//beconfused

I wrote this post due to popular demand of the previous post regarding and Saaya Irie and Mizuki Yoshii, the child models in Japan.

My site statistics have placed Mizuki Yoshii as the 8th most searched keyphrase here (55 people searched for it through Google, Yahoo! and Live), through a 6 month period which is shocking because I just blogged about her a week ago! [Most searched is 'japanese lyrics', followed by 'breast' and then 'create winks'.]

With help from Andre, I found the pictures of Mizuki Yoshii. And oh yeah, the reported made a mistake, her name is Mizuki Furui (古井みずき). The reporter mixed up the pronounciation of �??�?��?�?? which can be read either ‘Furui’ or ‘Yoshii’.

(Picture of Mizuki Furui, the 9 year old child model.)

Mizuki Furui is born on May 15, 1996, in the Kanagawa Prefecture (神奈川). That means she’ll be 10 just a couple of days later. She is 130 cm tall and is blood-typed ‘A’. Her favorite sport is swimming. She has talent in drawing stuff on paper. Her hobby is �??�?��?��?� (pronounced as ‘purikura’ I think), but I don’t really know what that is. I kinda suspect that is some photo sticker thingy that you can get from those machines. [I felt like I enter one of those time capsule devices each time I step into those.] Can anyone confirm that with me?

So here you go, these are some of the pictures I found.

(Several photographs of Mizuki Furui.)

Japan’s taste seem a little too extreme for me. Sure Miss Furui looks adorable in those pictures, but like Daniel Beattie commented, she’s rather normal looking. I don’t see anything very special about her.

I know you guys may not like it when I post such pictures. I find no problems with them. It is strange to me that people enjoy looking at girls so young. I am not here to decide what is morally right. I believe many are like me, just curious to see who this Mizuki Yoshii or Mizuki Furui is. So there, don’t scream at me okay?

External links on Mizuki Furui:

* かわいいブログのヤプログ！ – This blog has a post with images and links to Mizuki Furui. I think you can buy some PDF photo book or something, I’m don’t really know how that works though. I got my images from here.
* かわいいブログのヤプログ！ (Mizuki Furui Photo Report) – This has a link to a QuickTime movie that you can download. It’s a sample of Miss Furui’s video.
* EIC-BOOK 「古井みずき」写真集・DVD 商品一覧 – Here are some of her DVD works that you can purchase. Don’t be shock that she isn’t the only Japanese child model starring in these videos.
* 木村美樹、新井ゆな、古井みずき「第6回いもうと倶楽部撮影会」 [スクランブルエッグon the Web] (scramble-egg.com) – You can read up an interview session of Miki Kimura, Arai Yuna and Mizuki Furui. She said something about Maki Goto being her favorite celebrity. Something about being hopeful to join Morning Musume too. I do not understand Japanese so a translation would be nice.

Is it just me or are Japanese web site links kinda long. See, I did my research, this reminds me of doing online research for bioinformatics stuff.

Ben and Shawn bought a photo book. You know, those that feature a sexy girl kinda books? [EDIT: Those are often called 'photobooks'.] It’s hard cover and she looks really hot. I can’t remember her name! It’s Hitomi-something, I don’t remember.

She has this look that is cute and sexy. Sexily cute. Cutely sexy. Ah, page 33 even has her in the cute and tiny.. *ahem* Well, the book’s very stylish. The photographs are very artistic. The scenery is really good too. I can’t wait to get my digital camera and I’ll fly to Japan and find her! I mean, her photographer. You know, so that I can know where the sceneries are from.

The book costs SG$71! As much as I would want to enjoy viewing them, I will not spend money buying such things. I don’t think it’s worth it. A chat with Ben yesterday revealed that he thinks it’s worth the money. He also added that having spent SG$71, the only thing he can do to make his money worthwhile is to view the photo book every day!

There is even a comment that if the book is with Ben, the pages might stick together. [Think dirty.] I think Shawn said it. I told Zhi Yuan, if he wants to borrow it, he will be disappointed because the only page you can open fully is the one that details on the copyrights and publishing! [Read: The other pages stick together.]

Ben and Shawn invested SG$40 and SG$31 respectively into this venture. As you can see, Ben is the major shareholder. Before that, they bought UpToBoy, a Japanese magazine which they completely not understand. UpToBoy is one of those “hyper visual magazine for men”, if you get what I mean. I looked at the cover and saw someone quite familiar…

Nah, it’s not my mother. [No, Grandma, it's not you either!] It’s Natsumi Abe. She was from Morning Musume. She graduated from there already. She’s pretty, I tell you. I picked up the magazine and flipped it with disinterest. I got to pretend that I am not interested because Ben is telling me that I should pay. Now, where is my Nacchi music video..? [Nacchi is Natsumi Abe's nickname in Morning Musume.]

Ben and Shawn, being fans of larger-attributed women, didn’t find Natsumi satisfying apparently. So they went on and bought back Hitomi. Hitomi’s sexy poses reigns in every aspect of er.. photography, yeah, reigns in photography.

Oh, I found my Nacchi music video. I’ll end now. Here’s the conclusion:

If Shawn’s mother found out about the photo book, he’ll certainly get killed. At least he can die a happy man.

Ja ne [See you]. If only I can understand what’s Nacchi singing about. Subarashii. Suteki. Suki. Sugoi. Super Sugoi. Subete Subarashii deSu. [Just a whole string of crap expressing amazement and fondness. Probably wrong, since I gotten it from Japanese anime and anyhow plant them together.]

Disclaimer: Okay, let’s be quick on this; my video has started playing. Ben and Shawn are good people. Posting has been exaggerated for reading and writing pleasure. Hitomi’s beauty have been exaggerated too.

I won’t be posting Japanese music lyric translations for a while. I sort of ended my run too. I planned to post 10 of these. I post every Friday until the there are 10. The feedback has been quite positive so far, but last week, I posted number 10.

So this week, there’s nothing. I decide to post some credits instead.

I listen to some Japanese songs, some of which have rather strange lyrics, so I posted them. I never did translations, I do not understand Japanese. I took lyric translations from fan pages etc. Sometimes, the web fails me and I ended up typing the lyrics out by copying the subtitles from the video clip.

The songs come from different sources, I shan’t talk much about it, lol. Some came from video clips. I use m&g Software’s AVI to WAV extractor 3.5 to extract out the sound from the video. [The software is free by the way.]

For song cropping, normalizing of volumes and fading in and out, I use either Ahead Nero Wave Editor or Sonic Foundry Sound Forge. Both are good programs, I use the latter more though.

Songs are encoded in Windows Media Audio 9 for smaller downloads at a quality loss. I use Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 Series to encode all my music. [This is a free software too.] Windows Media Audio sounds best at lower bit rates as compared to other formats.

Some posts include still image captures, these are captured by Microsoft Windows Media Player 9 Series. [This is another free software.] Images are later cropped or edited by Macromedia Fireworks. [Photoshop committed suicide, great..]

These are the past postings [Most of the music are removed already, sorry.]

# music//ichi [Ayumi Hamasaki - Real Me]
# music//ni [Yukino Satsuki - Densetsu no Onsen GAME (Legendary Hot-Springs Turtle)]
# music//san [NICEGUYJIN - Hai, Irasshai! (Hello, Welcome!)]
# music//shi [Funta - Wake Up Angel ~ Negaimashite wa Mugen Nari ~ (Wake Up Angel ~ Wishing for this is unlimited ~)]
# music//go [Aoi Tada - Wo Qui Non Coin]
# music//roku [Yuuichirou Sakuraba - Hitoribocchi no Haburashi (Lonely Toothbrush)]
# music//shichi [Gackt - To build a fire (To feel a fire)]
# music//hachi [Judy and Mary - Kujira 12 gou (Whale #12)]
# music//ku [Maki Goto - Genshoku GAL Hadeni Ikube! (An Authentic GAL Should Be Bold)]
# music//ju [MiniMoni - Okashi Tsukutte Okassui (Making Sweets: Strange)]

I enjoyed posting these. I’ll do these weekly posting thingy in future too.

Yesterday, I posted a quote that has been posted a day before. I forgotten to change it to a new one in my template. Opps.

This has got to be one of the silliest songs I heard. I especially like the bass of this track. It’s rather “rockish” in a childish way.

The song is called “Okashi Tsukette Okassui”. [I searched and found several similar Romanized names like "Okashi Tsukette Okkasi" and "Okashi Tsukette Okassi".] I can’t find the title translation for this song so I translated the title myself to be something like “Making Sweets: Strange” or something. I don’t learn Japanese so I may be wrong. Can someone tell me the correct translation of the title?

MiniMoni members – Mari Yaguchi, Nozomi Tsuji, Ai Kago and Mika Todd – starred in the movie – MoniMoni The Movie: The Great Cake Adventure a couple of years back. I first heard that song from this film.

The movie’s about MiniMoni members running a confectionery that does wonderful cakes. Just hours before their shop’s anniversary, an evil queen sought to destroy the cakes they made. Just when things go bad, their sizes got reduced. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

I have encoded 56sec sample in WMA file proprietary (Windows Media Audio 9; 48 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo 2-pass CBR) for you people. This is the best quality I have encoded again, at the expense of file sizes again.

Download the sample from here (355 KB). [In Internet Explorer, right click on the link and choose the option "Save Target As...". Download it quick, as I'll remove it on February 23.]

Okashi Tsukutte Okassui
[Making Sweets: Strange]
Oide yo! Oide yo! Oide yo! Oide yo!
[Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on!]
Oide yo! Oide yo! Oide yo! Oide yo!
[Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on!]

Issho ni okashi!
[Together: Sweets!]
Issho wa okassui~!
[Together: Strange~!]

Okashi wa itsudemo SHAI dakara
[Because sweets are always SHY]
Hotondo kaiwa mo nai keredo
[They don't really have very much to say]

Okashi fushigi!
[Sweets wondrous!]
Okashi fushigi!
[Sweets wondrous!]
Okashi fushigi!
[Sweets wondrous!]
Okassui~!
[So strange~!]

Okashi wa itsudemo mirokuteki!
[Sweets are always fascinating!]
Shotaimenna noni oishisou
[They look so good at just the first glance]

Okashi fushigi!
[Sweets wondrous!]
Okashi fushigi!
[Sweets wondrous!]
Okashi fushigi!
[Sweets wondrous!]
Okassui~!
[So strange~!]

Source: The movie itself

After I watched the film, the words “okashi fushigi” still rings in my mind. I watch it last time by the way. So it proofs how addictive this tune is to me. Okassui, isn’t it?

Here are some still shots from the movie itself. I used to host it in another location, but I have consolidated all the images into this host. [Updated: May 2007]

Looks strangely like Teletubby land.

Mari Yaguchi holding a cake or keiki as they call.

MiniMoni’s new Ai Takahashi.

The thing about this movie is that it seems to be a satire of the actual MiniMoni group. In the end of the movie, Yaguchi left the confectionery she started and appointed Mika Todd to be the manager. Takahashi then joined the lovely cake-making crew. Yaguchi left to take care of the 4 kids as part of the story.

Yaguchi indeed left MiniMoni. With the addition of Takahashi and a new leader, MiniMoni also changed their styles. Yaguchi went on to manage Hello! Project Kids.

I am a day late again. Maki Goto started her career in Morning Musume, now she has gone solo. [Still under same record company.] I featured Maki Goto before in one of my themes in the past.

I listen to her album PAINT IT GOLD some time back and really like this track -Genshoku GAL Hadeni Ikube!. Without knowing the meaning of this song, I went on to listen. It’s a good walking song ya’know, it’s fast so it kinda sets a pace for me to walk fast too.

I tried to find the translation of Genshoku GAL Hadeni Ikube! for some time. It was until a couple of days ago that I chance upon it on the very site I’m viewing. Even so, I have difficulty understanding which English translation belongs to which lines. If the translations are incorrect, it’s likely that I have pasted the lines wrongly.

The translations seems generally accurate but some phrases are rather strange..

I have encoded 1min 06sec sample in WMA file proprietary (Windows Media Audio 9; 40 kbps, 32 kHz, stereo 2-pass CBR) for you people. This is the best quality I have encoded, at the expense of file sizes.

Download the sample from here (343 KB). [In Internet Explorer, right click on the link and choose the option "Save Target As...". Download it quick, as I'll remove it on February 16.]

Genshoku GAL Hadeni Ikube!
[An Authentic GAL Should Be Bold)]
Lyrics & Music : Tsunku
Arrangement : Takahashi Yuichi

Hitori no shuumatsu tte shinnjirannai hodo; Maji yabaissu!
[A weekend alone is so bad that you won't believe it!]
Kedo kono toki to bakari onna wo sora migaki makutte (Maji yabaissu!)
[But in this time I polish the woman in me]
“Kareshi ga dekita toki” Sonna yume ga
["When I get a boyfriend" That's the dream I have]
Dome no gobaibun
[It's five times the size of the Tokyo Dome]
Kitto mawari ga hiichau kurai LOVE LOVE ni nacchau mon!
[We'll be in love so much that the people around will take a step away!]

Tomodachi ttara
[All my friends,]
Nuke kakeshite ikachii koi
[they all stole away to have romantic relationships]
“Watashi ga saigo no kareshi nashi!” kka
["I'm the last one without a boyfriend!"]
Iinda mon Naite nai!
[I don't care! I'm not crying!]
“Eeeeeen”
["Eeeeeen" *cries*]

Genshoku gyaru wa hade ni ikube!
[An authentic gal should be bold!]
Shumi wa ryouri de ika ga?
[Is it okay if my hobby is cooking?]
Genshoku gyaru wa hade ni ikube!
[An authentic gal should be bold!]
Otsuke mono mo hade yo!
[My pickles are also bold!]
Supootsu taipu mo hade ni ikube!
[The sporty type should go bold!]
Michibata taipu mo hade ni ikube!
[The side-of-the-road type should go bold too!]

It’s a rather kawaii [Japanese for "cute"] song, isn’t it? Goto singing about her not having a boyfriend. I guess I just have to sacrifice myself to be hers. I’m very noble.

I first saw Maki Goto is Morning Musume when they are performing Mr. Moonlight. She really stood out that time, partly because of her wardrobe. There is no wardrobe malfunction during her performance though, lol. [Tribute made to Janet Jackson's left breast. Justin wants to "get you naked by the end of the song".]

Some phrases are rather strange as I said (before the lyrics). I wonder what’s “my pickles are also bold”. In fact when “Genshoku GAL” is translated to be “Authentic GAL”, I don’t feel it’s right. Maybe it should be “Real GAL” or something. I can’t decide, I can’t read Japanese.

I captured from screens from the promotional video too:
Goto on stage view from afar
Goto gets the crowd ready
Goto smiles showing teeth
Goto looks pissed
Goto “Eeeeeen” [crying sounds]
Goto slight smile
Goto jumps with guitar
Goto looks scary [too scary that I removed, lol]

[removed after March 12]

She looks pretty, doesn’t she? This song reminds me of Ayaya [same record company]. My favorite picture? I like the pissed look, she looks best when she’s pissed, hahaa. Having said that, I wonder ifGoto will be pissed when she reads this.

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.

Nielsen//NetRatings, a firm that deals in internet audience measurement and analysis, provides the statistics concerning the recent MSBlaster worm attack. Traffic of web sites with information concerning MSBlaster worm has increased significantly.

At the bottom of the top 5 list is Zone Lab’s web site, attracting 638,000 users, that is a 73% increase compared to the previous week. Norton Anti-Virus maker, Symantec, sees their viewer ship increase over 302% with over 4 million users.

The Windows Update web site which was targeted by the MSBlaster worm sees over 11 million users; that is an increase of 76% week on week. MSN Tech and Gadgets, which provided information and articles about the worm, attracted over a million people, seeing a 304% jump on that week.

Well, the winner is Microsoft’s TechNet site which recorded 3.9 million unique surfers as compared to 317,000 of the preceding week. That is a surge of 1131% week on week!
Don’t you just love statistics?

The worm attack launched on Microsoft’s Windows Update web site fail too. The worm is preprogrammed to attack http://www.windowsupdate.com/ which is just a redirecting web site. Microsoft removed Windows Update’s redirecting site and the attack failed. Somehow this DoS attack attempt reminds me of Code-Red which attacks http://www.whitehouse.gov/. I guess the worm’s author fail in his attempt.

That’s the default color for the Q&A for your info. I added a new theme – Goto Maki! She went solo last year I think. She used to be in Morning Musume. Check her out, she looks really pretty. [I kinda cheated and smoothen her skin just A BIT, hehee.. But she's still pretty without my editing.] At first, I only include her picture to her shoulder, not revealing her bikini. After a couple of look, I find it extremely distasteful, so much so that I recreated from a scratch – this time including her bikini. She looks more stylish in this way. Some minor updates only. I am gearing it up for a change coming September 01, so be sure to get your mouse (the computer one) ready. Oh, my Stellvia of the Universe download is complete. So happy about it. Shin-pon~! lol