eggchan

Okay, so I'm really late on this but I guess since I'm posting this right now I might as well say it. (I am belated on both cases, but OH WELL)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING~!

and...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY 大ちゃん～！

今年も楽しい年を過ごせるように～大きいマグロを釣れるように！＾＾大ちゃんの誕生日のために絵を描きたいけど、この間描く時間があまりなくてごめんね。

Okay anyway, so on to the rest of this post. I managed to actually finish a whole article from a magazine. I mean, I've always stopped like halfway through (I have no idea why but whatever...) This calls for celebration! Or.. e-celebration, I dunno. *throws confetti* WOO!--okay enough of that.

So here is Jun's interview for you! He actually talks about some interesting things including the ARASHIC tour and international fans... どうぞ～

Please don't take this out of my journal without my permission.

DO NOT claim these as your own. I spend a lot of time translating these, please be respectful.

My comments are in italics like usual

Enjoy!

To Arashi, I feel the end of the year 2005 to 2006 became a big turning point for us. From the period when “Hana Yori Dango” was broadcast, the number of mails from the whole country of Asia sent to my radio program have remarkably increased. I became curious about how many people who knew about us over there, and at the end of 2005, when the members, and the office staff went out to eat, we talked about that. There was the influence of SARS at the time, so Johnny’s didn’t do an Asia tour, but we said, “If the timing is good, I’d like to go” and that was the motive for us to implement our Asia tour. Also, at the 2006 summer “ARASHIC” tour, at first, we could have increased the number of performances for the Yokohama and Osaka arena tours, but we also had a talk about because of some circumstances with our schedule we couldn’t increase the days. Because there are people who want to see us, I felt we should increase it. Personally, I really wanted to try doing a concert at a really big place at least once instead of an arena, so rather than stopping I wanted to continue forward and discussed possibly doing three performances in one day with the members, and the first day we did it. From the morning, the first time we did it I wanted to thank the audience for getting excited, so we put our confidence in that, and I realized that Arashi started walking in a new direction. When we were on our first Asia tour, there were two reasons why we made a Best Of edition. The first reason is we made the people who have been supporting us for a long time in the area wait, so we gave back that time all at once. The second reason is, someone told us the “ARASHIC” tour was boring, and personally I was also at a point where I felt that way, so it just clicked. The result was the voices who wanted to see our first Best Of edition became louder, and we made a triumphant return performance in Japan. Furthermore, our first dome performance was connected to it.

Basically as far as Arashi not changing for 10 years, I feel we won’t change for the 11th or 12th year either. We will probably be questioned the moment we change somewhere. I’m afraid of changing, and more than continuing, I want to more or less continue doing things on snap decisions. It’s boring if you hit a stone bridge too much and it collapses, right? Occasionally, it’s exciting to cross it without hitting it. (laugh) (I’m not sure if this is some sort of Japanese proverb or not, but it sure sounds like it) Thanks to all the people that are supporting us, we were able to have an extremely good 10 years, so I’d like to protect those meanings, so while we hold that in our heads, I’d like to set our sights on something new and go forth.

cherry