KAT-TUN 2 Me

I cannot mention my musical tastes without causing a mini-riot in my classes, I swear. Today after I had finished a class I was cornered, literally cornered, by four 6th grade girls, one of whom had a Koki strap attached to her bag, and drilled on my taste in Johnny’s. They were just rapid-fire throwing out names and expecting me to give my opinion. Yamapi! KAT-TUN! Kanjani! Matsujun! Tokio!! They’d scream every time I said something positive. The teacher had to pull them away so I could even get out the door and to my next class. I was surprised about the Tokio thing, but yes, one of the girls was a Nagase fan. I later had lunch with that same class, and the posse of girls brought “One Love” to play in the class CD player during lunch.

Also, one of the 5th grade teachers is a big Kanjani fan. She was almost as bad as the little girls with all the questions.

So far I have “experimented” with mentioning Johnny’s to elementary school kids, Junior High girls, High School girls, and college girls, and it never fails to get a huge reaction. Sometimes even the middle-aged teachers join in. I feel so at home here! Lol.

Crazy Stuff,

~Celestia~

If you haven’t already, you should check out this week’s Cartoon KAT-TUN. It’s on Veoh HERE The part at the beginning with Will Smith is hilarious. I love it when cultures collide like that. Also, Jin’s English interview. He is so cute and nervous. He can’t stop touching his face and fidgeting with his hair/glasses/clothes and giggling. Oh the giggling. Nervous Jin is a rare sight, so we should enjoy this. His hair is still all curly, but significantly less curly than it was in those Myojo pictures. Looks like the permness has relaxed a bit, and I would no longer call him a poodle. Still don’t like it, but I’m not tempted to throw things when I see him anymore, so that’s good.

PS.  You can tell Jin’s spent a good amount of time talking with foreigners because he puts “like” into a lot of his sentences and says “yeah” instead of “yes”. His English pronunciation and intonation really is fantastic. Well, that’s the thing about Jin. If he puts his mind to something, like say, learning English, nothing, not even his own innate dumbness, will get in his way. He even knows fancy words like “automatically” and “reaction”. So proud of you JinJin!

Jodie Foster doesn’t even know how lucky she is.

~Celestia~

Today was my first real day of teaching in Japan. When I was visiting a 4th grade class (10 year olds), we had “ask the English teacher questions” time again. I was asked what kind of music I like, and when I happened to mention that I like Arashi, it got a huge reaction. Naturally, they started drilling me on my favorite songs, favorite member, etc. Somehow, the teacher decided to turn it into a show of hands game. First was “Who likes Arashi?” *almost everyone in the class raises their hands*. Next I asked who their favorite member was, again by show of hands. Matsujun was easily the most popular (unsurprisingly). Nino was a clear second place. Aiba got a few votes. Sho didn’t get any (weird. guess he’s not too popular with the kids?). When I got to Ohno though, one boy stood up and shouted “I like Ohno!!”. Lol. I think Oh-chan would be pleased to know that he has at least one little champion out there. Doesn’t he complain that he’s only popular with the Obaa-sans?

As Always,

~Celestia~

Quick overview if you somehow don’t know. 24 hour Television is a huge telethon that runs for one full day every year in Japan. This year, Arashi were the main hosts of the show. I’ll do a proper post about the whole thingt later, but I’m all giddy right now.

So, this time it was Nino’s turn to write a sentiment-filled letter to Arashi and make everyone’s eyes all glisteny. I was surprised it was Nino who did it. Usually he’s least inclined to make himself vulnerable or even express non-sarcastic thoughts in public or in interviews, which I think makes this all the more special. SO CUTE! He ended the part to each member with a very sincere “So-and-so, I’m glad I met you”. Then they sang Kansha Kangeki Ame Arashi (crappily because they were still all…glisteny. The Ohno/Nino lines sounded especially bad because they were both too choked up to sing properly. Jun was too, but odds are good his singing would be crappy no matter the situation). Oh-chan could barely even say his beginning lines.

There’s so much else I want to write about regarding 24 hour Television. I mean, even though everything isn’t about Arashi, that’s still a lot of Arashi. There was Jun playing with the little dying kids in Cambodia, Nino writing a song for a little boy to sing to his severely disabled little sister, more crazy Aiba experiments, and an awesome joint performance between Arashi and a team of disabled break-dancers. I’ve got to do something with this material, but I’ll need some time to figure out exactly what. It’s almost funny. You can watch them get more and more tired and scruffy-looking as the show progresses.They say it’s 24 hours, but since it starts in the evening, they’ve certainly been up and in the studio since yesterday morning, right? Ganbarimashita Arashi!

I don’t see how this could fail to make the population of Japan love these guys even more than they already do. It worked on me anyway. Since just about every Japanese celebrity participated in some capacity, and there was a huge and varied entertainment program, even people who aren’t Arashi’s fans may have gotten enough Arashi exposure through watching this program to fall victim to their considerable charm. Of course, that’s just a nice side effect to all of the money they raised for charity, their furthering of awareness of important issues like disabilities and HIV, and inspiring the people of Japan (and a few foreigners too).

Now please, please let those boys go home and get some sleep.

~Celestia~

Got these from HERE

Apologies for the pic. snatching, but these had to be shared with more of the world immediately.

They’re from the QOP tour. Jinnnnnnnnnnnnnnn! Why didn’t you take off your shirt at the concert I went to? Oh well. We’re lucky to get such pictures at all since Jin seems to be the KAT-TUN member least inclined to remove his clothing in the middle of a concert.

Oh but he has a nice body these days, doesn’t he? Toned, but not stick-skinny like many of the other Johnny’s boys. Manly!

Sweet Dreams =p

~Celestia~

PS: “Truth/Kaze no Mukou e” has sold an amazing 467,288 copies in it’s first week, falling neatly behind Arashi’s own “One Love” to become the current 2nd best selling single of 2008 in Japan and posting the highest first week sales of any single of 2008 thus far as well. Let me repeat, 2nd best selling single of the year after only one week of sales. Today is officially awesome.

Is it a rule, like a law or something, that at least one member of KAT-TUN must have a terrible hair style at any given time??? HERE if you want to see the pictures.

Kame finally fixes whatever he did to his hair a couple months ago (thank God. he looks really cute again), so of course, Jin has to go and immediately get a terrible perm. Whyyyyyyyy???? His hair looked so good before, and he’s now the latest victim of the wave of terrible perms sweeping the best of the Johnny’s. Kimutaku, Yamapi, Kame, and now Jin.

Quiz next time. I’m too pissed right now.

I wish I could bake Arashi a cake. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I still think the majority of them are far too skinny (Nino/Jun..I’m looking at you and keeping a close eye on Ohno while I’m at it). The second is because some serious congratulations are in order. In the last couple of years their popularity has increased A LOT, and they’ve all been running around like crazy little bunnies to help make that happen. I’m really hoping that they don’t release any more singles this year so they can reduce their work schedule from “Inhumane” to merely “Exhausting”, but that’s another story.

What I do want talk about is their most recent achievement: “One Love” has become the current top selling Japanese single of 2008. There’s no guarantees it will stay that way, of course, but that’s still damn impressive. Yesterday they released a new single (despite “One Love” remaining in the top 10 on the charts), and the index numbers for the first two days have been fabulous. 119,227 for day 1 and 66,067 for day 2, both higher than the numbers for those days of any Johnny’s single released so far this year. Maybe even the highest for any single, but I don’t have the numbers to back that up, so don’t quote me on that one.

Anyway, that’s an estimated 324,265 copies sold in two days. Two days! It’s extremely rare for a song to break the 300,000 mark in two weeks, much less two days.

KAT-TUN quiz coming next time. I’m working on it.

Toodloo,

~Celestia~

PS. Nino totally stripped Ohno’s shirt off of him during the last Arashi no Shukudai-kun. Evidence:

That’s all on the Ohmiya report for today.

CDTV has released a new “most wanted lover” list. Guess who’s number 1 (again)?

1 Akanishi Jin (KAT-TUN)
2 Kamenashi Kazuya (KAT-TUN)
3 hyde (L’Arc~en~Ciel)
4 Matsumoto Jun (Arashi)
5 Yamashita Tomohisa (NEWS)
6 Takahiro (EXILE)
7 Masuda Takahisa (NEWS)
8 Youngwoong Jaejoong (Tohoshinki)
9 TAKUYA∞ (UVERworld)
10 Sakurai Sho (Arashi)

Tss Johnny’s. Only 6 out of the top 10 spots. You can do better than that!

Yep yep yep,

~Celestia~

My internet at my apartment is STILL not working, and I`m about ready to throw my computer across the room, but I can`t stand to stay away from my blogs for this long, so I`m here updating from the internet cafe again.

First, I just want to say that since going to the KAT-TUN concert, the only thing that`s been on my mind is how I can get myself to another one. After seeing them so close and in person, it`s hard to content myself with just looking at their pictures and videos. I must go to another concert!!!

And now some Johnny`s notes from Japan that I haven`t shared yet.

-I mentioned in my Japan journal that I helped at an English language retreat for high schoolers. Well, we played a game at the beginning where we (the English teachers) shared fun facts about ourselves, and one of mine was that I`m a fan of KAT-TUN and Arashi. This instantly made me very popular among the girls. They were all coming up to me and asking me about my favorite songs, favorite guys, etc. One girl had even gone to one of the concerts in Ishikawa the day after the one that I went to! 

-Arashi is absolutely everywhere here. I can hardly turn on my TV without seeing a commercial or show with one or all of them in it, their AU advertisements are in most of the trains, and Matsujun is on just about every other vending machine. Japan is like Arashi paradise for a fangirl like me!

-On a similar note, I was walking by a cell phone store, and I happened to notice that Arashi was on the cover of the AU catalogs. I asked the salesperson if they were free (they were), and she kindly offered me the English language version of the catalog (which didn`t feature Arashi). Of course, I politely declined and ran off with my pretty Japanese language catalog.

-I am really enjoying being able to watch Johnny`s TV shows right in my own apartment on my own TV. Yesterday, I watched Cartoon KAT-TUN. By `watched` I mostly mean `squealed over each and every one of Jin`s adorable facial expressions`. Lol. They played this Russian Roulette-type game that involved punching holes in cards. They could choose to punch 1-3 holes each turn. Of course, Jin chose to do 3 every time. Kame was next after him, so he always had to choose 3 to or risk looking less brave than Jin. Once, towards the end, he started to do only 2, and Jin teased him, so he ended up doing 3. So cute!

-Today I watched Arashi on Utaban. Their performance of Truth was awesome!

Owari,

~Celestia~

Really. I leave for two minutes and a major scandal breaks out? What’s up with that? Well…it looks like the Jimusho has essentially gone to war with that publisher, so I take that as a sign that no one is getting fired or anything, so there’s no need to panic. I just hope there won’t be any long term consequences for Arashi as a whole.

It’s interesting, all the politics of this. The timing for one thing, and you can’t help but wonder how much that magazine paid those girls for that story. I imagine that the editors of that magazine sat down and carefully calculated how much money they would lose by pissing off the jimusho and decided that the revenue for the magazine sales would put them in the positive column. I can’t imagine they anticipated that Johnny’s would official shun then entire parent publishing company though. It seems that Johnny’s is choosing to make an example of them by reacting this way. It’s a message to all the other publishing companies, that message being “Don’t you dare fuck with us”. Sometimes I think the management is a little scary. *shrugs*. Oh well. Nothing to stop me from loving the individual boys, groups, and their music.

This is why I can never go on vacation. I swear, they just wait for me to leave to publish this stuff.