Rebanira Itame
27 November 2006
Yay! The third Morning Musume album - '3rd Love Paradise' - came in the post this morning. I'm listening to it right know as I'm writing out this update. You can't see from the photos but this seller has packaged the whole thing very well to prevent any possibility of damage during transit. I'm fond of people who take the time and care to make sure their items reach their destination safely so kudos to him. For some reason the guy included 3 used Tokyo Metro cards with my item, which you can see in the third photo. They are pretty interesting though, so it's not an unwelcome extra.
The CD condition is pretty good although the case does have a few marks on the surface. Considering it's quite a few years old, however, I'm not too concerned about it. Inside, the booklet and obi are in good condition with very little signs of wear. The CD itself is pretty much in a brand new state with very little in terms of blemishes on the playing surface. Overall, I'm pleased with my purchase.
I previously wrote about how I was eager to listen to this album because of the seemingly wacky tracks on it. Having listened to it a few times through I can safely say I was right about the craziness. /laugh The first and last tracks which are in spoken form are pretty interesting. Each of the girls says a little bit during the track and they finish by saying, 'ohayou'/'oyasumi' (good morning/goodnight). I guess they're trying to get across the feeling that all the songs are like single day condensed into an album. The middle track, aptly named 'Lunchtime', is incredibly weird to say the least. It takes the form of a spoof radio interview with the members of "Morning Mask". The whole 'song' is mainly the host saying various comments for situations and then the girls replying with, 'Rebanira Itame' (normally meaning Liver and Leek stir-fry but in this case nonsensical phrase). Interspersed are little funky sections of the 'Rebanira Itame' phrase accompanied by a rap-like beat. Truly odd stuff, but I love it! /laugh
One other song of note is the tenth track, 'WHY'. This is the one where all the individual syllables of the lyrics are broken up and sung by each member in turn. Listening to this song is a very strange experience. The editing makes each syllable come from seemingly different sides of your headphones. Although the splicing of each syllable into the words isn't quite perfect (I assume it was intentionally done for this effect) the flow of the song works quite well. It's a bit hard to explain in words the uniqueness of this song though.
'3rd Love Paradise' is very old school Morning Musume (at least to me, but at the time it was pretty fresh and new). Their best selling single 'Love Machine' is present, along with 'Koi no Dance Site' - another one of their most popular songs. I can see how this is their best selling album to date. Very good stuff.
Posted byHocchan at 12:07 pm 0 comments
Densha No Futari
24 November 2006
I received my other 'Ikimasshoi' CD in the post on Saturday morning. I won't bother taking any pictures of it since it's pretty much the same as the other copy. It's nice to have an unopened CD though. Everything on this one is just that little bit better condition. I still haven't received the 'Love Paradise' album yet. I'm expecting that to arrive tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to listening to the songs on that CD as they sound very interesting. The first, sixth and last tracks on the album are sort of like spoken poems. There's also a song that mixes each member's singing into individual syllables but still retain the flow of a normal song, ie. one syllable of a word would be from one member, then the next syllable would be from a different member and so on, for all of the lyrics. Can't wait to see how that turns out. Very intriguing.
It's almost been a month since I took a break from Final Fantasy XI and I think it's done me good. I'm starting to feel like I want to play the game again now whereas before I'd have no motivation to play. I hope when I get back my friends will still be around. It'll be nice to catch up on the news.
Posted byHocchan at 5:02 pm 0 comments
Hajime No Rock Concert
23 November 2006
Ah, the joys of the modern world. It's only been 3 days since the seller sent me the CD I won on eBay and it's arrived in the post already. I wasn't expecting it to be delivered until next week as airmail is quoted as taking 7-21 days. This means that the other 2 CDs should arrive tomorrow if all things are equal. Considering the low price of airmail it's not a bad result.
The one I got today was the incorrect copy the seller had sent by accident. It's still in mint condition though. The condition of the outer box is still in good order with only a few relatively minor indentations. The poster which comes with the item is practically new with no sign of it ever being unfolded more than once. The CD case, obi and booklet are also in a similar state. The disc itself has maybe one or two very small scratches on the surface near the outer edge. Doesn't affect the playback in any way though. Overall, you can tell whoever owned the CD originally had obviously taken good care of it which is lucky for me. I do have to remind myself that this isn't the item I paid for though, and that the even newer version is still on it's way.
Posted byHocchan at 4:03 pm 0 comments
Senkou Hanabi
This is just a short update I wanted to write before I forgot. I just e-mailed my teacher at my old school regarding my university application. After my unsuccessful attempt to get onto a course this summer I've decided to apply early for the 2007 semester. Hopefully I'll get the help I need to be accepted onto my preferred course. The drive to visit Japan is growing stronger every passing day and I'm determined to fulfil this ambition. This is one step towards my dream.
Last little thing I wanted to write about was the great exchange rates the Pound is getting lately. According to the latest conversion at XE.com the Pound to Dollar rate is £1.00 = $1.91. The Pound is also strong against the Yen with the rate at £1.00 = 223.28 Yen. Good time to import stuff! /joy Makes us Brits a powerhouse when bidding on eBay too. /laugh
Posted byHocchan at 2:30 am 0 comments
Desire Jounetsu
22 November 2006
Well, had my first signing-on for my Job Seekers Allowance. I was kind of surprised at how short the whole thing was. I arrived 10 minutes before the arranged time as agreed to check the computer terminals for available jobs. After that I went up to the first floor and handed my booklet in. The guy sat me down, asked me how my job search was going and asked me to sign a piece of paper. Once this was done I was free to go. It took all of 5 minutes if I'm being generous with my estimate. I expect my next meeting to be a little longer, maybe.
Had a little bit of good fortune a couple of days ago, which was nice. Found a limited edition copy of Morning Musume's 4th album 'Ikimasshoi' on eBay for a low price. Great thing is that the CD itself hasn't been opened so it's practically in new condition. I bided my time until 5 minutes before the end of the auction before making a bid. Unfortunately some guy from France had the same idea and we ended up in a bidding war. He started off with a low bid of $5.99 which I beat by doubling. He made a couple more bids, all of which were under mine, until he eventually went higher by $3. At this point there was only 1 minute left on the clock so I kept my final bid for the last few seconds. At 15 seconds to go I went with my bid of $20 and won the auction. That guy must have been so pissed off! /laugh This wasn't my good fortune though. This came a little later when the seller e-mailed me to inform me that he'd sent the item. I got a second e-mail later on in which he told me that he'd sent the wrong, opened copy instead of the unopened copy shown in the auction. He told me I would be receiving two CDs and that I didn't need to return the he'd sent by mistake. Two CDs for the price of one, superb. I did also win an auction for Morning Musume's 3rd album for £1. Hope my lucky streak continues!
Posted byHocchan at 8:11 pm 0 comments
Tomato Ketchup 100% OK
17 November 2006
Hurrah! Children in Need is back. I have a soft spot for this annual charity event which raises millions of pounds for children in the UK. They always have loads of one-off specials of current TV programmes which is a great laugh. There's also some half decent music sometimes (I say 'sometimes' as the opening act this year's was 'McFly' which drags it down a bit). As ever it's presented by the legend that is Terry Wogan ("ha ha ha"), along with Fearne Cotton and Natasha Kaplinsky as co-hosts. I have no doubt they'll break last year's total at the end of the night. Long live Pudsey!
I finally gave in and applied for Job Seekers Allowance. I had my interview today and we discussed what help I would get in seeking a job, along with going over the agreement which I had to sign. My first signing-on is next Tuesday which I'm quite nervous about but it should go smoothly. Hopefully I'll get some money soon which will allow me to pay off some of my credit card debt. Even better would be that I'm able to get a full time job in the process.
Looks like November's a month for new version releases. I've now got a new version of Blogger to work with. I'm not sure what to make of it quite yet as I've only just changed over from the old one. It's pretty much the same to be honest, save a few short cuts added here and there. One thing it did reveal though is that I've had a whole stack of unmoderated comments from the past year! /laugh I had no idea they had been posted. I could have sworn I'd set it so it e-mailed me whenever someone posted a comment but I guess not. For everyone who's commented on one of my posts and not had it published I'd like to offer my sincere apologies. Please forgive me! I'll promise to check it more often now so something like this never happens again.
Posted byHocchan at 9:11 pm 0 comments
Itakunai Mon!
11 November 2006
"What?", I hear you cry, "Where's the picture?! /shock /awe /weaponsofmassdestruction /idiotpresident". Well, I decided to go without one just for this entry to mix it up a little. Plus it's nice to take a break from all the HTML needed to display those images. /laugh It's also going to be a pretty short update as I'm super tired at the moment.
Got 'Advent Children' and 'Memoirs of a Geisha' on DVD last week. Best thing was they were free! Well, effectively free anyway. I received a survey about credit cards in my e-mail a few weeks ago. Normally I'd delete these straight away but on this one they were offering some vouchers to Amazon for my time so I filled the form in. For about 20 minutes of typing they sent me £5 and £10 vouchers to spend at Amazon. Got those two DVDs because I'd been meaning to buy them for awhile.
Watching 'Advent Children' again was good fun. Even though I've seen it loads of times already I still love the action sequences in it. 'Memoirs of a Geisha' was probably as good as I expected it to be. Having read the book before watching the film I felt that there was a lot of crucial elements missing from the script. Despite this I can understand that it would be truly difficult to show everything from a novel in just 2 hours of film. I felt that what they did include of the story was good enough to give a rough idea of the book. The acting was very good throughout. In particular the performance of Sayuri by Zhang Ziyi and Mameha by Michelle Yeoh. I did find it odd however that the 3 main characters of the cast of a film set in Japan were actually Chinese. Not sure why the casting director decided this but it worked out well enough.
Posted byHocchan at 11:53 pm 0 comments
Suki Sugite Baka Mitai
03 November 2006
A new month and another new theme. It was only a couple of updates ago when I changed my banner but I've made a new one already. Not only that but I overhauled the layout completely and used a different template. I think that this version of the site is the best out of all the previous editions. It's very bright and stylish, just how I like it.
You may ask why I decided to change it after such a short time? Well, you can blame Mozilla in a funny sort of way. I happened to read that they'd released Firefox 2.0 a few days ago and I decided to download it. It's got some very nice improvements to the tabbed browsing and there's a new spell check plug-in that I find very useful. Even better is that it's a BRITISH dictionary. None of your namby-pamby "Aluminum" here, thank you very much (as a matter of fact it highlighted "Aluminum" as incorrect when I typed it)! After installation I chose a nice, sleek theme since my old one wasn't compatible with 2.0 yet. Anyway, after getting 2.0 I wondered if Microsoft had released a new Media Player yet. Upon checking I found out that indeed they had, so I downloaded that too. Windows Media Player 11 is very slick indeed. It features a sexy, shiny black interface that looks like something off an Apple Mac. They improved the layout of the buttons and rearranged the library section. Very nice.
Horie Yui's official website got a make-over too at the start of November. It's looking totally fantastic and stunning now. Perfectly fitting for a beauty such as her. They added a section where you can write her a message which I tried out. I'm not sure if it works yet, I didn't get a confirmation message when I pressed 'send'. Guess I'll try again later to make sure. Also on the list of new updates was AVG 7.5, a free anti-virus software that I use. They also improved the interface to make it look cleaner and more modern. So you see, with all this improvement and updating going on I suddenly had the desire to change my blog's look again. It should be fixed now for a good few months so I can get used to how it feels. At least until I get another urge to redecorate! /laugh
Posted byHocchan at 11:01 pm 0 comments
