There's no denying 2007 and 2008 have been strange years for Hello! Project. A handful of their most recognizable artists have proverbially jump the "old" wall, and three of them (four if you still count Ayaka) chose to be honest about the romantic happenings of their real life and mostly likely lost of a lot of brownie badges they earned during their careers.

Fujimoto Miki's case, though, is tenfold more interesting than any other thing that happened last year. She was not under the pressure of an unexpected pregnancy (we're not gonna lie and say Tsuji and Iida carefully planned theirs, are we?), and as the squeaky brand new leader of Morning Musume, she was even given the green light by her company to lie about her date with Shouji Tomoharu. It's not like there was a communications breakdown, or like Miki considered lying would be heavy on her conscience--Miki outright said, "yes, it was me. I will take responsibility and talk to my superiors about this". Did she see the possible way out of Morning Musume, a group in which she alone did not fit?

Now, if there's something that has been killing me over the past two years, it has been that H!P has seen its cashcow in the HPKids, a branch of the company which I believe has nothing of the charm and talent of their predecessors, and sells for all the wrong reasons. As a result, they've relegated the adults to two (if not less) releases a year, and to the cheaper events (such as the smaller-venue casual dinner shows), considering them only fanclub fodder.

This is where Miki comes in. Considering her "blunder", UFA could've grounded her for life for going over their heads. However, the fact that she remains one of the biggest adult fan favorites (in a way or another, everyone remembers Mikitty--who the hell recognizes Koharu if not her own fans?), and that Miki was just about the last vocal talent UFA hired, seem to have played a favorable part in her comeback as an adult singer and actress. I'd also say the effort she's putting into selling to a broader audience is admirable and will prove fruitful in the long run.

However, what I want to go into right now is her stage actress career. Miki has a respectable record in this sense. She has played the cute role of Atsuki-hime at the (tender?) age of 18 in Edokko Chuushingura. Atsuki-hime is a spoilt princess who has never seen the outside of her father's castle and therefore unwillingly brings on a literal mess when she escapes to see the outside world. It is a role that does not require as much effort as Heckett, which was her next role in the 2006 musical Ribbon no Kishi.

In the musical, Heckett got the short end of the stick when God handed out souls to his children. Out of not wishing to become a man, she ended up becoming an immortal witch, whose eternal lifespan meant she'd see every man she loved die in her arms. Heckett envies Princess Sapphire, who was born with a soul of each gender, and she plots and uses Sapphire's enemies so as to obtain her female soul (leaving Sapphire with her much hated male soul).

However, Heckett is truly not a bad person, and her quest for a soul has a happy ending when she surrenders after learning of Sapphire's capacity to love. This is truly a much more difficult role than Atsuki-hime, even more so when you consider that Heckett has half the stage time Atsuki-hime does: Heckett has to show she's been truly damaged by centuries of solitude, but still has a heart beating within herself.

It also was a golden oportunity for Miki to display her vocal oportunities, as Heckett leads in three songs (one with the Prime Minister, one alone, one with the whole ensemble as a chorus behind her lines), something that Atsuki-hime does not do (save for a short verse at the beggining of her adventures). However, Ribbon no Kishi's script was not exactly rocket science nor did it appeal to an adult audience, so Miki did not get the props deserved for her role here. Fast forward two years or so...

Miki did not get an oportunity to be on stage again until the very recent production HAKANA. This production was somewhat small (it only lasted one week) but nonetheless it was carried out elegantly and was a moderate success. Unlike Ribbon no Kishi and Edokko Chuushingura, Miki carried the weight of the main role in her shoulders, and was correspondingly nervous about how it would turn out. To make matters worse, HAKANA's script has a major sexual undertone in its fantasy depiction of Japan all those years ago, a world of sensations and emotions that Miki could have not ever attempted to express, nevermind act out, as a member of an idol group.

Hakana (Miki) is the product of a bet between a human, Suzujiro, and a demon, Onishige. Made by Onishige from the corpses of women and infused with the soul of an innocent child, Hakana is not to have carnal relations in 100 days post to her birth, lest she fades into water and dissapears from this world. She is entrusted to Suzujiro to raise, but Suzujiro is a thief and a gambling man with the conscience of a brick, who knows nothing better than to look after himself. The only reason why he lives well is because he has Lady Luck at his side (literally). To boot, Hakana might have the mind and soul of a 3 year old, but her body is that of a beautiful young woman, and Suzujiro has a hard time trying to keep himself off her. However, Hakana's mind eventually grows and matures, and she loves Suzujiro enough to want to become a real woman. Along the way, Suzujiro loses her in a bet, and she ends up becoming a courtesan, furthermore endangering the safe ending of those 100 days.

This play deserves much more explanation than the brief paragraph above (and if requested, I will do a write-up on what Hakana is about), but nonetheless it is an excellent script. However, how to cope? Miki, an ex-idol, was to face the new challenge of tastefully acting out a role that, to be honest, was much more mature (and sometimes quite blatantly sexual) than she was allowed to ever act in Morning Musume. Which she did, and earned her a few good critiques.

Is she heading down the good actress' road? I'm interested in following her career as an actress, even more so because it was recently revealed that Miki is to play Rizzo in the Japanese rendition of Grease, next October. Rizzo, ladies and gentlemen: Sandy's antithesis, and the very real portrayal of the American young adult female in the 1960's. Wait, did we say AMERICAN?

This, I think, will be an interesting thing to see. Miki was born in Japan in 1985, a year that is to the American 1959 what an electric car must be to the Esso. In addition, the original Grease was a pretty severe critic to the polite society of the 50's: try as I might, I cannot think of a similar thought revolution to have happened in Japan, so Miki is without a paddle in looking for references in Rizzo's behaviour.

I'm curious about how Miki will act out Rizzo (and admitting to total dorkness, I have to say I'm dying to hear her sing "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee" in Japanese XD). In this case, putting her badass face on is not enough because being a badass is not all that there is to Rizzo. So while these three long months go by and she's putting together a portrayal of Rizzo, I'll just cheer her on to do a good job: in the past she has shown me before she can add a nice, palpable depth to her characters.

It's 2 am and I just got done watching the last episode of Last Friends. Kappa's rating: ☆ｘ１００

Eff you, Pikocci, that was beautiful. XD Next time you feel like teasing me at midnight about a show I haven't finished watching, feel at freedom to poke me to death until I do. XDD Except I doubt we're getting a drama as well written as this one for a while. Btw, two hours later I still think 14sai's ending was peanuts. :p

タケルのような彼氏はどこで探すかな・・・？

Scooter: ○
Helmet: ×
U-lock: ×
Insurance (!): ×

Pics are in order, aren't they? And they will be taken... tomorrow. :3 For now, you'll have to take my word for it: it rocks. The aforementioned items are quite important to ensure that I perform well on the road--the helmet is ALWAYS a must (never drive without a helmet, kiddies), the u-lock will clear up some insecurities I have regarding parking the bike in this city, and insurance, I'm told by my mother and her friends, is something I cannot drive a motorized vehicle without. Thankfully, it seems like for such a small vehicle it might not cost me much... so I'm investigating a bit on that.

On an absolute whim, I went out and bought (along with the newspaper that'll allow my continuing job search as soon as I wake up tomorrow) a gallon of paint. Four hours and a major shoulder ache after, my walls are now a beautiful blue color and by virtue of manual work induced hyperactivity, my room's all clean and ordered. :B I even found enough time to make a chart of cyrillic characters (not unlike how I started learning japanese, now that I think about it).

The thing that makes me proudest is that I've never actually painted my walls myself. I've always liked that "do-it-yourself" trend (mostly because somehow I always end up doing repair things at home), and it's gotten me to build or make many things people often rely on other people to do. It's very satisfying to sit back and realize what you have done for yourself.

Yesterday I sat through a Nochnoy/Dnevnoy Dozor movie stravaganza. I'd already seen Nochnoy Dozor, but it was 3 years ago when I did and I thought the sequel project had been abandoned (apparently it all but hasn't--it seems they're even working on a third one o_O), so I watched it again before moving on to the sequel. I found that it's one of those movies you enjoy even when it has been years since you last saw it.

Dnevnoy Dozor was way weirder and harder to follow than Nochnoy, and even fell a bit into excess flare and effects, but at the same time I'm pretty satisfied with it. XD Also, in this movie I absolutely fell in love with the character of Alisa, whose presence I hadn't really noticed in the first movie...

I recently got these four cuties. The ones on the left are strawberries and fennel (which I suspect might soon get replaced by a blueberry shrub), the ones on the right are oregano and basil.

Why? Well, I've always liked plants, and I was able to help cultivate my grandfather's orchard back home a few times when I was a kid. I love doing that, but we live in an apartment, so the number of plants we can have is limited... therefore, I never took the step forward to get a few of these. However, since I've started cooking seriously and for other people, I like the idea of having a lot of fresh ingredients to work with, which will add a fresh-and-natural quality to my recipes. :D

I really like them, so much that I even designed a small tiled roof to cover them from the rain but still get sunshine, hehe. This is only for the time being, though, I need to find them a more permanent way of protection and storage. I'm already planning on a few more before May's over (namely the blueberry shrub mentioned before, plus a whole pot of cherry tomatoes :9).

Today we went out for arabian food. The lights had gone out there so we ended up going to a pizza joint not far from home, and eating deliciously. XD We decided the kitties should get the same benefit (and besides, we were running out of cat food anyway), so we decided to hit the Wal Mart. It turns out that they're selling these cute looking "recycle" bags; resistant, strong organic fabric shoulder bags that you can fit a ton of things into, with the logo "Paper or Plastic? Neither", sold for little over a dollar.

They're apparently also pushing to have people bring their own bags to the market to reduce the number of plastic bags used. It made me happy that they've started doing this, because of all the corporate monsters, the one I least expected to go eco was Wal Mart. I'll start hunting for more bags to bring to the market!

We've also thought of dividing our trash, but there's no point to doing it because if you leave it to the government's trash trucks, they mix it all up in the trucks, and the very few recycling centers are all in extremely far away parts of the city. It sounds irresponsible of us, but really, this city makes it difficult for one to be environment-minded... in relation to this, a few years ago, a high profile murder took place in this city: that of the King of Trash. The guy was nothing short of a mafia boss, as he had built his entire fortune off the trash business (they say he even had a son in Harvard...). In any case, it's due to the "business" of trash that recycling hasn't really got any effect here: if there's no gain, nobody cares. Sad, isn't it?

Recently, while studying towards the end of semester, I've become aware that I need exercise to keep a certain mental balance, or else I will go nuts. So in addition to getting a gym membership, I've also been looking into the sports clubs at the uni. I've shortened my choice to tae kwon do and judo, both of which have their up and downsides. The upside to tae kwon do is I've done it before, for almost 9 years, and I have the gear required to practice it. A small down side is, it's very high impact, and my knees might not like it at all, but the major downside is that they charge a mensual fee for teaching you, which I cannot afford right now. The upside to judo is I like it from just looking at it, and it's a branch of combat sports I've never done before. It also requires no expensive gear, and they charge nothing.The downside is, I have no practice in it.

Meh.

Recently we rescued a kitty from the street. Mom fell in love at first sight with it and we really had to deploy this incredible plan to rescue her and take her to the vet. However, since our vet told us that they only keep lost animals for two weeks, then fix them and let them out on the street, my mom was horrified and decided to give her shelter at home. Since it's been three weeks and we couldn't find anybody who'd want to adopt her, she's pretty much the third cat in this house, which made for some fearsome hissing contests. We asked our vet what should we do, and she told us: "Keep the others pampered, and have the kitten earn her place in the clan," and earn her place she did: she now pretty much chases the cats when they annoy her and goes occupy their places, like their daybeds, their place zones---everywhere. I don't know what to do anymore. T_T

New avatar feat. my cats. :D

On monday this week, I saw a kitty running like a demon between moving cars at the avenue right in front of my university. I panicked that he'd be ran over, so I ran after him and cornered him under a parked car. Regrettably, I lost him when he ran in the opposite direction, and left pretty depressed for class because this cat couldn't have been older than a month, yet he had to fend for himself.

The week went by and on friday, I was getting ready to cross this very same avenue when I heard cat whining sounds, impossibly loudly. At the same time it was impossible to see where they were coming from, and I started looking everywhere, under the cars, inside the lighting poles. Three other students came by and said, "we saw him when we were going to class, but when we tried to catch him he ran into the sewers". Between two of us we took the sewer coverage out and effectively, there the kitty was. He was whining pretty badly at this point, and we refused to leave until we figured how to get him out. He seemed famished, so one of the students ran to one of the stands nearby and bought him a taco. We tossed it into the sewer ground and he crawled out to get it, so I got head-first into the sewer, covered the tube he had come out of with a book, and took him out.

Next I knew, one of the girls had wrapped him in her scarf and put him into her sweater. I originally was gonna tell her I could take him to my vet, but after she told me she'd take him to her vet, and put a kitty she'd never seen and that was tired, dirty and hungry into her sweater, I couldn't help but trust her.

It was a good experience, to know that at least once in a while what you'd thought would be a tragic story ends up having a happy end.

I'm currently in the middle of a European Culture paper involving Constantine the Great. I'm at a complete loss as to how to order everything I've compiled about him, to be honest, and the paper requirements ask for sources taken from at least three books, since the professor really disaproves of looking information up in the internet. @_@ I've been lucky to find ONE book that has consistent information on Constantine... I'm not sure how to proceed now.

Laugh Out Loud Cats © Hobotopia

This week marks my fourth (hence, my first month) as an university level student. I was scared beyond reasonable bounds the first week, the reason mainly being that I hadn't step foot in a school in five years. However, it's been a really nice change in my everyday life: the routine is never the same everyday. I have to work a bit harder than usual to keep up to the other students, as a good deal of them are transfers from other majors, another bunch are, surprisingly, on their second career, and 80% of them are bigger bookworms than I ever thought I was.

The biggest change is in the amount of stuff I have to read. My personal book collection has grown by about 14 books in the past four weeks, a good deal of these stuff that I have less than two weeks to read completely. D: Speed reading might come in handy, thinks I.

For some reason, my left leg hurts a lot. I say "for some reason" because I've done nothing in the past days that'd imply hurting it, except perhaps walking in the rain (not like I have an option, hurricane season always drenches the city). This is a drawback, I was considering on trying out for the university's soccer team. ;_; I guess I'll have to take it easy for now, but I hope it won't pose such a problem that I won't be able to try out later on.

One thing several people've commented is that I seem just about this close to going back to FFXI, like dobledorje commenting on me bearing an FFXI avatar and listening to the OST while posting last time. XD That is partially true; I will be going back sometime this year. However, I'll most likely go back past mid-november or the beggining or december, since that is when it seems that the workload for this semester will become lighter.

I'd appreciate it a lot if those who stuck around tell me a little about what's up with them. In many cases it's been 2 years since I last talked to everybody, so I'm sure I've missed a lot of fun things and important events in this span of time. I've updated my AIM adress, which is what I mostly use nowadays, so if you wanna drop a word in I'll be happy to chat a bit.

I would like to post something a bit longer, but actually, I kind of waited until it was too late and now I have to run off. D: I suppose that if I'm not too exhausted, I'll drop back in and write something with a little more depth tonight after class. XD

but alas, here I am, 2 years later.

The short update in my life is that I've lost weight (A LOT), I've graduated high school and been accepted into University, and I'm studying for a BA in English Literature and Language. I've also got two adorable 8 month old cats, and uh. What else. Um. Started learning Japanese? :D Yeah, I suppose that'll do.

In any case I intend to start posting often in here. I've erased a good deal of lost contacts, but if you deem me worthy of your friendslist, let me know and I'll add you (or re-add you, case depending).