Lamenting the lack of 80's Jpop Otaku...

After my experience on the D-addicts site 2 years ago, i think 80's Jpop/Dorama fans are a rare breed indeed. It seems that 98% percent of the fans out there don't know a damned thing outside of what was on last week and what the newest crappy Jpop song is out.
Like if people really think artists like Morning Musume & Ayumi Hamasaki are the best thing since sliced bread then let them rot in the now cesspoolof crappy Japanese Entertainment that exists today.
I do think there must be other real 80's otaku out there like myself but they're real hard to find, but i think it's worth it to try.
I mean my big thing is just to touch base with other fans and hopefully be able to trade stuff to fill in our collections... Like i've got about 2000 or so 80's-90's Jpop albums (CD's,Cassettes & LP's) that i've built up over the last 23 years yet i think there still about another 1000 out there that i would still want to get my paws on.
Somebody said before that i should go to a Japanese media board to find other fans...Well i've tried that and the problem is that they will talk but the chance of actually trading with them is like next to zero. Japanese collectors always take the position of "Oh, you can see what i got.... but you will never see or get it from me" & that really really pisses me off.
I've been collecting since the early 80's and i lived in Tokyo duting the Golden Age of Jpop (1986-1991) but due to people ripping me off and stealing from me, i've lost key parts of my library... Like my library of The Top 10 & Yoru no Hit Studio from the 80's and countless LP's & CD's...all gone.
Luckily i have had some kind traders contact me and share downloaded 80's broadcasts of Top Ten & Yoru no Hit Studio which are just gold to me.
I think at least if there are more like minded otaku out there that live in North America or even Europe and hope for the the chance of still networking is there. Well i can hope.......

I mean there are countless Jpop/Entertainment boards out there but they only deal with the just the most current and trendy shows/music & artists.... Yet, i've only found one that caters to 80's Jpop/Anime Otaku/Fans. Why ? I really don't know.

Good Idols and Bad Japanese Writers don't mix.

Me and the wife like watching old drama's and of course i generally pull out ones that i've either had copied off Japanese satellite or gotten old VHS tapes off J-Yahoo auctions. For the most part i've been lucky and been able to watch some real good ones or at least enjoyable...well at least until recently.

Two unfortunate stinkers we've watched recently were Tokyo Elevator Girl , a 1992 TV Drama with Rie Miyazawa and the Original Minami Kun no Koibito from 1990 starring Hikari Ishida.

The flaws in these shows was not in the acting on part of our beloved idols, but in the crappy writing skills of the supposed writers on these shows. In previous dramas we've seen both Rie & Hikari in, they've been written well for the shows they were in. However in say Tokyo Elevator Girl, Rie is cast as Rika who is a "elevator girl slash greeter" for a major department store. Which is fine enough and the real story is the intertwining relationships between Rika , her best friend and other employees. Without giving away too much unless one is curious enough to watch it. but pretty much boils down to watching Rika observing her friends and colleagues making disasterous personal and relationship choices and then turning right around and repeating them herself and spending half the series chasing one of the most chauvinistic & arrogant males i've ever seen portrayed in a Japanese drama. When we hit the 3rd episode, we were both going WTF !!! but since we started watching it (and i paid $60 to get it off J-Yahoo) we had already invested the time to actually sit through the series which left us both shaking our heads in disbelief. Pretty much for me the only good parts of the series was seeing Rie dressed up in her cute gold elevator girl uniform & hat with black tights & short heels.

The 2nd Drama, the Original 1990 version of Minami Kun no Koibito starring Hikari Ishida was a one shot TV Movie and was of particular interest (other than it had Hikari-chan) because i saw the 1994 TV Series with Yumiko Takahashi and was quite cute until the end of the series.
However the original version was so poorly written,most of the acting excluding Hikari was so bad and wooden and was made to be mildly ecchi (which was very poorly executed) that it made watching it rather painful. I know it was originally based from a manga, whether it was actually a Ecchi manga i'm not sure. The fault in both of these dramas was not in the idols acting but in horrendous writing. The entertainment industry in Japan main job (other than making money) is to promote their talent in the best way possible. It does amaze me that idols manager's and production teams would allow their talent to undertake such unflattering projects.... It kinda just made me remember the "Santa-Fe" photobook Rie did back in the early 90's. There's a bad choice if i ever thought could be done by a idol.

Old Idol Cassettes & Cute Hikari-chan

I did some playing around with a Creative USB Soundbaster card i bought a several years ago for my old Vaio FX-215 Laptop on my Main PC with the idea of actually using it to act as a interface with the old cassette deck we have to transfer off all my old Idol cassettes. Lo and behold it works pretty good. It does'nt work under Adobe Audition 2.0 but it work under Mixcraft. No big deal... I'll WAV it in Mixcraft and clean it up in Audition. Just like my major VHS to DVD transfer project that's been going on for a couple years now, (Only about 200 VHS tapes to go :) ) the 200 or so Idol Audio Casestte tapes is another thing i've been meaning to get to transferring to a digital source. I thinks i should be able to somewhat set it up so i can let the PC record tapes awhile watching TV with my wife and go back to editing it later. Me thinks i really got to get to ordering more Hard Drives that i've been putting off for months now. I figured to would take a few minutes today and throw up another Mizugi Gallery, this time for Hikari Ishida. I actually got a copy of the 1990 Version of Minami Kun no Koibito with Hikari-chan recently so i should really get to watching it soon.

Anyhow, the Gallery link for Hikari-chan is to the right in the Gallery list.

Let Idol Parade begin...

I've been in the net since 1997 and of course i spent a lot of time scouring around for idol pictures and whatnot. And in due course would burn off the images among the other webfinds into CD-Roms. Suffice to say after 10 years now of being on the net i've compiled quite a few pictures of my favorite idols, but the daunting task of actually going through all the cd-roms to sort it all out kinda turned me off for awhile. But i said to myself that " I better do it before the damned cd-roms break down" So i've started to sort them all out and the first of many galleries to come will be for the Jpop cutie Yumiko Takahashi. Like many images back then on the net, not all of them are huge or really big but luckily i do have the photobooks for many off the images there and it's here for archival purposes. Of course, i'll get around to scanning them and posting one of these days.




I've put the link in Gallery section so feel free to check it out. I know that i need to actually put links up in the main idol paradise page,but i can't be bothered to screw around with HTML right now.

Idols...Swimsuits... Oh My !

I remember awhile ago on the JpopMusic Forum there was a quiry about a girl group in the early 90's called "Girlfriend". I had'nt heard of them and did find out from another member as the discussion went on that they were barely a one hit wonder with their single "Namida No Culture Shock" and apparently not very good. Since i'm always on the hunt idol music i don't have i'll probably get it one of these day off J-Yahoo.
Anyways... In a lot auction of old idol mags i got off J-yahoo awhile ago contained a August 1990 issue off Sugar and the cover photoshoot was for the Group we speak of. Since i was planning on archiving all my idol mags & phootbooks online (Now that i've MP3'ed 95 % of my 80's Jpop CD's) i would sit down and put up this swimsuit photoshoot for Girlfriend.



I've put up the full photoshoot Here.

The girls look cute enough & i've always found the brigtly coloured basic Elle one-piece Swimsuits real cute as well. The one girl Natsuyo Mikami looks half-Japanese and vaguely
remember in the JPM conversation that was used a bit as a attracting novelity. Of course this is years before Tsunku did it with varied MoMu Sub Groups, but i guess it did'nt work with GF because i was a real idol freak back then and if they did'nt come up in my Otaku radar they must have come and went real quick.

This week is got a rather nice surprise in the mail from a trader i've been swapping old idol stuff with from Hawaii. In my last E-mail with him i mentioned in passing that i've turned 37 now, (Yeah... Real old idol nut :) ) and he told me that i he did'nt forget about it and he was waiting
for the item to come in the mail to ship to me. He said he had a copy himself and that i should like it. I was honestly figuring he was going to send a DVD burn of a popular movie or maybe a R3 of a old Kadokawa flick. So when i get this oversized package in the mail i was really intrigued
and proceeded to open it up and this is what was there.

Hotwax Complete 1980's Japanese Pops Song & Album Guide.
(Direct Amazon.jp sales link is right below the picture)

Suffice to say i was quite surprised and touched he thought so much of our trading relationship to for one actually give me a gift (Which has never happened before) but one that's right up my alley. It covers most of the major idols (Mostly Female Idols with a couple male idols such as Matchy & Toshi) and some of the one hit wonder girl groups with full discographies.

There's nice little write-up's for each of the major idols but the real attraction to this book (As written on the Obi wrapper) is the 1,500 Full Colour Album & Singles images for all the idols releases contained in their discographies. I know it's gonna come in use when i compile a thousand or so singles for a second ipod and i'll have proper thumbnails for each song, also when
i put up some downloadable songs up on my idol site. Even since i took the plunge and got a 60 Gig Video last summer, it's been great to start loading it up with all my idol cd's and being able to listen and see the album covers in the thumbnails.

Anyways, this generous gift will find a nice place in my idol library and i believe gained more than a good trader, but a real friend. And that's pretty rare on the net...but again just true idol fans got to stick together as we're a rare breed.

I did put the Amazon.jp sales link for the book below the picture and i highly suggest any idol collector to buy it. If you can't navigate the Amazon.jp site to order, no worries. You can order in English :)