//beconfused » hikaru utada

Hikaru Utada has fun with Nintendo DS

Mr. Dew — Mon, 28 May 2007 17:22:38 +0000

Utada Hikaru Nintendo DS commercials exhibed in Japan in 2004. Note they used the song “Easy Breezy” from her english language CD “Exodus”, available in English, American and Japanese stores. I like the beginning of Easy Breezy and thought it would be good to put the front part as a ringtone or something. This is quite a long advertisement though.

Utada Hikaru Nintendo DS Commercials

Okay, the line “you’re easy breezy and I’m Japanesey” does kinda make “you look stupid”. Exodus is kinda unique but it didn’t quite work in the States. I still prefer her Japanese albums.

An advertisement every Tuesday

Watch Utada Hikaru plays Tetris

Mr. Dew — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 14:28:29 +0000

(Utada Hikaru does Tetris pretty well actually.)

I suck at Tetris and Utada Hikaru does that pretty well actually. Watch her play, feel free to skip around. Hidden talent I suppose?

looks//renewed

Mr. Dew — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s a new layout with Ayumi Hamasaki. This layout is called ‘RAINBOW’ simply because I took the images from her album with a similar title.Ayumi Hamasaki is a Japanese singer whose albums sold like hot cakes. Is she my favorite Japanese artist? Er, I’ll prefer Hikaru Utada to her, but this layout’s on Ayu.

All the colors are inspired by the scanned image of Ayu’s CD booklet images. The designs are somewhat derived from there too. A tiny bit of it is inspired by the 2003 special issue of Newsweek, but seriously I thought it’s not worth the mention.

I kinda given this layout a very dreamy look. Looking at it now makes me want to hover on my ground. Ayu looks so dreamy too.

I don’t have themes this time because I feel this layout can stand alone, without usage of themes. I intended to put Ayu’s song, “RAINBOW”, in here too, but it sounds really bad after quality reduction.

The Ayu image is quite hard to edit, I need to stitch the images with Photoshop even, first time I tried photo-stitching. I need to erase all the Japanese lyrics, yet preserving the background too. I kept this images for quite some time but never work on it simply because it’s too troublesome. But it’s done and you’re looking at the results.

I have chosen Century Gothic as the layout’s font. The logo uses News Gothic Standard. There are still traces of Verdana around, never mind that. The Applecommunity doesn’t have Century Gothic, so they should see Avant Grande (my secondary font). The font size is quite big unlike my previous too.

Originally, I intend to make Ayu’s hair shimmer with the use of Flash’s masking and stuff but I kinda messed it up, lol. So no flash too.

Actually the blog design doesn’t fit my blog contents and my personality too. I don’t even know why I construct it to be this way. It’s like I’m following a client’s order or something like that. Anyway it’s done and it’s staying for a month once again.

Also, new tomodachis. I have added Serene andxia. Check their pages out too. Want me to add yours too? Hate or love my current layout? Drop a comment.

[Okay, look people, I always wonder if you know that you can comment too.]

music//ichi

Mr. Dew — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Do you listen to songs of other languages. A language that you are not familiar with? I listen to Japanese music but I don’t speak Japanese.

And because I don’t live in Japan or listen to aJapanese radio station. I choose artists either based on recommendation or the fact that that artist has a nice Japanese name. I end up listening to similar artists like Ayumi Hamasaki, Namie Amuro, Hikaru Utada, and occasionally Hello!Project groups. Hello!Project is some sort of an organization to nurture teeny pop princesses and throw them to form a group. The brain child of Tsunku, Hello!Project includes groups like Morning Musume [Musume=Girls], Coconut Musume, MiniMoni, PetitMoni, Aa! and more. Very successful due to marketing and looks.

Then the question comes. I always ask myself, “Why do I listen to music that I don’t understand?”. I can’t provide a decent answer on that one. All I can say is that I like the flavor of the music. The beat of the music. The vocals, and well.. the broken English.
So the day arrives that I tell myself, I got to at least why out what they are singing! I roughly know it’s what type of songs as I know some very common words, plus the tune suggests it too.

But I want to know the details. So one day, I did.

I start of with searching for Ayumi Hamasaki’s “Real Me”. I was surprised with the results. I mean, wow, she sang some parts in English! I didn’t know it was English. I do know there’s English in that song, but I didn’t know there’s so much in there.

Some parts of her song:
What I get?
[No translation needed]
What you get?
Te ni shiteru mono wa
[It may be an illusion]
Shinjitai dake de
[And we may only want to believe]
Gensou nano kamo na
[That we have got]

a woman could be dangerous
a woman could be generous
in order to survive
Sonna ni itsudemo
[We cannot always be]
Ii Ko bakari de irarenai
[So good girls]

a woman could be having fun
a woman could be like a nun
in order to survive
honto no watashi wa
[As I know]
Anata ga mite de kureru kara
[You see the real me]

Translations done by Masa.

Personally, I find the lyrics rather amusing. “A woman could be having fun, a woman could be like a nun”, I didn’t know that’s what she sang before I checked. Sister Act 1 and 2 are enough to proveAyumi wrong that nuns cannot have fun.

If it’s the English that you feel doesn’t make sense, I think Ayumi wrote it herself, please forgive her, lol. As for why the lyrics itself doesn’t make sense, well, most of her lyrics are like that. It probably make more sense before it’s translated to English.