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I think I’ve written about it before. In the Ya-Ya-yah episode I watched during my first trip to Tokyo back in July 2004 Yamada Ryosuke made his very first TV appearance in the Johnny’s Jr. Audition segment. In that same audition Morimoto Ryutaro and Fukasawa Tatsuya also made their first steps into the world of Johnny’s. I’m sure back then neither of us could have imagined how our lives as idol boys & fanboy would develop over the next 3 years. Anyway, I was a Ya-Ya-yah (and Ya-Ya-yah only) fan at that time so I didn’t really pay too much attention to anyone else. That’s why I didn’t really become aware of Yamada and Morimoto until that 2006.06.25 Ya-Ya-yah Live Stage when they performed Sekai ga hitotsu ni naru made together with Yuto and Ya-Ya-yah (and that’s really strange because Morimoto appeared in at least 4 or 5 Jr. ni Q segments on Shonen Club in 2005).

I was in a nostalgic mood today so I tried to find out when Yamada and Morimoto started to appear on Shonen Club. And I’m still trying to, because it’s not all that easy to spot two boys in a crowd of dozens of backdancers, especially because two years ago the video quality wasn’t as good as it is today. For some reason I find Morimoto a lot easier to spot than Yamada. He’s usually the smallest of them all, and even in the early days he was almost always taking a center stage position. Right now I’m safe to say that all three of them, Yamada, Morimoto and Fukasawa, did appear on Shonen Club at least as early as the 1st quarter of 2005. I’ll check on the 2004 Shonen Club episodes tomorrow. I really want to know when they first showed up.

Anyway, all that means that I probably saw these guys both at the Yokohama Arena Ya-Ya-yah concerts in March 2005 and the Ya-Ya-yah Summary concert in July 2005. I just didn’t know who they were or what would become of them in the next two years. I have no recollection of any of the Junior boys at the Yokohama Arena concerts. But there’s two things that I clearly remember about the Summary concert. One is the Hikaru handshaking event, the other is that at one point during the concert there was a commotion going on behind me so I turned around and I saw 10 or 12 chibi boys running towards the exit just 3 or 4m behind me. I didn’t know who they were, and it was too dark to recognize their faces, but now I think it’s not unlikely that some of them were people that I am so familiar with today.

So, I’ll continue skimming through my old Shonen Club episodes to find out when those chibis made their first appearances, and I’ve already started another nice little project called Jr. ni Q – The Movie. I’ll put all the Jr. ni Qs I have together in one file and upload it, ’cause Jr. no Q is always fun to watch even if you don’t understand a single word they’re saying.

To wrap this up, here’s Yamada in that Johnny’s Jr. Audition segment on Ya-Ya-yah 2004.07.25. You can download the full episode here.

P.S.Sorry I didn’t have the time to reply to your comments today. I’ll do that tomorrow.