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So I was watching YY JUMPing yesterday, and the show was as boring as always. I don’t even remember what happened, but I’m sure it had something to do with food. The Live Stage was quite nice though. Yabu and Hikaru were performing Score. However, just like last week I have no idea where to find the video as the usual sources seem to have dried up. Maybe they’re just enjoying their summer vacation, I don’t know.

So anyway, I was really looking forward to today’s School Kakumei. I never really watch that show either, except for the Live Stages that seem to get increasingly boring as well. But hey, at least it’s something.

Yeah, turns out that there was no School Kakumei this week. The next show will be on September 5th.

So we have nothing. And I have nothing to talk about.

I don’t know what happened. I’ve been writing this blog for almost 5 years now. There have always been times when nothing new was happening. Remember that excruciatingly long time between Hey!Say!JUMP‘s 4th and 5th single? I have no idea how we got through that. Even when nothing was going on I always found something to write about. But these days it’s becoming increasingly difficult. Maybe it’s just me, me and my life that’s been changing. I’m in a relationship, I do sports on a regular basis, I’m writing a book. All things that weren’t the case 2 years ago. All things that take up a decent amount of my time. It kinda bugs me that I don’t have as much time to spend blogging, but these other things are very important to me. But so is my blog. And I’m gonna keep it alive. Somehow.

At other times when there was nothing new to report I used to post old Live Stages that I’d never posted before, just for the fun of it and for a bit of nostalgia. I wish I could do that today, but haha, funny story: the other day I mentioned that I’d had these computer problems (again!), and I was so happy that I managed to sort them out while still keeping all my personal files like videos, music etc. But it turns out that I did lose one personal file after all, and it’s a very important one. It’s the database of my DVD collection that allowed me to locate any of my videos within a few seconds. Just type in the file name and the database would tell me on which DVD the file is. Now I’m sitting here with 700+ DVDs containing thousands of files and no index. I know I have the 2nd Shonen Club of May 2003 somewhere, but finding it would take me days if not weeks right now. I’m gonna have to scan all my DVDs again and rebuild that database, but that of course will take up more of my precious time. Oh well.

So yeah, no new videos to flail about, and all the old ones are kinda inaccessible at the moment. That’s boring, but it can’t be helped.

I really feel like watching old Johnny‘s videos today though, so I guess I’m just gonna get on YouTube and see what I can find there.

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This blog post is totally random.

So, the Japanese writer Murakami Haruki said in a speech he gave in Oslo this week that writing a novel is “just like having a dream“. That may very well be true. Especially since nightmares are dreams too. I’m currently struggling to write my own novel. Struggling partly because I’m lazy, partly because I’m busy with other stuff, and having evil cyber-terrorists attacking my beautiful new computer with viruses isn’t exactly helping either. You always know you’re in for a shitload pf trouble when you have to get out your system recovery DVD. But hey, at least this time I was lucky enough to save all my files, my videos and music and photos and everything, so all I had to do was to reinstall all my programs, which only took the better part of days. Two days, in which of course I didn’t get any writing done. Oh well.

Anyway, Mr Murakami-san is an exceptional writer whose work I admire very much, so much that I find it hard to pick a favourite book. It’s probably Kafka on the Shore, although all his books are good reads. So now with autumn knocking on our doors why don’t you just buy yourself a fireplace, forget about the real world and immerse into the fantasy world of Murakami. It’ll be worthwhile for sure.

Mr Murakami-san doesn’t seem to have any problems with writing, bless him, unlike many young people in Asia apparently. Accoring to this article young Chinese and Japanese find it increasingly difficult to write in their own languages because they’re getting more and more used to computers and mobile phones with alphabet-based input systems. And I’m afraid that’s true. From my own experience I can say that computers are incredibly helpful in finding and translating kanji characters. But remembering them? Not so much.

However, for those who still use pen and paper to write, but who think that handwritten emoticons don’t look quite as cool on paper as they do on a computer screen, there is now an emoticon stamp that allows you to stamp out hundreds of those cute Japanese emoticons. Available for ¥3,990 at geekstuff4you. All I can say to that is: \(^o^)/

And finally, if your life isn’t weird enough already, drop by at your local Ototo Café. We all know that Maid Cafés that have long been the craze among male otakus in Japan. Now here’s something for you if you’d rather have a little brother than a maid. Even though the article at cnngo claims that ototo cafés are primarily aimed at female customers, the homepage of CafeB’s Prince in Tokyo’s Chiyoda ward greets us with “Okaeri! Oneechan! Oniichan!“, so I guess male customers are welcome as well. Too bad that the little brothers don’t look very much like boys at all, on account of actually being girls. Thanks, but that concept hasn’t worked for me in Peter Pan, and it’s going to work for me in a café either, which is why I’d rather visit a place like Edelstein Café where boys will indeed be boys, or rather: where boys used to be boys, because the place closed down earlier this year.

First Edelstein Café, now HMV Shibuya. Why are all the cool places in Tokyo going out of business?

Oh well, I’m closing too now. But only for today.

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Okay. I was wrong again. I predicted the next Arashi sinlge for November. Turns out it’s going to be released in October. Which means a lot of things.

First of all it means that they could still get that record, five singles in the yearly top 5, if both Love Rainbow (released on September 8th) and Dear Snow (released only four weeks later) sell more than the two AKB48 singles that are currently on #3 and #4 in the yearly charts. Not an impossible feat, especially since both upcoming Arashi singles come in two different versions.

Also, I think it’s now more than likely that Arashi will release yet another single in late November or early December, no matter if that one would still be needed for that top 5 record. From a business perspective it would be a smart thing to do. They’re on a roll. They have sold a total of 2.79 million copies of the three singles and one album they released so far in 2010, that’s a mind boggling average of 698k per release. They’d be stupid not to release more stuff while people are still crazy for Arashi. So yeah, right now I think there will be another, a 6th Arashi single this year.

In my previous post I wrote that Arashi won’t achieve that top 5 record. That was premature, because I didn’t take into account their next two, possibly three, singles coming up. That record is still out there, waiting to be achieved. It’s by no means certain that they will do it, but if anyone can do it then it’s Arashi. This is going to be an exciting four months until the end of the year, especially if AKB48 decide to release yet another single as well.

On a side note, it’s an intriguing situation for Arashi fans. They’re next single isn’t even on sale yet and you can already preorder the one after that. It’s something that Hey!Say!JUMP fans (or, indeed, fans of any other Johnny’s group) can only dream of.

The title Dear Snow seems somewhat premature for a release in October. I wonder what the title of their December release will be. Maybe Springtime for Johnny. Ha.

Single release from Arashi featuring a love ballade song which is theme song to the film “Ohoku” starring Nino. Limited edition includes a bonus DVD with music video of “Dear Snow.” Regular edition includes a bonus track which is not included in limited edition. Features alternate jacket.

Dear Snow [w/ DVD, Limited Edition] YesAsia – CD Japan
Dear Snow [Regular Edition] YesAsia – CD Japan

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