As Time Goes By

Yesterday was rather productive for me as I solved some storage problems by buying a tall, thin shelving unit that fits nicely into my tiny room. After we had lived the joys of building flat-pack furniture, I went round the house claiming all the CDs that belonged to me and went on a wee trip down memory lane.

A New Home

Among the things that I found was a loose CD with the words "Morning Musume - 10 MY ME" written hastily on the front in permanent marker. This was the start of my J-pop fixation. I had not long got into Momusu and so had bought their, at the time, new album and burned it onto a CD. And suddenly it hit me that this was three years ago. I thought, "Wow, I must've been only been in second year when I got into all this". But thinking about it, I remember having Aya Hirano's 'Love Gun' stuck in my head during a first year french test, although I suppose that was the anime connection more than anything else.

 

Anyway, the Morning Musume of '10 MY ME' is now long gone, with only two members from that era remaining. Which brings me on to my next point. 'Renai Hunter' was a year ago! "That's not very long" you may say but, although it feels like yesterday, I would say I've changed quite a lot between then and now. It's been two years since I was entranced by miwa's fantastic debut album, two years since I was worryingly hooked on Perfume's 'Laser Beam', getting on for four years since I first heard Morning Musume and SCANDAL.

 

My point is that change is good. The change is what has, ultimately, fuelled by love of Japanese music. There is always new material being released and I cannot think of a time when I have been bored with a trend simply because they last no time at all! I often think to myself "Will I still like this stuff when I'm older?". While in the past I have been cynical and answered that question with "Of course not, I will have matured", now I see no reason why I can't be fan of Japanese music for years to come. After all, I've come this far.

(Bonus points to anyone who recognises the title of this post as a certain '99 gem)