Gackt:



Tsukasa:




*wrings her hands and wails in despair just like Gackt* It is true after all, I have seen it with my own eyes. Life is cruel and full of pain~

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't like Tsukasa playing with Gackt. If anything I am hella amused by it. I was being a drama queen because it's just too hilarious! I wonder if I woke up my neighbors because I laughed too hard watching the video.
I am not gonna bother with uploading it. It's Gackt's video after all, it's gonna be on youtube within 15 minutes, if it is not there already. Instead I think I'll go to sleep and hopefully I won't see any nightmares involving Gackt ;D~

P.S. Almost forgot. Expect the same entry version 2 on Sunday after I watch the live performance of the song. Life is just one ordeal after another. When will it end?! 8D

What is it with my Japanese titles lately? Anyway it fits, because that's what happened today. I was ~enlightened~.
It's just that for a while now I'd been trying to find a solution, but could not quite grasp it. I'd had an annoying feeling that it was almost there, I could almost see it through the fog in my head until this morning when it suddenly became clear. Maybe a good rest over a weekend helped. Or maybe it was that Nth cup of coffee that finally did it xD
I wonder if I was still tripping from my ~enlightenment~ during Japanese class later in the evening. I don't know what happened, but everyone was so slow. I was about to start pulling my hair out by the time it was over. I bet everyone thought I was being exceptionally obnoxious today. Ha, little do they know. I can do better than that >;D
On the way to class I stopped at a book store and found a magazine (was it Fool's Mate? Or Shoxx? I tried not to look too closely at the cover since it made me cringe). Look what I found inside:



I do not remember that happening, but a photo reminded me that a) a DVD is going to be out in a month (I hope I won't find myself there) and b) tomorrow is a payday which is good considering that I have 5 yen (in one yen coins) left in my wallet. I think I established a new personal record ;D

今週１級の漢字の半分の勉強が終った。でも正直言うとよく忘れちゃうよ。知っている言葉も少ない。例えば漢字の意味を分かって読み方が知らない、読み方を分かって意味が分からないの場合も多いです。読まなくて言葉を覚えられないでしょう？そう思って昨日大学生たちに聞いた、そしてこの本をおすすめされた：



読めるか？読めないか？！すぐ諦めちゃうか？！（笑）
あ、でもその前乾杯！



イラ万歳！（笑）

P.S. How many grammatical mistakes have I made? Let's see... every other word? Am I too optimistic!? Does it even make sense? It sure makes sense to me ;D~
And here goes another どうでもいい　entry 8D

I had been watching videos on youtube and accidentally came across this one:



I was there! It was my very first rock concert: Мумий Тролль at ДК Горбунова, December 1998. We went only to the first day, when they played "Морская" and "Шамора 2" songs. But now I wish I could go to the second day too, "Икра" and "Шамора 1", sadly we could not afford it. It is hard to believe that it's been 11 years since then, time sure flies fast. Funny how much I remember even now, but ДК Горбунова looks bigger than I thought it was... this is all so nostalgic.

Anyway lunch break is over, back to micropipelines.

Вот и вся любовь ;)

How could you take part in Gackt's video?! GACKT OF ALL PEOPLE!!! *weeps*
Still I wanna see it, even if only to cry and lament some more ~_~
This is really disturbing, guys! ;"D Does anybody have any idea what that video might be, title etc.? I only know what Tsukasa said in his blog and I am really not a Gackt's fan so I have no idea what is going on with him. Not that I actually want to know that, but for once I am willing to make an exception ;D

At least that was my question until 2 minutes ago. I've got work to do and a deadline coming next week, but instead I'd been sitting at home waiting for construction workers who are setting up a new digital TV antenna at my apartment building.
The guy finally arrived a couple of minutes ago only to tell me that a TV socket is fine the way it is and he does not need to install a new one. I feel cheated ~_~
I'm off to work.

So close! The shape of 0 is similar to 6, but still it is not the right number. How awesome would be to get a ticket number 666 for a Marilyn Manson show?! Too bad I got 606 -__-;



Today he did not grace me with a bottle hitting me right on the chest and I am really really glad about it considering that the bottles he was throwing in the crowd were beer bottles, glass ones obviously. Isn't that kinda dangerous? He also shoved one of the bottles in Twiggy's mouth and made him drink ;D
The funny thing was how in the very beginning when Marilyn talked to the crowd (nothing particularly meaningful, just something along the lines of "Nagoya mothefuckers!") and, when there was not much of response, he was like "Maybe you don't understand English. That's fine, you are crazy!" and a girl from the front row screamed: "You are crazy!" I don't know maybe she was just parroting him, but Marilyn said: "You're a tough girl! Come here," and he dragged her out of the crowd on the stage. She was a cute tiny thing with long pink pigtails wearing a black goth corset and a skirt, the top of her head barely reached his chest. He took a lollipop from her (no kidding, she had a lollipop), put it in his mouth and then kissed her right in front of everybody. HAHAHA! The crowd was screaming and whistling and cheering. Then he threw the lollipop in the audience. How is that for a souvenir - a Marilyn Manson licked lollipop! 8D He also took a pink beret with bows from some girl in a crowd and wore it during a couple of songs. Probably he likes cute Japanese girls. And I love Marilyn in the pink beret! xD
I stood on a right side in the middle of the hall because I figured that's the side Twiggy would be since he switched to guitar from bass (and I was right). It's been a while, the last (and the first) time I saw him was back in 2001. He left the band for a few years and did not tour with them two years ago when I saw them again. Ginger Fish and Chris Vrenna were in the back and I could not see them very well. Their new bassist, Andy Gerold is cute. And Manson got a tummy, he is getting old. No one of us is getting younger really, but they still played such an awesome show. It reminded me again how much I love them. I always say that bands come and go, some disappear without a trace really fast and others stay for years. Marilyn Manson is definitely the band that has been with me for a very long time, since 1998 if I remember correctly, back when they released Mechanical Animals, and they are not going anywhere. Antichrist Superstar, Mechanical Animals, Holy Wood, those three are among my favorite albums and it's not going to change. I was so happy to hear The Dope Show, Rock is Dead, Coma White, The Beautiful People, Irresponsible Hate Anthem, Tourniquet, Disposable Teens, Sweet Dreams along with the new songs like Devour, Pretty like a Swastika, Four Rusted Horses and We're from America. Oh, if only I could hear them play 1996 or Target Audience T_T And did I hear things or did Twiggy really play an intro that sounded very much like Shimauta before The Beautiful People? ;D
I hope I can watch them online play at V-Rock festival  this Saturday (and D'espairsRay too!), though I haven't figured out the details of the broadcast yet.

I abhor Tokyo subway. Absolutely so D; I blame the long narrow stairs at Yurakucho and Kamiyacho stations for the pain in my left knee. I could barely walk down the stairs at some point. At least after sitting for almost two hours during a shinkansen ride back to Nagoya the pain went away. But wait, I am not yet done with telling my woes, I am just getting started!
I wanted a new laptop, my old one that I bought three years ago  was acting up lately and I figured it was time to get a new one. However, here I faced a problem: I live in Japan. How could I have forgotten about that! There is pretty much no such thing around here as a computer with English OS. The best they could offer me at a store was Japanese Windows switched to English mode, so the menu would be in English. But they warned me that it still would mess up all my English software. Boo ;( The bastards laughed when I said: "I can read Japanese, but I don't want to". Since I was in Tokyo today I went to Akihabara after work, there are a few stores there that sell overseas models, no luck finding them in Nagoya or maybe I am just blind. As if I needed more problems in addition to the fact that I could not decide what to buy. Sure I had an idea about what OS, a hard drive, a screen size etc. etc. ect. I wanted, but all brands have similar models. I don't like choosing stuff like that, it is boring. In the end it all comes down to small things like a brand, or slightly bigger size of a hard drive, or slightly lower price. Or a color.



It is red and it made me think that maybe it is about time I pack my suitcase and get the hell out of this country before I finally go to the dark side and skip merrily through the fields of daisies wearing a frilly skirt. At least it is not pink 8D~

Every language has a set of phrases tied to certain situations that reflect the customs and manners. Those phrases can be difficult to translate since they sometimes do not make much sense outside of the cultural context. I can think of a few Japanese phrases that make my head hurt sometimes. I am sure everybody knows them, they are well known like よろしくお願いします (please, or treat me kindly etc. etc.),　頑張ります (I'll do my best) or　お疲れ様 (can mean thank you or good bye). They can be used in so many different situations and sometimes quite inappropriately from my point of view, which is probably why I dislike some of them.
But here is one example that happened just 15 minutes ago. お疲れ様 (or a casual お疲れ) is a way of saying good bye and it has a nuance of "thank you for your hard work". I was walking down a corridor when I saw a guy going out of a toilet and saying お疲れ to someone inside. Yeah, thank you for a job well done indeed. Did he say 頑張ります (I'll do my best) before going in the toilet?! -___-; To be fair it was probably meant as a good bye to someone leaving since it is evening and many people are going home. Still the situation was quite comical, even though I was probably the only one who saw it that way.
I think I should do the same and go home. お疲れ様 ;D

P.S. and I wonder if it was an example of Engrish, but one of the student wore a T-shirt that said "World's Biggest Member" on the back. huh? rest... I really need to rest right now -__-;

Well, it is me with Maniac Station again, but this time it is a little different. It's been a while since I did subtitles ;)
On September 11 D'espairsRay had their first and only live broadcast of Maniac Station, all programs before have been recorded for the airing. It was also broadcasted in the internet and that's the video I used here. Unfortunately the quality is pretty low, as usual for that kind of videos.
They did pretty well for a live broadcast, at least if you enjoy watching Karyu freak out every few minutes like I do. But D'espairsRay would not be D'espairsRay if they did not ruin it in the end. I want that horrible mental image of a table out of my head! xD

D'espairsRay Maniac Station live broadcast 11.09.09. subbed version.

Part 1 on youtube (I had to split it to keep within 10 min restrictions).



part 2 on youtube
part 3 on youtube

Next day edit: I re-watched the video again and found an annoying typo at 12:38. Karyu says "It seems so" not "I seems so". I missed it despite checking it so many times -_-; Anyway, I did not want to delete, edit and re-upload youtube videos so they will stay as it is, but I edited the full version and re-uploaded it on megaupload.

version 2 of the video on megaupload

Day One is here

 

( day two is much shorter )

The weekend was so much fun and it was not as awkward as I was afraid it would be, aside from a couple of moments. I want to go again! ;D The funny thing is that two days after the trip the FC announced another one in December, probably because Kyoto trip was such a success and there were people who could not come. So tempting~ ;3

Tonight I shall exercise self-restrain, my will is of iron and I shall be calm and collected. No more sparkly pink font! It was a moment of madness caused by severe brain damage and I think I have managed to recover. At least to a certain extent, a full recovery might be impossible for me ;D

D’espairsRay FC unBeautiful organizes trips with the band every autumn (this year is an exception, but I’ll get to that later). Two years ago they went to Okinawa and last year to a hotel near Tokyo. I had been curious about what kind of an event it is and, since this year it was held in Kyoto, a nice city to visit and pretty close to Nagoya, I decided to join. Another reason was that lately I have been getting more confident with Japanese so I figured I will not make a total fool out of myself. As if I ever needed a language barrier for that… 

And that concludes day one. Since livejournal is being nasty and not allowing me to post the whole thing at once, I have to split it in half, even though I do not like making multiple posts. Day two will be posted shortly.

Yesterday typhoon warnings were posted on the subway etc. and the rain was getting really strong (whenever that happens my satellite TV gets cut off). But it's not like typhoons are something unusual in Japan this time of the year, so I did not pay much attention to it. But this morning I woke up around 5.30 a.m. because of the loud noise, as if something was beating on the windows. When I looked outside I saw that it was a storm, the rain and the wind were so strong it looked scary. I checked to see that all my windows were closed and went back to sleep, but it was really unnerving, I was worried that one of the windows would break or something. Also nevermind the work, there was no way I was going to set my foot outside the house if it continued like that. Two hours later when I got up the typhoon was gone, but I saw uprooted trees on the way to work. According to news websites Aichi was hit the strongest and there were casualties (The Japan Times and Channel News Asia). This year is already my fourth autumn in Japan, but I think it was the strongest typhoon I witnessed so far. Not happy about it, though it was nothing in comparison to other typhoons that have been hitting Asia lately.

because I just checked the photos I took yesterday and realized that I not only caught Tsukasa on a camera (I noticed it immediately at Kiyomizudera, but I could not bring myself to delete it), but also Hizumi talking to their hairdresser. I really did not mean to, I just did not noticed them with all the crowd around when I was trying take the picture of the view, especially since the rules were being so strict about no taking pictures of the band except the individual/group photos taken by the staff. But why did I have to make such a face when I had a photo taken with them?! It is so typical of me though, I always unintentionally make weird faces at the camera >_>;
But it was fun! Surprisingly so. I did not know Despa guys could keep talking and fooling around for hours straight, they must have had a stash of beers hidden somewhere to keep them going. Why else would Hizumi look so flushed by the end of the night? ;D The only really awkward moment was yesterday morning when Hizumi went like "Lately a lot of foreigners have come to live in Japan. I have never thought of living abroad so I am envious of their strength(? I forgot the word he used). Are you guys having fun?" and looked at us sitting three seats away from him. I said "yes", but ugh two white girls stick out so much in the crowd of one hundred and fifty Japanese, no way to hide >_>
Despite that one moment it was so much fun! Zero spinning around himself and then trying to walk to a microphone to prove that he has the best balance among members, stumbling and falling a few times on the way; armwrestling and one-arm push-ups to see who is the strongest; quiz games; Karubi making a brief appearance; Tsukasa playing six flutes he just bought on the bus for us and complaining about how bad the sound was; Zero going on and on about his underwear. And I could go on and on about this weekend, but so much happened I need to think and put it all in some sort of an order in my head before I write something more coherent about it.
But hey, look, I have learned how to use a sparkly font and finally I have a good reason for it: D'espairsRay
Poor you reading this, more will come later 8D~

I met mini_myna  in front of Shibuya station around 16.30, earlier than I originally wanted, but that was for the best since I actually managed to get the very last member's produced T-shirt, Tsukasa's one. All the rest were sold out. It took us over 30 minutes to get to the goods table, the line was way too long. I also got a tour pamphlet and... D'espa really do not put much efforts into the photos (nothing new there), but there is an awesome and really long interview about the band's history year by year and personal interviews (but I did not read those yet, only the main one).



( C.C.Lemon Hall )

Tomorrow... tomorrow I am going to take my Despa obsession to a whole new level of low. Though I am not sure I am ready to admit what I am going to do. Not just yet. It is going to be so awkward... At least Kyoto is beautiful and I hope I will enjoy it despite the questionable company xD But what should I wear?!

Look what I got delivered today! It is Tsukasa's snare drum head I won in unBeautiful lottery ;D

( pictures under a cut )

We have five consecutive days off, I love national holidays in Japan and tomorrow I am going on a shopping rampage! My wallet already hides in a corner shaking in fear and begging for mercy >;D

I'd been watching Antichrist Superstar videos on youtube and lamenting the fact that Manson plays at V-Rock festival, but I did not want to go to Tokyo to a huge festival like that. Not when I like - OK, lets face the truth - adore and love only two bands playing there, Marilyn Manson and D'espairsRay. I do not care for the most of the other bands and there are actually a few I dislike and I'd have to be paid a lot of money to make me see them ;(
So while thinking that it'd be nice if they played other shows in Japan once they are here, I checked Ticket Pia website and saw that they will actually play in Osaka and Tokyo that week! Osaka was out of the question since I am in Tokyo that day for work and Tokyo is sold out *tears her hair out and wails* Lawson website - same result *weeps* eplus listed Nagoya show! But only for pre-sale and it was over *at this point already almost hysterical and foaming at the mouth* TankTheWeb - got a ticket *cries tears of joy*
Ah~~ my poor nerves. What the hell is going on with ticket sales in Nagoya!? There were quite a few gigs that never went on sale on any websites except TankTheWeb, which is local and sells only for the events in Aichi and Shizuoka prefectures. Manson's website actually does not list Japanese tour dates at all... weird. But whatever, I am a happy girl right now ;D
And since I am already talking about music. Does anybody know a way to unsee things? This morning I saw Rammstein's Pussy video posted and I watched it. Bad start of the day >_>; It's hilarious and tasteless and kitsch, but very explicit. You've got a pussy I've got a dick. So what's the problem? Let's do it quick! lolol I find it very hard to believe Till when he sings I can't get laid in Germany. The fact that he waves a German flag makes it all so much more hilarious. Some people have a weird sense of humor. But back to my problem: I'd very much like to unsee their dicks D;

Zero was probably right about the rain-man winning that day, it was clear in Nagoya, but as I got closer to Tokyo the sky was getting darker and darker. Just look at the clouds! Luckily for us, he did not win completely and there was no rain as we waited outside. Fight-oh! Clear-sky-man-Zero, don't let Hizumi have his evil rainy way ;D



( Spanking D'espairsRay ;D~ )

Next is C.C.Lemon Hall. Lets see how it is going to turn out ;)

We went on a trip around Mt. Fuji this week (we did not climb the mountain itself, which was totally fine with me). We were supposed to see the mountain too, but the weather was really cloudy so no luck there ;( We even stayed at a hotel at the shore of Kawaguchi lake and a tub was placed at a balcony in a public bath there, so if not for the clouds we would be able to watch the view of a lake, a night city and Mt. Fuji while soaking in hot water. But we had to settle for the view of the lake and the city.

( a lot of photos under a cut )

I have to move to a new apartment tomorrow and I'll have no internet for who knows how long. なんって事だ！Will I survive it? 8D