Monthly Archives: October 2014

SS1422 #93 (2014.10.26) (with special guests Nakanishi Kana and Tamura Meimi)

Special Guests

It’s Power-up Week for Radio Nippon, which means that this is a special show. It’s special in that hosts Takechan and Rinapuu have invited some special guests to join them in the recording booth today. Who are they? It’s a surprise. Rinapuu gives us a hint that they’re as cute as angels, which means the only answer could possibly Kananan and visual-center of S/mileage Tamura Meimi! Shocking! This leads to a lot of commotion considering Meimi’s opinion of herself on the last show, and so the top 3 beauties edge her out of the conversation. Kananan hopes that her cuteness will adequately be conveyed over the radio and Takechan and Rinapuu thank her for taking time out of her busy schedule to meet with them. Meimi does not get to talk anymore.

Song: S/mileage – Samui, ne.

A Thorough Debate

In this special corner, the members will discuss and debate each other on a given topic, namely, what should S/mileage do to prepare for the coming year. Rinapuu assures us that despite the long into from Takechan for this corner, it’s basically just them talking about whatever they want. Kananan says that now that they have 9 members, an odd number, she can finally take her place as a true center. The other members start to scream over her, especially Takechan, who says that it will definitely be her. Kananan continues to say that it’s strange thinking of themselves as 9 members because she has only ever talked to AiAi at the last Hello!Con but no one else has spoken to any of them. Meimi says it’s weird interacting with the Kenshuusei in general because she never knows who might be in the same group as her later on. It’s a puzzle. The fans probably enjoy it, though. Kananan asks who she thinks will make friends with the new members the fastest. Everyone is pretty sure it will be Kananan, but Kananan thinks that it will probably be Rinapuu. Rinapuu is the type to be the last to actually speak to the new members but will probably make friends with them the fastest. Rinapuu says it’s because she doesn’t know how to talk to new people so she just sits back and watches how other people interact with them, then uses that information to make friends with them. Continue reading →

SS1422 #92 (2014.10.19)

Power-up Week

Radio Nippon’s October Power-up week is coming up, so Meimi asks Takechan was she would like to do for it. Before Takechan can answer, Meimi interrupts with her idea. She wants to bring someone involved in omiai brought into the studio to talk about their job and how it works and if they could put the S/mileage members into the rotation to see what people’s reactions would be. Takechan says she’ll pass. Some of you are probably familiar with the concept of omiai, but in case you aren’t, I’ll explain. Typically when someone in Japan gets married, it’s because of one of two things, renai (恋愛) or miai (見合い). If you can read those characters you might guess what the difference is, but renai is romantic love, so you meet someone and date them and eventually fall in love and get married and theoretically live happily ever after. Miai is when you’re reaching an age where you want to get married (or in many cases when your family thinks you should be getting married) but don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend and have no realistic prospects, so you meet with a miai specialist, a matchmaker, essentially, or sometimes a grandmother or other relative with connections to find you someone who you might not love romantically, but could see as a lifelong partner and parent to your children and can support your household. Once it’s established that you don’t hate each other in person, you get married. Nakazawa Yuko got married this way; it’s a fairly common practice still, there’s your Japanese culture lesson for the day. Anyway, what Meimi was asking for, then, was to be put into the pile of ladies for men to choose from and for the matchmaker to gauge how good of a candidate she’d be. Takechan is understandably weirded out.

Takechan’s idea is instead to go out somewhere and record the show. They’ve been talking a lot about going to an amusement park for their 100th show so they can’t go there, but she thinks it would be fun to go to a school or pre-school and talk to the students there for the radio show. However, Meimi questions the practicality of going out in public and talking to people, not because of technical difficulties but because none of the members would really feel comfortable just running up to people and asking them questions in the street. Meimi says she’d be fine doing it, but Takechan agrees that she would most likely be the only one. Meimi says, “I can just host that week by myself, it’s okay.” Meimi has no time for shyness.

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Konya mo Usachan Peace #412 (2014.09.15)

konya

Continuing from last week’s Hawaii topic, Sayu begins by telling more stories about their recent trip there, this time focused more on the members themselves. Sayu anticipated it would be fun going there with this current lineup and everyone was really excited about it — Harunan alone in the weeks preceding it told Sayu at least on five different occasions how much she was looking forward to it. Sayu says that it was such a fun and happy time, it exceeded all her expectations.

After work they’d do things like run around on the beach while still wearing their outfits from the photo shoot and stare up at the starry night sky — they even pretended like they all saw a shooting star together just because of how lovely the idea of it sounds. Still, Sayu was truly happy, and she says looking at the stars made her think quite deeply about life and how among those many stars Sayu just happened to be born on this one, in a country called Japan, and meet with the other members of the group. It reminded her of the lyrics of “Toki wo Koe Sora wo Koe” and about how in life you end up meeting the people that you’re supposed to meet, and it made her feel like the song is about the concept of Morning Musume itself as a whole.

Seeing the starry sky with the others that night gave Sayu a whole new appreciation for “Toki wo Koe Sora wo Koe,” and she thinks this trip strengthened the bonds between the members even further.

Song: Morning Musume ’14 – Toki wo Koe Sora wo Koe

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BZS1422 #113 (2014.09.14)

bzs1422

Like Meimei and Take-chan on SS1422, Chii and Kumai-san begin by talking about the Respect for the Aged Day. Kumai-san says she hasn’t gotten to see her grandparents a lot recently so she’s thinking about shooting them an email on this occasion. She says her grandpa is using a lot of emoticons in his emails as of late, and he tends to pick the really cute ones: it won’t be just a single “♪”, but more like two or three, etc.

Chii visited her grandparents the other day and they treated her to a meal. They have a teppanyaki grill at home and instead of eating themselves, they just kept bringing Chii more and more delicious meat for her to have which once again made her realize just how kind they are. Kumai-san says they must find their granddaughter adorable, and Chii says she is really thankful. As one way of showing her gratitude, Chii always waves to them in their 2nd floor seats when they’ve come over to see Berryz in concert, and her grandma will respond by excitedly waving both her hands at her.

Chii notes that a year ago they were extremely busy doing the “Warera Jeanne” musical — they’d be practicing from 10 in the morning until 9 in the evening. Kumai-san adds that because they were practicing below ground they didn’t even know how it looked outside which made it even tougher. Chii says that they were so busy, she doesn’t have many memories of that time period: it was an endless repetition of sleep, practice, sleep, practice, sleep… with the occasional radio appearance.

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SS1422 #91 (2014.10.12) (with guest Fukumura Mizuki)

More 100th show plans

Continuing the topic brought up last week, Takechan asks Meimi if she wants to do anything special for the 100th show. Meimi, being the thespian that she is, wants to ask some actors onto the show or broadcast from a theater. She is very adamant about it; anybody is okay, even understudies. If she could ask someone in particular, she’d ask her favorite actors and actresses from Gekidanshiki (Japan’s version of Broadway) to come on. Even some fans wrote in to say they’d want them on the show. Takechan takes the opportunity to remind her that this is the 100th show for everyone, not just Meimi.

Meimi: But that’s okay, everyone can just invite whoever they want!
Takechan: They won’t fit in here!

Meimi asks Takechan who she would invite. “I won’t say,” she says, “because I want to go to a theme park.” She wants to do the show while riding on roller coasters, but she admits that even though she likes roller coasters, she’s never actually been on one that goes very high off the ground so she doesn’t know how she’d react on radio if she had to ride one. Still, she and Meimi both agree that they should go to FujiQ and have all four of them go into a haunted house and do a report from inside. It’s settled, it’s happening. If they can go at all, that is.

Third Generation Members

After Takechan finishes doing a promo for the play, during which Meimi is yelling “yay~” the whole time in the background, they talk about the 3rd generation members, Murota Mizuki, Sasaki Rikako, and Aikawa Maho. Meimi is really excited for Murotan joining because she remembers her from the 2nd gen auditions and how strange it must be for her to go through everything and still end up in the same group she originally auditioned for. They’re also very happy about AiAi saying she wanted to join S/mileage. They recognize that girls these days have a lot of idol groups to choose from, and they want to thank them for ~~flying with us today~~ voicing their love of S/mileage over groups like Morning Musume. Takechan mentions how strange it is for there to be so few people left in KSS from when she was in the program. For Meimi, it’s weird that those few people are technically more senior than she is by tenure, yet she calls Taguchi Tagucchi and Taguchi calls her Tamura-san. Takechan says she’s perfectly able to turn it around and call her Taguchi-san if she wants, but Meimi seems less than enthusiastic about it.

Cuties

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Trattoria Buono! #81 (2014.10.18)

♪ Buono! – Gachinko de Ikou ♪

Momoko announces that the day after the broadcast, October 19th, would be TOEIC Day. Again, this is to do with some wordplay associated with the date. The 19th day of the 10th month can be set out as 10-1-9, or ‘To-I-Ku‘, which sounds close enough to TOEIC (Airi: ‘They really do like to use this sort of wordplay‘).

Momoko asks the girls if they’ve used English recently. While Miyabi and Airi haven’t, Momoko has a story that happened on the day of the recording itself – she was on the train when a foreigner asked her to help out with directions. She was having trouble explaining the route, even with a map. In the end, she used an app she had on her phone to help her explain.

Momoko: TOEIC is important, but apps are important too.
Airi: They are important. Although it would have been good to speak English too.

Miyabi’s happy that Momoko was able to help the foreigner out. Yes, Momoko is proud to have been his saviour. While for the foreigner, it’d be a memory of Japan.

Momoko: And so, we too, would like to study foreign languages from now on too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amffMc6fHj4

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We are Juice=Juice #53 (2014.10.14)

It has color!

The Miya-Miya combo presents us with this opening phrase because today, on their 53rd show as We are Juice=Juice, Yuka has just noticed that the script has their colors on it! It made her feel like she was seeing something rare so it made her happy to see it for the first time.

Karin has very little to add to the opening statement, so Yuka moves on to ask if Karin has any clothing staples for fall. Karin explains that she doesn’t so much rely on staples but simply picks out the things that she likes at the time, and recently she has been interested in red check shirts. She bought some but has had tremendous difficulty trying to match them with things, which Yuka completely understands, though she thinks it would suit her (by the way, if you’re getting deja vu at this point, there’s a reason). Yuka recommends trying a cardigan, but Karin is stuck on what color of the check to try and match with. Yuka has been into long black skirts because they’re more mature and cover up plenty of things she might want to hide, so she bought one and actually wore it to the recording today. Karin admits that she has been interested in them but didn’t think she could pull it off when she tried one on, but it really suits Yuka and she looks very mature and stylish.

Fan Letters

The first letter comes from aMa no Jaku, who congratulates them on their new song release and says that they saw them perform as the opening act for Morning Musume at Budokan. Their performance made them feel like the 5 of them are going to move to bigger and bigger stages in the next year and hope to see them perform at Budokan soon. They think it would be amazing to do one big juice toast with all of the Juice=Juice family in Budokan. Another letter comes from Watada, who has been listening to their new songs since they got the CD and has been in love with Date ja nai yo since seeing them look so good performing it live in concert. This makes the two of them happy, especially the part about doing a toast in Budokan, which Yuka had thought of doing before. Karin makes a pun out of Budokan and says that they should all have grape (“budou”) juice. You didn’t hear that from her, though.

Song: Juice=Juice – Date ja nai yo, uchi no jinsei wa Continue reading →

We are Juice=Juice #52 (2014.10.07)

Lumpy

Karin brings us this opening word as she has come to the conclusion that she loves lumpy foods. She loves strawberries, as most everyone knows, and they’re sort of lumpy and pulpy but she finds that it isn’t just the taste she enjoys but the texture. Uemu asks if this goes for other things as well, like salmon roe, and Karin affirms that most of her favorite foods are on the lumpy side. She also prefers to have her drinks be thicker and pulpy, which Uemu says she also enjoys. Karin adds that she has noticed Uemu also shares this affinity for pulpy, lumpy things, since they both enjoy kiwi seeds and such in their juice whenever they get it, but she also remembers something that happened recently with Uemu and food. The Juice=Juice members all went out to eat and they asked Uemu if she wanted anything in particular and she said, “takenoko,” or bamboo shoots. However, when the plate got to their table, Uemu started freaking out and asked why these perfectly normal bamboo shoots were so wrong. It turns out she had meant to order “kazunoko,” or herring roe, instead. Uemu retorts. “But they look the same! They have the noko in common you know so it’s easy to confuse them!” Uemu said what surprised her was that there had been a picture of the kazunoko that she was ordering from and they came out looking so different.

Bamboo-shoots This is not herring roe, despite what the ‘noko’ might lead you to believe

Karin continues in the food discussion and asks if Uemu has any fall foods she’s looking forward to eating. She says that roasted sweet potato tops her list, although she enjoys miso soup this time of year as well. Karin enjoys sweet potato as well, although lately whenever she really wants one she cooks it in the microwave to get it quicker. She discovered this when she wanted one but there wasn’t anyone around selling them. She and Uemu both delve into their best sweet potato salesperson impressions as a result.

Song: Juice=Juice – Date ja nai yo, uchi no jinsei wa Continue reading →