56th Kouhaku pt 1

Kouhaku has reignited my love for jpop, not that I really lost interest. This year, viewers were able to vote for songs they wanted and there was a variety of great performances which sent me on a week long mp3 hunt. Without further ado, let's look at my favourite parts of the 1st 2 hours of the show, besides the the Momusu 9/10-nin.

JUDGES

Couldn't even recognise Nagasawa Masami. Jdorama fans might recognise her as the main girl in Dragon Zakura. Whoever did her hair needs to be hung, drawn and quartered.

Manabe Kaori!!!!!!! Damn, why isn't she in more doramas?

WORST ENGRISU AWARD

The worst Engrisu award is a tie between............

Suzuki Ami with Delightful and

Kishidan's One Night Carnival

Seriously, jpop wouldn't sound as good without all the crappy english. And Suzuki Ami's song sucks. It sounds like her old stuff she used to sing in the 90s. Maybe it was one of her old songs which I never heard of.......

Kishidan's performance was funny. I never knew Kuabara's (from YuYu Hakusho) hairstyle would be possible in real life. The song is pretty funky and it'll be staying in my playlist for a while. Get one night carnival here: http://rapidshare.de/files/10717115/Kishindan_-_One_Night_Carnival.mp3.html and sing along to 'Can't u master baby, master baby!'

GOSPELLERS


Holy crap, Gospellers are fucking good. The only Japanese acapella group I've listened to before is Rag Fair but Gospellerss performance of Hitori is sublime. I bloody regret not checking their music out earlier. Time to catch up on their songs. Here's the mp3 of Gospeller's Hitori: http://rapidshare.de/files/10716157/Gospellers_-_Hitori.mp3.html

The lead singer has a bloody high pitched voice. Heaven help any fool who attempts this song in a karaoke sober.

YUNA ITO


Endless Story is one of my favourite songs of 2005 and I've not seen Nana not do I have the PV. In fact Kohaku was the 1st time I saw Yuna Ito and she is hawt! Maybe I should consider moving to Hawaii......

One can never get enough Yuna Ito. Can't wait for Nana dvdrip. :)

SHIMATANI HITOMI - Amairo no kami no Otome

Haven't gotten around to grabbing this song yet.

OTSUKA AI - Planetarium

2005 to me was the year of Otsuka Ai ballads and she really gave a good performance. I remember last year's Japan Gold Discs awards or something like that where she gave a crappy performance of Sakuranbo. Otsuka Ai is really popular among gaijin jpop fans so its pretty easy to find this song.

MORIYAMA RYOUKO and MARIYAMA NAOTARO - Satoukibi Hatake

I thought I had this song was scrambling for an hour looking through my coms and cds for it. If I'm not mistaken, it was used as the theme song for Kuroki Hitomi telemovie a year or two back. Finally found a 9 minute version by Miriyama Ryouko which is a bit too long. Give the song a listen here: http://rapidshare.de/files/10718173/-__X_R___q_-_____________.mp3.html

Stay tuned for pt 2, same sukebe url.......