Well, of course, it should really be spelled "craze", but I felt like using alliteration. :p

Korean pop, or k-pop as it is often called, seems to have become quite popular in the last few years. It also seems to be a trend (even if it is unintentional) for people who were once obsessed with anime to turn their interests to Korean dramas and bands. It's not a bad thing necessarily, though I must say it made me feel both sad and proud. Sad because I felt like the race of otakus was dying out (though actually that's not really true at all, from what I've seen on the Internet lately), and proud that I wasn't following a trend. The second part's funny, considering that I'm probably missing out on a lot of good things because I try not to do what everyone else is doing. (I guess that was part of the reason I picked Weight Training instead of Dance. I didn't want to add to the stereotype that girls take Dance and boys take Weight Training. But then again, I actually do want to try Weight Training.) After getting disappointed by the Twilight series, I lost faith in what's popular with the general public. Though I'm starting to jump back on the bandwagon again, particularly since I've watched a couple of popular anime (Durarara, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica) and found that they were actually quite good.

Back to k-pop. I haven't really listened to too much of it. I've tried, but I'm not usually all that fond of hip hop and dance music (I have the feeling I've misidentified the genres, but whatever). There are a few groups that I do like, such as DBSK (which has, unfortunately, split up, though a few of the members made a new group called JYJ, I think). Maybe I should listen to more of it. The other day, Shiroi showed me a few songs, such as a DBSK acapella, and also, to my surprise, some Japanese songs sang by K-pop groups. It's pretty cool that they can sing in too languages. But then again...have you heard any of those Vocaloid songs which are supposed to be in English, but the lyrics don't make any sense? I heard this Luka song the other day that was saying something about German alcohol, I think. I guess the composer's knowledge of English was a bit...lacking. Maybe it's just because Asian countries seem to enjoy putting English words in their songs and on their products, even if they aren't exactly sure what it means?

As for actual Korean songs by K-pop groups, thefalse-tto introduced me to Pinocchio Danger and Nu Abo by the group F(x). In particular she pointed out the girl Amber, who has now been added to my growing list of women/girls that I admire. For some reason I really like tomboyish girls and girly-looking guys. But besides that, it turns out Amber is actually Taiwanese-American and from California (I assume from around Los Angeles, since that is apparently where she got picked up by SM Entertainment).

Speaking of Los Angeles, I'd sure like to go there - not because I'm planning to audition to become a k-pop singer (though I actually would like to try if I had a larger vocal range), but because of Miku Hatsune's live concert at Anime Expo... Right now all the tickets are sold out, but I really hope there will be more. I'm thinking about going there if more tickets become available. (True, since Miku is a Vocaloid, she's just going to be a hologram and I could probably watch the concert on Youtube later, but I've started to think that a concert is a totally different experience from listening to music by myself. After all, you're surrounded by tons of people who love the same thing that you do.) This is one of the times that I feel frustrated about living in the suburbs. It's rather far from the action sometimes. (But there was a convention a lot closer to where I live, I guess I couldn't gone to that one...The price and the fact that finals were coming up threw me off, though...Still, would've been nice to look at the merchandise and see people perform at the convention.) Oh well. When there's a will, there's a way. I'll have to see about getting to LA.

Labels: amber, anime, anime expo, california, concert, convention, english, f(x), japan, k-pop, korea, languages, los angeles, miku hatsune, music, otaku, trend, vocaloid, weight training

That's a phrase that I saw in the book The Heights, the Depths, and Everything in Between by Sally Nemeth. And I thought it was really very true.

Life can give a person a lot of happiness, but also a lot of pain. If we didn't have the good times to keep us up, the sorrow in our lives would take over. There are still things that I've done in the past that continue to haunt me. If I didn't have good memories that I could recall, I don't know how I could keep from being swallowed.

My mom says that she likes to watch funny dramas so she can have something to laugh about. I find her interest in watching dramas rather amusing. She checked out this book from the library about a guy named Jerry in Australia. (There was a picture of him visiting the Twelve Apostles, which are these rocks in the ocean - unfortunately there are no longer twelve of them - which I had visited myself last summer)

My parents also seem to know about Super Junior. And then my mom said she knew about one of the guys from SS501 and how he was in Boys over Flowers or something like that. My dad, on the other hand, for a short time, kept mentioning someone called Angela Baby.

There really aren't that many differences between teenagers and middle-aged people. Both of them like...
- Asian dramas
- Social networking sites (Facebook, Kaixin, etc.)
- Being selfish

In fact, I wonder if that means that adults are immature or if that teenagers are actually middle-aged in their mindset.

Well, my mom had said that the older you get, the more you recede and become more childlike...Like slot machines, for instance. They have bright, cute pictures (cherries, bananas, diamonds, etc.) and make amusing noises. In a way they are like toys. No, I take that back - they ARE toys. Toys that take your money. XD

I've been watching an anime called Special A the past few days, and it's been pretty good. But it has a lot of similarities to Skip Beat, which I have also watched (and am currently reading the manga of).
Both...
- are in the Hana to Yume magazine
- have clueless heroines
- have heroines who are out to beat someone (Kyoko wants to top Sho, while Hikari wants to defeat Kei)
- have scenes where a character has a very evil aura
And so on. It's always possible to pick out similarities between stories. I guess it's because of the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" idea. After Harry Potter came the Lightning Thief. I haven't read the Olympians but I've heard that both involve half-bloods and such things. So it seems to very common for people to borrow one another's ideas.

Labels: age, cry, drama, happiness, ideas, k-pop, laugh, life, memories, pain, similar, skip beat, special a, teenagers, the heights the depths and everything in between, twelve apostles

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