Favorite J-Pop Singles: L<->R / Knocking On Your Door

Theme song for the extremely funny and heartfelt drama BOKURA NI AI O! (Give Us Love!!) starring Eguchi Yosuke, Takeda Shinji and Suzuki Anju (looking particularly yummy here!)

Eguchi runs a dilapidated rooming house filled with equally dilapidated boarders (among them the always quirky Kokubun Taichi of TOKIO!), but he find a goal to strive for when cutie stewardess Anju Suzuki and friends move into next door’s fancy hotel.

Whenever I hear this song, I can’t help picturing the opening credits for the show… so wacky, they've even got Eguchi and the gang lip-synching to the song, happily playing away on instruments and dancing as the credits rolled!

Arg, another song I tried once upon a time (very unsucessfully) to sing at karaoke...

Favorite J-pop Singles: Nakayama Miho and WANDS / Sekaijuu no Dare Yori Kitto

Watching this live video the other night, I was surprised to realize that I hadn't written up something in honor of this awesome single earlier, and in fact, I had to go through my pages one by one to make sure I didn't, 'cause I sure THOUGHT I did!


Taking the solid rock beats and vocalising of group WANDS (whom I've written about before here) and adding the sweet, sweet vocals of petite Miss Nakayama, and you had SUCH an INSPIRED winning combination! Already known to me just by word of mouth, I finally got to see a MUSIC STATION performance of this song, and MAN, was I hooked! The band sounded great, but of course what really sold it was cute li'l Miho, and she had this certain stance that she took during this song, one foot in front of the other, arms crossed and gently bumping along with the rhythm of the tune...!

I've gotten quite a few performances of Miho doing this song since, and it's neat that she takes that killer pose in each and every one of them! Not to mention lookin' pretty as heck!

Kohaku Uta Gassen 2007

Nakai and Shofukutei, note Sayumin looking adorable as heck in the background!

 Well, I have to say that this yer's Kohaku Uta Gassen (or, rather, the Red and White Song Festival) was a pretty straight forward event, and resonated (at least with me) as about as average on the whole scale of Kohakus, anyway. I should have known things would be  meh when I saw that for the first time, they were gonna use two GUYS as the Red and White Captains, respectively Nakai Masahiro for the Red (Female) Team and Tsurube Shōfukutei for the White (Male) Team. How off is THAT?

Apart from that diversion from the traditional, the show went off without hitch and there were a few acts I thought stood out for me...

The Princesses and the Queen:

Morning Musume started the show with an explosion of girlish playfulness...and then Kenichi Mikawa followed with this year’s example of excessive gaudiness! 

 

 

Once again, the Kohaku proved that Enka is still alive and well, and like last year, Yoko Nagayama did her always fierce performance of "Jonkara Onna Bushi", rockin' that Shamisen while growling out those lyrics and delivering the steeliest gaze ever...

And they had cute young girl groups backing up the seasoned pros, this time with Shoko Nakagawa and AKB48 backing up Natsuko Godai...

Kohaku Regulars TOKIO were back again, this time performing their rocker "Seisyun", that cool little theme song from the terrific Nagase Tomoya/Aibu Saki drama "Utahime"...

Nakamura Mitsuko was the one to ring in the “matsuri” stage…

The Shakalabbits- flavoured Mihimaru GT roused the crowd

WaT did their best Simon and Garfunkel….

We had the reunion of Kiyoshi Maekawa and Cool Five…

Enka goodness with Kaori Kozai

We got a TREAT with the reunion of the awesome KOME KOME CLUB, back in rare form performing their old classic hits like Kimi Ga Iru Dake and Roman Hikou!

Ai Otsuka came on to deliver the funniest, zaniest and most eccentric performance of the night, with the bouncy fun "Chu-Lip"!

K-pop Diva BoA wows! 

And speaking of WOWing, even Kimutaku can’t hide his awe at the epic pyrotechnics of Satomi Kobayashi!

 

A softer side of Kumi Koda...

A strangely ghoulish performance by Mika Nakashima…

Ayumi Hamasaki knocks it out of the park as usual

While Gackt does his Taiga Drama performance (in full get-up!!!)

Next we had 80's veteran Noriyuki Makihara come on, but wasn't his performance of his song "Green Days" that did it for me as much as the admiring gaze of adorable Yui Aragaki watching over him as he sang the theme to the drama "Love and Farm"...

Gakky watching Makihara perform

...she approves!

Speaking of which, there was not one but TWO cuties on the judges table this year, with not only Yui Aragaki, but Aoi "Atsuhime" Miyazaki in attendance!

 

 

For me, the absolute highlight of the evening was the incredible performance of "Winding Road" by the smooth sounds of Kobukuro duetting with the stellar vocals of singer AYAKA, man, such a  great song, such a COOL delivery, I loved it! Ah, and wasn't Ayaka just sooooooo PRETTY?! YES!

What Kohaku can be complete without seeing Saburo Kitajima with confetti in his hair (and,occasionally, in his mouth)?

But they seem to be shuffling around the younger acts in recent years, and instead of Saburo Kitajima, we had acts like the mighty Dreams Come True as the penultimate act...

...And having SMAP close the Red and White is definitely something I’ll have to get used to…. 

All in all a fun time!
Well, that was about it for me, We'll see what they come up with NEXT year!