Tag Archives: Michishige Sayumi

The first concert of Sayu’s final tour with Morning Musume took place on September 20th, and Sayu repeats here the announcement she made that day about taking a leave from the entertainment industry following her graduation from the group. She wants to emphasize again that although it may seem like a big deal, what it really means is that she just wants to take a break after these 12 years, and following that, she’s going to start thinking about what she wants to do next.

Interestingly, the allotted rehearsal time for this tour was really short — in fact, Sayu reveals it was the shortest of any tour she’s ever done in these past 12 years. She kind of felt like she wanted to rehearse more considering how it’s her last tour, but thanks to everyone focusing even harder than usual she felt confident even with the smaller amount of practice time. While there was the initial nervousness on the first day of the tour, she didn’t feel scared at all when it was actually time to get on stage. She says this is thanks to all the fans: the moment she walks on stage and sees everyone there to see them, it blows away all her worries.

Sayu also loved how the members all wore pink Michishige T-shirts at rehearsal that day, and it reminded her how strong the unity is between the members of this current line-up.

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Sayu begins by talking about Morning Musume’s recent guest appearances at the Budokan concerts of Berryz Koubou and °C-ute. While she did have fun appearing, there was one slip-up she made prior to °C-ute’s performance. Before they got on stage, everyone there including the members of Berryz Koubou, Morning Musume and the Kenshuusei all gathered around to do °C-ute’s signature call before the show: “zenin sorotte hajikeru zoi!“

The way they usually do it is, Maimi says “zenin sorotte“, Nacky says “hajikeru” and everyone yells the final “zoi” together. Despite this being explained to Sayu beforehand, she nevertheless got confused and mistakenly joined in too early, saying the beginning of “hajikeru” with Nacky, much to her embarrassment. What made it even worse for Sayu is that Momochi and Ikuta gave her looks that made it clear they’d heard her.

This embarrassment fresh on her mind, Sayu made sure not to repeat the mistake the next day before Berryz Koubou’s performance.

Listener requested pose: “Sayu updating her blog while battling sleepiness”

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Sayu begins by talking about her recent activities with Morning Musume and how they’re starting to remind her of her approaching graduation: she’ll now often realize she’s doing all kinds of work with them for the last time, the recently ended Hello!Con or Naruchika tour as an example. She didn’t feel very aware of it at the time her graduation was announced, but now it’s starting to hit her with all these “lasts.” While it does make her feel lonely, she also doesn’t want to end up having any regrets so she’ll continue having fun talking with the members everyday, and trying to leave the fans with lots of great memories.

And speaking of lasts, Sayu brings up Morning Musume’s 57th single which is the last one featuring her and says tonight’s broadcast of Konya mo Usachan Peace features the first-ever broadcast of “Shabadabadoo.” Her initial reaction to the song title was one of confusion — “Shabadabadoo? What, does it have something to do with Kudo?” But now she actually likes the title and how its similar to the pointlessness of the title of her previous solo song, “Lalala no Pipipi.” She thinks that one, too, doesn’t really have any real meaning, and yet it very accurately represents the image of “Sayumi.”

Commenting on the difficulties Sayu had recording the song, she says her first recording session for it took five hours (usually a single only takes her just an hour or so.) She recorded all the vocals in the song herself, including the whispered and background vocals. Afterwards she received some pointers from Tsunku, so she did another recording session for the song improving some of the parts which took her a further three or four hours. So all in all, she spent eight or nine hours in total recording her vocals for just this one song.

Since she gave it her everything, she hopes the listeners will reciprocate by listening to the song so much that their ears begin hurt — though Sayu adds that since it’s her singing, that might actually only require one listen.

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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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Sayu talks about their recent Hawaii fan club tour (she just got back home two or three days before the recording of this show). She begins by saying that she had a lot of fun doing all sorts of things, and lists the many activities they did there. She was especially happy seeing so many pink T-shirts there even though it wasn’t even her solo event or that sort of thing. Sayu says she doesn’t usually see such a large number of fans wearing pink T-shirts aside from concerts held in her hometown, or her own birthday events. It really moved her.

In the early days when they’d go to Hawaii, Sayu remembers thinking to herself how she had almost no fans at all and trying to figure out how she could make herself more appealing and attract more fans.

Thinking back to how it was ten years ago made her feel all the more happier seeing how she now has so many people who support her and the current 10-member lineup, especially as this was Sayu’s last Hawaii visit as a member of Morning Musume.

Song: Morning Musume – Mikan

Sayu no Kobeya
Letters from listeners

Fan mail #1: The listener assumes that Sayu didn’t have the chance to eat any Japanese food while in Hawaii, so he asks what the first thing Sayu ate when she got back to Japan was, as well as what the most memorable meal she had in Hawaii was.

Since the members knew they’d feel like eating a lot in Hawaii, they tried to hold back from eating too much in Japan in the days leading up to the trip. And sure enough, the members were all eating so much at every dinner, they even became worried about having to wear their swimsuits later — although that still didn’t stop them from eating more.

Sayu reports eating all kinds of things in their time there, including Chinese food at a restaurant the group always visits when they’re in Hawaii. But the number one most memorable, delicious meal for her was the meat — “meat is the best!“, she exclaims. In Japan, Sayu likes to add lots of wasabi on her steak, and lots of tare sauce on her yakiniku, etc, but the meat she had in Hawaii was just so good and juicy, she thought adding anything on it would only disturb its natural, delicious flavors.

Sayu talks about how the portions in Hawaii are so big, she was full after just three slices of meat. Meanwhile, Oda, sitting next to her, just kept on eating and eating until she finally said she was full after eating over twice as much as Sayu. That apparently still wasn’t enough in Oda’s mind, though, and she was disappointed she couldn’t eat more.

The first thing Sayu ate after coming back to Japan was natto which she wanted to have immediately after getting back home.

Listener requested pose: “Sayu when she finds the new 12th gen members cuter than her”

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One of the things Sayu says she found really remarkable about the summer Hello!Con was the growth of the Kenshuusei. She loves seeing how they’ve all gotten taller and how their faces have become more adult-like in the six months or so since she last saw them.

Sayu names Kenshuusei Makino Maria as an example. She says Maria-chan has grown really tall and cute, and that she’s always dancing intensely while keeping a huge smile on her face. She’s really friendly with people and says she likes Sayu, so one time she even asked if it was okay to hug her. Sayu being Sayu, she naturally didn’t object to physical contact with a girl in her low teens.

Maria-chan is from Aichi prefecture, so when they had a Hello!Con there, Maria-chan brought everyone some manjuu buns from her hometown. Sayu set one aside for herself to eat later and went to thank Maria-chan for the gift. Maria-chan said it was no problem and asked her if she’d had some yet. When Sayu said she hadn’t but that she’d try some later, Maria-chan said something that would change Sayu’s life for several days to come: “it keeps for a long time, so please enjoy it whenever you would like.“

Sayu says she was so moved hearing her say this, thinking she was such a good girl. Suddenly receiving such a grown-up statement from such a cute, child-like girl really got to her. She can’t even quite explain why this is; saying something will keep for a long time is obviously a normal thing to say among adults, but hearing it coming from Maria-chan just left a huge impression on her.

There was no time to share this story with anyone right away since it happened right before the concert, so Sayu didn’t know what to do with herself while she was still trying to process this explosion of cuteness. Some days later she finally got to relay the episode to Oda-chan, and Sayu says it felt really good to get it off her chest at last. Oda-chan, too, was touched by how cute Maria-chan is, and she revelead that Maria-chan often talks about how she likes Sayu even when she isn’t present. Hearing this obviously made Sayu even happier.

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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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Looking back on the last two weeks on the show with Maa-chan as the guest, Sayu says it was just “amazing” — she says the people who listened to the shows will know what she means by that. She describes Maa-chan as a storm that just swept its way through the show, and says that her antics didn’t stop only at what was broadcasted: she was also on a rampage behind the scenes, too.

First of all, when they were heading towards the studio to record the episodes, Maa-chan told Sayu she was hoping they’d have recorded them in the daytime instead (this was in the evening). When Sayu asked why, Maa-chan said she wasn’t feeling all that energetic. Sayu obviously didn’t like that someone who was coming on her show as a guest wasn’t feeling very excited about it, but she nevertheless told Maa-chan she’d be doing her best to make it exciting so she wanted Maa-chan to do her best, too. Maa-chan just answered with a half-hearted “Yeah, sure… I guess…“

But the second they arrived at the studio, even before the recording started, Maa-chan suddenly got insanely fired-up to the point that Sayu even wondered what on earth she’d meant when she said she “wasn’t feeling very energetic.” Maa-chan was just eating everything in front of her, constantly talking and not making any sense, carefreely calling over staff members just to talk to them… Sayu says Maa-chan was 100% “Sato Masaki” that day.

Maa-chan, too, said she had a lot of fun, and a couple of days later she sent Sayu an email saying “I want to appear on Konusapii again!” However, that email was immediately followed up by another email that said “I forgot to bring my training wear with me today. I’m very sorry to trouble everyone.” Sayu figured Maa-chan was feeling nervous the members would get angry at her for forgetting to bring her gear so she must’ve been trying to butter Sayu up with compliments to hopefully soften the blow.

Sayu hopes to get back to her usual, Maa-chan-less, more relaxed radio show this week.

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