially when I'm in a park. When there's no one else around. Oh, I get the shivers. I don't wanna see a ghost. It's the sight that I fear most. I'd rather have a piece of toast. Um... yeah. LOL


So sometimes when I listen to a song in Japanese I grasp bits, but I don't try to trasnlate it or google for a translation because sometimes it's so disappointing. -_-

So when I first listened to Kotoba yori taisetsu na mono, which was on SC 2007.06.10 -I know, I'm a total JE-illiterate ^^;;; In my defence, though, I've only been in the fandom for a little over 2 years now- I thought "oh, catchy song", but I didn't have any special interest in knowing what the lyrics said.

Now, things changed when I learned it was Shoon's fave song of course. ^__~ So I googled for a translation, and I was so surprised. The lyrics are actually pretty deep, and maybe it's just me, seeing too much into things as usual, but they fit with what Shoon, as well as Taiyô, Yabu, and Hikaru have gone through.


[download this clip] - [download mp3 rip]

If you didn't recall this performance immediately, as it happened to me before rewatching it, you were probably waiting anxiously to see Ya-Ya-yah appear, weren't you? For a moment I was almost worrying they wouldn't appear there at all, and I started wondering why I had posted that clip at Never Stop the Music, my Ya-Ya-yah SC performances site. Obviously that's a consequence of the nightmare the past months have been. It still feels so strange sometimes when every group appears, and you find yourself waiting and waiting, and Ya-Ya-yah doesn't appear. Well, the thing is that, in this clip, as in so many other SC clips of the "Ya-Ya-yah era", this last minute appearance was a stage trick to build the audience anticipation. And gosh, did it work. I remember anticipating breathlessly their appearance with every SC opening. I wonder if that happens to HSJ fans, if there's that same anticipation for them. I loved that feeling. It was just beautiful. It was like a wave gathering strength slowly in your chest, and then, when Ya-Ya-yah appeared at last, to take the centre of the stage, that wave turned into a sense of pride that washed over you, because you had seen them from day one, you had seen them happy, nervous, moody, tired... you had even seen them cry, and above all else you wanted them to get to the top.

The following translation is a mixed version of 5 translations and bits I changed or added [sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It may seem ludicrous that I've gone to the extent of comparing 5 translations, but that's what in Spanish we call "deformación profesional" - e.g. when you're a translator, like me, and you are so obsessed with your work you can't even read a translated book without picking out the errors. I'm not fluent in Japanese, but translations must, above all, sound natural.

言葉より大切なもの (Something more important than words)

I kept on repeating the clipped melody so as not to forget it, // because there’s something more important than words in it. // Caught up in the strong wind, I don't even have a reason to force a smile. // My dream, turned into a warped dream, has been torn apart, and the fragments lay scattered on the ground. // What kind of song can I sing that will convey my love while pretending not to care? // Well, let's go on with our life. // I stored that invisible melody in my heart so as not to lose it, because there’s something more important than words in it. // Why is my dream so unreachable when I can almost see it and touch it? // I couldn't help feeling bitter, and I cried so no one could see me hurting from my weakness. // Now, let's see what, being honest to myself, I will make of tomorrow, // of this hope we call “life”. // Fling your dreams into the faraway sky and wipe away those tears; words won’t give you the answer you’re looking for; you’ll find it in your heart. // If, for example, you play a tune, // the dawn of that time will dance down and separate the two of us, // even if we part with a "see you", // I will still have had that one summer with you. // On this splendid day, the clouds roam the skies trustingly again. // There will never be a love greater than yours. // I kept repeating the clipped melody so as not to forget it. // I've sent it to you because there’s something more important than words in it.

I actually teared up a little reading the lyrics and thinking of Ya-Ya-yah. Especially the lines "My dream, turned into a warped dream, has been torn apart, and the fragments lay scattered on the ground" and "Why is my dream so unreachable when I can almost see it and touch it?" (though I'd change that to "when I could almost see it and touch it").

It's been half a year since Ya-Ya-yah sang their last song together, and when I think of them now the melancholy is still there, as well as the resentment towards JE, but above all there's this questioning going over and over on my mind: "why?, why them?". The dream of a Ya-Ya-yah debut seemed so tangible in the months before the HSJ debut!

I could list reasons and fill a whole page: new songs, new versions of all of their old songs, more attention to Taiyô and Shoon... We all know those reasons. I can't believe we were all deceiving ourselves. I still believe JE was building a debut for Ya-Ya-yah. I don't know if it would have happened in 2 years or 5, but I am sure that had it not been for the Hey!Say!7 success Ya-Ya-yah would probably still be around.

But, oh, well, JE is not there to fulfill the boys dreams. All that "jumping to my dream" stuff is just prefabricated rubbish, part of the fairy tale the showbiz is. JE is not there to fulfill the fans dreams either. No, JE is there to make money.

My only comfort these days when I think of Ya-Ya-yah is that it was truly great while it lasted and that the warmth they filled my heart with will stay there for a long, long time. Just like when you read a good book and the story remains in your mind as you replay different scenes and details. =] I also take comfort in seeing Yabu, Hikaru, and Shoon smiling sincere, happy smiles again. Unfortunately I have no way of knowing first-hand how Taiyô is doing. However, I felt much relieved when I read just a couple of weeks ago on a Japanese blog that he had been seen at the Tokyo Globe Theatre. He went there to see Koyama's play Loss, Time, Life.

I wonder if he'll go to see Shoon's play too. I hope he will. I hope he, Yabu, and Hikaru could go together. =] I hope their friendship will stay strong, because there are certainly things more important than words. I could write pages and pages about Ya-Ya-yah, but not in a million pages could I convey the magic they wove together, the magic that ensnared me and holds me prisoner. Though I'm a very willing prisoner, I must say. ;-)

PS: Still replying comments. Please bear with me! m(_ _)m

PS2: This is slightly unrelated, but I'm on the brink of becoming an Arashi fan. One of the first JE songs I listened to was an Arashi song, and I loved it, and I've always thought they're all really nice guys, and there's even the Arashi-Ya-Ya-yah connection: they both staged Stand by Me, Shoon's first solo-singing was a song by Ohno, Shoon co-starred with 3 Arashi members in West Side Story, the last time we heard Taiyô singing solo on the Ya-Ya-yah show it was an Arashi solo... And now I learned Shoon's current fave song is an Arashi song too. =] In fact, I see a tiny bit of Shoon in Matsujun, something of Taiyô in Aiba, and something of Hikaru in Nino. Perhaps Yabu could be Ohno. Definitely not Sho. LOL Weird thoughts. The only thing that scares me about getting into a new fandom, and especially a fandom of a debuted group that's been around for so long is that I would go crazy trying to download every show they've been in. XD;;; That was absolutely crazy in Ya-Ya-yah's case, but gosh, I did it.

PS3: In case you're having weird thoughts too... no, the PS above doesn't mean this is going to become an Arashi blog. XD This is and will always be a Ya-Ya-yah blog. ^__^ ... But I came across the PV of the song, and it's so cute I just can't resist putting it here: I also came across a clip of Ueda destroying the song on SC ... that was disturbing @__@


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