Some Changes

So as I have been painfully late with pretty much all my LIVE FLIGHT reports, I thought I'd spare a few words to explain what I have been up to in the past few months. Thus, here are some mention worthy things from the ridiculously busy life I have been leading recently:

LIVE CASTLE 2011 -Anniversary-

~I was there~

On this day last year, I was enjoying a little piece of heaven in LIVE CASTLE -Queen's Night- with -King's Night- still ahead of me. That weekend will always remain very important to me - it was very special to Nana herself and also to me. Thus this post to celebrate its anniversary!

私の宝物

BOOM! Just hit 7,777 tweets on Twitter!

As celebration, a slightly sentimental Nana-related post and maybe a bit silly. I do apologize. But...

Japan, here I come!

Well, today I move to Japan.

I'm nervous and excited and everything else possible, really.
And I am sad about leaving the things behind that I have to and sometimes wonder why I need to care so much about everything.
But! In any case, today is the day! Look forward to reading about my adventures in Japan once I have settled down in my little apartment.

And now, without further ado....

Allons-y!

Preparations for Japan

After a couple of months of nearly constant stressing, it is rather unbelievable that I currently find myself in a situation where I have a lot more sorted out by now than I ever thought I could possibly have. So here's a little update on where I'm currently standing.

In Honor of June 5th

~LIVE JOURNEY~

This day is pretty special to me, as on this day last year I went to my first Nana live ever. LIVE JOURNEY in Niigata. It still feels like a dream. I really couldn't believe it, that it was actually happening, not before Nana showed up on stage. And even then, it took a few songs for it to register in my brain - that I was actually there. And that's when I cried silent happy tears.  June 5th will definitely always be a very special day for me, because of Nana and also because.. 

This day a year ago, was the day one girl started making her dreams into reality.

NANA MIZUKI LIVE CASTLE 2011 -King's Night-

-King's Night- へようこそ!

This time, releasing LIVE CASTLE entry number 2 in time for Valentine's! xD Okay so, I know I said I would definitely be faster with this entry than I was with -Queen's Night-... but yeah, that didn't happen. I am very sorry. In fact I took a lot longer with this...... wahh... I truly cannot apologize enough. m(_ _)m  Work leaves me so tired that I don't have the energy to do anything sensible afterward. Plus a lot of other shit has been going on... BUT ANYWAY, here it is! So, enjoy~~!

<<WARNING! This is going to be a very very long entry... AGAIN>>

Also again, this is not a very objective account - it's a personal account. So I will praise all songs from the bottom of my heart. :3

NANA MIZUKI LIVE CASTLE 2011 -Queen's Night-

-Queen's Night- へようこそ!

Well as a special celebration of the New Year, here is my LIVE CASTLE -Queen's Night- entry finally! Only like a month late, whoops. I hope I'll be a little faster with -King's Night-, I'll definitely try to be.. Anyways, best of luck to Nana on Kouhaku Uta Gassen today! And now then...

<<WARNING! This is going to be a very very long entry, so make yourself comfortable and make sure you have some time before reading it. xD>>

Also as a point of note, this is not a very objective account - it's a personal account. So be prepared for me to mention how I loved hearing every song live in my account of all the songs haha and stuff like that. Also on another point of note, I tried to write about things exactly the way I thought that night. So some revelations on stuff and whatnot will be appearing on the -King's Night- entry and not here.

Japan Travel Journal [Day 1]

So during my first day in Japan (Friday 2nd), I got this great idea of making a blog post for each of my days there separately and also to make it even more fun I'd write the day entry at the end of the day itself. Yeaaaah, was never gonna happen. xD I was too busy enjoying myself, which is definitely a good thing! It was a very successful trip. So anyway, here is the first day entry, a week or so late. :P Btw, I must apologize in advance on how late all of these entries will be, I am trying to write these little by little during the short periods of time when I am awake before/after work. >.<

So, I arrived in Japan a few hours later than I was supposed to, due to technical issues with the plane. How fun. So needless to say, I was feeling pretty messed up. I managed to get on the Narita Express without incident though luckily. On the Express they were showing train info and I was shitting my pants because the JR line that I was supposed to take from Tokyo, Yamanote line, seemed to not be running because of an obstacle thing. Well tbh I wasn't sure whether to worry about complications or to laugh about obstacle THING. xD Fortunately, the line started running again before I got as far as Tokyo.

My first trip to Japan!

Okay, so I'm super late with this entry too. ごめんなさい....! （；_・）
Though I would like to say it wasn't my fault.....
Oh yeah, I was actually thinking of starting to write something in Japanese in all my entries in order to practice, but we'll see if that'll catch wind.

Anyway! I was planning on taking a phrase book and my Kanji book along with me on my trip, so if nothing else I could at least do something useful during my flight there, but when mom saw them in my bag she exclaimed "No studying on this trip - this is vacation!" and thus I left them at home. Which was probably a good thing. I need to learn how to chill out... 

Also, it's curious how I've been quite unbreakable when shit hit the fan in the weeks before my trip. Like, after getting over the initial shock of the car breaking down on the Scotland trip I thought "Who cares, I'll pull through and then I'm going to Japan!!" and during landing on my flight to Japan I got a really bad ache in my right ear (been over 12 years since I last had that) that went all the way down to my jaw and I thought the right side of my face was gonna be ripped open, and in the midst of all this agony I just thought "This I can handle, I am almost in Japan hell yes!!" Fun times!

Now to the main attraction...!

What's to come...!

HELL YES!!!

Holy shit - long time no see! I bet you're all thinking now hell yes epic entry coming, but no - my entry today has a few purposes without being very interesting in itself. The first purpose being just to inform that I haven't died or anything, I've just been very busy with moving back to Finland from the UK and all that jazz and the second purpose being to give a heads up on the awesome stuff to come.

I AM GOING TO JAPAN TOMORROW! HELL YES!

Nana's Charity Program + 30 Day Song Challenge: Day 08

Nana <3

Holy hell, I am stunned - Nana's charity program was just simply amazing. I was expecting the heart-felt 7月7日, since that is one of the usual songs Nana sings accompanied by her harpist friend, Mika, but Innocent Starter and SUPER GENERATION were a surprise and were so very damn beautiful! The program started with Nana offering her condolences to the victims of the disaster and you could really see how sad she was. During her songs you could sense how much she cared and hell I was so touched that I might've even cried if stupid things didn't keep interrupting my lovely experience. Grrr. Anyway - Nana you are so pretty! (*゜Д゜*) I'm glad she ended with a happy song like SUPER GENERATION, as otherwise she probably would've cried herself. At the end of it all she didn't even give us an ending speech, but instead just whispered a very very sincere "Arigatou" which totally blew me away.

The new single SCARLET KNIGHT

I know I already went on about this on Facebook, but I don't care! I'm going to go on about it here too - it's so awesome. I tend to be very skeptical towards new songs of the artists I like, as quite many of them have let me down, like for example, I used to like the unique style of Shakira and Avril Lavigne a lot, but the way they've been going with their latest albums they've just basically invaded the main stream which really doesn't do it for me at all. Bleh is all I have to say!

But yesh one of Nana's new singles was aired on the smile-gang the other night, and thankfully the radio rip of it can be found on YouTube, hallelujah! I have been saved from an agonizing few weeks (still agonizing, but not as much as it could've been).  Nana, just like Hikki with her batch of new songs in her Single Collection Vol. 2 earlier, has succeeded in impressing me. SCARLET KNIGHT is a very unique and powerful song that just screams Nana from start to finish. Needless to say, I am quite in love. Sadly my Japanese is not proficient enough to make out the whole song yet, but judging from the parts I do understand it seems like a very fitting song to be released at this time. I am sure it getting to hear this song has helped and brought hope to her fans across Japan. They definitely need something wonderful at a time like this, and Nana delivered for sure.

A Candle for Japan.

Well I just felt like I needed to write an entry about Japan.

It's been ripping me apart reading about everything that's been happening there the past couple of days and I've been greatly saddened by the fact that there is nothing I can do to help. It really leaves you feeling so hopeless when you realize how powerless you are against natural phenomena. I've been thinking about it a lot today and wanted to say that even though I cannot go there and help with the rescues and such, there is one thing I can do - and that is to show that I care, that I really do care. I'm going to look into how I could donate something from my limited student budget tomorrow. I think I saw a link for that on Twitter earlier today.

My whole heart and all my prayers go to Japan.

And I also have to say that everyone who says something as stupid as "serves them right for Pearl Harbor" is a retard. Seriously.

The Place of Happiness.

I figured my crazy day with the Japanese deserved an entry, so here it is.

My Japanese teacher, Kinue, asked me to show her nephew around town when he came to visit, so I agreed as having a variety of activities to do does really good for me and the state of mind I've been in lately. So, on that day I was waiting for them in town and when they arrived, Kinue just pushed her nephew towards me and said "He doesn't speak much English, gomenasai, I'm going shopping" then left. Haha, bless her.

He says: I'm sorry, my English is not very good...

My thoughts: OMG, someone who speaks English like Nana! KAWAII!

Top 10 Obsessions

So of course right after I say that I'll do a top 10 list each week, things come up that make me a couple of weeks late. Thank you Heathrow and Christmas. :P But yes, now I am back on track! Hopefully..

So yeah, I decided I'd do a suggested list every other week and in between do one of my own. So, this week's list has been suggested by Chris, and the topic is obsessions. Basically things that make me go like this: 

Hiiiiiigh tension!

And like this:

Hauuu, omochikaeriiiii~!

So yeah, behold - the list!

第６１回ＮＨＫ紅白歌合戦

I am so happy that Nana made it into this annual Japanese music show, Kōhaku Uta Gassen, that's shown on every New Year's Eve again this year! Last year was her first year on the show and she got picked again - how great is that? I can't imagine how happy she must be right now (She wrote in her blog that it came as a complete surprise to her and she cried of joy, aww <3). Also: Nana + celebration cake! :D

Admittedly I didn't even know such a show existed until today when I read this:

Nana Mizuki, AKB48, L'Arc-en-Ciel in New Year's Kōhaku

The concept seems quite interesting - two teams, Red Team and White Team, made up of popular Japanese artists go head to head in a song contest. I shall later on be educating myself by watching last year's show (since Nana was on it, how could I not watch it?) and then I can probably explain in more detail the flow of things. From what I've read today already though it does seem like a very fun idea.

Anyways, I hope Nana's team wins this year! :)