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

I thought up this title because I've had a lot of dreams and would like to write them down before I forget them. Perhaps I should keep a diary of sorts, except of my dreams, not daily life. (But I won't make this an official dream diary, because I do want to talk about other things here, and I usually don't remember my dreams...Except for recently) Whenever I hear the name Dreamland I feel like it sounds familiar and that's because I used to play an online multiplayer game called Toontown.

I kind of miss playing Toontown. When I was younger, quite a few years back, you could get a free trial, and you could go to the other lands. You can never get very far with a free trial since it's only like 3 or 4 days but at least you could see the other neighborhoods (there are many different places you can go in the game). But then they changed it so you have to subscribe to go to the other lands. I decided to subscribe during the summertimes. I actually got quite far on one of my accounts and I'm proud of it. But I didn't subscribe this year and I feel strange not having played it. (I know I wouldn't have had much to do in the game besides maybe fight the really tough bosses, but just nostalgia, you know?)

Anyhow, on to the dreams, since they are already starting to slip from my mind. I'll go in chronological order (as in, when they happened). They did not happen in the same day, mind you.

- The first one was that I was at a pool. It's not like most swimming pools you'd ever see. It was indoor, except the walls were high and they were held up by columns. The pool was sort of like a lot of rectangles stuck together which made it look like a blocky zigzag, I guess. My mom and I were swimming in it and we were wearing wetsuits and snorkels and things like that. She and I had split up and I had swam deeper in the water to go into what I thought was probably a tunnel somewhere but it was just a dead end pretty soon. So I swam out of it and was going to go to the other side of the pool, but a shark was blocking my way. It swam back and forth in a straight line like those video game enemies you sometimes see. It noticed me and started turning around in a tight circle, watching me. I thought it was going to attack so I began back paddling furiously. The shark was going to lunge as I was pulling myself out of the water. (Luckily the dream ended because probably I would've had my legs stuck in a shark's mouth...Whoa.)

- The second one was quite short and simple. I was taking my vitamins and I was only supposed to take two of each kind but I started eating too many of them, so I overdosed on vitamins. It was freaky. At least I think it was an accident in the dream and I wasn't trying to kill myself.

- The third one was just last night, in fact. I was probably younger than I am now because I was on a trip led by my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Blaker. But the people with me were not necessarily the people who were in my class then. Just some random folks, some from the YMCA daycares, or from middle school, or something. So we were on a field trip to Los Angeles. There was a small bay there and we were on a huge white ship. (I don't know if Los Angeles actually has a bay, but in the dream someone said it was Los Angeles) All us kids got on some swim suits, life jackets, swimming goggles, that sort of thing. We went swimming in the bay. I don't know if the water was cold, but it was very clean and blue. And there were a bunch of white sailboats and fishing boats and stuff docked. You could see some tall buildings but not as much as you would expect from a big city, and the sky was quite clear. Eventually we stopped swimming and went up on the ship for a while, but then we were given the option to swim one more time if we wanted to before leaving Los Angeles. So I went down this ladder (it was quite a short one, I mean, you could jump from level to level if you wanted), and that area of the ship was really crowded what with people running about talking or going down and up the ladders. So I put on my gear again and I was going to go swim but it turned out that the only way down to the water this time was climbing! You had to climb down this tall, squishy sort of blown up thing. It sort of resembled the weird things you sometimes see at car dealers, you know, the long squishy ones that flop in the wind. I climbed down it carefully and I thought I was going to fall off because of my weight, but no, I didn't. Sometimes I had to climb onto a blown up dolphin, and I don't know what that was for... Eventually I got all the way down and swam for a while before going back up. There, a guy (whom I actually recognize as someone who goes to my school currently) showed us his bookmark collection, which had various quotes written on them. He took out a book as well, a small white one which I mistook for The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by E. L. Konigsburg but it wasn't. Mr. Blaker took the book from the guy, found a page, and started reading. The story was set in the medieval times. There had been a legend, which I don't remember clearly, but it involved some important holy man who walked up some stairs and his key got tangled around his legs (maybe the key was on a chain or something). A man walked up some stairs and this happened. He had been invited to the home of two people who wanted him to marry their daughter, and he didn't want to get married but he thought he should be polite. Anyhow, the people who invited him gasped upon seeing that the key got tangled around him. I don't remember more since I had woken up by that point. (What a complicated dream! One of my longer ones.)

Labels: bay, bookmark, books, danger, dream, dreamland, field trip, key, legend, los angeles, neighborhood, online, overdose, shark, ship, summer, swim, swimming pool, toontown, vitamins

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