Kouhaku 60

It's that time of the year again! My post is quite a number of weeks late but that's okay. There was Tezuka in my Kouhaku... or I mean Shirota Yuu, in my judges panel. It was strange.. because I can only see him as TEZUKA!

• Ayumi started off the event but sang with much difficulty as usual, versus EXILE.
• Then there were a bunch of children performances like the Ponyo girl.
• AKB48 were cute as usual but then there were the NYC boys (lawl?)... oh wait, they're part of the Johnny's, no wonder. I see now.
• Speaking of Johnny's, Snow Prince Gasshoudan kids debuted, not officially however...
• I was surprised to finally see Arashi on Kouhaku. I figured they would've been on it a long time ago, considering their popularity and the fact that the other Johnny's groups like SMAP, TOKIO, Kinki Kids have all been on it before.
• Funky Monkey BabYS - what?  it's like school food punishment wtf.
• Somehow Susan Boyle made it onto the program.
• SMAP did a Michael Jackson tribute.
• misono got publicity via Koda Kumi's medley performance.
• Angela Aki always sings the same few songs.  I don't find her all that impressive.
• There was a Korean group, Tohoshiki (I think - popular?)
• Perfume's One Room Disco was <3
• Then there was Mizuki Nana's *fantastic* debut. Awesome. I'm quite happy for her.

The theme this year was the "power of song" and the white team definitely stood out and won it. That's quite a number of years in a row now...

Kouhaku 59

Alright, it's that time of year again for Kouhaku!

This year it starts off with out of tune Hamasaki Ayumi who sings one of her new songs that... er, doesn't sound very good. Could be because that it's live... could be because the song really just does suck. Then to add on top of that awesome song, she does this awesomely ridiculous dancing.

Okay, luckily the show's saved by this truly awesome Ghibli tribute that constantly gave me serious goosebumps. Then I found out that SMAP's Kimura does the voice for the prince in Howl's Moving Castle, which is rather interesting information. I've taken a liking in Ikimonogakari, so I might try them out for a bit. Perfume's performance was nice, maybe I'll give their music another try again maybe. There was this Japanese black guy called JERO who sang ENKA and holy crap he was good. If I were an enka fan, I'd be listening to both him and Kiyoshi (cuz Hikawa Kiyoshi rocks too). Apparently SPEED is back for more, even though they're all old now. Koda Kumi had the most prettiest dress and she strut her stuff in it too, singing TABOO - hot. Angela Aki's overrated (yeah I just said that). SMAP was out of tune, as usual. No one else too special in the 2nd half of the show. The guys won again this year. I would've voted white too if I were in Japan.

Hello February!

So wow here I am again MID-FEBRUARY! Look at the time fly :/

Let us examine the many aspects of life:

School- Projects come and go... the semester feels a bit more slack than the previous (which of course is an awfully good thing yes?) The [maybe sudden] realization of society and culture sadly taking form in and between the classmates at school. Do I even know what I'm trying to say? No? It's okay. It'll be a conversation between Me, Myself and I. What I'm trying to say is... Having to act a certain way and say certain things just to be accepted is really silly. omg, it feels like frickin' high school - the attitudes especially.. people, grow up! What the hell have you been learning in Rick's tedious lectures? I know they're long-winded but they frickin' make so much bloody sense it's actually rather frightening. Yes, we learn about how culture diseases society and how we can use it to manipulate others (hurhur, go go graphic designers!)... So yeah, I decided to be 'different' and now I'm exiled. Fun. There goes my social life at school. Not that I needed it though.

Sooo.. there was this Breast Cancer contest slash fundrasier thing that went on and one of our projects revolved around this contest that we ended up submitting to. I liked how mine turned out and I would THINK the teacher liked it too... after the contest he kept trying to convince me to turn it into a children's story book XD?! But yeah I didn't win though BUT SOMEONE BIDDED ON MINE!! Our class was invited to the reception-like event that was held at Steamworks in gastown... open bar but was limited to beer and wine. I didn't feel like drinking but I had a LOT of appetizers that circulated around constantly. Everyone brought a guest so I decided to bring Mike with me since he worked nearby and I'm sure he'd be one of the few that might appreciate something like this. Unfortunately I don't think I was that great of a host to him though (when am I ever a good host, seriously?)... We had two classmates that ended up insanely drunk... fun times, fun times. After the event, I finally went and visited Mike's NEW OFFICE! Awsome view, great atmosphere - very convenient to lots of things nearby. Yet again he offered me a position in their company but damn, full time no good!

Work- Work's been DEAD! No one shops at Oakridge The Bay much nowadays! I was able to grab a few extra hours during the Valentines rush (minus a day because of Dynamis on Tuesdays - tho I heard the day before Valentines was busy :/).. so I think I've narrowed down my favourite guy fragrances to Issey Miyake L'eau Blue and Gorgio Armani GIO. To answer ToFu's question from a long time ago: I don't mind guys wearing fragrances.. as long as it's not oversprayed (as you reek of nothing but the fragrance), not stinky stuff like CHANEL, DRAKKAR Noir or Burberry, not insanely sweet like ESCADA or JOOP!.. it should be subtle and pleasant. Just maybe a little there to make you want MORE (rar~) - tips for guys? :D

Gaming- Now that I've thought about it... I think I'm going to level RNG to 75 instead of COR. Ranger is actually quite fun (doing insanely high damage!) and getting equip for COR is hard as hell. It's exciting to get hate from the enemy easily :b Not so exciting when they can't get it off me and I die in the process XD;; I'm one point away from Private First Class assault ranking grahgrahgrah... stupid assault ls cancelling for no bloody reason.

I've also finished Children of Mana! Boy was the last, last stage long as hell or what >_<;

紅白 - KOUHAKU 2006!
I almost forgot to blog about this AGAIN.. um so [spoiler]the guys won again this year[/spoiler]. The theme this year was love and family. I don't remember the order so I'll just talk whatever I remember... um, random people I didn't know and felt that they sucked: Aqua Timez and DJ OZMA... random people I didn't know and felt was good: Sukima Switch 《スキマスイッチ》, ... surprised to see Angela Aki and Suga Shikao there! Very awsome! Returning awsomes: Nakashima Mika, aiko, Otsuka Ai, Porno Graffiti (このＢＩＧＭＡＣＨＩＮＥを乗っていけよ！！！！(ノ ゜Д゜)ノ)... ORANGE RANGE returned which was nice.. BONNIE PINK showed up (!) but was meh, Hamasaki Ayumi of course was there but she's meh to me now too... oh yeah SMAP can't sing still.

Blogger-
New blogger's pretty annoying now... forcing me to login with my google account grr. I need to find some time to recode my blog to fit the standards of today :b... someday I will, someday.

Harddrive-
HEY! I finally cleared out my harddrive! Now E: is dedicated to anime! Backlog time backlog time! I've finished 4-5 unfinished series so far?... 2924983473 more to go!

Website-
Backlogged until further notice!

Manga-
Furuba 22 WASN'T THE LAST BOOK OMG! Torture to wait another month for 23, the REAL final book. It's really wrapping up... I can't believe it. FRUITS BASKET IS ACTUALLY ENDING!

I read that Kami-chama Karin is going to be animated... it'll be FUN! Also, Sou-niisama is playing a character in "Bokura no", a manga (to be anime) by the creator of Narutaru so I decided to read up on it (another Sou-niisama fan shared it on the LJ community) and wow...intense... I KNEW that it was going to be another depressing, action-filled story involving kids.. that's just the Narutaru way!

Air Gear 15: RINGO! WHY DID YOU@!$*#$U#*($&*#(JIOEJFK She's my favourite character too D:

今年の紅白歌合戦

I finished watching the 56th annual Kouhaku the other day and unfortuantely the guys won this year. Maybe I never noticed it before but this year lots of musicians sang old songs: Nakashima Mika, TM Revolution, Hitoto You, Shimatani Hitomi to name a few. And ahem, who's THIS PERSON? She He She He THAT PERSON [or Gorie, as he/she calls him/herself] is [almost] the scariest thing I've ever seen. He/She was on the red side so I guess it's sorta safe to call him/her a SHE. Though underneath the SHE he's a HE and... ahh... I don't keep up with the pop/drama news so he/she just caught me off guard.

Year by year, it looks like Hamasaki Ayumi's been improving on her live performances lol! She wasn't out of breath AND she danced a bit! Also, I found out that Hikawa Kiyoshi can't dance! I couldn't stop laughing during his performance when he was attempting at [happy] dancing... ah well, at least his singing is still top notch. Kouda Kumi's performance was pretty awsome, though I kinda stopped listening to her stuff a while back so none of her stuff rung a bell. BoA's hairdoo was pretty cool. You know, the 'one side of the head is braided'-style? It looked good on her, surprisingly. There were more hip hop/rap wannabe groups that showed up this year -- D-51 (not D12? :b), Def Tech, ... oh, m-flo also showed up this year and they sung "HEY!" with Akiko Wada which was kinda weirrrrd. w-inds, aiko, TOKIO and CHEMISTRY return this year; nothing special. :b And more and more weirdo groups are getting popular: "Kishidan" who always has someone rip off his wig every Kouhaku appearance, "Group Tamashii" sung a song called "I'll buy you juice" LOL, apparently it was a theme some for some anime. OH, I only found out about DEPAPEPE recently but they showed up for like 2 minutes to do a guitar performance (duh!) but yay! they got screentime so that's all that matters! Now if only they sang, they could beat the living crap outta that other group -- WaT!

I conclude this review by reconfirming: SMAP CAN'T SING!

:))

Thanks all for the encouraging comments everyone. I've taken the time to think about it more on the weekend. It feels like I've climbed a step too high and I'm kinda stuck in the middle. I'm just not ready for that line of work yet. Maybe it's a sign I should return to that bloody place called school? :D I guess the hardest challenge right now is to find the right words to say and the right time to say them. I've always had trouble expressing my opinion in the "adult world", afraid I'd ruin my own reputation, or something to that relation. As if they'd look down on me just cuz I'm a kid who has no right to speak up cuz.. well I'm just a naive kid right? Okay scratch that, I'm dumb. Thanks again everyone, I'm in the process of climing down this frustrating ladder. :]]



To the happier side... it's that time of the year for KOUHAKU (紅白)! This year the women win again (ha-ha-haa). But really, the reds were so much more spectacular this year, without a doubt! The guys were SO so-so... The highlights: ORANGE RANGE (not Hana but Locomotion's good too :T), Ueto Aya (Ai no Tame ni), Chemisty (I lub them <3), BoA (QUINCY -- I was reminded of Ishida Uryuu and was like gasp, a song for him? XD), an oldie guy Matsudaira Ken coming in with UBER SHINY KIMONOS WITH OVER 50 MORE UBER SHINY KIMONOED DANCERS dancing to a SAMBA (aka. the 'MATSUKEN SAMBA II')! That was the most surprising thing throughout the whole event but lol it was cool but funny at the same time. Okay back to the highlights: AH Takizawa Hideaki was in the guest stands doing teh judging (damn he's hot? :p), then there were two guest singers from KOREA (gaspgasp... excluding BoA) Ryu (singer of the theme song for Winter Sonata) and Lee Jung-Hyun (I think?) who did some crazy dance plus singing her themes in Koreanified Japanese ;DD. And other faves who showed up included aiko, Hamasaki Ayumi (I swear it looked like she was lip syncing cuz she wasn't in a shortage of breath like she usually is AND she moved around), DREAMS COME TRUE, Nakashima Mika, Hitoto You, PornoGraffiti, Maki Goto and the female Enka artists (I don't know their names by heart... except Kobayashi Sachiko and Fuji Ayako. Nor am I a fan of male enka, except Hikawa Kiyoshi cuz he's young :p). Anyways, this year was awsome but something was missing--! SMAP! Ahahaha, even though I don't exactly love them to bits, they were still missed. :p And probably the most annoying performance was by nobodyknows+ where all the singers in the group just jumped around like mad with their we're-ghetto-and-wannabe-american outfits but at least they sang a good song that I know of (Kokoro no Odoru... perhaps from hearing it at Daiso?). Hahaha, I can't get over the fact that Takizawa Hideaki presence graced the event. XD Oh the little bored face he had on... heehee.



Ok! Install UT now.

The past week was alright. Nothing overly great...

Well, the results fot the Psychology statistics assignment was crap. The marketing case study marks also came out crap. I couldn't monitor hunt crap. And didn't try to avatar hunt either. Had short dialogs for japanese class we had to create ourselves. Me and Irene made a all-out feminine dialog filled with pink bikinis, ~wa and ~wa ne and ~wa yo, and atashi and kareshi and 'ohohoho'. The teacher pet pair centered their dialog on the teacher's birthday, go figure. The 'chibi high pitched dude' was overly (and unnecessarily) hyper, jumping around and raising his voice constantly. Everyone elses' were typical.



After school Wednesday, I retrieved my brother's 22" monitor -- it's a TV. I then went out for bubble tea with Jo and Amy at the revamped Bubble World. The place is nice and roomy but our favourite photo hunt game was missing. However, they played unenjoyable music that repeated throughout our stay there. Replaced my old monitor with the 22" and whoa, scary big difference. Now I have too much desktop space but a nice movie player. At least until I get my new monitor. I was supposed to get a viewsonic but SOMEONE waited too long and now it's gone. Now I'm going to take the chance and wait till Monday to see if there are any other deals for better monitors. I'll just keep crossing my fingers and hope I'm right.



Got new groups for my marketing class. An unexpected group I'd say. I do not look forward to find anything good from these people though... I hope I'm wrong about this one.



I lost my original seat in my Geo lab class so I took the seat in front of it. I sat beside a strange girl who plays with her hair constantly in class and talks to herself a lot. I asked for some graph paper from her and I was only given one. I had to draw three graphs, supposedly on three separate sheets, but I was forced to fit all mine onto one sheet. Cheapass girl. :/ Got out of the class early and met Ryan. He came over and I lent him some anime. I angered a few drivers on my way home. Good stuff.



Watched the second half of Red White: Kouhaku. I expected White to win afterall and so they did. The guys definately had more interesting performances than the women. I was really happy to see CHEMISTRY perform. ELT wasn't any special nor was Ayumi. SMAP, imho, did a crap job even though everyone just loves them to death despite how little effort they put into it. I didn't know of Hitoto You until now but I might have fallen in love with this artist after hearing her song 'Morai Naki'. *goes to download*



Today. Woke up. Headached from sleeping too much. Had McDix for lunch. Waited for Jo and Amy to arrive for some studying. We studied for a record time of 2+ hours. We then watched My Sassy Girl as a reward for our hard work on teh 22" monitor. Not as great as we all heard it was. Had dinner at my local HK cafe. Stayed there for 2+ hours. Drove back. Talked in the car. We all had to piss. Went inside my house. Tried to install Amy's blog. Didn't know what the problem was. Everyone leaves. I realized the database wasn't properly activated yet. Sighs.



I'm cold. :|

The day started out like crap.

Got to Japanese class to realize I forgot to bring my English poem I had to hand it later that day. I got my Geo lab back to find that I got 1.5/2, not the highly-anticipated 2/2, even AFTER I did the damn optional questions that I thought would SUPPOSEDLY boost up the mark by giving an impression to the marker. But I guess NOT. Then once again, the lab sucked because I sit around people that wouldn't socialize with me mainly because they got their own friends. Damn I should change seats. And the strangest thing today... the guy that asked me for help AND kept OBVIOUSLY looking at my answers for our last lab is considered SMART in that class! People that look smarter than he does are going to him for help... wow. Thumbs up! I quickly finished my lab and rushed home to get it. Tried to help a few guys with the pay parking machine that ate their money with no ticket. Wasn't really helpful... Got home, made a few dozen last minute changes to my poem and got back to school. Analyzed two interesting "poems" today in English, "Woke Up This Morning" by the Sopranos and "Lose Yourself" by Eminem to end off the unit (thank goodness). I'm too cheap to buy the next books we need for english... I think I'll go to go the library this weekend. Got home after the last class, did some quick chores and watched Red and White Kouhakuuu!



Ohoho lots to say about it this year, even if I've only watched the first half so far! Before they started singing, I started to get excited to see all the COOL PEOPLE THAT SHOWED UP THIS YEARRRRrrrrrrr...!! Anyways, BoA started up Kouhaku with DOUBLE, then w-inds with Long Road. Then there was Goto Maki singing a Morning Musume song (not to mention, this year has lots of clothes-removing-and-voila-another-costume-right-UNDERNEATH singing), and Aiuchi Rina with HIGH JUMP! Then then, 175R is a band made up of ugly guys with a vocalist that SCREAMS for singing. Kinda funny but hard to listen to.. Bleh to them, not my style. Not to mention he's short when he stands with everyone else. Gee! There was Gackt with Last Song! Mmm, he looked good and ultimately a good song too. And I don't like EXILE. They just copy Chemistry. *throws things at them* And then the most SHOCKING THING! ZONE's TAKAYO LEFT?! AND I WAS LIKE WTF? NOO!?!? What graduation, you, you, LIAR! *throws bigger things at Takayo* But I hear there's already a replacement for her...~ And I recognize the same guy in the audience waving at the camera again this year... Heeh. Silly people. And everyone else didn't make a big enough impact on me. Well at the first half, the White team's winning... which is kinda disappointing. Hope that changes around when I get to the second half. :D



I still got so much to do this weekend... FFXI Summoner avatars, monitor hunting, Marketing case study, Psychology statistics assignment... *sigh*

Cute white haired bishi, Bakuraaa from Yu-Gi-Oh *drool*... Erm, just finished watching Red/White, second half. Yo, Ayu appeared! Gackt appeared! Namie Amuro appeared! *thinks* CHEMISTRY appeared! The Gospellers appeared! Guys won this year.. boo~ XP Yay, fun & lifeless visit to Richmond w/ Moni today.

New bloggie layout! Inspired after I finished the board and felt like some CCS. I got the laaatest Animage Magazine, so I'm super satisfied today. Comes with a super spiffy calender too! I can't wait to scan some of these pictures *_* ... Now I'm just figuring out how to stick this in my locker, since it's quite big. o_o



Got to watch the 35th 2001 Annual Red and White Contesto Thingy! (I think I need a better translation for the name... =\) We only got to rent the first half of it because the second part was all rented out, leaving us (me & mom) shrieking for more! Wonderful appearances and performances by Every Little Thing (Fragile: <3 that song), MAX, Da Pump, ZONE (never heard of them before actually, but their music is not that bad), Morning Musume... I'm on a brain cramp, can't think of anymore people at the moment. But anyway, I didn't see any appearances by any other popular j-pop peepo. Not even Laruku, Ayumi nor SMAP this year. Really quite disappointing.... >_<