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The 2nd Ya-Ya-ya video I saw was “Andalucia ni akogarete”.

It featured only two of Ya-Ya-yah, Yabu and Shoon, and a new face: Yaotome Hikaru. Back then I had a hard time figuring out who he was and why sometimes he was there and sometimes not. But I fell in love with him right on the spot. His smile was killing me then and two years later it still is.

In the following weeks and months I downloaded dozens of videos and hundreds of photos, and I visited hundreds of websites trying to find out who they were and when their birthdays were and all that useless information. A big part of the information to be found was in Japanese obviously, and I knew only 5 words in Japanese: hai, iie, ohayou gozaimasu, konnichiwa and wakarimasen. Those wouldn’t get me very far, but I wanted to know what the hell they were singing and talking about, so I started to teach myself Japanese. (I hate to admit that after 2 years I still have problems with some kana, but I took a kanji test the other day and scored 75 out of 100, so I guess I’m not doing all that bad.)

Anyway, I was eating, sleeping and breathing Ya-Ya-yah, and within a few weeks I discovered a whole new world, the wonderful world of Johnny’s. What an amazing, enigmatic, intriguingly beautiful place full of beautiful people. I loved this place, this new world full of fun, youth, and beauty. And yet I tried to keep my head straight, because it seemed so pointless to get emotional about popstars, especially if they were 10000 miles away. I just wished they were real. Well, they were real, sort of, but they were also at the other end of the world and when I thought about it I was absolutely 100% sure that I’d never ever have the chance to go and see them. It was all just a dream. Beautiful, but still just a dream.