Monthly Archives: September 2014

We are Juice=Juice #50 (2014.09.16)

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A Toast

To celebrate their 50th radio show and their 1 year anniversary, Juice=Juice toast each other and also there is cake. The announcement about cake leads to a lot of yelling and screaming from Sayubee, in particular, while Uemu only wants to know if she’s allowed to eat it now. Kanatomo then asks everyone what they are drinking. Yuka’s voice is still in pretty bad shape so she’s drinking a healthier option, something called ACC juice, comprised of carrots, cabbage, and honey. The other members remark on how it certainly looks healthy and is a deep red color. Kanatomo breaks Juice=Juice code with her beverage choice, apparently.

Kanatomo: Mine is… royal milk tea.
Sayubee: Oy!
Kanatomo: I mean there’s fresh apple juice and such, but I wanted to drink milk tea, so I did.
Sayubee: Hm. Well I chose pure grapefruit juice, 100%, because I am the purest of all Juice=Juice.
Uemu: What is that supposed to mean?

Karin has a milkshake comprised of milk, eggs, and vanilla. Uemu has cocoa. Kanatomo says that Uemu has already finished more than half of her drink and looks very happy with it. They decide to start digging into the cake and Karin mentions that Uemu should get cake first, which causes much delight and encouragement from Uemu who then proceeds to eat a massive bite of it while the others are admiring it. I should mention that you can hear straw-slurping sounds in the background, most of which I assume are from her.

SongJuice=Juice – Date ja nai yo, uchi no jinsei wa

When they return from the song, Kanatomo comments on the straw sounds getting picked up by the mic and hopes that the listeners enjoy hearing them so that they can imagine Juice=Juice eating cake and having juice more vividly.

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Nakajima Saki no °C-ute na Jikan #139 (2014.08.30) (guest: Yajima Maimi)

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Nacky begins by saying she’s going to let Maimi herself answer the question posed by Sayashi Riho about Maimi’s abs at the end of Morning Jogakuin. Speaking about Sayashi, though, Nacky says she’s once again noticed Sayashi’s dancing skill going up a notch lately and she wonders just how much better it’s possible for her to get. She’s also noticed how well she works with the cameras at concerts — Nacky says she herself still feels quite nervous about them, but Sayashi can look right at them while singing her lines. Nacky says she needs to do her best to catch up to her kouhai.

Maimi, introducing herself as she joins Nacky, says she had a really fun summer and Nacky asks her for details. Aside from getting to hang out with °C-ute at the beach, Maimi says she used her summer vacation to go see the fireworks and visit an amusement park, among other things. Nacky is jealous: while she did have something of a summer vacation herself, she has such few friends that she had no one to hang out with. Thus, she spent the entire vacation in the house. Alone. “That’s sad…“, Maimi quietly says. Nacky says she didn’t even feel like going out and buying any clothes from all the summer sales, so she was just reading Maimi’s blog entries, thinking to herself how much fun it looked like Maimi was having eating watermelons and all that summery stuff.

On the subject of the fast approaching °C-ute no Hi, Nacky asks Maimi what kind of a performance she’d like to make it at Budokan. Maimi says she’s looking forward to seeing how it’ll be performing there with Berryz Koubou, and they both agree they’ll have to do their best not to cry on stage now that they’re aware of Berryz’ upcoming indefinite hiatus.

While Nacky was happy the last time °C-ute got to appear at Budokan, she was even more so nervous and worried she was going to mess up, to the point where she now only remembers sporadic images from the concert. Thus, she hopes that this time around she’ll be able to save some “video” of the concert in her mind, too.

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Morning Musume ’14 no Morning Jogakuin ~Houkago Meeting~ #126 (2014.08.30)

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With everyone’s summer vacations ending and autumn quickly approaching, Sayashi asks Fuku-chan and Maa-chan about their memories of the past summer.

Fuku-chan mentions having gone to a summer festival with Oda and Eripon and enjoying some delicious peach flavored shaved ice. She asks Maa-chan how her summer was.

Maa-chan: This summer was really, really fun!
Fuku-chan: Yeah?
Maa-chan: No! Wait! I have so many regrets about it!
Fuku-chan: Oh.

Maa-chan explains she meant this in regards to having missed out on a couple of Hello!Con performances earlier in August due to her ill health, but says she’s 100% fine now. But on the plus side, she says, she got to go back to Hokkaido which probably helped her get the rest she needed and get better. Fuku-chan, too, has noticed Maa-chan looking a lot better since coming back from Hokkaido. (Unfortunately, Maa-chan was again absent due to ill health on September 10 when Morning Musume appeared as guests at °C-ute’s Budokan concert).

Sayashi regrets not having been able to go to any summer festivals, but on the other hand, she enjoyed her work as well their trip to Hawaii. She says she had a fun summer.

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Opening Question
“What’s the song you would most like to sing solo?”

Fuku-chan’s choice is °C-ute’s “Wasuretakunai Natsu.” She says she loves it and listens to it a lot, and that she actually wanted to sing it at their event in Hawaii but couldn’t: the way it works is that the members all have to send in several choices of songs they’d like to sing over to their manager, and this song unfortunately didn’t get picked. She hopes to get to sing it at a future summer event.

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Trattoria Buono! #76 (2014.09.13)

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♪ Buono! – Runaway Train ♪

Momoko announces that September 13th – or more generally, the second Saturday of September – is family karaoke day. None of the girls have gone for karaoke with their family recently, but Momoko admits that she generally goes alone. The others find it kind of sad that she goes alone, but Momoko shrugs it off and says that she finds it perfectly fine. Furthermore, she can go at it for about two and a half hours, usually finding time when she has gaps to fill in her work schedule. Though it does make her a bit hoarse at the jobs she has later.

However, she does have a complaint.  Once, when she was paying, she heard the guy at the reception whisper something on the lines of, ‘Look at this girl, going for karaoke all alone’, which irritated her.

Miyabi: Wouldn’t it be tough if you get exposed? It’ll be like, ‘Eh Momochi, don’t you have any friends?’

Momoko: It does suit my image (the girls laugh), but that would definitely suck.

Airi: Yeah, that’s… kinda sad.

Momoko: And so, I put on a mask, face downwards, I rub my eyes like they itch, until my face is completely unrecognisable, then I go.

Airi: You go to that extent and you still want to go?

Momoko explains it’s easy when she enters, since she can act like she’s waiting for her friends. It’s when she leaves that she has to put on a disguise, and go like ‘(cough) My eyes itch because of hay fever’ as she leaves the karaoke store.

Although she can’t go for karaoke alone, Airi states that she’s fine with going for gyuudon alone. Momoko and Miyabi are still amazed by this revelation. Miyabi starts getting grilled about places she can’t go alone to. While she can’t imagine going to movies or for yakiniku by herself, she’s all right with large chain restaurants.

Going back to solo karaoke, Airi still imagines that it would be tough when you had to go to the reception desk.

Momoko: Well, today may be family karaoke day, but I definitely recommend going for karaoke by yourself.

Miyabi: No way, I recommend going with family.

Momoko: Okay then, with your family. So that you won’t thought of as a loner.

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SS1422 #87 (2014.09.14)

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Respect for the Aged Day

The third Monday in September every year is Respect for the Aged Day in Japan. Meimi immediately wants to know if Takechan has any plans to pay respect her elders. Takechan says sure, but she then complains that there are an awful lot of holidays in Japan for old people. She asks if they didn’t just have a Respect for the Aged Day at the beginning of the month, and Meimi says no, that was Labor Day to pay respects to laborers. Takechan is confused. It turns out that Takechan is confusing the root for ‘rou’ in ‘kinrou,’ or ‘labor’ for the ‘rou’ in ‘roujin,’ or ‘elderly person,’ so she thought that there were two Respect for the Aged Days. Takechan also announces that she has something of a grudge against the holiday because she always noticed that everyone was nicer to her grandparents on Aged Day than they were to her on her birthday and she wants to know why, even for just one day, weren’t they nicer to her. Meimi says that she always gives presents to her grandparents on this day; Takechan applauds her. Takechan then asks which day was more recent, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Once Meimi enlightens her, Takechan says that last Mother’s Day her family all did karaoke at home and had melon and that was it. Takechan does not have a good understanding of the calendar year and national holidays.

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Reflecting on Marotesque Station

Last week S/mileage Station was transformed into Marotesque Station by Kanyon, and Meimi says that it was a very long recording for her. As you might have guessed by Meimi’s lack of judgment on Takechan for not celebrating any major national holidays, she tries very hard to be pleasant and go along with things on the radio, but it was very difficult the last time. Kanyon wanted to talk for the majority of the show about Berryz Koubou and their impending hiatus and she would often look at Meimi and say, “You know?” or “You remember, right?” when Meimi actually had no idea at all. She tenuously agreed to everything she said to make the show flow better and not make Nyon angry, but she was having a lot of trouble pretending like she knew what was happening.

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Konya mo Usachan Peace #409 (2014.08.25)

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Sayu begins by talking about Morning Musume’s recent Mezamashi Live performance.

During the event, they performed her debut song “Shabondama,” exactly 11 years to the day after it was first released. Sayu says she felt really nervous about it — so much so, in fact, that she says the nervousness mixed with the heat nearly made her feel physically ill.

It’s customary at Mezamashi Live for the audience to get to watch the artists doing their rehearsals, too, and although it was originally their plan to do Shabondama without rehearsing it just to have it be more of a surprise for the audience, Sayu insisted on rehearsing it because she didn’t want to mess up the spoken word intro. But even though the audience knew they were going to perform the song, everyone still acted surprised during the actual performance and this made Sayu really happy — not to even mention everyone chanting the modified lyrics: “aisuru hito wa Sayumi dake.

Song: Berryz Koubou – Tomodachi wa Tomodachi nan da!

Sayu no Kobeya
Letters from listeners

Fan mail #1: As is the trend lately, the listener asks how Sayu reacted to the news of Berryz Koubou’s upcoming indefinite hiatus.

Sayu was of course surprised when she heard the news. She says that while some might think that the members of Berryz might not really be all that close behind the scenes due to their varied personalities and characters, she assures the listeners that that is not at all the case: even after ten-plus years together, they’re always seen hanging out together, and Sayu suggests that they must have really deep connections with each other.

Sayu says she feels a mix of surprise as well as loneliness — Berryz Koubou has existed for nearly the entire time Sayu has been a member of Morning Musume, so them being there has always felt like an unchanging constant for her. To think that they won’t be there anymore after next spring feels really strange and unimaginable to Sayu. “What will Hello!Con without Berryz look like?“, she wonders aloud.

Lately, Sayu says she has especially felt the power of the group when listening to their song “Ai wa Itsumo Kimi no Naka ni.” She says that it’s such a cool, powerful song that it could only have been released by Berryz — and not Berryz two or five years from now, but the Berryz of right now. Sayu calls the song just amazing. Berryz have often been called “intense” or the “scary senpai” of H!P, but Sayu says this song takes it to a whole new dimension. She says she has been feeling this way ever since seeing them do the song in rehearsal, and looking back, she speculates that it may have been the result of them having talked about their hiatus and thus strengthening their unity.

Berryz has lots of songs that Sayu loves just as much as this one, and while it’s not like the songs themselves will disappear as you can still listen to them on CD and probably hear others perform them in H!P concerts, she does feel lonely that there probably won’t be many opportunities to hear the songs sung by Berryz themselves after next spring. Sayu says she’s looking forward to the remainder of Berryz’ activities together as a group.

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BZS1422 #110 (2014.08.24) (guest: Sudo Maasa)

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Chii asks Kumai-san if there’s anything she has yet to do this summer.

Kumai-san says she hasn’t gotten around to going to the beach even though she says she’d like to — she recently even bought a swimsuit. Chii wisely asks for further details regarding this newly acquired swimwear, but after a brief silence, Kumai-san says she’s going to leave it to the listeners’ imaginations. She does say, though, that she’d feel embarrassed wearing just the bikini so she also bought a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt to wear over it. Chii still presses for more details and at least asks Kumai-san what color her new bikini is, and after some hesitation, Kumai-san says it’s a blue-ish color.

Chii says the thing she hasn’t done this summer is wear a yukata. In fact, she doesn’t even own one. Chii just recently heard about something called the Nouryousen (a cruise around Tokyo Bay that gives discounts to people wearing a yukata) and she says she’d like to partake in that. The only problem is, the summer festivals for the year are all nearly done with so there won’t be many more opportunities to wear a yukata anymore. Thus, especially with the changing trends of yukata dresses, Chii thinks she’s going to give it a pass this year and buy one early next summer instead.

The two introduce their special guest of the week: Sudo Maasa! Chii asks her how she’s doing lately, and Maasa replies she desperately wants to see Kumai-san wearing her new bikini. Chii and Maasa get into a heated discussion about Kumai-san’s bikini despite her protests.

Chii: It’s apparently a blue-ish color!
Maasa: Ooh, nice!
Chii: So that’s either light blue, dark blue or navy. I bet it’s navy!
Maasa: Navy seems like it’d really suit her.

Maasa says she also wants Kumai-san to wear a bikini that’s similar to her own blue member color. Kumai-san promises that if she ever does, she’ll take a picture and send it to her. Maasa says she’ll make it her phone’s wallpaper. Chii is disgusted.

Chii asks if Maasa did anything summer-like this year and Maasa says this was the first summer she got to go driving since she just recently got her driver’s license. Chii points out that driving isn’t particularly summer-like at all, and adds that she’d be deathly afraid of getting in a car driven by Maasa. Kumai-san says Maasa does indeed seem like she’d speed a lot, but Maasa denies this and says she drives safely.

blog, Kumai Yurina, Sudou Maasa, Tokunaga Chinami-485842

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Trattoria Buono! #75 (2014.09.06)

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♪ Buono! – Lady Panther ♪

Momoko announces that the 6th of September is ‘Younger sister day’. Airi asks for clarification, and Momoko explains that it’s the eve of the midpoint of the astrological sign Virgo, the maiden. The girls agree that it’s a complicated definition, and Airi tries to work it out – ‘so tomorrow it’ll be the day that Virgo is at its midpoint?’ and Momoko responds in the affirmative. Airi ponders about the younger sister = maiden relationship, and then mentions that she’d like to set up an ‘Older sister day’. Momoko suspects that one already exists.

Airi then points out that all the Buono! members are older sisters. Elder sisters to a younger brother, in fact. Momoko asks if they’d ever thought it would be nice to have younger sisters, and the others both admit that they’d thought about it before. Miyabi says that it’s something she’s been thinking about recently, while Airi mentions that she occasionally thinks about how nice it would be to have a female sibling, and be able to wear matching outfits. Momoko agrees that you can’t really share things with a brother.

Momoko also admits that she’d like a younger sister – one who could stand in class and boast about her amazing sister. Airi wonders where that statement came from, and Momoko explains that her younger brother speaks ill about her. Their relationship is good, but how he acts at home is completely different from how he acts outside. She recounts a tale of when they were at the supermarket recently and he called her to come over quickly, she replied with a popular quote from the movie Frozen, ‘I got it~’. This resulted in her getting a complete scolding from him because he was embarrassed. The sternness of her brother surprised the others.

Momoko: My brother does it every time, and being told off like that makes this older sister kind of sad.

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