Crush Of The Day: Fujisaki Nanako

At the height of my love for MAX (That’s Mina, Reina, Nana and Rina, in case you didn’t know), I was renting any and every Japanese variety show that the foursome appeared in. In fact, it was because of MAX that I started watching shows like YORU MO HIT PARADE, CD COUNTDOWN and the mighty UTABAN show!

Now, besides those shows, MAX were almost regular guests on a show hosted by the zany duo of Matsumoto and Hamada, called “DOWNTOWN DX”. In this show, they would invite a whole bunch of guests (maybe around 10) and they would break into teams and play these just absolutely wacky games. Some of my favorite ones were rolling an egg down the length of a brick wall, and playing JENGA with shiitake mushrooms! I remember one hilarious epsidoe where MAX was teamed up with flamboyant enka singer Mikawa Kenichi, and at some point, Hamada points a them and says . “Hey, look, that team is all girls!” To which the half smiling Mikawa murmured, ‘Ma, ne.” Ahahaha!

After seeing them on the show a couple of times, I started really liking Downtown DX, and began including it in my stack of weekly rentals whether MAX was on or not! And it was during this time watching DX week after week that I started noticing this pretty and giggly idol-type girl who seemed to be appearing quite regularly on the show. She was spunky and really fun to watch go through the various game challenges, and after catching her on a few episodes, found myself actually looking forward to seeing her each week! But…Who WAS She?

Though the Downtown DX show would list the guests’ names at the beginning of the show, it was thrown up in a box with all the guests lumped together, and it was impossible to tell which name matched with which guest! Even when trying to listen closely to Hamada when would call out to her, it was still pretty hard to make out. It was only when she won a certain challenge and they threw her name up on a scoreboard that I was able to discern which name was hers! Then, of course, came the NEXT inevitable problem… Her name was made up of kanji’s that I didn’t recognize! Why O why couldn’t she have a name like “Yamaguchi” or “Inoue”?!! But, no, it was ones I didn’t know, and I sadly conceded that it just wasn’t gonna be in the cards for me to know her name.

Explaining my dilemma to a friend at work who could read Japanese, she offered to try and translate the name for me if I could copy down the name and bring it in to her the next week. I was excited at the prospect of her translating the name for me, but wasn’t too sure I could do a decent facsimile of the name onscreen! That evening I went home, and when the mystery girl’s name came up, I paused the video and with squinty eyes hand-copied her name as best I could Afterwards, making sure that what I’d drawn was at LEAST a passable copy of what was on the TV, I folded up the piece of paper and took it back to work with me!

I was filled with nervous anxiety…did I do a good enough job copying those kanji’s? And even if I did, would it be a name my friend would recognize? Well, all my fears disappeared in an instant, for when I handed the paper to her, she took one look at it, and without even a moments delay, handed back the paper and said, “Nanako Fujisaki’.

YATTA!!!!! Finally after all this time I had a NAME to go with the pretty face!!

Now armed with an ACTUAL name, I paid a visit to friend who had a computer (Yes! This was back before EVERYBODY had one of those things…) so we could go hunting in cyberspace for information and (better yet) PICTURES of Nanako!

Now, the Internet back then was a lot sparser than it is today. There wasn’t any “Google” or “Wikipedia” to help you with your search, all you had were search engines like Lycos and Hotbot, and the few pages we were able to find using those were those old GEOCITIES sites (where J-pop seemed to flourish, somehow), but never mind, find it we did, and after sifting through the pages and pages of type, was rewarded with (drumroll)…SCANS!! Yes, Scans and Scans of pretty Nanako Fujisaki in bikini after bikini after bikini!! AEWSOME! Sadly, back then nobody had such a thing as a CD burner so the best thing to do (so I could “have” these pictures) was to have my friend print them out for me, and I remember leaving his house entirely satisfied with a portfolio filled with my Nanako Fujisaki motherlode!

Poring over the scans later, it occurred to me that these looked like they were scanned out of some Magazine layout or Shashinshuu. Shashinshuu! If Nanako had any photobooks under her belt I certainly wanted to get my hands of them! Back then there wasn’t anything like CD Japan or Amazon.jp to check out what may or may not exist for any given artist, but thankfully there WERE places I could go to check on things like Gravure Models, and that would be the ad pages in the back of magazines like BOMB! and KINDAIEIGA Magazine. And when the new issues came out and I checked out the listings, not only did I find Nanako had a new Shashinshuu out, but VIDEOS as well!! You can bet I wasted no time ordering THOSE!!

The NEXT tape, “Frozen Daiquiri”…Ahhhhh…This was more like it! Bikinis and cheesecake, just the way I like it! Nothin’ but Nanako lounging in a swimsuit in front of a pool for 10 minutes…Now THIS was more like those Photoshoots that I mentioned!

While waiting for my Nanako Fujisaki Photobook to come in, I was happily surprised to see Nanako making her Japanese drama debut! She appeared as one of the secretaries working for Zaizen Naomi in the Kusanagi Tsuyoshi Drama IIHITO!!! WOW!! So she was making her start as an actress!! Though she didn’t have much to say or do in this one, I was sure she would be branching out into bigger parts soon enough!

Around this time I finally got my Nanako Shashinshuu, a beautiful softbound book simply entitled NANAKO FUJISAKI, and this satisfied my Nanako cravings for the time being, which was a good thing, too, because when Nanako’s NEXT drama came out (another Zaizen Naomi vehicle, this time as hostesses of an upscale club in OMIZU NO HANAMICHI) She once again played only a background character (usually regaled to part of a group) and this time had even LESS to say than in IIHITO!

Now, If I thought things would be getting better for her, I was optimistically wrong! For, lovely as Nanako was, the only thing I saw her in after that was as ANOTHER background character, this time for the amply endowed Sato Tamao drama HASHIRE KOMUIN. Fortunately, I really enjoyed this drama and it provided me with not only my introduction to L'Arc En Ciel but also gave us a HILARIOUS NG clip where poor Nanako gets bonked on the head during a funny gun squabble! AHAHAHAHA!

After that, the only thing I saw her in was an occasional photobook, though I WAS lucky enough to purchase Nanako's 1999 Calendar, which featured some particularly pretty n cute pics of Ms. Fujisaki...(don't mind the creases, time has been murder on these calendars!)

Back when I was downloading all those Nanako scans from the internet, there were some just absolutely lovely shots, and though I’ve managed to acquire a lot of them through purchasing her photobooks, my very, very favorite scans of her were these ones of Nanako wearing this pretty blue dress (see below) and I’ve NEVER seen the book this scene was from! In fact, going online, I can’t even find the original site I got it from in the first place! So all I have of my fave shots are the grainy and slowly fading scans I’d printed out over a decade ago!

Does anybody know which shashinshuu these pics are from? Or at least a site where I can re-download them? Because it’s funny- it’s been over 13 years since I’d first fallen for Nanako, and there’s STILL something of hers that I’m longing to acquire from the former Visual Queen of The Year!

Crush Of The Day: Nagasaku Hiromi

Still Our Baby-Faced Girl: The Resilient Ms. Nagasaku!

Of all the former idol/singers that have come out of the legendary Pony Canyon PARADISE GOGO “stable of Stars”, probably the most successful is the center girl singer of pop trio RIBBON, the talented actress HIROMI NAGASAKU!

In the 80's j-pop experienced a sort of idol group "boom"and it was here that Pony Canyon unleashed a whole stable of soon-to-be-fave groups emerging from their Idol Group show PARADISE GOGO, with acts like CoCo,Qlair and a rambuntious trio of girls in a unit called RIBBON. Featuring Matsuno Arimi, Aiko Sato and a "round-headed kid" girl named Nagasaku Hiromi, these gals really put the FUN in j-pop! Where most groups simply stated the statements they were required to make,(i.e. "Konnichiwa, CoCo Desu") Ribbon were the kind of girls that always added something to the mix! Needless to say, I instantly and utterly fell in love with them! And yeah, I know it's supposed to be spelled with a lower case "r".

For about four or five years Ribbon (and the rest of the Paradise Gogo artists) lead the way for cute girl groups with catchy pop tunes, till around 1994 when Pony Canyon decided to dissolve their idol franchise. Though popular group CoCo got a farewell album and Final Concert, I never saw anything of the sort for ribbon, who were more or less allowed to simply fade out! Would we be seeing any of them performing again any time soon? well, yes and no!
In an ironic turn of events, it was JUST at that time that local Japanese television station KIKU began broadcasting the Toyokawa Etsushi drama AOITORI (below), and I remember watching it and telling a friend after that evening’s episode, “I SWEAR the girl that plays Toyokawa’s childhood friend is that baby-faced singer from Ribbon!” Doing some research I found that this girl Nagasaku Hiromi was INDEED the one and same person!

As Akimoto Mikiko, the martyr of unrequited love on the behalf of Tokoyawa’s Shibata character, (in a situation where he’s rebuffed her time and again but still relies on her whenever in a scrape) she really made you sympathetic towards her, and I found myself impressed by how well she could act! Having seen other idols eke out an existence playing only bit parts in dramas forever, I hoped she would be moving on to bigger and better parts as her talents deserved!
Well, the next drama I saw Hiromi in was the Tokiwa Takako/Takahashi Katsunori drama HITORIGURASHI (below), and though Hiro-chan DID get kind of a top billed ”Co-starring” role, it was a very strange show that did little to promote her in a good light!
Conceived as a sort of “Single White Female” situation, (where a seemingly innocent roommate begins stalking her fellow tenant) Hitorigurashi had Hiromi’s Kyoko character obsessing over Tokiwa’s Miho character, from wearing her clothes, using her name and even drugging and undressing her! Though bizarre at the time, I’ve recently re-watched this and was surprised how touching and sad her character actually was. Watching it now, it seems more like a story of a lonely girl who really and deeply loved her friend and treated her like she was the most important thing in her life.
Things turned brighter for Hiromi’s career in the next drama I saw her in, the upbeat and positive Hitoribocchi Kimi Ni, a drama starring Hamada Masatoshi (of DOWNTOWN fame) and Hiromi as two adults who find an abandoned little boy and begin caring for him. I really dug this drama though I spent most of the time praying that I wasn’t gonna have to see Hiro kissing Hamada, (yeg!) a direction the writers thankfully sidestepped. I wanted Hiro to grow as a rom-com top biller, but not like this! AAHAHAHA!

The next show I saw Nagasaku in was a return to the darkness of Hitorigurashi in the VERY black drama SHUMATSUKON, the story of a willful woman who is so jealous of her sister’s good fortune that she makes a career out of sabotaging every bright spot that comes her way. When I first read the synopsis, I though it was going to be HIROMI playing the assailant, and was very surprised to see her playing the sweet and meek “good” daughter. Too meek for my tastes, I spent this drama lusting after Ayako Kawahara instead. Sorry, Hiro-chan!
After that, I didn’t see Hiromi in just about anything; though Dramawiki shows me that she’d been continuously putting out new dramas like clockwork, none of them made it to Hawaii through either NGN or KIKU. At the time, I’d sadly figured that Hiromi had given up the drama route. Still, there were other Nagasaku things to keep me interested, like SHASHINSHUUS! Yep, Hiromi had continued to make them, and it was here that she released probably her best photobook yet, the VERY sexy and sizzling U.K. ASAGAN, where we got to see just how bad she could be! From then she continued to make periodic covers of magazines like FRI and the mightly WEEKLY PLAYBOY, but there was a new career direction for Hiromi just on the horizon!
By 2006, though Hirochan had headlined several dramas like Pure Soul and Kongai Renai, I was oblivious to their existence (people should REALLY appreciate sites like D-Addicts and Dramawiki that keep j-drama fans abreast of ALL new shows!) and so was EXTREMELY HAPPY to see Hiromi appearing in a new Aoi Miyazaki/Eita movie called SU-KI-DA. So HERE Hiromi was- she’d slowly made the progression over to the BIG screen! And though (truthfully) Su-Ki-Da was less than thrilling for me, I was excited to get behind Hiromi’s new Cinematic move!

From here, aside from a part in the NHK Taiga Drama KOMYA GA TSUGI, the only things I saw her in were movies- and what great movies they were! While waiting in anticipation for Hiromi’s upcoming movie Hito No Sex O Warauna, (which would TOTALLY KICK-ASS, BTW) I read a review by writer Mark Schilling who had only the UTMOST praise for Hiromi, citing her good acting sensibilities and habit of stealing the show as reasons she was a star to watch!!! Besides giving me the urge to see another of Hiro’s movies (the INSANELY AWESOME Funuke Domo~Show Some Love, You Losers), Schilling even suggested that it was high time somebody constructed a drama for Hiromi built around her strengths as the wacky-powerhouse bundle of energy type of woman she’d come to EXCEL playing!
As if to validate those suggestions, Hiromi recently returned to the “Small” screen co-starring in Kanno Miho’s new Drama MAGERARENAI ONNA (The Unbending Woman) playing Hasumi Riko, a -what else? - eccentric housewife who bustles with energy playing the perfect, bubbly wife while masking her true sadness caught in a loveless marriage. Along with Tanihara Shosuke as a womanizing Police Officer, the scenes with Kanno, Nagasaku and Tanihara are just electric!
I’m just about halfway through the show, and besides bringing her AWESOME acting to the table, Hiromi is looking as beautiful as ever! She even made the cover of the latest IN RED magazine, (an issue I didn’t hesitate to order, I must say) and the photos tell me her looks in the drama are no fluke- though a bit older, when Hiromi smiles that smile, she still looks like that sweet baby-faced girl we all fell in love with all those years ago from her innocent ribbon days! Girl, You STILL ROCK THE HOUSE!

Favorite J-Pop Singles: Yamashita Tatsuro / Dreaming Girl

When I began seriously watching Japanese dramas, the love of  Kimura Takuya / Yamaguchi Tomoko drama LONG VACATION (which up until then a friend had been taping for me) prompted me to begin subscribing to NGN.

NGN! After years of watcing my dramas exclusively on KIKU, this was like having an actual connection to Japanese broadcasting (though I would later learn was far from it) and I just couldn’t get enough and watched just about everything they had to offer!

 One of the more curious programs they broadcasted was a 15 minute drama they aired every weekday morning (and again a “lump” on weekends) called, naturally, Morning Dramas. How Cool!

 The very first Asadora I watched on my newly acquired NGN subscription was a drama called HIMAWARI, a story that followed the life of a cute and spunky young girl named Nozomi Minamida as she made her way through her life, played by an equally cute and spunky actress by the name of Matsushima Nanako. Who WAS this girl? I didn’t know, but I liked her right off the bat! While unquestionably attractive, she had a determined tomboyishness that really seemed to set her apart from being just another pretty face!

Now, one of the coolest things about Himawari was that no matter what the storyline was, the show would always begin with a short little snippet of Nozomi engaged in any assortment of things, from walking to work, writing a letter or even falling asleep at her desk! In the background there would be a harmony singing the opening refrain to the credits, Dream… Dream…, and then Yamashita Tatsuro’s theme song DREAMING GIRL would start!

 It got to the point where waiting to see what Nanako would be doing at the beginning of each episode became the thing I looked forward to the most, and there was one clip in particular that just MADE MY DAY:

One of the threads throughout Himawari was Nozomi’s relationship with her colleague/romantic interest Yuji Hoshino (played by Kamikawa Takaya), and in this one intro, they’d isolated various times throughout the series when she’d called his name. It was so funny and cute- You wouldn’t have thought someone could call somebody’s name in so many different ways with so much different feelings! And best of all, they ended the montage with Nozomi calling out Hoshino with the happiest, bubbly laugh ever!

From there the clip went directly into the theme song opening, and since the show was called “Himawari”, we got to hear Tatsuro Yamashita singing Dreaming Girl against a field of sunflowers set against a beautiful blue sky!

 Seeing the daily intro clip of Nozomi and having it segue right into the song, you really felt like Tatsuro Yamashita was singing about her when he referred to his “Dreaming Girl”, and soon enough that song was forever endeared to me as a TRUE Nanako Matsushima theme song! Dream, Dream, Dreeeeeaaammmmmmm.....

Crush Of The Day: Motokariya Yuika

Yuika Motokariya in Boku No Aruku Michi

I have to start off this post by saying that the fact of the matter is, the first two times I saw actress Motokariya Yuika, I didn’t think too much about her. In fact, in the first drama I saw her in (Uchino Masaki’s GONZO detective series) she played this law enforcement agent whose self-deprecation when she lets a woman under her care get killed was driving me up the wall! Though I ended up really liking Gonzo, I can’t say that there was any huge shift in my opinion of her in that one, sorry.

With Uchino Masaki in Gonzo

The next thing I saw Motokariya in was the Kitagawa Keiko movie special DEAR FRIENDS, which I’ve gushed about in an earlier post. Though I really loved this movie and all the actors in it, I don’t think I made the connection that this great actress was the same girl from GONZO. All I knew was that they’d got the perfect, mousey girl to play the quiet, mousey character of Maki. At the time, she struck me as another actress in the mold of OTOMEN lead KAHO, whom, though I thought was quite cute in 4 Shimai Tantei Dan, really worked that “plain-jane” type of look.

With Kitagawa Keiko in Dear Friends

So anyway, a few months later and I’m watching the very, very good Kusanagi Tsuyoshi drama BOKU NO ARUKU MICHI, the story of an autistic man named Teruaki as he works towards becoming independent, and though lead actress KARINA was looking fine as ever, I found myself strangely gravitating more towards Teru’s sister Rina, whom besides being one of the more sympathetic members of the family, was cute as heck to boot!

As Rina in Boku No Aruku Michi

Everyone in Teru’s family had issues to deal with. His mother is worried that she is overprotecting her son, and as she is having health problems, wonders who will take care of his when she is gone. His older brother Hide grew up being bullied and teased for having an autistic sibling and has grown up stern and strict to Teru, and has a wife who is afraid they’ll have to take care of Teru when his mother passes, as well as a son who is ashamed to have an autistic uncle.

Boku No Aruku Michi

Rina is caught in the middle- she’s grown up neglected by her mother since she’s devoted all her time to taking care of Teru, and even as she’s about to graduate, she still feels like no one cares about what she does. Additionally, knowing of her Sister in law’s apprehension to taking care of Teru, she’s nervous that SHE’LL be the one who gets “stuck” with him, and these problems are slowly wearing down on her.

The scenes with Rina as she tries to deal with her problems, first by talking to her family, then though an earnest talk with Teru’s counselor and finally a real heart-to-heart conversation with her mother, you really feel for this girl!

with Kusanagi Tsuyoshi in Boku No Aruku Michi

And you know what another awesome thing about her character- no matter what problems have beset her because of Teru, she’s always constantly loved him, cheering him on and supporting him in his decisions. By the end of the drama, I was in love with this girl, and HAD to know who she was!

Since she reminded me a bit of Shimabukuro Hiroko from SPEED, I had this vague idea that she might be a pop singer or something, perhaps a side gig from some undetermined j-pop band…I had to know, so onto dramawiki I went!

Logging on, my mind was filled with what to expect. Was this girl doing anything new? Was she successful? Did she only make this one Tsuyoshi Kusunagi drama and then fade out? HAHAHAHA, silly me! You can imagine the look on my face and found out that she was the same girl in both Dear Friends AND Gonzo! Ya coulda knocked me over with a feather!!! Not to knock her looks or anything, but why was she SO DAMN cute in 2006? AHAHAHAHAHA!

I’m in the middle of acquiring the 2010 drama Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge which she appeared in for a few episodes, and this time I will be watching her with the full knowledge of who she is…hope she wows me once again! Oh, and I’ll be looking forward to HIMITSU, where Yuika is reunited with her former BOKU NO ARUKU MICHI castmate Sasaki Kuranosuke!

Favorite J-Pop Singles: CoCo / Yume Dake Miteru

CoCo was one of those groups where I had not one but three favorite songs from them, and at any given time of the year, any one of them might be my Number One Favorite!
CoCo was the very first j-pop group I fell in love with (and in fact was the catalyst that would make me totally jump into all things Japanese from music to movies and dramas) so it was natural that I would have strong feelings for just about everything they did, but my “Top Three” (as it were) were even EXTRA special to me, and those songs were:

Naze? (off of album Straight)

You’re My Treasure (off of Sweet and Bitter) and

Yume Dake Miteru (off of album Share).

All three of these songs are number ones in their own way: "Naze?" is, in my opinion, CoCo’s Perfect Pop Tune, absolutely brilliant in its catchy tune, driving beat, and great vocals, (plus the best bridge ever), and "You’re My Treasure (Tooi Yakusoku)" is a sentimental favorite, for this was the first song I loved when I was first getting into the group, and listening to it now, reminds me of those days going to my friend’s house and listening to and discussing what precious information we could find of CoCo, back when info was sooo hard to come by!
And then there’s Yume Dake Miteru.
From the first time I heard it on CoCo’s Complete Singles Collection, I knew there was something special about it. Unlike most of the idol songs at the time with jangly guitars, programmed drum beats and bright keyboards, this one sounded at once both HUGE and EPIC, as if it were the soundtrack to a great Space opera! Opening with a synthesizer symphony and grounded by a heavy thumping beat, this song would slowly build and build, ultimately working its way up to a crashing crescendo!

I didn’t know just HOW epic the song could get until I got the CoCo Budokan memorial Laserdisc to see the group perform at the Nihon BUDOKAN.
BUDOKAN!! MAN, I cannot even begin tell you how much this concert blew me away. For one thing, this was the first time I got to see the band as a five piece with lead singer Azusa still in the group. You see, up until this point, we’d only ever seen CoCo Concerts 1993 DE-LUXE EDITION and CoCo Final Concert FOREVER- that is; we’d only seen CoCo performing as a four-piece unit. Aside from the songs on SINGLES and ICHIBAN, we really didn’t know anything about that mysterious fifth member Senou Azusa, and were quite happy to enjoy the performances we saw featuring only Maki, Rieko, Erika and Mikiyo. But then we saw the Budokan Concert, and watching the group with Azusa fronting them, I suddenly realized for the first time how vibrant and COMPLETE the group felt. THIS was truly how the group was meant to be! Songs that I’d loved from the Forever and Deluxe Edition concerts like Onegai Hold Me Tight, Hanbun Fushigi, Otome No Rehearsal and Naze? took on a whole new dimension, because the versions we’d been watching up until then had in fact been drastically changed from the way it was performed when they were a five-piece- when Azusa left the group, all the songs they’d performed up to that point had to be restructured for a 4 piece band to do: all Azusa’s lines had to be reassigned to other members to sing, and the dance routines had to be re-worked to fill the void left by the missing fifth member. Even stranger was when (like in the case of Naze?) they DIDN’T restructure the dance moves, and there was a big HOLE in the stage when the girls froze in their “positions”.

So to suddenly see the group working like a well-oiled IDOL machine, dancing the routines as they were meant to be danced and singing the lines they’d sung on record was nothing short of HEAVEN!! Not only that, the thrill of playing at the Budokan mixed with the sadness of Azusa’s departure made for a concert where EVERYONE was pouring their hearts into every performance!

Side One set me up with a GRAND opening, starting with Haru Milkyway, Live Version, Hanbun Fushiji, and a particularly heartfelt Otome No Rehearsal, where, in the middle of her lines, Azusa becomes overwhelmed with feelings and happy tears start rolling down her face! From there they did some solo songs then back for a fun version of Natsu No Tomodachi… Then it was time For Yume Dake Miteru.

At this point in the concert, a huge screen had dropped down in front of the stage and the audience was treated to a short movie clip as the girls took a brief intermission. Then the clip ended, and as Side Two began, the huge screen slowly began rising up like a curtain lifting, and as the cameras focused on the posed silhouettes of CoCo, WHAM! Yume Dake Miteru started!!

First off I have to say that this silky green ensemble the girls are wearing is just about my all-time favorite outfit worn by the girls, and that’s saying something because I’ve loved LOTS of their concert costumes. Man, they look so, so nice in these dresses!!! And to make it even more special, they wore it for this one performance only, and when they returned onstage after this song, they’d changed to the next outfit!

Another great thing about this perf is that the dance routine for this song almost seems to have been tailor-made for the Budokan Concert. The huge stage has clearly been taken into consideration for the “moves” of this song, and as soon as the song starts, the girls do their best to cover the entire floor, moving out up the runway towards the stage ready to take on the audience, then dividing to extend the performance to the very edges of the arena’s extremities!

Watch this and the girls individual personalities emerge:

If these was any doubt that Rieko was the “princess” of the group, you’d wonder no longer, as her lines are just adorable, and I love how she has to psyche herself up before she sings her part, expending ALL her energy into getting her lines out! Maki has always been the emotional one and I don’t know if there’s anyone who loved this group more than her, and you can see she’s already getting misty eyed, and it would only get stronger as the concert moved on! Erika’s the genki “best friend” member of the group, and for this perf, she’s all smiles, rallying the audience with her arms and running back and forth with energetic gusto! Mikiyo has always been the kind of aloof one, but I love how she always smiles proudly after every line she sings, as if to say “Yatta! I did it!” And then there’s Azusa! MAN, what a singer! Watching the way she just absolutely belts out her lines with the power and confidence of a seasoned singer, its no wonder Pony Canyon wanted to spirit her away towards a solo career!

With so much running integrated into this performance, I have to say that every other performance I’ve seen of this song since (like on Music Station and the like) has looked a bit strange as they would be doing basically the same dance moves as Budokan, but running only two or three feet back and forth. In Budokan, it’s like they’re going for a goal running the distance of a lit-up football field towards a total otaku touchdown!! (and in that, I must say they succeeded)

As the song slows down to its finish and the girls retreat back to the back of the stage to resume their poses, I love how Azusa looks over her shoulder, as if to say, “We Came, We Saw, We Kicked Your Ass!”

Coming right off their awesome album SHARE, I think its safe to say that for this BUDOKAN show, CoCo was at their absolute PEAK! Emotions are running high during this show because it is Azusa’s very last concert before departing to a solo career, and the girls are making every minute count: They look absolutely beautiful, their voices have NEVER been better, and they are pouring their HEARTS into each song they sang! This Concert is the finest example of what the group was all about, and there’s NO BETTER example of this than their majestic performance of YUME DAKE MITERU.

They would later repeat this dramatic formula for their twelfth single CHIISANA IPPO DE (to satisfying success, I might add) but for sheer magnitude and importance in the anthology of CoCo, Yume Dake Miteru will always be the group’s “A Day In The Life”!

Funny thing about this single: Though it’s a Favorite J-Pop Single, the version that I love is actually the ALBUM version. One of the best things about the live version of Yume Dake Miteru was that it had an insanely great ENDING, and the single version FADED OUT! So imagine my surprise when, listening to the SHARE CD for the very first time, and hearing the song have the SAME ENDING as the LIVE CONCERT!!! WOWWW- It seems that they’d only faded out the single version in consideration of radio airtime!  WHEW!!!

Lend your eyes and ears to CoCo, performing my favorite song from them, wearing my favorite outfits, at my Favorite Concert from them! It’s a J-pop Favorite Triple Threat!!!

Favorite J-Pop Singles: Tamura Naomi / Chijou Ni Maiorita Tenshi-Tachi

Another incredible, epic song from powerhouse singer Tamura Naomi, who REALLY shows off her pipes in this MUSIC STATION performance! I just love how she builds and builds on the song to those crazy highs, once for the bridge solo and once to take the song out!

Ah, man, I was just getting into the goodness that is Princess Princess, and I guess my mind was at its most “Japanese Girls that rock the house” mode, but this song really made an impression with me! The only problem I had was…what the heck was the NAME of it?

As I mentioned before, when I was first getting into j-pop, I had a hard time reading some of the song titles, and without the help of the internet, was left to guess as best I could with my “Kanji ABC” book… I studied my Hiraganas and Katakanas, and by the time this Naomi Tamura song came out, was fairly decent with my ability to decipher the titles to the songs I liked, at least more or less...

But then I get hit with a song with a title like THIS:

地上に舞い降りた天使達

WTF?!!! O My God, Look at ALLA THAT KANJI! It seemed utterly insurmountable to me at the time! And while in situations like this, my best bet was to read along with the lyrics on the screen and try to match the title to what she was saying, EVEN then, the chorus was sung at like a MILLION MILES an hour!!!

Truth be told, I never did figure that one out myself, and in fact, until very, very recently, It was always simply referred to me as “That song with the long title that Naomi sings really, really fast!” AHAHAHAHAHA!

Thankfully, with the advent of cool sites that romanize lyrics and translate songs, I finally came across a site where some kind person (BLESS THEIR SOUL, BTW) took the time to translate that Naomi Tamura single for me and give me the long-desired song title!!!!

Listening to Naomi belt this song out always makes me want to go to karaoke (though I would NEVER DARE attempt to tackle a song like this) because her absolute 100% attack style of singing ALWAYS gets me fired up! It’s like watching a great Kung-Fu movie and then walking out of the theater wanting to kick somebody’s butt! AHAHAHA!

With hard-hitting songs like Yuzurenai Negai, Blood, Sweat and Guts and Chijou Ni Maiorita Tenshi-Tachi, Naomi has certainly solidified her in my mind as one of the great Japanese Female rock acts, and the Rock n Roll lady is still out there kickin’ it live to this day! With her recognition for her fine anime songs, she even recently performed for American audiences at the 2009 Otakan, and from the clips and photographs of the event, Naomi is still as terrific-looking as ever!

Kitagawa Keiko in "Dear Friends"

OKAY, a full confessional here: when I acquired the 2007 movie DEAR FRIENDS, my MAIN purpose of checking out this flick was to see the ubiquitous Kitagawa Keiko (who has without doubt moved up to become one of my VERY FAVORITE actresses) duked out as a SEXY, SUPER-HOT VIXEN complete with the skimpy outfits and tight, tight shorty-shorts and the attitude to match! Yes, after seeing Keiko play a ditzy type of girl (in Mop Girl) and a serious musician (in Buzzer Beat), I was all set to watch Keiko play a SLUT!
And a Slut she was! Sexily gyrating on the sweaty dance floor and leading on her choice of men, she’s the kind of girl who has friends casually ask, “Could it be you’re pregnant AGAIN?” and have her response be, “Can’t Be…I’m on the Pill, after all!” WHOA!

But if I thought this movie was gonna be all fun and games, I was SORELY MISINFORMED! ‘Cause though there WAS an awful lot of that in the first half of the movie, at one point, Dear Friends becomes quite somber and turns into a serious and introspective film. Where I thought I would be spending my time drooling and pandering after Keiko, I suddenly found myself weeping like a girlyman instead!

Keiko plays Rina, a sexy girl-about town who has the world of the nightlife in the palm of her hand. She is brash, spoiled and manipulating, but when she finds herself suddenly hospitalized, she is brought crashing back to earth, her partygoing life and thrillseeking friends taking a back seat as Rina is forced to see what really matters in life.

Stellar acting from all the lead actors, especially Keiko and actress Yuika Motokariya, who plays Maki, another sick girl who gives Rina the inner strength to go on with her life when fate has dealt her a bitter hand. Also of merit is the CUTE little girl Mao Sasaki who played Kanae, a tiny shut-in patient who befriends Rina during her initial stay at the hospital. Oh, and a holler out to Hatsume Matsushima who played Rina’s partygoing friend Emi who looked HELLA like Ueto Aya in those opening scenes!
This is my second movie in recent weeks dealing with hospitalization and cancer after seeing equally terrific HEAVEN’S DOOR, the movie that starred Nagase Tomoya as the cancer patient and Mayuko Fukuda as the shut-in hospitalized girl. Though the two movies couldn’t be any more different, they both had heart at its center and guaranteed that I’d be using up all my Kleenex as it took me through its emotional ups and downs!! Sob, Sob!