lol, “busy schedule”, if you count 3 events between now and next year as busy the yes. ^_^

So somehow i’m going to that cosplay ball thing, fuyucon, and Japan before the end of the year. And there’s me thinking I was going to have a nice quiet cruise into christmas (well, the Japan thing was planned back at the beginning of the year though).

Cosplay ball at the Clapham Grand in London (ugh Clapham is such a dump/trampy area), i’m sure I remember that place having “all you can drink” nights during the week where you’d pay an entry fee and then get free drinks while inside. No doubt that even if they did have such a thing it won’t be happening during this particular event, lol. Also… how comes  some people got stars on their envelopes with the tickets inside… my envelope had no stars stuck to it. T_T *wanted stars*

Fuyucon… well it’s pretty much walking distance, lol. Random JPop music on laptop + 24 hour bar seems to be the agreed consensus for the weekend again ^_^. Swimming pool and sauna included with on-site hotel… fun fun fun. Hmm, now what water based cosplay’s are there…. I guess there was that jellyfish from Kyouran Kazoku Nikki…….

…speaking of cosplay, the cosplay ball should be interesting. (For those of you that know: lol. For those that don’t, the turtle was a clue).

And Japan, mmm, yes, 3.5 weeks from mid-December. Lucky star shrine for new years, and a possible K-On concert (when they announce the dates, and assuming they’re in the right half of December!!). Oh, and this time I won’t forget to eat that damn turtle dish I missed out on last time.

So, first impressions after having had a few driving lessons, and i can safely say there are significant problems with the design of cars…

• Poor design feature number 1: “Power steering”. It clearly lacks the amount of “power” i was expecting. The rotation of the steering wheel should match exactly the turning of the wheels… namely if i turn the wheel 90 degrees to the right, i would now expect the wheels to be pointing as far as they will go right. Now what the hell is “powerful” about having to turn the wheel 1080 degrees to have them pointing all the way to the right? If i’ve turned the steering wheel three bloody full rotations then i would expect the wheels underneath me to have turned three full rotations and some sort of crash to have occurred. I dread to think what non power steering is like… do you have to sit there with a hand crank for 5 mins before the thing turns at all?
• Poor design feature number 2: Gear changing. An automatic seems a bit like owning a mac (namely that it magically does everything for you without your approval, and if you want to do something with your car apple don’t want you doing….. well good luck with that). And a manual is just like installing slackware linux, ancient, outdated, and overcomplicated, but works when done correctly. I don’t particularly want the car deciding what gear it wants to be in, yet using the clutch seems like a royal pain in the ass, there should be something in between… where you control the gears yourself, but changing gear just happens at the flick of a switch… flick switch up gear goes up, flick switch down gear goes down.
• Poor design feature number 3: Accelerating. Now i don’t know whether this is just a “feature” of what i’m learning in, or whether it affects all cars, but why doesn’t the amount you push down on the gas pedal match how much the car accelerates in a smooth 1:1 ratio? It seems like you can push it down some way and have completely nothing happen at all, then after that it suddenly becomes super sensitive and every little millimetre now makes huge jumps in revs. Just seems badly designed to me.

The only other thing i can say is… how the hell can anyone that drives a car stand to play racing games on computers? They’re completely nothing like driving a car *at all*.

Also, mmm, delicious paella:

Tiger prawn, muscles, chicken, sherry, veg stock, peas, tomato, peppers, onion, garlic, saffron, paprika, parsley, lemon, paella rice. *_*

(click for fullsize)

Right well now that i’ve finished throwing obscenities around hello online (incidentally, how exactly does a “temporary ban” with an expiry date of 1st Jan 1970 actually work……….. lol!) and various other places, i guess i’ll make a post here.

So this is the official announcement:

Regarding 7th Generation Morning Musume Member “Kusumi Koharu”

At the final performance of of the “Morning Musume Concert Tour 2009 Autumn ~ Nine Smile ~” (Dec 6), 7th generation Morning Musume member Kusumi Koharu will be graduating from Morning Musume, and from Hello!Project. During the 4 years and 4 months she was in Morning Musume, she has learnt the basics as a singer and a talent. And next year, she will turn 18. She’s come to learn the base of what it takes to work in a group. And at the same time, she’s been working as “Tsukishima Kirari”. Based on seeing all of her work so far, as a producer, I felt I wanted to let her have a solo career, so decided to have her graduate. Having said that, she won’t be making a singing debut or any other kind of debut right away, and some of the plans are still a bit rough, but Kusumi will continue to work hard for now, while privately taking various lessons. Her own hope is to be a model, so I think she’ll be aiming towards a new direction, and taking new steps. So everybody who has supported her so far, please continue to give your support to Kusumi Koharu, and to Morning Musume. Thank you very much!

2009-9-19
Morning Musume Producer
Tsunku♂

Koharu’s comment:
To all Hello!Project Official Fanclub Members

Thank you for your continued support. I’ve been with Morning Musume for around 4 years now, and at the December 6 Morning Musume concert at Tokyo Kouseinen Kinkaikan, I will be graduating from Morning Musume, and from Hello!Project. One of the things I want to do from now is to try modelling. I have been active in Morning Musume so far, but now as Kusumi Koharu, I want to move forward, facing my different dreams and goals. Please continue to give me your support.

Now there’s definitely something odd there, consider the following:

a) She’s never once mentioned wanting to do “modelling” in the past. In fact in a question a little while back about what they wanted to do after they leave she answered with things such as dancing, and acting in CM’s or drama… nothing about modelling.

b) Why did they put her in the 2010 calendar if Tsunku knew he wanted her to leave in December?

So, it was obviously a recent decision on someone’s part. It has also been noted how “out of it” she seemed on that recent Tokyo Friend Park TV show (namely when everyone’s begging on the floor for the host to let her win her game, she was the only one not doing so, looking like she didn’t care).

So my guess is that either Tsunku wasn’t happy with Koharu’s progress as a singer and without Kirarin Revolution songs to make him money decided he didn’t want her anymore, or Koharu wasn’t happy with Tsunku’s future plans for her. Either way her wanting to do modelling is bullshit. It’s painfully obvious that her/her management have just discussed that the best way for her to stay in the public eye post-Morning Musume (for the short term at least) is to be a model, her singing ability is no good for a solo career, her acting is pretty naff too, thus they likely told her she’d only be good as a model. And to make it look like it was a sincere decision they had her announce it as something she “wants” to do.

Meh, oh well, guess I don’t have to be polite about all of Morning Musume anymore…

Gaki is a chain-smoking drug mule, it’s only a matter of time before she’s caught, Sayu can’t sing and has all the personality (and usefulness) of a one dimensional hair brush, Reina’s singing voice is about as bland and average as one can find, Eri barely exists at all she’s so un-noticeable most of the time, Mittsi needs to stop taking those “make me thin” pills and throwing up after eating, it’s really not healthy.

The only 3 I can’t say a bad word about are; Linlin (who is wasted and totally unappreciated in Morning Musume), Junjun, and Ai (who is really the only person carrying the band at all), no doubt she’ll still be there in her zimmerframe though, their profits would fall through the floor if she left. Wouldn’t want that now would we Tsunku♀ $$$ ?

Ah well, here’s a picture of some melon:

Also, “modelling” means far more handshaking events for photobook releases, lol. And likely far less nazi security, yay! ^_^

lol.

So i finally gave in and got an iPhone:

All i can say is: how did i ever live without one? The ability to have internet access wherever you are, a gps tied to google maps wherever you are, the ability to search for anything you could ever possibly want to find yellow pages style and then get directions to it… wherever you are! And i have to admit O2′s pay as you go tariff’s are pretty cool… i barely use my phone for phone calls, only text messages… top up £10 and get 300 free text messages, lol, that’s £30 worth of text messages for free. Far better than vodafone. Only bad thing i’ll say is that O2′s network coverage seems a bit more flakey than vodafone, but oh well. And this Parallel Kingdom game is pretty fun too, as is the app that identifies planets and constellations when you point it at the sky.

As for, TV Tokyo:

(Koha is by far the best member ^_^)

They broadcast a 45 minute documentary about Morning Musume’s LA visit. I’m sure most people that were at AX managed to spot themselves several times. Doesn’t look like there was any footage of the breakfast thing in there, so i’m still hoping for a DVD of some sort with everything on it!

And finally, the relatively impromptu hello project meetup the other day in London was pretty funny. Originally intending to be some sort of singing Karaoke in Japanese for a few hours with some beers, but their Japanese machines were broken or something, so we had to settle for English songs instead. My setlist consisted of some classics (me and Tom were just bringing down the tone amongst the good singing from chococat and tasuki_daisuki, lol):

The Tellitubbies
Bob the Builder
Barbie Girl (duet)
Chocolate Salty Balls
The Time Warp
The Monster Mash
Vindaloo (duet)
Too Sexy For My Shirt (duet)
First of the Gang to Die

The only thing that was disappointing (apart from the complete lack of Japanese music of course) was the lack of Mr Blobby, how could they not have it! >_< (and no Dragostea din tei either, fail)

Anyway, if anyone really dislikes their ears enough that they want to torture themselves, there are some video’s of the singing up on this page on HelloBlog, lol. Best song of the night goes to CDevil though singing “Who Let The Dogs Out” with a hilarious Jamaican accent. I was in almost in tears by the end of it, sadly i think we were all laughing too much to film it.

Bowling in trocadero afterwards (and losing at DDR ), though they totally rigged our lane for our first game and made me come 2nd instead of first. Made up for it in the 2nd game by winning thoroughly though. A fun day indeed, though my head was not happy the next morning.