リジーです

Did I ever tell you I love rap? I love that everyone is rapping in this song. But I just didn't think Sho-kun would take the melodious rap and give the real(?) rap parts to Nino and Matsujun. And Nino's rap pitch is so low! It's so weird listening to that, since you know, he's usually high-pitched and loud lol. And why homie though, Sho-kun?

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Enjoy! ^_^

This song seems to be the crowd favorite and I definitely agree. (But Japanese use metric system so why do they use "miles"? LOL) It's so simple (only has the same 5 chords played over and over except the very last part), yet it's so beautiful. And Ohno-kun did a great job dividing the lines between the members. Sasuga Riida!

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Enjoy! ^_^

This was requested by some friends. I actually handwrote it for them and I was gonna post it last month, but I kept procrastinating lol. So here we go.

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Enjoy! ^_^

During my high school and college years, I posted quite a lot of chords upon requests in my other social networking accounts. Since I don't really use those accounts anymore, I'm just going to repost some of the chords here. For the first one, I choose Hikari by Utada Hikaru, which was also the theme song for Kingdom Hearts. I know the English version of this song exists, but I like the Japanese version better. And even though this song was released 14 years ago, it's still one of my favorites :-)

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Enjoy! ^_^

For some reason, Eito's Samurai Song has been stuck in my head since yesterday. And since I was at my brother's place earlier, I tried to play it on his guitar. It sounded pretty weird. Okay, let me explain. There are a lot of slash chords in this song. I'm so used to hear the chords as they sound like in the song, and that's also how I usually play this song on the piano. But since I don't know how to play any advanced guitar chords, I always ignore all the slash and just play the regular chords lol. That's why it sounded weird earlier. My brother actually taught me some slash chords before, but I thought they were hard, so I never really bothered to play them again =p

Anyway, here are the chords.

(Thanks to otakara_maru for letting me use the romaji lyrics!)

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Happy playing! ^_^

I just watched some performance clips from V6's 20th anniversary concert. I can't believe they sang Change the World. It was so nostalgic and I got emotional. It was the second V6 song I knew, but it was the one that brought back the most memories. My brothers and I used to watch Inuyasha when we were kids, and we always sang this song passionately whenever it came on. It was one of our favorite anime songs. I can't believe it was released like 15-16 years ago. Has it really been that long? Gee, time sure flies. But I still remember all the words to it! Yeah, I surprised myself too, since this is not what I listen to regularly. I listened it on youtube once some time last year after seeing them on Arashi ni Shiyagare, but that's it. I don't remember when I last listened to it before that. This is just like that Backstreet Boys performances on Miss USA few months ago. I didn't know they were gonna perform there. Suddenly they were on the stage singing my favorite songs, and I could sing along to all of them. Oh, and most of the audience could sing along too! Well, I guess it's a given. Their popularity was no joke back then. Anyway, it seems like my brain only works for these kind of things. There's no way I can remember important stuff from years ago.

Back to V6, my other favorite performance is Kimi ga Oomoidasu Boku wa Kimi wo Aishiteiru Ddarou Ka. They sang it a capella! I gotta watch it again with earphones later. It was so good. But I'm disappointed the person who uploaded this doesn't include In The Wind and Brand New World. In The Wind was the very first V6 song I knew, and the one that introduced me to them. And Brand New World is another song they sang for Inuyasha. (I swear Inuyasha had one of the best soundtracks. It introduced me to Do As Infinity, which later becomes one of my favorite bands) I need to see those two performances to complete the nostalgia trip. Please don't tell me they didn't sing those songs in this concert. I'm gonna be so bummed. I gotta look for the full concert later.

PS: This is random, but I've always thought that damn Boys over Flowers OST sounds kinda similar to Change the World. I mean the part where it goes "Almost paradiiiseeee...." and etc. I never know the rest of the songs because they usually just play that part in variety shows. But I think that's the chorus? The whole chorus (or whatever it is) always reminds me of Change the World. They're not really similar, but the feeling is kinda similar in a way. Still, I don't like that the soundtrack of a crappy drama always reminds me of one of my favorite childhood songs.

When I was teaching piano a few days ago, I heard someone playing a familiar piece in the room next to mine. It sounded so familiar, but I couldn't figure out what it was. It took me like 5-10 mins to finally figure it out. (I tried to remember it during the lesson lol) It was Joe Hisaishi's One Summer's Day from Spirited Away. Ahhh... I love that piece. I can't believe I couldn't recognize it right away. Maybe it's because I haven't listened to it in a very long time. So I listened to it on youtube when I got home. I have this habit of scrolling the comments when a youtube video only has audio. So I read the comments while I hummed along to the tunes, and I was so surprised to find out that the Spirited Away's animator died last May. I didn't know how I missed this news, but it was so sad. Spirited Away is one of my favorite animated movies. The animation is so beautiful, especially the one where Chihiro was going to the sixth station. It's A+, and forever my favorite. And apparently she was also the animator of some other Ghibli movies. Since all Ghibli movies have gorgeous animations, I believe this is such a huge loss, for them and also for us.

I actually haven't watched a lot of Ghibli movies. I know, it's a shame. I've only ever watched Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Ponyo. And I only got to watch Ponyo few years ago, when the kid I babysat was watching it. I blame my parents for not introducing me to more Ghibli movies. They only made me watch Disney movies. While Disney is also great, it's not the same as Ghibli. Ghibli has better stories and animations. I like that the stories revolve around a little girl and there's no romance involved. Meanwhile, Disney loves princess stories. It's always about a princess falling in love with a prince. Like Danny from The Mindy Project said, they wouldn't even have a story without their princes (except for maybe like 2-3 of them). I like Pixar movies tho. When I was in middle school, my older brother told me to just watch Pixar movies because their movies always have good storylines unlike the other Disney studios. And I think he's right.

I've been seeing a lot of Ghibli posts on tumblr. Almost all of them seem so sad and/or hit too close to home. So I intend to watch every one of them. I'm thinking of starting with Hayao Miyazaki's movies first. (Btw, I'm still not over his retirement) I have Howl's Moving Castle downloaded, but I haven't got a chance to watch it. I'm so surprised that KimuTaku is one of the voice actors. Because when I was reading the wikipedia pages of Ghibli movies, I didn't recognize any of the voice actors, except a very few of them. But I really didn't expect to see KimuTaku's name there. I guess it's because the image of him as a drama king is still so strong in my head lol. Anyway, I'm not sure when I'm gonna finish this watchlist. They have a total of 20-ish movies. So I still have a long long way to go.

When I first looked at the list of this dorama season, I was like "Yay, there are two food dramas this season." But when I read the synopsis, I wasn't quite sure about Otoko Meshi. I mean, it's about food and yakuza. I didn't think those two things would go together well. So I was thinking of skipping this drama. But then somebody picked up this drama. Since I've been curious about it anyway (and I also love food-related shows), I decided to watch it. And I quite liked it. It's one of the shorter dramas, only about 20 min long. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, because it means that we only get a little bit of food porn (that's kinda a bummer because that's the point of food shows), but on the other hand, we don't spend much time on the yakuza part. Well, as long as they can make it work (and not boring), that's okay, I guess.

The yakuza part is pretty weird, just like I thought. But because it's comical, it kinda makes it less weird, I think. They spent the first half focused on the yakuza arc, which was understandable, because this was the first ep and they needed to provide backstory and introduction. Once the setup was complete, we finally got a little bit of food porn. I was a bit disappointed tho, because the food in the opening sequence looked way better. Maybe it was just because they didn't have a lot of ingredients in this ep (they only used leftovers). But it does look a lot better in the preview of the next ep, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm not too sure where the yakuza arc will go from here, but I hope it won't ruin the lightness of this drama. Because when I'm watching food shows, I just wanna relax and enjoy the food porn, without thinking of any other unnecessary arcs.

What a strong premiere week! Well, it's kinda expected. This is written by Song Jae Jung, who wrote Nine (which is the best written drama ever in my opinion) and Queen In-Hyun's Man (one of my favorites). Everyone who's seen those two dramas will agree with me that she's one of the best writers out there. But I'm not gonna lie. I was a little worried W wouldn't be up to my expectation, because the last drama she wrote (The Three Musketeers) wasn't that good. I'm glad she's back on track again. And the whole production team is so solid. Even though I'm not really familiar with the PD, I think the cinematography is pretty (although not as pretty as Uncontrollably Fond). And I definitely love the animation between manhwa and the real world. I think it's so cool. And I approve the choice of color palette. It's really pretty. It's kinda similar to One More Happy Ending, which also aired on MBC btw. Hmm... Is it a coincidence? Anyway, the color palette really pleases my eyes. I'm tired of seeing weird and/or washed out color palettes (yes tvN, especially you). So this is like an unexpected gift to me. And I just found out that the music director is the one from Signal! Whaaattttt? Signal is almost flawless in every aspect (writing, directing, acting, music, you name it), and it will most likely be the best drama of the year. I still remember how the background music gave me the chills during intense scenes. And they still nail it during serious and intense scenes in W. Lighter and funny scenes are pretty much the same in every drama, so I'm not gonna comment on that. But they did a great job overall. All of them. What a great writer/PD/music director combination!

When I first heard about the plot, I thought it was a bit similar to Heroes Reborn. There are two worlds, and somebody goes into another world (the world of a game in Heroes, and the world of a manhwa in W). Even though the stories are different, I can tell W is definitely better written. I love that Kang Cheol is a pretty unreal character, like he should be, because he's actually a character in a manhwa and doesn't exist in the real world. I mean, he used to be a world-class athlete, but after all of his family got murdered, he had to quit and also spent some time in jail. After he was proven innocent, he worked hard, and now he's a successful and super rich CEO. Pretty unreal (and dramatic), right? And I love that we get to know him with a voiceover from Yeon Joo, like a narrator doing an introduction of a character. It shows that Yeon Joo is the one in the real world, and Kang Cheol is just a manhwa character. And it actually makes something else great; Yeon Joo knows (almost) everything about Kang Cheol and the manhwa world. Well, it might be a little creepy, like when she accidentally confronted him about something he said about her, when she wasn't supposed to know about it, because she just read it in the manhwa. But I love that she unintentionally helps him understand himself by saying things she read in the manhwa. I'm sure that's one of the reasons why she's "the key to his life". As cheesy as it sounds, he didn't say it because he fell for her. She understands him more than himself. And she saved his life twice. And she will definitely keep saving him, especially from her dad. I agree with him that she will be the only one who can tell him the reason for his existence. We don't know yet what makes her dad wanna kill Kang Cheol, but I'm sure she won't let it happen. Not only because she's a fan of the manhwa and his character, she also thinks that Kang Cheol is a real person (therefore killing him would be a murder). I'm not sure myself if a manhwa character that comes to life isn't a real person, because it's certain that these characters begin to write the stories themselves, and the manhwa world is not under the writer's control anymore. And the ending of ep 2 kinda implies that Kang Cheol is becoming his own person. He escaped the accident that was drawn to kill him and became self-aware. He even asked "Who are you?" to the writer. So does that make him a real person? Maybe, I guess?

I love that this writer still keeps some of the things from her previous works. Like a strong, quirky female lead (like in Queen In-Hyun's Man). It's so nice seeing the heroine saving the hero, and not vice versa. And the whole sequence of her fast-forwarding to 2 months later was hilarious. Especially when she was in Kang Cheol's car, and of course the slap and kiss. I laughed so hard. Imagine being someone in the real world and reading her thought bubbles in the manhwa lol. And she's kinda like Kim Boong Do (also from Queen In-Hyun's Man). Despite being transported to a different world so suddenly, she can quickly get a grasp of how things work in the manhwa world, and knows what she needs to do. Oh, and she's only inside the manhwa world for 30 minutes. Just like the time-travel in Nine. I love it. This drama is off to a very great start. I hope it will stay awesome until the end.

After 2-3 years of watching kdramas exclusively, I've started to get back to jdramas again. The main reason is because I'm getting tired of romcoms, or romance in general. Well, actually my depression is also one of the triggers, but that's not the point of this post. Kdramas are full of romance, and Koreans sure do loveeeee romance. Even in cop shows or any other mystery/thriller genres, the focus is pretty much on the romance between the leads, while the actual plot is usually meh. I'm actually not sure myself why I'm watching so many romcom kdramas when I don't even like romance story in general. Peer pressure, I guess? During my freshman year, literally all my friends were obsessed with kdramas. They were all talking about the "it" drama at the time, and I couldn't follow the conversation. Although I grew up watching Asian dramas, I never watched more than 2 airing dramas, and I never watched them all year long continuously. So at the time, I wasn't watching any Asian dramas, instead, I was watching tons of US shows. And since I was never that big of a fan of kdramas, I wasn't really sure of what they meant when they were talking about kdramas in general. But I didn't really care. I was already busy with school and hundreds of shows I was watching anyway. But in the summer, I didn't have a lot of classes. And all my shows were on hiatus. So I decided to watch some kdramas and jdramas. When fall quarter started, the only drama I was watching was a jdrama. But I couldn't talk to anyone about it, since nobody watched it. So since then, I started watching less and less jdramas. And after my graduation, somehow I only watched kdramas exclusively and started to watch less US shows. Long story short, I started to get bored with kdramas last year. It was always the same romcom trope, with a lot of unnecessary angst (and tears), and not enough (good) comedy. Moreover, 2015 was a dull year for kdramas. A lot of kdrama fans were struggling to find good dramas, especially during the first half of the year. So I slowly picked up more US shows, and eventually, jdramas too. It was a really good change. I needed it. US shows and jdramas have good thriller/mystery shows, which are more relevant to my interest. And they don't focus on the romance. If they do have romance, it's usually more like subtle romance. And I also love that the people who are watching it actually cares about the plot. While in kdramas, most people just talk about the ships. No one really cares about the plot. And I'm tired of seeing that.

I had an unintentional hiatus from kdramas during April and May. I don't know if it was because "Signal" raised the bar too high and nothing could top that, or I was just done and needed a little break. In any case, I dropped the two shows I was watching because the plot was really bad and not moving anywhere. And there was no other shows that interested me at the time (and I had decided to avoid romcoms for a while). Anyway, during my little hiatus, my love for jdramas and jvariety grew a lot bigger. I started to blog them daily, get obsessed over them, and search for updates very often. Basically the stuff I used to do with kdramas. Meanwhile, I skipped most of kdrama posts on my tumblr dash, and only checked for updates like once a week. But I'm not completely over kdramas. I don't think I'd be able to completely get away from them. Watching kdramas has kinda become a habit, so it's gonna feel weird if I stop watching them forever. I've been watching them again since June. I finally have some dramas that interest me. But I'm still avoiding romcoms as much as possible tho.