discovering a great "new" artist, Hitoto Yo

My friend sent me rips of Hitoto Yo's second album, Hito omoi, the other day. I had never heard of her, but...I've become addicted to this album. *_* She reminds me of a mix of singers, ranging from Utada Hikaru, Yaida Hitomi, Kiroro, and Shina Ringo to name a few (yes, I'm sure these artists don't ring a bell for most people, but she does remind me of them). In any case, she is another one of those mulit-lingual artists that seem to be cropping up lately. According to a biography I found, she has a Taiwanese father and a Japanese mother, and can speak three languages. She actually sings lines in Chinese in a couple of songs on the album, but most of it is in Japanese.

In any case, I want to introduce this wonderful "new" artist (new for me, that is) with two songs. First, the song that obsessed me last night, Hanamizuki (Dogwood). It is an absolutely lovely song, and I like the lyrics.

According to an interview in Japanese, she had written the song after hearing about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. After considering it deeply, she decided to write about the peace that surrounded her, such as the Dogwood (hanamizuki) Plaza at the Futagotama River where she had wasted time with her friends after school. The dogwood had been given to Japan after the mayor of Tokyo, Ozaki Yukio, had given cherry blossom trees to America. Cherry blossom trees decorated the Potomac River in Washington, and the dogwood bloomed in the gardens of Japan, as well as at the Imperial Palace. And so she thought that it was beautiful to see how the thoughts and feelings of each side bore fruit in a visible manner as blossoms over time. She wrote Hanamizuki with the wish that the person she cared for and their beloved could be together for at least a hundred years.

Hanamizuki
[(incomplete) romaji lyrics and (complete) translation]

As for Kyou wazurai...I just plain like this song. It grew on me the more I heard it, and now I love it. ^_^

Kyou wazurai
[romaji lyrics and translation]

At first I couldn't find lyrics online, so I checked yahoo japan music for the Japanese lyrics...I hate that site because they have the lyrics as flash pages and I can't copy and paste, so I had to type them all out. Even after I managed to find romaji lyrics and decent translations (though I don't really like the translation for Kyou wazurai...), I as always checked the accuracy of the romanization and discovered several serious omissions in Hanamizuki. So I include in post my laboriously (well, not really...) typed up Japanese lyrics of both songs and my romanization of one.

( ハナミズキ )

( Hanamizuki )

( 今日わずらい )

attempt #1 at the okiayu pile...

Am finally checking out the songs I've downloaded from seiyuu...some of the latest posts are PoT songs, which I thankfully have. ^_^ I'm just going to free write my reactions as I listen to them because otherwise I won't be motivated to listen to them all...

If you like a Johnny's light pop group of guys singing type of thing, Haato wa Koukiatsu from EMU is right up your alley. The El Hazard song was...bad...go here for those.

In another post, half of the offerings weren't very memorable. I rather liked Kodou from DN Angel. Unfortunately, Okiayu really sings too lightly in comparison to the gothic, heavy background instrumentals. Stardust is a lovely ballad...I wish Okiayu put more feeling into his singing of it, though. He has more feeling in the pretty Taiyou ga Ippai. Rain needs special mention for the very eighties feel of the song. My god. Not a bad song, just dated. ^_^; Sweet Pain is a better song that is also a bit dated. I'm not sure I can get over the dated-ness of it, for all that it is a nice slow song. Sore de ii yo is a pretty ballad, but once again, I am not quite happy with the way Okiayu sings (especially the chorus). Lovely melody, though. Hm, I think my favorite song from this batch is Melody-Go-Round...it is a nice slow yet rock song...either that or Taiyou ga Ippai....Yeah, I like the ballads. :D

...Okay, I'm tired of listening to each and every one of these. *sigh* I'll have to continue at another time. I have to say that, overall, EMU has very nice songs, but they don't sparkle for me...I guess I'm spoiled by the recent Tezuka album. ^_^

Speaking of PoT, the download for 142 finished and I got to to be amused by Arai attempting to act like Tezuka...and then getting pounded by snarky American kid...Arai needs to learn when to give up, and his fellow second years need to learn to STOP him before gets himself killed...Also found torrents for 143-146 but they are downloading at such pathetic rates it depresses me. When will I get to see them? I refuse to skip to 147 like my friend did!! That is just too many episodes for me to skip!! This is driving me batty. I guess I should have spent some time filling in the missing episodes before I go on a marathon.

The only good thing resulting from my frustration is that I'm getting reaquainted with my piles of PoT doujinshi...damn, I have some good ones...

"shinning with zest" -- pot and bittorrent, or how to waste a sunday

Well, my download rate on the PoT never did improve, but luckily my friend who lacks the same episodes started downloading them and got a so much better (normal) rate that I cancelled my own downloads so that when his gets done he can send them over to me. He just got one batch done, and was commenting on how bad these Chinese DVD rips were...and sent me a clip to see if I could handle the odd encoding...and I died laughing...

shinning with zest

That line slayed me. Completely. I could not stop laughing for the life of me.

I had a wonderful breakfast overlooking the ocean today with a whole bunch of friends...pancakes, bacon, ham...the works...

Then I got home, and for most of the day was frustrated over bittorrent (until above solution was proposed by friend) and avoided my computer. Watching a bittorrent download is not healthy. Or productive. And so to distract myself I spent a lot of the day reading PoT doujinshi. The ones I grabbed (on the top of the pile) were TezuRyo fic ones, and I was again struck by how much good TezuRyo there is in Japanese. For anyone who can read Japanese and is interested, here's a short silly sappy Christmas story, white snow, on the great website Mad clown web. I love the fic description--"TezuRyo and the gay boys of Seigaku (...)." ^_^

In any case, I am downloading the files overnight...and I will have more PoT to watch in the morning!! Yay!