One of the songs on my workout mix is Morning Musume’s I Wish. I hate Tsunku’s background vocals, but otherwise it’s a fun song, and a cute video (albeit a bit confusing to anyone who hasn’t seen their weekly television show…). The lyrics made it a popular concert-closer, especially for “graduation” concerts.

Last night, though, I suddenly realized that not only has the group turned over completely since this video was made, only two of them are still actively producing new singles and videos.

In order of appearance:

1. Ai Kago: career suicide. Her smoking scandal benched her for a year, and just as they started the publicity campaign to bring her back into the family, she got caught returning from a hot springs resort with a notorious womanizer. Latest twist: her mom is now promising to pose nude for a photobook.
2. Maki Gotou: abruptly retired at the peak of her solo career, allegedly due to burnout.
3. Natsumi Abe: successful solo artist.
4. Mari Yaguchi: kicked out of the group, still in the family. Popular television host and actress.
5. Hitomi Yoshizawa: Retired for family reasons, then resumed a light performance schedule when Tsuji's sudden ilness turned out to be...
6. Nozomi Tsuji: retired, married, new mother.
7. Rika Ishikawa: leader of spinoff group Biyuuden.
8. Yuuko Nakazawa: actress and occasional solo artist.
9. Kei Yasuda: recently resurfaced as an actress, still in the family.
10. Kaori Iida: solo career on hiatus due to pregnancy and subsequent marriage.

Kago’s the only one who really burned her bridges with Hello!Project. Most of the rest still show up occasionally in a concert, a one-shot group, or a few episodes of Uta Doki.

Now available from Amazon.

[Update: link added for the back of the map]

One thing I couldn’t find online before the trip was a good map of places to go in Akihabara. The ones I did find were either inaccurate, incomplete, not to scale, required local knowledge, and/or were drawn with complete disregard for the Western notion that North should either be at the top or clearly marked.

The time I spent marking things up in Google Earth did help me find a few places, but it doesn’t produce useful printouts, so I couldn’t bring it with me as PDFs.

Fortunately, less than ten seconds after we stepped out of the station, a pretty girl in a maid costume handed me this (3MB JPEG). The back side of it has more ads and a sorted list of shops and their block numbers.

This is apparently produced by the folks at Akiba Guide.

[Update: Oh, yes, North is to the right, and in Google Maps the area looks like this.]

[Update: just for fun, I dropped this map into Google Earth, and it’s very well-scaled. There’s some distortion around the south edge, most likely to get everything to fit, but most of the map overlays so well that you can easily locate individual shops.

Also, someone has made a set of Google Maps pushpins that covers some of the highlights of Akihabara in English. There are also two decent ones (1, 2) if you can read some Japanese. The first one is a collection of maid cafes, the other is more general.]

Steven has declared a unit of measurement. Sometime during the blur that was my vacation in Japan, I found something that I think measures up:

In addition to her high-school uniform, she enjoys busting out of a yukata, a miko outfit, frilly western dresses, and lacy lingerie. She’s the oldest of four sisters, and their Parents Are Traveling Abroad. And Our Hero has just moved in with them, having been Sent Down From The Mountains by his father to Become Stronger in the ways of the samurai.

She’s his new teacher.

Less than an hour after moving in, he manages to get into a Compromising Position with all three of her younger sisters at the same time.

Second sister is a bleached-blonde modern girl who’s sensitive about her small bust. Third sister is a sexually aggressive busty meganekko Gal doujin manga artist and junior high-school student. Fourth sister is a fourth-grader, who doesn’t appear to be a harem loli, fortunately, even if she does get dragged into the Wacky Hijinks.

“Thank you for removing yourself from the gene pool.”

There are two possibilities in this story: either he was one of the dumbest people on the face of the Earth, or he was making a “goodbye cruel world” call on his cellphone as he ignored the flashing lights, walked around the lowered crossing gates, and stepped in front of a moving train.

When purchasing sake in a Japanese grocery store, read the label carefully, if you have any ability to read Japanese at all. If, for instance, the English label on the shelf reads “nigori”, check the Japanese label to make sure that it isn’t actually namazake (生酒).

Why? Because while most good sake should be served slightly chilled, namazake must be kept in the fridge right up until the moment you’re ready to drink it. It’s not pasteurized, and if it gets warm for even a few hours, the live yeasts turn it into basically-undrinkable carbonated mush.

What’s different about the new version of Tadashii Kanji Kakitori-kun? First, instead of stopping at the 1,006 Kyouiku kanji, it includes the full 1,945 Jouyou set.

Next, the core writing module is considerably better. One frustration with the first edition was that it only taught shape and stroke order; if you didn’t remember what the character meant or sounded like, you had to look it up somewhere else. The new version doesn’t have the search capabilities of a real kanji dictionary, but does have readings, meanings, and vocabulary words. It also adds detailed critiques of your characters, graphically showing your errors.

They’ve also completely redone the drill and test modules, for the needs of a more sophisticated audience. This is the only place where it’s not as useful for a foreign student, because the previous edition broke up the jukugo drills by grade, and this one lumps all of the grade-school kanji into one set. The Kanji Kentei prep section is now more of a timed test than a drill, although it’s still divided by grade.

I’m currently ripping through the kyouiku kanji in the new one, so I can start on the junior-high section, but I’m going to continue working through the drills on the old one.

There are some nice restaurants in the Kintetsu mall near Kyoto Station. While perusing the menu outside of one of them, the muzak system turned up a familiar-sounding tune. I just couldn’t place it. Dave didn’t recognize it at all, and then it hit the refrain, and was revealed to be this.

The next time we went by that place, they’d cranked the silliness higher, with a muzak version of this.

There’s a perfectly good reason why the Japanese cowboy is para-para dancing. If you were hanging out with these Shibuya gals, wouldn’t you?