Two tech-ish questions

ONE:
How do you rip audio from a Youtube video? I really want an mp3 of this video I found of Niigaki Risa (as Athena from that anime she’s in) singing Koko ni Iruzee!:

Haha, I wish there was a better version though, without the extra stuff from the anime. Oh well.
I think I like this version the least out of the versions I’ve seen so far (Morning Musume’s original and Tsuji Nozomi’s cover), but I still would love to have this on my iPod. xD

Oh, and we’re reading The Odyssey in English class, and every time I see “Athena” I think of Risa. And I keep getting Shouri no BIG WAVE!!! stuck in my head while I’m reading. Hello Project has taken over my brain…

TWO:
How do you make ringtones out of mp3s? I think all I have to do is cut the mp3 down to a short clip, but I don’t know how to do that- is there a specific program I should use? Haha, I want Mikan as my ringtone…xD

[Scans] Morning Musume, Athena, and some manga covers

Explanation and music list

So, this is basically the scans post to go along with my recent orders that arrived on Friday. Sorry it’s late, but scanning the two limited photobooks took forever, and I had a sleepover last night cause it’s my birthday today (yay!).
I also didn’t end up scanning the H!P 2007 Winter Live DVD Box, cause there’s this 4-DVD case that’s too big for my scanner and I was too lazy to figure out how to get it all. xD
I might end up scanning some more CDs soon cause I’m on winter break, but I can’t make any promises. xD;;

EDIT: Sorry that the small versions of the preview images look crappy! In my earlier posts, I actually uploaded them to Blogger, but this time I uploaded them to Photobucket instead. Guess the site handles it differently. Just click the preview images for the full-quality version.

Morning Musume’s latest single Mikan, normal edition. I scanned the photocard of Risa and included it in the .rar file.
Download the .rar file for the rest of the Mikan scans

Morning Musume’s latest single Mikan, limited edition A which comes with a DVD. I scanned the photocard of Koharu and included it in the .rar file.
Download the .rar file for the rest of the Mikan limited edition A scans

Morning Musume’s latest single Mikan, limited edition B which comes with a photobook. I scanned the photocard of Sayumi and I also scanned the photobook- both are included in the .rar file.
Download the .rar file for the rest of the Mikan limited edition B scans

Athena & Robikerottsu’s first single, Shouri no BIG WAVE!!!, limited edition which comes with a photobook. I scanned the photobook and included it in the .rar file.
Download the .rar file for the rest of the Shouri no BIG WAVE!!! scans

I scanned the covers of the manga for my personal collection, so I thought I’d share them here too if anyone’s interested. For SKET DANCE 1 and Prince of Tennis 40, it’s just the one image so I didn’t bother to upload a .rar file- just click on the preview image. The dust jackets just barely fit on my scanner- I didn’t include the inside back flap because all it is is like a list of Jump tankoubon. For the Prince of Tennis Fanbook 40.5, the book’s really thick, so the dust jacket was too big for my scanner. I scanned the inside flaps separately, so there’s a .rar file for 40.5.

SKET DANCE 1 – Penki Kamen / Paint-Mask

Tennis no Oujisama / Prince of Tennis 40 – Tennis wo Wasureta Oujisama / The Prince Who Forgot Tennis

Tennis no Oujisama / Prince of Tennis 40.5 – Official Fanbook
Download the .rar file for the rest of the 40.5 scans

Recent purchases

It took us 4 hours to get home yesterday from my school, which usually only takes one…and it was uber dangerous, too. D: I love snow, but not when I’m trying to get home on the highway…I got uber bored, so I ended up romanizing lyrics to some Prince of Tennis songs I had lyric scans for on my laptop. I would have done j-pop songs instead, but the only scans I had were for the Prince of Tennis ending singles WHITE LINE and Wonderful days. xD; I’ll post the romanizations later…
Anyway, I think the two packages sitting on my bed when I got home actually kinda made up for the long drive. 8D

I love Kinokuniya. I used to get pissed because there isn’t one nearby where I live, but I ordered Prince of Tennis volume 40 and the 40.5 Fanbook on Saturday, and it’s already here! 8D I’m so used to Yesasia which takes forever to ship, so…I think in the future I should use Kinokuniya to buy books and stuff, otherwise they’ll slow down Yesasia orders like it did with my latest order. >> Sadly, this strategy doesn’t work with Hello! Project photobooks. I checked it out when I went to make the order with the Tenipuri books, and you can’t get them from the New York stores. It redirects me to their Japan store site instead, which a) I can’t navigate very well and b) the shipping would be hell anyway, and take a while. But Kinokuniya is good for manga, so…xD
And then, I FINALLY got my Yesasia order that I placed over a month ago. I’m still pissed that it took so long- it really should have shipped out once Mikan was released. It’s all because Sket Dance took so long…but I think it was worth it. Three copies of Mikan (haha, I know, I’m an uber crazy fan), Shouri no BIG WAVE!! limited, Sket Dance volume 1, and the H!P 2007 Winter Live DVD Set.

First up, the three copies of Mikan. I love this song so much. xD Which is part of the reason I bought all three editions. The other part is because there were special photocards in each one, and I love stuff like that. xD
I’d share some more pics of the booklets and limited photobook and stuff, but I’m going to scan these later today, which is even better! 8D
And now…which photocards did I get??
SUSPENSE! xD

Risa, Koharu, and Sayumi.
If I could have chosen which I got, I would have chosen Reina, Junjun, and Risa, my current three favorite members. (or the group card, which I totally didn’t know existed until like five minutes ago…?) I absolutely LOVE Reina, and I love how she looks in the promo pics for this single! She has some really nice shots in the limited photobook- I love her outfit and her hair and like EVERYTHING! @_@ Sadly, luck was not really on my side when I opened these last night.
I’m really happy I got Risa, though. =) She’s my second favorite member, and I like her photocard.
Sayumi’s cute too- she’s not one of my favorite members, but I like her appearance in this single, so I’m fine with getting her card.
Koharu, however…don’t get me wrong, I like Koharu, but…I don’t really like her here. I just don’t think she looks that good- and honestly, she’s not very high on my member ranking, so…

Next up is the limited edition of Shouri no BIG WAVE!!, which came with a photobook. I actually had no idea it had a photobook until I opened it up and it came out…xD I totally never saw anywhere just what the limited edition actually had in it.
I love this song- it’s really cute and upbeat, and the Engrish makes me laugh a bit. Though, as much as I love this song, I think I’ve had enough “OKEY-DOKEY!”s for a while. @_@
The photobook has some pictures of the four girls involved in this single- the two Momusu, Risa and Aika, and the two C-ute members, Nakajima Saki and Okai Chisato. Aika’s really cute. xD And, I’m sorry, I still don’t really know who Nakajima and Okai are. I had to look them up to find out which group they’re in. ;-; I seriously need to get my act together and learn the names of all the H!P Kids already…

Then there’s the H!P 2007 Winter Live DVD Box. I feel like such an uber crazy fan having this…it cost $100, but I think it’s worth it- three concerts and a bonus backstage disc. It’s my first H!P concert I’ve actually bought- I’ve thought about buying some other concerts in the past, but turned them down in favor of more music. I can’t wait to sit down and have an H!P concert marathon…xD
What I really like about H!P concerts is that unlike concerts by a solo artist or a normal group (lol, as in like, one that stays the same rather than constantly changing), there’s always new groups of people singing an old song. Like current Morning Musume singing a song like LOVE Machine- I love always being able to hear different people sing older songs like that. Compare that to a concert by someone like BoA- you don’t really hear anything new when she sings her older songs, because it’s still the same person singing it- just live instead of a studio recording.
Now if only they’d record some of these new versions in the studio and release them separately…xD

Last but not least, there’s the three manga I ordered. Sket Dance 1, Prince of Tennis 40, and Prince of Tennis 40.5.
Sket Dance is a new manga in Shounen Jump, and it currently has 21 chapters. It’s a random school comedy manga, and it’s really funny. Most new manga hasn’t been doing so well in Jump lately, but I hope Sket Dance survives- it’s really cool and funny, definitely one of my favorite series in the magazine.

Prince of Tennis 40…oh this is so much crack. xD The title of the volume is “The Prince who Forgot Tennis”…you really wouldn’t think there would be this much crack in a tennis manga, but there seriously is. Basically this volume starts out in the middle of the National Tournament finals with Tezuka’s arm being UBER DEAD (xD) and Sanada winning…then Ryouma comes back with Momo, Atobe, and Oshitari (because, see, Ryouma didn’t show up to the finals, so Atobe WITH HIS HANDY HELICOPTER THAT HE JUST SO HAPPENS TO HAVE AT THE TOURNAMENT takes Oshitari and Momo to go find Ryouma. Who knows why Oshitari went, he’s absolutely pointless), and the rest of the team is uber excited ONLY TO FIND OUT THAT RYOUMA HAS AMNESIA AND DOESN’T REMEMBER TENNIS! DUN-DUN-DUN
Then Inui and Kaidou play doubles against Yanagi and Kirihara, and Inui gets uber beaten up and basically dies in the middle of the court after stopping Kaidou from going into devil mode. Which is an uber scary sight that I hope I never have to see again, btw.
I know, wtf, people actually can get sent to the hospital for playing TENNIS?
Inui wakes up, he has UBER UBER BANDAGES WRAPPED AROUND HIS ENTIRE BODY (ahahaha I love that panel), and then it switches to Fuji vs Niou.
Niou, with his Illusion or w/e it’s called, apparently can turn into Tezuka. I DON’T KNOW HOW IT WORKS EITHER. I mean, he’s not just using Tezuka’s moves, Konomi’s actually DRAWING TEZUKA instead of Niou. And then it turns out that, ZOMG KONOMI PUT AN ANIME FILLER EPISODE IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS MATCH FOR A FLASHBACK, and Fuji played Tezuka as a freshman. Angst happens. Then the volume ends.

40.5 is not, as you may think, half of a volume. xD It’s the new fanbook, taking after 10.5 and 20.5 (no, it’s not that they don’t know how to count…30.5 was an artbook rather than a fanbook.). It has tons of information on all the players, and tons of other interesting pages that I’m sure would be much more interesting for me if I could understand any of it. Some of my favorite facts:
-Marui’s favorite music is ORANGE RANGE. That’s some good taste right there, huh? xD I started skimming to see if anyone else mentioned specific bands, but I got bored after getting halfway through and put it down. Eiji apparently loves idol groups, but he didn’t specify H!P. I bet he has a collection somewhere, though. xD
-Ooishi’s special skill outside of tennis is that he’s able to tell whether a baby chick is a boy or a girl. Wtf, Ooishi. That’s weird.
-Jirou carries Marui’s wristband in his bag. STALKER
-Sanada carries around the “Sanada Family Rock”. xDDDDD oh Sanada. A rock?? Why does his family even have a ‘family rock’ in the first place??

Haha, look at Inui. xD Who knows why he still wears his glasses. Can he even see with all those bandages? xD
(oh, and Koharu and Yuuji are there too- they hold the honor of being the ONLY EXPLICITLY STATED CANON GAY COUPLE in the series. <33 Now if only Konomi would just admit that the Golden Pair has sex behind the scenes…xD)

So, there we go. Scans and lyrics should be posted soon.

Mikan first week sales are a record low for Morning Musume

Aw, fuck.
I think that basically sums up my thoughts right about now. I can’t believe it, and I really don’t know how to react to this.
In my opinion, Mikan is Morning Musume’s best single since…well, a while ago. Not that they’ve been really bad, but none of their singles measured up to their old releases back when they were really popular. Mikan…I thought it was a great catchy song, nice PV, it seemed more Golden Age-ish than any of their singles in the past year or two, or even longer. I thought this single would do way better than their more recent singles. Didn’t mostly everyone on the H!P blogosphere like this song?
So what the hell happened to make this their lowest selling single ever?
Not that I ever expected this single to have sales rivaling Golden Age singles, but I definitely expected more than their recent singles. Instead we get a huge drop from their last single and it ended up beating out Ambitious! Yashinteki de Ii Jan as their lowest first-week single sales.

Well, I guess all we can do is cross our fingers and hope that their next single doesn’t somehow drop even lower…and I think I’ve learned not to expect so much from Momusu. *sigh*

BUT I STILL LOVE THEM <3
xD No matter how badly they sell, I’ll still support them. <33 They still remain my favorite j-pop group…

Congrats, Nono! ^^

As I’m sure most people on the j-pop blogosphere know by now, Tsuji Nozomi had a baby girl yesterday! Sugiura Noa was born at 12:45 am yesterday morning, weighing 2730 grams. Both Nono and Noa are in good health~
Wow, I still find it so hard to believe Nozomi has a kid now! @_@ I mean, NOZOMI of all people! As I think I said back when the pregnancy was announced, I never would have thought that Nozomi would be the first Momusu to have a kid. I guess I was expecting one of the older members of H!P like Nakazawa Yuko or Iida Kaori to be the first…well, Kaori’s #2, with her child due soon (January, maybe?)…

On a random note, I romanized the lyrics to Mikan and the b-side today, but I’m not sure if the kanji lyrics I got from a Japanese fansite are 100% correct so I’m going to wait until my copies arrive (just to double-check) before I put them up here…

Broken headphones, connections, and a little bit of angst

pic 1
pic 2
Grr, my headphones finally totally broke this morning on the way to school. They were at least usable before, but now the left headphone doesn’t work at all and the outer part of it is like GONE…what a horrible time for my headphones to break, now I have to live with these all week until I go home for the weekend. My mom’s going to buy new headphones from the Apple Store, but yeah, I still won’t get them until the weekend.
I use my headphones so much during the week too- I can’t fully wake up in the morning unless I listen to my iPod from breakfast straight through until assembly, and since I have such weird music tastes (well, to the normal American world =P) that once I’m back in my dorm room I have to listen to my music with headphones rather than just using my computer speakers. This is definitely going to bug me all this week…

Connections: Well, I just had teh uber shocking discovery. I was listening to Ibu Shinji’s first character single from the Prince of Tennis anime, Can See the Light, and looked it up on Yesasia to add it to my cart cause it’s a great song, and then I noticed that Yesasia said that it was by Moriyama Eiji. Ok, I definitely recognized that name, so I went to look him up on Wikipedia, and I found out- he’s Momo’s first-cast actor in the Prince of Tennis musicals!
What the hell…? So then I redownloaded the full single (I lost it when my hard drive crashed a while ago, but the song was still on my iPod) to listen to the voice message, and sure enough, as soon as the seiyuu started talking I immediately recognized him as Momo. It’s so hard to tell though, when he’s actually voicing Shinji! I definitely would -never- make that connection…
Moriyama Eiji as Ibu Shinji in the Prince of Tennis anime – Can See The Light
Moriyama Eiji as Momoshiro Takeshi in the Prince of Tennis musicals – Ore wa Momo-chan ~ Seigaku no Abarenbou
Seiyuu Voice Message from Shinji’s CD- the first voice is Moriyama as himself (which is basically his voice for Momo) and then he has a ‘conversation’ or something with Shinji (aka, himself but with a different voice)…xD
Moriyama also plays Renji in the Bleach musicals, but I haven’t watched that yet. I seriously need to, cause NAGAYAN (aka the cutest Eiji actor ever) PLAYS HITSUGAYA ASASDFKAJESLRIJASDLKFJASDKLFJ

And last but not least, I’m having an angsty moment on the inside cause my Yesasia order with my precious 3 copies of Mikan hasn’t even shipped yet. It’s been almost a week since Mikan was released~! DDD:
And since I chose free shipping, it’ll be another week after it ships before it arrives at my house! And knowing my luck, it’ll end up arriving on like a Monday and then I’ll have to wait until the weekend before I actually get it. *sob*

roar @ Yesasia

I really really want my copies of Mikan…but it still hasn’t shipped out yet. T_T I didn’t think it would take this long to find a copy of the first Sket Dance volume…grr, now I know not to put a manga volume in the same Yesasia order as something I’m uber looking forward to…
Hopefully it’ll ship out soon, then it’ll arrive next weekend or so. I really don’t want to have to wait ANOTHER week…even if it comes on a Monday, I still won’t get it until that weekend since I board…D:

Morning Musume – Mikan PV OUT!! <333

WHEE

watch it on Dohhh UP!

Ok, I LOVE this song. I don’t usually absolutely LOVE a song after one listen. There are some songs that I like after the first listen, but I don’t really LOVE a song until I’ve listened to it a couple of times.
I LOVE this song. After watching the PV once.

I mean, I love all of Morning Musume’s singles. Except some of their early ones (a couple of pre-LOVE Machine singles like Memory Seishun no Hikari and Furusato), but w/e. That’s totally besides the point, they had kinda a different style back then.
But lately, their songs have taken a few listens before I really start liking the songs. When I got back into j-pop after not paying attention to it for a couple of months (this was…about April-ish I think, cause the Kanashimi Twilight PV was out, but the single wasn’t), I downloaded Egao YES Nude, and thought it was…different from Momusu’s usual style. I like it now, but it’s not really my favorite of their songs…
Kanashimi Twilight was great, but again, I didn’t really like it after I watched the PV once. It really took a couple more listens before I actually liked it. And again, it doesn’t really seem…Momusu-ish to me.
Onna ni Sachi Are had more of a dance-style to it, which not only was totally different from the previous singles, but it was something that I don’t think I’ve ever heard before in a Momusu single. I mean, maybe there was a song like it on an album or as a b-side or something, I dunno. To be perfectly honest, I tend not to listen to b-sides/album songs very much. ^^;;; I liked Onna ni Sachi Are on the first listen, but not really like…’zomg this song is great’, like I thought when I first heard Golden Age Momusu songs.

Mikan, however…
Wow. This song really reminds me of the Golden Age of Momusu- like Koko ni Iruzee!, as I’ve seen other people say. It’s really pop-ish and cute, and it’s totally different from their last couple of singles, which seemed almost like experiments in other styles of music. This song, however, takes them back to what worked in 2003-ish.
The music video, while not really loading correctly on my computer and freezing every couple of seconds (grr >_<), was…well, I didn’t think it was anything too special, but it’s good. And the baby pictures are so cute! <33
I think Takahashi Ai looked better with long hair. >_<
Linlin reminds me so much of Ayaka in a couple of scenes in the PV…xDD; Am I the only one that thinks they look similar?
And I really like Junjun. At first, I saw a picture of her that wasn’t really a good picture, and I didn’t think she’d be that good as a Momusu member. However, I think she looks nice in this PV, so…<3

I know Momusu hasn’t been doing too well lately- at least, compared to Golden Age and everything. But I really think this song will do well~ <33

I might buy both limited editions of this single. I’ve never done that before- I really don’t like the idea of two limited editions for a CD. >_< I mean, before, you didn’t really know what would come with a limited edition of a Momusu single. It could be photocards (like Chokkan 2 and SEXY BOY), it could be a DVD (like Ambitious!), or it could be a photobook (like Rainbow 7), or maybe something else (yeah, those are the only ones that came with a CD I got). But then they started releasing two limited editions for a single, one with a DVD and one with a photobook. I don’t like having to choose. xD If possible, I might seriously get both limited editions. Not sure yet, though…