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@missing – That’s a pretty good article. Like the author, I became fed up with the snobbish attitude so many people adopt when it comes to the preferences of others (especially in regards to music).
When it becomes cool to dislike what is popular, the hipsters become the trendy and everything gets flipped upside down. Now it’s the hipsters that, hipsters though they are, listen to pop because it’s not popular among their fellow hipsters. They are therefore cool^2. This process continues on until nobody knows what they actually like and what they are pressured to like (or dislike) in the pursuit of (or flight from) the approval of their peers.
Why can’t people just honestly asses for themselves their own preferences and indulge them in peace?Alright I guess I’ll do it. Unlike like Dae however, it won’t probably be just as well written.
It all started on November 2009, during the beginning semester of my junior year in high school. At that time, I was slowing getting lax in my work, and at that time started watching lots of anime to pass the time. Those anime consisted of largely of mainstream stuff like Code Geass, Naruto (though I still do watch it), Lucky Star , TMOSH, Ouran High School Host Club etc. By the way, this does not mean I was obsessed with anime – just like how many people like to leisurely watch anime, or dramas, it was a pretty awesome way to pass time. One fateful night (yes I choose to use such words because it seems like fate to me), I opened up Youtube and typed in the search bar “seifuku”, because if y’all have ever watched Lucky Star, you know the opening theme for that anime.. I expected to see search results about Lucky Star, but there it was, the video that was first on the search results, and the video that lured my curiosity that morphed into the missingno15 you all know today.
This is that same video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_1ObyG2-1YMy curiosity got the best of me so I decided to have a watch. The song is subbed so I clearly can tell what this song is about. Rather than freaking out like the average person, I thought it was pretty interesting given the topic it was about or seemed to portray, not to mention the song was really good. I mean REALLY good. The more I listened to it, the more I started to love it – it was nothing like anything that I’ve listened to before. I mean, it was Japanese music, but it wasn’t clearly anime music and it definitely was not Western music. The fact that there was so many girls in one group didn’t faze me either. It got me more excited knowing just how much novelty there was in the idea of it. Just about everything a “normal” person would do, I did the opposite lol.
Then here comes the part that most people expect to come first. After the nth time watching and listening to the video, there was a girl that caught my eye. It was the girl who was shown for a second at 2:38. She was mad cute and I JUST HAD TO KNOW WHO SHE WAS. Looking back at it now, I can probably name just about every single member in that video and I know who she is now, but at the time, there was just too many to properly fit a name to a face. It also didn’t help that they got seconds of screen time. I knew that if I just watched more of their songs and videos, helpful Youtube comments would help point me the direction to who was who. Through this process, I became more exposed to their videos and songs, liking pretty much every song that came my way.
(Btw, if you want to know what those songs were, they were 会いたかった、軽蔑していた愛情, スカートひらり、Baby!Baby!Baby!, 夕日を見ているか, 大声ダイヤモンド, 涙サプライズ！, １０年桜, 言い訳Maybe, RIVER….you get the idea, basically every single until November 2009 when I discovered them).
It’s probably also important to note that this all happened in one night and over the course of a few days so naturally, I didn’t know who anyone was so the main thing that really pulled me was their songs. It really pisses me off sometimes when people assume that the reason why I got into AKB is because I’m just some male teenager with hormones on MAX. Reasonable assumption though, I’m not gonna lie, some are cute, some are sexy, but not what pulled me into this fandom. Hell, my Japanese 先生 used me as an example on her powerpoint slide to review the grammar point 「んじゃないかと思う」 assuming the same thing. → ケンさんはＡＫＢのコンサートに行ったので、女の子が好きなんじゃないかと思います Here we can obviously see it was in jest, but I’ve met some people who just couldn’t fathom the fact that it was music first, then girls.
After what seemed like an exhaustive comparison between videos, I finally discovered who the girl was. Her name was Itano Tomomi.
“Wait a minute, that doesn’t seem like the girl at 2:38″
Thats because she isn’t lol. The camera work was so fast and the members had seconds of screen time so in the process, yes, I confused Minegishi Minami for Itano Tomomi and this is why she is my oshimen. Sorry Miichan lol. This discovery led me to wanting to know more about her so I did google searches on her which led me to one of the AKB48 forums – Stage48. There I found a 62 page thread discussing her, and I was determined to find out who she was. So naturally, I did what anyone with no life would do: read around 60+ pages of a thread in 1 night lol. As of now, 4/18/2012, her thread has over 200+ so if you have no life and are willing to read through all of that, then by all means, go ahead lol.
After finding out who she was, I lurked around that forum for a month until my registration on 07 Jan 2010, 23:08, according to Stage48 (my username is honeysenpai btw, only on idol forums though). I read more into who these people are for that entire duration and one thing that caught my eye was people experiences meeting them. They known as “Idols you can meet”, and there were a couple of Stage48 members who shared their experiences seeing them in the AKB48 Theater in Don Quixote building at Akihabara. I read stories about having 2-shots with your favorite member (2shot just means having a picture with another person in which in the picture are 2 people. This isn’t only used in AKB, this is actually a Japanese term), paying money to have time to talk to your favorite member etc. I loved the idea of it, it made me want to go see them so much because I thought of Western celebrities and understood how you will never interact with them in the way that AKB allows fans with its members. These guys obviously were 外人、so they warned how it was a good idea to know some Japanese when you want to talk with them because as I remember it, “it would become an awkward smiling and staring contest”.
As you can imagine what you just read, wanting to go to meet these idols, it would probably be a good idea to know some Japanese. It was an idea at the time, but what solidified my resolve to do it seriously was this video right here. I realized that they were never going to learn English, so instead of waiting for them to magically learn English, I would learn Japanese instead.
Thank you Kobayashi Kana for being so horrible at English. If it wasn’t for you, I would have never began learning Japanese.
It was around this time too, when I found Koichi/Tofugu. Koichi seemed like a really chill guy and he was offering his newly created, Textfugu which he promised to make Japanese much much easier while providing constant updates being that it was an electronic textbook. I know why MisterM is always so angry all the time, it was because he wrote this on his manifesto and its what he proclaimed which probably what brought in many people. I was one of them and one of the first ones too lol. Its all g though, I learned to move on from Textfugu. Because I understood from the beginning that I have no idea when AKB will break up so for me, becoming fluent in Japanese is something that I just
wantneeded to happen NOW and Koichi seemed to promise me these things so I bought Textfugu membership at around February 2010. Thus beginning my journey and never-ending quest to become fluent in Japanese.What do I think of all this now? Well, that most of this nonsense started with AKB and I enjoy every minute of it. It also isn’t far to say that my life completely changed because of AKB. AKBは一生の恩人だ。Through AKB, I discovered my passion, what I really want to do in with my life、just like how Danny Choo discovered his passion when he saw Japanese video games and anime. It’s also pretty funny to me that my relationship with AKB has grown to this point, it’s a hell of a lot deeper than what people think at a superficial level, it’s been an awesome rollercoaster ride so far with so many new experiences and ways of thought. It’s what really exposed me to Japanese culture as opposed to anime which is the popular media item which gets people interested in Japan. My goal of meeting them one day hasn’t changed, though meeting any member now is near impossible now because they are the nation’s most popular idol group (at the time of this post). Now, not only do I want to meet them in person, I want to tell these members with my newly acquired ability that I toiled so hard for everyday, a thank you of a lifetime.
Thus concludes how I met AKB. Hopefully, you enjoyed reading this and wasn’t a waste of time for you. I have an irregular sleeping pattern now so the time I finished typing this all up is at around 5:30am lol.
Proper way to end this….IS WITH MORE AKB STUFFS BALHHHHHHHH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV2po8XZWJs
yes, I confused Minegishi Minami for Itano Tomomi
Made me laugh pretty hard :b
While this wasn’t as well written as the newschoolkaidan article thing, I still think it was pretty good, and definitely worth the time. Thanks for taking your time to write such a long thing, it must have taken ages!
Also thanks for reminding me of the lucky star intro :P
My way of discovering Japanese was at first through anime as well, but then I moved on to searching info on Japanese culture, with tons of wikipedia articles read about all kinds of aspects of the culture, and then on to reading a lot of articles from Danny Choo. I don’t know why, but I just got totally stuck in, and spend a few days just reading, and watching things about Japan… I remember what was most intriguing was the work culture, because I didn’t understand it at all, and because it was so different. So yeah, I am more in it because of the Japanese culture, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if I had got interest through AKB like you did^^
While not the hardcore idol fan myself, I can understand how irritating it can be that everyone gets the impression that you are in it only because of the girls. But I guess you will have to keep putting up with that↓In the west it’s actually hard to imagine a dude who makes a hobby of watching cute girls without the, “Bro, I would totally bang that chick” mentality.
↑This quote is just perfect to describe why it is happening.
Also I do feel that I have to add that, you will most likely have to watch a lot of AKB stuff, to even get an idea why and how this fandom can even occur. I however feel that Missing’s previous link does explain it as best as it can, when just being text.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 7 months ago by
Just FYI missing you (and Dae) may or may not have inspired me to write a post about idols on Tofugu this week, so please point out the inevitable mistakes when it’s published.
No problem Hashi, I prenotified the guys at NSK, and I’ll remind them again when it comes out.
I have a project due tomorrow but I haven’t started it at all. Instead, I’m reading Danny Choo’s How Discovering Japan Changed My Life article in japanese, and I’m getting a complete high off of it lols. I just love reading it. Also, I’m in the process of translating the entire post of mine into Japanese because I’d like to let Japanese people know too how this all happened.
Just did Season 2 chapter 8. Going to do Season 2 chapter 9 aka “Counting and Numbers”.
Wow, thanks for sharing such a massive story with us! It must have taken a long time! You have quite a knowledge of AKB!
“I know why MisterM is always so angry all the time”
Hehe ;) It’s really just a mix of mild annoyance and a love of complaining and arguing :PMisterM is angry? I wish more people’s expression of anger was helpfulness….I’d be spitting in every coffee withing range.
I’m spending most my time on iKnow and reading this book now, it’s pretty great: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/All-about-Particles-Naiko-Chino/9784770027818
I’m torn between this and the Japanese Sentence Patterns book missingno loves, I have it but I’m trying to get through this book on particles first, it’s not too long, around 160 pages.
I am currently working on JLPT lvl 3/2 grammar and vocab. also, building a vocab list from some manga to build kanji and vocab.
Yo when’s the next JLPT in Japan?
July 1st, (sadly Canada day, but I can celebrate after writing the test =D)
Any Nintendo fans? Reading through an interview with Koji Kondo, composer for such series as Mario and Zelda :D Can be found here, if any of you want to see it too: http://www.zeldapower.com/index.php/zelda-sheet-music/682-the-legend-of-zelda-series-super-best-for-guitar.html
It’s 6 pages long (the second row of thumbnails). I bought the English version of the book since the Japanese one was kinda expensive – and I had an Amazon gift card, which also bought me JSPFEC – and there just wasn’t enough 日本語 in it to warrant buying. Unfortunately, the English edition doesn’t have the interview or even the accompanying CD, but the songs in it are still fantastic :D Can’t wait to get back to my guitar and get learning them haha. Solo arrangements of various Zelda tunes for classical guitar.
I find I’m getting the gist of a lot of it, even if I can’t figure out exactly what he’s saying. Not using a dictionary (vocab or grammar), just reading through seeing how much I can get :) Still some bits that I’ve got no clue about. Reading is such an awesome way to practise vocab other than Anki :D
And if any of you wish to hear the quite exquisitely done pieces: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLED86AD896A3CF401&feature=plcp ;)
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This reply was modified 12 years, 6 months ago by
MisterM2402 [Michael].
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This reply was modified 12 years, 7 months ago by
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