Welcome to Wota Wonderings! We are a group of english-speaking Japanese music bloggers brought together once a month to answer questions posed by johpan. We strive to be creative and entertaining, and we may even shed a bit of new light on interesting musical and cultural topics. Any questions about how we work should be directed to johpan. Don’t forget to check out the other posts from this month at the bottom of this post. Enjoy!

The task set out for those trying their hand at this month’s Wota Wonderings is this: “I [johpan] challenge you to find the best example of idol love.”

This is a fitting topic, or rather challenge, for the month of February as February holds the highly commercialized day of love, Valentines Day. However, I find that the challenge is too unspecific. How does one find “the best example” or anything? A piece of fiction, a song, a movie, a television show… Can someone name “the best” SINGLE example of any of these things? Truly, this would be impossible, for every person is different, and thus has different tastes and ideas on what “the best” would be.

The same can be said for idol love. Who is to say that one way of expressing love for one’s idol is better than anothers? In this month’s challenge, johpan listed a few examples on how one could show their love for an idol:

The sky’s the limit to what you feel counts as love: could be a poem, artwork, a cover or remix, a huge collection of merchandise, the list goes on.

Just looking at this list, one person could be an amazing artist, and thus expresses their love through beautiful drawings. Another may be eloquent and able to describe their love through words. Another may feel the best way to express their love through more materialistic ways and will buy as much idol merchandise as they can. Who is to say which form of love and apprciation is best?

So on that account, I will have to fail at this challenge, for I cannot begin to assume which form of expression is best. However, just being part of this blogosphere, where all of these fans write about the music they love, we are all expressing our love in various ways.

From a pic spam post, to a review on a PV or album, to a remix, they all take time and energy, and in most cases, the post is written because of the bloggers love of the topic, the group, the music or the person being written about.

Using myself as an example, I have 3 blogs dedicated to Jpop, 2 of which are are worship blogs dedicated to a single idol (per blog). Within this blog, I do reviews on singles, PV, albums, concerts, and so far one movie and one musical. In addition to that, I have my Memorable Snippets series in which I go through a sorts of old video clips I have of Hello! Project and share some of my favourite ones with all of you. And I do all of this because I love the music, I love the idols and I want to share that with anyone who’s willing to read, watch or listen. I mean, I’ve been with this blog for a year and 3 months… It’s obviously not just some passing fancy.

My Matsuura Aya worship blog Shine More is sadly not updated very often. However, I do hope to remedy that soon (lol, I’ve been saying that since I started it. XD). But on this blog, I’ve done multiple posts showing my love for Aya. I’ve been torn because these posts solely written on Aya could very well be put on Shine More, but I don’t want to double up the same post in two places, but I do want to showcase Aya here, on my main blog.

Anyone else finding this to be a really hot pic of Aya? Hat and glasses? <3

My Natsuyaki Miyabi worship blog Last Forever has been around a little longer and has a much larger amount of posts. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, she has been a lot more active musically within Hello! Project since I started blogging. Secondly, she is not a soloist. So when I do a write up on Berryz Koubou’s latest PV or Buono! latest album, I can do a separate post on Last Forever just showing screencaps of Miyabi, or gushing about how much I loved her part in this song or that. I can’t do that with Aya…

With that said, I would have to say my personal favourite representation of my own idol love would have to be the birthday countdown that I did for Miyabi’s 16th birthday. After posting a video or pic spam post for the 16 days prior to her birthday, I celebrated the actual day with a video or her and Risako singing Berryz Koubou’s “Today is My Birthday” from Berryz Koubou’s 2005 Fall concert, and followed it up with my own rendition of Buono!’s “Kiss!Kiss!Kiss!” – lyrics written especially for the occasion.

I would put this song as being my most extreme/”best” expression of idol love thus far, for it not only required me to write lyrics (which not my forte, if you couldn’t tell) and sing the song (which isn’t a problem for me, ’cause I practically never stop singing… just ask my brother), but the biggest thing was my actually putting up my recording for anyone to listen to. I have a hard enough time with each post I write up – for my own blogs and even for every write up I do for International Wota. I always second guess my writing. Writing is a very personal thing, and blogging really puts you out there. Well, for me, singing is even more personal than writing. When I feel down, I don’t tend to read a book. I usually load up my favourite songs and allow the voices of my favourite singers, whether it be a Hello! Project member, Hanson, Lea Salonga or whoever, to soothe and calm me.

And so that is why I would say that this song best embodies my best example of idol love. I put a lot myself into it and left my self vulnerable… If that isn’t what you do for love (whether it be familial, platonic or romantic), I don’t know what is.

*For RSS readers, there’s an embed of the song… I think the plugin I use doesn’t give any message about it. I should look into that. XD

** Other wota wonderings 02 posts:
Wota Wonderings 2… I luff youuuu~ (H!P Fangirling like Nobody’s Business)
Wota Wonderings 2 – All you need is love! (Solo Space)
Wota Wonderings 002 (Selective Hearing)
Wota Wonderings 002: All you need is love! (Merry Go Round)
Wota Wonderings: Idol Love. (boylikesmusic)
Wota Wonderings 002: All You Need Is Love (The Groove Music Life)
Wota Wonderings 2 – Passionate Idol Love (Our Second Blossoming)