Seems buxom actress/gravure model Nakamura Shizuka has been celebrating her success on “Koko Ga Uwasa No El Palacio” by releasing even MORE sassy ‘n’ sexy videos like this rousing clip from “Shizuka ni Yurete“ featuring Shizuka as an Instructor giving her student what he really wants!
Setting this teasing little video to music, I passed on what we all know to be the obvious “Sexy Teacher” song choices, so instead of something like “Hot For Teacher” by Van Halen, I give you “Kojin Jugyou” by Finger 5!
Received just about the most awesomest Christmas Present from my friend Car this year! Remember a month or so back when Japanese fashion magazine An-An published an issue with the luscious Korean model/actress Youn-a gracing the cover in a highly sexily-charged pictorial? Well, come to find out those pics were part of a photobook of sorts called Go! Go! Youn-a, and that’s exactly what I got when I opened my gift this morning!
The book itself is a peculiarity that I’m not familiar with: the bulk of it features an almost catalog-like array of ads for jewelry, shoes, purses, ensembles, furs and other accessories, and only after the 24th page do we finally get to see Youn-a, posing with some of the trinkets that have been shown in the previous pages. But it’s a wait worth the time, for Youn-a is as fine ‘n’ pretty as I remembered, and each pic is s joy worth scanning!
Just then, after chapters of fashion accessories called “Cheap Chic”, we get down to the nitty gritty as the book opens to a double page spread entitled “Lingerie Fashion” featuring Youn-a in all her sexy, bra-and-panties clad glory! O can you say HALLELUJAH?! God DAMN, this woman is HOT as HELL!!!!
As gravure fans already know, when you see a pictorial in a magazine (like BOMB! or the like), featuring a model or actress promoting a new Shashinshuu, quite often there are a few pics shown that are not included in the actual book (mostly different poses from the same photoshoot), and Go! Go! Youn-a is no exception. Sadly, there are still a few pics from the An-An spread that don’t appear in this book, making that fashion magazine still a must-get! LOL!
PS: Gads, I really THRASHED the spine of my Youn-a book when I was scanning these pictures, not only does the paperback book not close right anymore, I fear the pages might start falling out! They have GOT to invent an easier way to save these precious pics to hard disc! Ah, the price one pays for beauty!
Below: Pics from the original An-An photoshoot, via Tokyohive:
While I loved the conclusions of dramas like Toda Erika's KEIZOKU2: SPEC and Yamada Takayuki's YUUSHA YOSHIHIKO TO MAOU NO SHIRO, one thing that didn't sit well with me was the way that they wrote into the story the promotion of the upcoming "movie version" of the drama...
Before, it used to be that if a drama waa popular in its' initial run, they'd go ahead and reunite the cast for some fun one-off storytelling in a movie or two, but nowadays, not only is it almost just given that the drama will HAVE a movie following the drama's conclusion, they've been actually making the dramas CONCLUDE in the movie!
I'm all for great shows getting the cinema treatment, but having to go to the movies to see the end of a TELEVISION show is like eating appetizers at a picnic and having to go to a fancy restaurant to pay for the main course! And so it was when I finally got to see the conclusion (or what I thought was gonna be the conclusion, anyway) of Arakawa Under The Bridge and was informed in no uncertain terms, that the last episode was going to be released in the theaters! D'OH!
Funny, I'd been hearing and reading about the Arakawa Movie, and figured it would be like the Nodame Cantabile movies: fun if you're a fan, but not necessary to enjoy the show. Little did I know that unless I saw the Arakawa movie, I'd never know how the story ended!
*Slight Spoilers here if you haven’t watched Nazotoki wa Dinner No Ato De Episode 6 yet*
So I’m watching the latest episode of the Kitagawa Keiko/Sakurai Sho detective drama “Nazotoki Wa Dinner No Ato De” to check up on who the latest target is, and when they dramatically unveil the murder victim lavishly laid in a bed of Scarlet Roses, I take one look at the girl, and though she’s ten times more beautiful than the last time I saw her, my mind immediately thinks, “Whoa, that girl looks like a grown-up Ayumi Yamaguchi!” But what were the chances of that?
Well, I keep that thought in mind, and as the show goes on (with Keiko adorably channeling her old Mop-Girl Momoko persona) and they flashback to the victim’s earlier days, I take another look and go, “Hmm, maybe I’m wrong. That actress kinda looks like Rio Matsumoto now…” as a spiritual guide pushes her to her resting place in a mystic wheelchair…
But then when they cut back to another flashback (this time with the girl laughing and purchasing a package of kitty-cat snacks), I’m back to my original assessment, thinking, “Aw, that’s just gotta be Ayumi Yamaguchi!” Whether it is or not, whoever this girl is, she’s darn pretty!
Finally at the wrap of the show, they focus on an old photograph of the girl clutching a bouquet of roses, and as the camera zooms up to the shot, I leap up out of my chair and yell, “THAT’S AYUMI YAMAGUCHI FOR SURE!” And so it was!
Checking up on the Dramawiki site immediately after the show ended, I see that not only is it the latest thing Ayumi’s done, it’s the only thing she’s done in quite a while since her last stint as Shoko Kohagura in 2007’s Churasan 4! It’s GREAT to see her back, and lookin’ more FINE than ever!
It seems like it’s a given that if you’re a Musician, you’ll be expected to star in dramas and movies, contrarily, if you’re an actress (or actor), you’re going to eventually be releasing a CD album or two. These releases are usually met with curiosity and general acceptance, though few of them really break out BIG.
Kyoko Fukada, Aya Ueto, Yu Yamada, these are just a few of the famous tarento who’ve gone on to release pop tunes of their own, so when I first heard that sultry actress Meisa Kuroki was giving singing a shot, I didn’t bat an eyelash, and was in fact quite keen on giving a listen to anything the luscious “Cool Beauty” had to offer!
Meisa Kuroki HELLCAT CD
The very first recording Meisa released was an EP called “Hellcat” that featured a decidedly different Meisa from the sleek, demure, silky haired actress I’d come to know- here on the cover, she was done and trussed up like a New York Times Christmas Tree, befitting her new feline “rock” persona. But how did the actual music tracks stand up?
Well, I held hope that it would sound OK, little did I know that this album would BLOW ME AWAY and become one of my FAVORITE CDs of the year, certainly one of the most played discs in my car, with its ultra-catchy pseudo-rap music phrasing, saturated production and super phat low-end bass beats! Blasting the CD in my car, the bass end was so loud my car speakers would rattle and my friend was heard to yell, “I Feel Like I’m in a LOW RIDER CAR!” LOL!
Opening with the spacey-trancey track “Hear the Alarm?”, one is immediately amazed by the album’s awesome recording- presented with clear, crisp keyboard notes and Meisa’s airy vocals building up to the thunderous Bass kick…Holy CRAP what a way to start the thing! And as she sang “Angel In my Mind / Devil in My Mind” you knew this wasn’t the Meisa you thought you knew!
Then onto what I consider the albums’ centerpiece and MASTERpiece, the VERY Hip-Hoppish “Like This” which featured the EXTREMELY catchy (and aforementioned) tagline Bounce Bounce, So Do You Like This?, to which I give a resounding YES! I’ve even played this for friends and all of them seem to agree that this one really rocks! Oh, and the video’s great, too:
This next song of hers, a pretty straightforward rocker (except with amazing bass notes booming in the backdrop) called "Bad Girl!", instantly reminded me of the kind of kick-butt tunes that sexy singer Nana Tanimura would put out, with the synthesizers pulsing out chords as Meisa rattles off the lyrics at a machine-gun pace-FACE TO FACE! And if that wasn't enough, the official PV for the song was HOTTER THAN HELL, with Meisa alternately gyrating in a skimpy white dress go-go dancer style and slithering around in bed wearing the sexiest red negligee you ever feasted your eyes on! Sadly, this naughty version wasn't available on youtube, so all we've got is the music track:
Track Three is one of the first songs I really took to when I first began spinning this disc in my car, though at the time I had no idea what she was singing about, and though I was to later find out the song was called “Criminal”, Meisa’s slightly engrisshy take on it sounded to me like she was saying “Creamy, Creamy, Creamy Now!” which really had me wondering just WHAT she was singing about, though I DID catch the “You’re gonna get arrested!” line.
“No No No” is one of those tunes that seemed less of an actual song than Meisa rappping lyrics along to the sing-songy up and down beats, a style I found quite catchy though my friend declared the song’s “Beats were all off” in his opinion! AHAHA! Yet another song whose bass notes just shook my car speakers!
Then there’s the ironic song “Sex” in which a hot ‘n’ bothered Meisa purrs “I’m Going Crazy Thinking about SEX!”, the irony of course is, no matter how slutty and glitzy they play Meisa up to be, she never seems to shake the rigid and uptight image she’s portrayed in Dramas and Movies…though it’s a terrific song, not once do you ACTUALLY think she’s interested in anything sexual AT ALL!
The next track is “Lost” which is not only Meisa’s most “normal” radio-friendly song on this CD, but was actually a pretty fair indication of where her musical direction was going to go after this EP, which was further away from Hellcat’s real “R&B sound to a more techno feel a la PERFUME.
Well, after such a rousing collection of bopping’ tunes, the album ends with a rather somber song to “wrap it up”, the synth-driven "This is Crazy", an auto-tuned drenched song that evokes a detached melancholy feel even as Meisa urges her lover to "Step It Up" and "Stop The Kidding" regarding their dysfunctional relationship. A nice capper that reminded me a bit of Yamada Yu's "Free" somehow.
The quality and catchiness of Hellcat impressed me so much that I’ve even shared the album with my friends who wouldn’t be caught dead listening to j-pop music, and even they have to admit that it’s an extremely well-produced (over-produced?) record, and one friend even ventured that “this music could be played on the English speaking radio NOW and it would be a hit!” While I’m not sure how readily the rest of the world would accept this cool-as-ice Japanese actress-turned crooner, his compliment was in the right place!
From there Meisa would of course go on to even more singles as well as her first album MAGAZINE, but though I LOVE her later songs like 5IVE, LOL and even the droning “Wired Life”, there’s nothing that can top her first outing, the absolutely superb HELLCAT!
Among the J-pop artists that were featured on that very first j-pop cassette mix I got from a friend back in 1995 was a singer that would go on to record MANY of my very favorite j-pop singles, and that was Miss Kyoko “Kyon Kyon” Koizumi, and the very first song I ever heard from her was the sultry and rockin’ number TSUKI HITOSHIZUKU!
At the time it struck me how similar she sounded to another one of the artists on that cassette mix, Miho Nakayama, and I would learn later that they both came from just about the same era, starting out in the early 80’s as pop idols and making their way up to adult contemporary singers and established actresses in their own right with movies and dramas! In fact, to this day I still consider them two peas from the same pod, and I love ‘em BOTH!
Going to the local Japanese video rental store, I was able to rent some Christmas Music specials, and wouldn’t ya know it, right along with others like Nakayama Miho, Kudoh Shizuka and SMAP was Kyon Kyon all dressed up cute, silvery and glitzy as befitting a star singing her ode to the Moon, complete with a huge crescent moon necklace and a transparent guitar perfect for air-guitaring along with the music! It was AWESOME! Kirei Da Ne, Indeed!
If that wasn’t enough to make me just fall in love with the song, and additional treat came along with j-pop music show HEY HEY HEY’s year-end NG special, where they aired all the fun “bloopers” of the past year, where there was this hilarious scene when Kyon Kyon was singing Tsuki Hitoshizuku and when the camera zoomed up, it hit the stand, making the microphone bop Kyoko on the head! LOL! It didn’t hurt her, but as she tried to sing the re-takes, she kept laughing thinking about it! SO FUNNY!
Ahhh, she had so many great songs that when she came out with her singles collection ANY TIME, I picked that one up right away, and she was one of the few non-CoCo artists I’d bought at the time along with acts like Be-B, Ohguro Maki and Zard! And she wasn’t done yet, as she would go on to record even MORE of my favorite j-pop songs and star in some of my very favorite DRAMAS, too! Whatta Gal!
