On winding roads.

In this post I thought I would continue with the introduction material and talk about the origin of my H!P fandom and how it has evolved over time. Where I live I guess there is a fairly large Japanese speaking population since they broadcast some Japanese programming on one of the local television stations. When I was younger they used to schedule a number of music variety shows, like HEY!HEY!HEY! and that type of thing, and I would sometimes watch them because there might be attractive women on as guests. I had absolutely no interest in Japanese music or entertainers beyond that purely superficial level and it was more of a "sound optional" television watching experience. As time passed my household eventually got cable TV and with it the "International Channel" which expanded my exposure to those programs. Then one day I tuned into one of these shows (I don't recall which one) and when the guests came out it was bunch of little girls wearing blue and yellow dresses with knee pads. I don't remember, but knowing me it is likely I said something along the lines of "What the Hell" at that very moment. I didn't see a performance by those girls, in fact I didn't even watch the entire talk segment with them, it is likely there was something else I wanted to see at the same time. In any case, I filed that little piece of information away and continued with my life.

I didn't think much of that incident until I was walking home one evening in late June of '05. I don't know what triggered it but suddenly I started wondering what had happened to those girls; whether they had fulfilled their dreams and found success or if they had fallen back into the obscurity that I assumed they had come from. It seemed to me that since they were a group of little girls it was very unlikely that they would last longer than one record. I believed their main selling point would be novelty value, and once people became accustomed to that they would have no reason to go back for more. Curious about the fate of those girls I turned to the source of all knowledge, the Internet, for answers. I didn't even know the name of the group so I had to use my 1337 Google skillz to identify them. I don't remember what search terms I used (though I'm sure the NSA still knows), but it was probably something like "blue yellow dress girl jpop". Well, I had some success and learned that the name of the group was Berryz Koubou (or Koubo or Kobo or some collection of lines I had no hope of deciphering) and that they were part of a larger music collective called "Hello! Project". I also learned that another Hello! Project group called "Morning Musume" had their own television program where Berryz Koubou would sometimes appear as guests, and that you could steal episodes of this show from various places on the internet. So I joined Hello!Online where the first two torrents I ever downloaded were this one of "Nanchuu Koi wo Yatteru YOU KNOW?", which was the first PV I ever saw and is to this day one of my least favorite Berryz songs. The other thing I got was the most recent episode of Hello! Morning in the hope that Berryz would be present. Berryz Koubou wasn't there but I was treated to a very funny episode of Hello! Morning where Morning Musume had to speak what could loosely be described as "English".

It was the first time I saw that Morning Musume was entertaining in its own right and not just a path to get to some phantom group I had seen once before. Also it was the dawn of my fandom of "cheese in refrigeeta" Kamei Eri and "Meron! Meron!" Michishige Sayumi. I now understood that great pleasure could be had in following Hello! Project and I continued on gradually seeing more and learning about the various aspects of idols and H!P that you don't really see in U.S. music, like photobooks and shuffle units. Well, I suppose groups like New Kids on the Block probably had photobooks, but I really wouldn't know for sure. Anyway, there was one of these Japanese peculiarities that had a fairly significant impact on me.

The 2006 Hello! Project sports festival came around and I was full of eager anticipation since it would be my first time seeing one. At that time I'd only ever seen small clips of the previous festivals, but I knew it would be a chance to see (almost) all of Hello! Project together at one time. I thought the whole thing was lots of fun, however, the single most significant moment for me happened in the first few minutes of the event as the contestants were walking out onto the field. I was watching them line up and all I could think was, "Whoa! Nakajima Saki is sooo pretty!".

I'm not sure what it is I like about her, I do like her smile a lot, I have huge teeth like her and feel a sort of kinship over that... she also has a very round head... but I suppose these things don't really need a reason. In any case, at this point I knew nearly nothing about C-ute, the only member I could recognize was Murakami Megumi, who I knew from Sexy Otona Jan, but the rest required tables of photos and names. However from this point on I knew that would have to change and out of my desire to see more of Nakajima Saki I started watching all the C-ute I could. In contrast to my view of Nakajima, my initial feelings towards Okai Chisato were a lot cooler. I liked that she seemed to value play quite a bit, she would spend time goofing around with Hagiwara Mai while the other girls her age would spend more time with the older three. To me this meant that Chisato wanted to extract all the fun that life had to offer, and cared about that more than appearances and being "grown-up". That's the type of prioritizing I like, though if you were to ask me what I  thought of her, I might have described her as being too homely. Things continued like this until I first saw the Hello! Days Volume 5 DVD that featured C-ute. When they were doing the nickname segment and the suggestion of "Okai-shounen" (岡井少年) came up and Chisato replied with something like, "Um. But I'm not a boy..." I was so overwhelmed by her cuteness that I had all my doubts about her dispelled. Watching the backstage segments, seeing the staring contests and her janken face off with MaiMai I thought that maybe there was greatness in Okai that I hadn't truly appreciated before. Afterward came the stage segments where she was talking and everyone else was looking at her like she was crazier than an antarctic nudist. Okai frequently seemed like she was in her own little world talking with Mai and Murakami Megumi there, and by the time she was acting out the dispensing of soft serve ice-cream and sassing Megumi for doubting her I knew I had new favorite in the world of idols. Later on, I learned that Chisato can sing too! Shoot, from that point there has been no one besides Okai for me, she has all that I am looking for in an idol.

This post has sort of turned into an Okai Chisato love fest, but I think that is okay... after all, my whole life has sort of changed into an Okai Chisato love fest. Looking back, I have been around for less than three years, and in that short time I've seen sex scandals, teen pregnancy, expulsions, and the end of great things like summer shuffles, sports festivals and Hello! Morning. Heck, I've even seen Nacchi nearly commit vehicular manslaughter, and in spite of all of that I'm still here. I think that is proof that I just don't learn too good... though my school transcripts alone should be proof of that... *cough*. Still, there is lots of wonderful entertainment within H!P and as long as there is joy to be had I want a share of it, even if it comes with a taste of drama now and then.