Japanese Music: KAT-TUN

KAT-TUN ga daisuki.
I love KAT-TUN! :)

KAT-TUN is a Japanese boy band made up of five members - KAmenashi Kazuya, Taguchi Junnosuke, Tanaka Koki, Ueda Tatsuya, and Nakamaru Yuichi. They've released 6 albums and 18 consecutive #1 singles since their debut in 2006, and they'll be releasing their 19th single, Fumetsu no Scrum, tomorrow. Yay! I'm looking forward to it. :)

L-R: Junnosuke Taguchi, Koki Tanaka, Yuichi Nakamaru, Tatsuya Ueda, Kazuya Kamenashi

Once in my life, I would like to watch KAT-TUN live in concert. I'm telling you, they hold awesome concerts. In fact, they were the first ever and only artists to perform for eight consecutive days at Tokyo Dome with their Break the Records Concert Tour in 2009. Imagine this: Tokyo Dome has a seating capacity of 55,000 people, and they filled it with screaming fans for eight consecutive days. (Actually, the concert tour had more than eight shows, but only eight were consecutive.) Now that's what I call breaking the records!

Here's a TV show that featured KAT-TUN's latest concert tour, Chain, held in early 2012. It's in Japanese, but you can still see short video clips of the concert. Ah, I wish I could have been there. :D

Japanese Food: Monjayaki

Most people only think of sushi, sashimi, tempura or ramen when Japanese food is mentioned, but there are a lot of other Japanese foods besides these! Here is one I would very much like to try - it's called Monjayaki. The main ingredient of monjayaki is cabbage mixed with some meat, other vegetables, and a thin batter. It's cooked right at your table and you eat it straight off the hot plate with a small metal spatula. Yum!



Oishisou desu ne? [Looks delicious, doesn't it?] ^_^ This monjayaki looks delicious as well:



Monjayaki is said to have originated in the Tsukushima District of Tokyo, and many monjayaki restaurants can be found there. I'll have to go to Tokyo then. :)

Fresh Inspiration

I have just gotten some fresh inspiration to continue this blog. Thank you, everyone. :)

My dream to go to Japan is still strong in my heart, and I am happy to find people who have the same dream as me. Maybe we'll meet there someday. :)

How to Wear a Japanese Kimono & Tie a Flat Obi

I finally got the chance to wear a Japanese kimono last week! It was so much fun! Thank goodness for YouTube though or else I never would have figured out how to wear it or tie that long flat band around my waist (which I later learned is called an obi). I also learned that the kimono I was able to borrow from a friend was called a yukata, which is a summer kimono made of cotton.

And here it is:

I had tied the bow tightly, but at the end of our program when this picture was taken it had already loosened. Oh well, I'm still proud of it considering it was the first time I learned how to do it. Now I will share to you the videos that helped me. First, let's learn how to put on the yukata kimono:



And now let's learn how to tie a flat obi to complete the attire:



Now that wasn't so hard, was it? :)

I'm Back

Wow, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog. A lot has happened since then. For starters, I've cleared Pimsleur's Japanese I and am now on lesson 10 of Pimsleur's Japanese II, the intermediate course. I can already understand a bit when I watch anime and J-Dorama. Yay! :D

I got infected with the Rock Musical Bleach fever and watched all of the shows including the backstage/DVD specials that haven't been subbed in English yet. I wrote about Rock Musical Bleach here and here. I love the original cast especially Isaka Tatsuya, Moriyama Eiji, Hayashi Shuji, Ohkuchi Kengo, Nagayama Takashi, Tsuchiya Yuichi, and Kitamura Eiki.

I watched a J-Dorama called "Asuko March" yesterday and got a really nice surprise when I saw Isaka Tatsuya in it. He was only out for a brief moment though.

Yesterday, while on our way to watch Transformers 3: The Dark of the Moon at Ayala Center Cebu, I saw a poster for a Japanese Film Festival. I wasn't able to inquire about it, and the poster didn't give out any information about the movies being shown at all, but it seemed like old ones. I snapped a photo:

































Sore dake de. :)