[note: the song is depressing, but this is not an indication of my life or mood, simply the fact that I liked the song enough to prep it for my reading class. I have a DVD with an excellent live performance, but this one has escaped collection on the various video sites. I suppose there’s a torrent out there of the Folk Songs 3 concert, but it’s probably unseeded, and I wouldn’t link to it anyway. Here is the only performance youtube has, which is probably closer to the original arrangement than the one I like.]

[I’ll add pop-up furigana for the kanji later.]

誰もいない海

作詞：山口洋子　作曲：内藤法美

今はもう秋
誰もいない海
知らん顔して
人がゆきすぎても
私は忘れない
海に約束したから
つらくても
つらくても
死にはしないと

It’s already autumn, at the deserted seaside. Although he walks past like I’m not there, I will not forget, because I made a promise to the sea, “Even if it’s heart-breaking, even if it’s heart-breaking, I will not die.”

今はもう秋
誰もいない海
たった一つの
夢が破れても
私は忘れない
砂に約束したから
淋しくても
淋しくても
死にはしないと

It’s already autumn, at the deserted seaside. Although my only dream is torn apart, I will not forget, because I made a promise to the sand, “Even if I’m lonely, even if I’m lonely, I will not die.”

今はもう秋
誰もいない海
いとしい面影
帰らなくても
私は忘れない
空に約束したから
ひとりでも
ひとりでも
死にはしないと

It’s already autumn, at the deserted seaside. Although that beloved face will not return, I will not forget, because I made a promise to the sky, “Even if I’m alone, even if I’m alone, I will not die.”

ひとりでも
ひとりでも
死にはしないと

“Even if I’m alone, even if I’m alone, I will not die.”

In the land of Your Mileage May Vary, I found this music video so cute that I went to Amazon to look for the CD/DVD single, and was saddened to find that it was a very limited limited edition.

But I have to say, I wouldn’t drink her milkshake. She has excellent taste in potato chips, but that’s just not how you’re supposed to eat them.

[this is the OP song from Kannagi, by the way]

When I upgraded to iTunes 8.0 and turned on the new Genius feature, I discovered that the US iTunes Store has acquired a rather large catalog of J-Pop, including a significant subset of the various Hello!Project groups’ albums and singles. The iTunes Genius analyzed my collection and gleefully pointed out all of the songs that would be perfect for me.

All of which I already owned. In many cases, it was pointing to the exact same song, from the exact same album. Why? Because the purchased albums have metadata that’s written with kanji and kana, and the iTunes versions are all romanized. Er, mostly romanized. Okay, inconsistently romanized. Album and song titles are usually romanized, artist names are all over the map: kana-ized, Hepburn-romanized, Kunrei-romanized, last-name-first, first-name-first, capitalization and white-space optional; fortunately they seem to stick with the same version for multiple albums.

This makes searching entertaining, but this is a big deal, because all of this stuff is at standard iTunes pricing, which is a helluva lot cheaper than import CDs, and just over half the price of the same tracks in the Japanese iTunes Store.

The Japanese store is the source of the peculiar partial romanization, by the way, and in fact when you view it from the US, all of the navigation is translated as well. I remember that when the store first launched, everything was in Japanese, including song titles, so I’m wondering if they’re geographically localizing not just the menus, but also the song metadata. The search system seems to handle pretty much anything you throw at it, so I wonder if Apple was seeing so many American purchases from the Japanese store through gift cards that they went out of their way to accommodate them, first through romanizing the interface, then through importing popular content.

There are some indexing oddities. If you search for “nakazawa yuuko” in the US store, you’ll get her most recent EP and a stub link that should lead to her audiobooks, but that only works if you’re on the Japanese store. I’m guessing that the stores all talk to each other internally, sharing indexes and content, with flags to indicate what content is importable. Given the price difference, new releases are unlikely to show up for a while.

Leave it to trained professionals…

…or, in this case, the idol group Idoling!!!, manufactured by Fuji TV for a weekly variety show. I think the wrestling matches were a fan request…

Warning: they do not lip-sync their songs on the show (live vs studio). You may have already figured this out if you watched the embedded clip…

John McCain comes out:

"Dare I say Abba?" he replied. "Everybody says, 'Ugh. Abba.' Why is that? Abba was the largest-selling record act ever. Nobody likes them, but they sold more records than anybody in the history of the world, including the Beatles. But everybody hates them. You're a no-class guy if you like Abba. Why does everybody go see Mamma Mia!? Hypocrisy! Rank hypocrisy! I'm not embarrassed to say I like Abba."

Hell has a new overlord, and the torments of the damned tear at our ears.

Oh, wait, that’s just Koharu Kusumi’s new single. My bad. I always get her and Satan confused. It’s something about the eyes.

[Update: added amusing machine translation of the lyrics, along with commentary]

Okay, so a link to a link to a link to a Youtube video got me started on this, and now I have six videos of the song セーラー服を脱がさないで.

Apparently, it all started back in 1985, when someone formed the idol group おニャン子クラブ (literally “kitten club”). The title of their debut single was “Please don’t strip off my sailor suit” (school uniform, that is), and their first album included songs like “Teacher, stop that!” and “Oh, no! Molester”. They lasted long enough to grow to over 50 members, and inspire future generations, including Morning Musume.

Videos and lyrics below the fold.

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You’ve left Hello!Project behind. You’ve got a new manager, a contract with a real record label, and tens of thousands of fans had idolgasms just seeing cellphone camera pictures of your recent training trip to LA. You’re positioned to take over the world.

Could you at least pick up a decent dress on the way to the show?

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