Misc

smile again and again
Almost a year into the hiatus announcement, and I think the fandom is doing FINE. Some of us have accepted things as they are, some are still scared, most of us are sad however else we feel about it, but they’ve been throwing announcement after announcement that it’s sometimes hard to stop and catch our breaths! At least, that’s my observation from my tiny corner of the fandom. I haven’t been that active in a long time, and I’m mostly just lurking and talking to the same fandom friends I’ve been talking to since forever.

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Arashi News Round-up
  • Yesterday we got to see the Japonism goods for the first time! The masking tape (venue-limited item) for Nagoya is blue. And it comes in a set of two tapes! I’m all excited about it, but I didn’t really order any, because it’s too expensive with our current exchange rate (T_T). Anyway, you can check out the goods here.
  • Ninomiya Kazunari will be starring in Fuji TV’s New Year drama SP which will be aired on January 3rd 2016, at 9pm. The drama will be “Botchan”, based on Natsume Soseki’s novel. Since lately I’ve been feeling like reading and/or rereading Natsume Soseki, I’m looking forward to timing my Botchan read with the drama 😀
  • Arashi, along with TOKIO, HSJ, Ikuta Toma and Totsuka Shota, supported V6 at their 20th anniversary concert. Arashi went onstage as backup dancers during the encore, for “TAKE ME HIGHER”. Look for the news clips all over dailymotion and tudou; they’re fun to watch XD

Arashi!

My first trip to Japan after becoming an Arashian was in 2010. It was a good year to be an Arashian; throughout the whole trip, my friends and I kept getting excited over seeing them on CMs in the subway, on billboards and posters everywhere we went. It was impossible NOT to see them, back then. Of course, I still saw Arashi posters in my following trips, but it was nothing like back in 2010. Last year I only saw the same Kirin ads over and over, at various places.

Last month’s trip reminded me a bit of 2010 – not that there were as many posters and advertisements (and it’s still mostly Kirin!), but there were certainly a lot more than I had become used to. I didn’t manage to snap photos of some (like all the HOME’S posters I’ve seen with Nino) but here’s some of the ones I did take pictures of.

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JAL (Ginza Line, subway)

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Cataloging CDs and other things

Maybe it’s because I’m a bookseller now, and I was a school librarian (which is what we call students that do library page work) since I was about 11, but I’m just a tiny bit obsessed with cataloging stuff. I’m also somewhat of a completist. Anyway, since becoming an Arashian I’ve been wondering about the best way to catalog all the things I have related to them. It started with a plain text listing on LiveJournal, then various brief attempts of uploading photos to a on Pinterest, Tumblr, and Weebly…

None but Weebly stuck, and Weebly was kind of frustrating to use (which was why I moved to WordPress in the first place), and I was also cataloging my CDs on RateYourMusic. I probably would have stuck with RYM if adding new CDs (which I had to do, since not many people added info on JE music) didn’t mean taking a long time waiting for their moderators to approve every little thing. Recently a colleague suggested I try LibraryThing, which I’m already using for cataloging my books. I never included my CDs because I didn’t want them to mix with the books, but then I started making separate shelves for CDs, DVDs, and Arashi (all Arashi-related items, including concert  goods) and decided that I liked it.

I’m still way behind on cataloging the DVDs and goods, but today I finished doing my Arashi CDs!

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I think I’m definitely sticking with LT. It doesn’t have spaces for tracklists or formats or cases or any of the special columns that RYM has, but I can easily add the items I own and tag them, AND I can have them in more than one shelf if I want to, so my CDs are on my CD shelf (with non-Arashi CDs in the future) as well as on my Arashi shelf (along with DVDs, photo books and concert/drama/movie goods). I haven’t decided if I will start working on the Arashi DVDs next, or my non-Arashi CDs.

I wonder what cataloging system(s) other fans use?

While shopping for meds…

Last month I was in Osaka (and very briefly in Kyoto, Nagoya and Tokyo) for a week with my family. My mother had a sore throat and a flu coming, so I went to get her meds, when my brother-in-law called out to me and pointed these out:

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There you go, Arashi can be found almost anywhere, haha. (For those interested in the rest of my non-Arashi related trip, I wrote about it in my regular blog here and here.)

Waku Waku Gakkou goods list, and updates on Miyagi & FREESTYLE II

First of all, the goods list for Waku Waku Gakkou!

Teacher clear file folder (Group / Individual Arashi members)
Student clear file folder (Group – HSJ)
Teacher and Student clear file folder (Arashi & HSJ)
Tote bag
Binder notepad
6-color pen
Large handkerchief
Tissue case pouch
School badge IC Card sticker
Japanese origami paper

To be honest, I usually prefer their WWG goods because they’re simpler and more practical to use. I also prefer goods without the members’ faces on them; I don’t know why, it just feels weird to use stuff with the members on them. Looking at this particular goods list, I wish I could go!

The times for the Blast in Miyagi concerts have changed to 4:30 for each show. It’s a good change, because I had wondered about getting back to the main stations when the area’s super packed and it’s late and in a kampung sort of place.

And as for FREESTYLE II, it will be in Osaka in… 2016!? I’m both super happy and impatient when I heard the news.

Day 1: Harajuku/Shibuya
On our first day we were going to wander around a few places, but ended up mostly just in the Harajuku and Shibuya area. We started out late, and headed straight to the Johnny’s Shop (I didn’t go on my last trip) for Popcorn shop photos. I also got a couple of Eito pics, but not as many as I would like to. Still ended up spending more than I thought >_<
We walked to Harajuku from Omotesando station, where we saw… Sho-kun! Lots and lots of him XD. Really it was Kelly who saw the posters and had to tell me three times before I focused and saw what she was pointing at ^^;
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More Sho-kun and other pics under the cut 🙂

Long Overdue Trip Post! Day 13: Odaiba

We met up with Kishiko, Ono-chan and Siti for a trip to Odaiba ~ I didn’t get to go  on my last trip, so I decided that I had to fit it in this time, despite the fact that it cost quite a lot and we were running on a tight budget :p It was fun, anyway, because it’s my first time in Odaiba as an Arashian, so the kinds of stuff we did/looked at this time were completely different from all my previous trips.

In the evening Salwa and I went on to meet her friend, another Arashian for a quick dinner and trip to Mandarake. The day after would be our last (technically speaking), which we spent in Ikebukuro and Meiji-jingu with Kishiko and Siti. On our actual last day we spent the whole day at Haneda, so this actually concludes our trip. Until next time, I guess? ^^

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