So I haven't been all that active of late, mostly due to school and other commitments, but I couldn't resist making this post about Kishi Yūta. I don't think he's especially cute, but I can't deny that he's an extremely energetic dancer. Like seriously extremely energetic. Of course it's nice to see juniors who are really enthusiastic, but I think that Kishi Yūta might want to tone down his passion a little bit. And here's why.

The Scene: October 7th, 2011 Episode of Shokura. The Song: "With You" performed by Nakaken, Kuramoto, Shōri, Takahashi Fū, Yo Marius, Matsushima Sō, Jingūji, Haniuda, and Kishi.

As you can see, Kishi has a regular microphone, just like all the other juniors



And then, at approximately 5:33, after he does a spin to start dancing solo for Nakaken, he loses his microphone.

Kishi without his mic.

The mic on the floor.

After his little solo dance is over, Kishi scoops up the mic like a pro at approximately 5:36.

And for a little while, there's no more trouble. It didn't even matter that he'd lost his mic because Nakaken was having his solo lines at that point. The performance of Kishi and the other juniors continues flawlessly. But then, at around 6:39, when Kishi gets some more solo dance time, he loses his microphone again.

The moment where the mic flies off.

Look on the floor; that's Kishi's mic. Drop number 2 as a result of being a little over-enthusiastic. Only this time, Kishi wasn't able to pick up the mic. So he pretends.

Kishi pretending to hold his mic at around 6:54.

Kishi, clearly without a mic, grinning for the camera.

In his defense, Kishi carried on performing like a real professional, something that's always admirable in juniors. Yeah, the faking was obvious and a little bit silly, but he kept smiling and dancing and just generally be adorable and awesome. I think he deserves two thumbs up for his effort. But he should definitely try to tone down his dancing a little, as I'm sure that he got chewed out by the director(s) or coach(es) afterwards. It's expensive equipment and all. But seriously, well done Kishi Yūta. You're not the cutest of the juniors, but you know what you're doing.

Also, Matshushima Sō has clearly recently learned how to do a body roll and wanted to show it off as much as possible in one performance xD.

  お久しぶり！

It feels like it's been forever since I've been online. There was WiFi available at the summer camp where I was teaching Japanese, but there was never any time. I was either interacting with the kids, or planning my next lesson(s)/activities, or hanging out with my fellow staff.

It was amazing, probably one of the best experiences of my life.

And it feels like the Johnny's world has sped ahead without me. Guess I've got a lot of catching up to do :). Unfortunately, livejournal is being kind of weird for me at the moment. It seems like others might be having problems too. It seems like the issues might be getting resolved though, so that's good.

Just a quick little post to say that I'm going to be teaching Japanese at a summer camp for two months! I definitely won't be able to get online as frequently as I have been, so if you message me, I hope you won't be offended if it takes me a little while to respond.

ちょっと　緊張してるけど　頑張ります！かわいい　かわいい　生徒たちに　ジャニーズを　紹介する　つもり　です　xD。

The title completely expresses the purpose of this post xD. Today is yabu_takeshi's birthday. Happy Birthday!!! Since our first-ever conversation, as far as I recall, began mostly because of Watanabe Haruki, here is a (horrible because I suck at making gifs) gif of him and Myūto (including some other juniors as well).



Haruki and Myūto both hope that you have a flipping awesome birthday. Sorry, terrible pun (and it's dumb because you usually say that you "twirl" a baton, not that you "flip" it, but whatever, puns are my favorite).



Rikito also hopes that YOU have an awesome birthday. Yeah, I should not be allowed to try to make art.

Fandom would surely be a bleak place if I didn't have yabu_takeshi to talk about juniors with :DDD. Thank you for uploading so many fantastic junior-related and adorable kid-related (Seishirō!) videos. やっぱり、この　大きい　ファンドムの　中で、君と　出会って、仲良くに　なって　ことは　ラッキ　でしたね　＾＾。お誕生日おめでとうございます！！！

School Kakumei livestages aren't usually worth talking about. They're nice, in that most of the members of Hip!Hop!JUMP and at least a couple boys from B.I.Shadow, along with some other juniors, generally appear in them, but they aren't fantastic. I usually watch them once and kind of forget about them.

But not the one that aired today. Because Hagiya lost his tie, and then courteously scooted it across the floor with him when he moved position onstage, and then KICKED IT OFFSTAGE because he is just that awesome and conscientious and talented. Yeah.

Usually, when I talk about HHJ, it's about Rikito, whose blinding smile is on par in brightness with Massu and Junno and Aiba, the three notorious bright-smilers of JE. He's just so into dancing and grinning at you and putting on a good show that how can you not talk about him? Then there's Juri, who just keeps getting better and better as his confidence (and height ^^) increases. I am a huge fan of good rapping, so of course I flail over Juri quite a bit.

Hagiya, though, I don't talk about nearly enough. I guess I just take his greatness for granted, since he has literally always been that good. Of course he's had times where he made mistakes, however, in general, he is one of the most consistently accurate (not missing steps, not forgetting to sing, looking at the camera, not looking like he's about to run off the stage or faint in sheer terror, etc.) performers in the younger generation of Johnny's juniors. The kid's freaking talented. Did I mention that he can drum? He was probably doing it before Yūto made it cool xD.

The whole tie thing today made me want to recognize his skill. So here's to you, Keigo Hagiya. Oh, and here are some screenshots of the incident.

Keigo, with his tie on at about :48 into the performance:



Keigo then went offstage. When he came back at around 1:00, he had lost his tie. You can see it on the floor at his feet :).


Then, at 1:52, Keigo cleverly kicks it off the stage so it won't get in anyone's way. He was probably afraid that Yūgo was going to slip on it, lol. He practically worked the kick into the choreography. Keigo, major props to you, seriously. The first screencap shows Keigo kicking it, the second one shows the tie going flying =D.



I also cut a short clip, if anyone wants to watch the kick in action:

Keigo, you're the man. Well, the young man.

So basically, both of the episodes of Shokura that aired in February were awesome. The special version of "Arigato~Sekai no Doko ni Ittemo" was so great. First of all, because of Takaki solo lines. Why is his voice so under-appreciated? It's tied with Ryutaro's and Yamada's for my favorite in Hey!Say!JUMP. Hey, I don't have to be a huge Yamada fan to appreciate that he has an awesome voice. And, of course, the juniors <3.

Ordinarily, Nishi Reito wouldn't be a junior that I'd pay a lot of attention too. He's cute and all, just not really that eye-catching. Now that I've seen his breakdancing skills though, I'm inclined to keep an eye on him. He could turn out to be an excellent dancer.

Let me just say that I approve of boys with weapons. Boys wearing sparkly pink, fluffy costumes is cute and all, but nothing beats a boyish boy. I'd already quite liked Ichimiya Taiki from when I saw his picture in an issue of a magazine, and getting to see him doing a little sword dance was so awesome. Yuuyan was even the one to say his name ^^.

Boys doing acrobatics are always cool. Especially when one of them is the little badass known as Hayashi Takuto and the other one is his tiny brother Hayashi Ren.


And then there was the Jumping Paradise segment. If I didn't already adore Kanezuru Hideki, this surely would have made me love him. His English xD. "Good evening gentlemen, gentlemen and... lady. Hi, my name is Hideki Kanezuru, please, and please be our FANS!" And then he told Koyama, Nakamaru, and his fellow fresh juniors that he'd said: "we're going to stir things up, so please support us and be our fans." I think not, Hideki-chan, I think not.

Nishimoto Kyohei seemed quite amused by Kanezuru's French. He was grinning practically the whole time Kanezuru was speaking. Then, when Arioka tried to say "merci beacoup" properly according to Kanezuru's instructions, he burst out into laughter. Kanezuru thought it was fuuny too; he was smiling quite widely.Too cuuuuute, the pair of them.

I felt quite proud of Shintaro Morimoto, or rather, felt like he should be proud of himself, since during the opening song where he performed "Hoshi wo Mezashite" with his posse, he was entrusted with tapping the fresh juniors Sato Shori, Takahashi Rin, and Kaoru Kuramoto to cue them when to move across the stage. As expected of the leader of the younger juniors :). The rendition of "One For You" was just as good in this episode as it was in last month's. It's a seriously great song performed by seriously great juniors.

The only thing wrong with this episode was that I didn't see Myuuto at all. And on an off-topic note, he's taller than me now. Actually, he's technically been taller than me since June of 2010, when his height was measured as 172cm, but now he's significantly taller than me at 175cm. It's so weird to think about the little ace actually being grown up...
Also, some people shouldn't be allowed to write song lyrics. Kei-chan, I am so happy that you probably have no idea what you are singing. "Wikileaks", WTF?

For me, the highlight of the Shokura episode that aired on February 4th was, of course, the rendition of "Marui Chikara" by the newest and biggest junior group, Japanese High. Well that, and Hip!Hop!JUMP and Shintaro's performance of "Love So Sweet." But about JPHai (someone needs to come up with a good abbreviation for this unit's name):

I kind of love them.

This isn't exactly surprising. What is surprising is how many of them I can recognize already. I didn't actually knew I knew them until I saw them performing. Then I saw like: "Ah! Jinguuji Yuta, Nishimoto Kyohei, Ichimura Taiki, Misumi Akito, Akiyama Daichi, Omata Sho..." And of course, the juniors that have been introduced in recent episodes (like Takahashi Rin, Sato Shori, Akiba Ryusei, Ohkubo Lewis, Hayashi Takuto, and Hayashi Ren).

Plus Kuramoto Kaoru, of course. He seems to have been chosen as the front boy of the group, for the moment, which I have no complaints about. Even though he's not one of my favorite fresh juniors, I can definitely see his appeal.

Of all the new boys, I kind of favor Kanezuru Hideki. He's the junior who speaks Chinese. The poses he made during the opening part of "Marui Chikara" were just so full of energy and cheer, I couldn't help but grin. Although I don't like to mix together words from different languages in the same sentence, I will make an exception this time because he is just super, super genki.

If I had to make a short list of the boys who stuck out to me in "Marui Chikara" it would include: Kanezuru Hideki (for the poses, like I said, and his energy in general), Takahashi Rin (he seemed a lot less nervous than he did less month, and did a very good job), Nishimoto Kyohei( he totally forgot the lyrics/forgot to sing at 43:02 and just gave the camera a nice, professional smile, which was a great save), a boy who I think is Abe Aran (who isn't that good looking, but who was definitely among the better dancers onstage, as exemplified at 43:21), and the foursome of Omata Sho, Akiyama Daichi, Misumi Akito, and a boy who I think is Imamura Hayato, for their great dancing starting at 43:28. Oh, and Tanaka Kotaro, because I seem to have a soft spot for him, though I don't know why.

I'm really looking forward to seeing more of this unit, and spotting more juniors who I couldn't pick out in this performance. Like Aono Ibuki and Taniguchi Yuuya.

For the most part, the Japanese artists that I fangirl over are Johnny's. One notable exception to this are the Breakerz. I'm pretty sure that they qualify as JRock, but I've never been good at categorizing musical groups.

I'm a relatively new Breakerz fan, although I've known about Daigo, the lead vocalist, for a while. He was in the drama "Stand Up!" which is one of my favorite dramas of all time, which is how I first heard him. Recently, he guest-starred in another drama called "Lady~Saigo no Hanzai~" and his character was hilariously creepy. Daigo <3.

"Bunny Love" is the song that I like best by the Breakerz. It, well... My description wouldn't do it justice. All I can say is this: boys in bunny ears. Yeah. Yeah. No, actually, I'll say more than that xD. It's a song that has a darkly energetic, mature feel to it. In my opinion, the best time to listen to it is at or around sunset, when it's just starting to get dark, and you want to get pumped up to do something wild with your friends. Or any time when you want an adult-ish rush, if that makes any sense. It's a song that's like an auditory sugar rush for grown-ups and I love it. You should watch the PV, and then look up the lyrics. You'll probably learn a few interesting new terms ^^.

BREAKERZ is releasing a DVD of “Wish 02″ in Budokan this February 9! Check out the snippet below:

Amazon Japan

CDJapan

HMV

yesasia

For more information, please visit the official BREAKERZ homepage.

For BREAKERZ news, lyrics, and translations in English, please visit BRZFan.

Woah! I just watched Hip!Hop!JUMP's new year message and got a huge shock. Takayuki Konno appeared with them! And just when you thought that the group was done shuffling it's members xD.

For real though, I'm quite happy about this addition. I've been a fan of Takayuki's for quite some time. His shigin (traditional Japanese poetry singing) is lovely, he's a decent dancer despite still having rather short arms and legs, and he's just fun to watch.

I have no clue why he's been added to Hip!Hop!JUMP, not that I'm complaining. Although I am a bit sad that he'll no longer be appearing alongside Shonosuke Muraji. I've always thought of them as a pair, with Takayuki's shigin and Muraji's shamisen.

Today's especially sweet, isn't it? Because, in addition to being the "lets run around in the dark and get candy, or alternatively, get totally smashed and do things that we'll probably regret in the morning" day, also known as Halloween, it's one special junior's birthday. Myuuto Morita, I hope that you're having the best of birthdays. May all your wishes comes true.
( Read on for some screencaps and me talking about Myuuto xD. )