Last night was the Starfire 11th anniversary event at Pasela in Ginza.  It was one of the best Starfires I’ve been to yet.  People from all over Japan and people from other events who usually don’t come to Starfire came out for the anniversary and it’s nice to see people supporting Starfire.  I got my 11th anniversary cell phone strap 

I think the bartenders at Starfire have been taking notes from the bartenders at SEF because their drinks have gotten super strong.   So I was very happy all night hehe.

The lessons were:
Sex Skiller / Go Go Girls
My Lord / Techno Mob

Sex Skiller is definitely a Ryohei routine.  All 3 members of T-rrex were there for the anniversary. 

My Lord from Hyper Techno Mission felt like a cop out by Ryuuichi.  It was meh.

I think it’s funny that they choregraph these routines the day before the event.  They have a whole month to prepare.

Then it was time for the prize raffle.  Each of the members gave out a prize, and I won the Inocchi prize! I finally won something.   It was Samourai perfume, the same thing I won at SEF Rena and Suzujun’s wedding .  It’s good perfume. 

Matsuno-san from avex gave out bags of avex goods.  Last was Bancho.  And ironically the person who won Bancho’s prize was Satomi, who he loves to pick on.  It was a really good prize too – Starfire t-shirt and every Starfire dvd.  Bancho had wanted it to go to a young person who didn’t have the dvds, so Satomi was nice and gave them out to people. 

Next they gave out something called the Starfire Mastercard – a card that lets you enter Starfire for only 1000 yen each month for a year (normally it’s 2000 -3000 yen).  But they made you earn it in a “Guess that Tune” type game.  The DJ played the intro to a song, and if you could name the song and the artist and dance the routine, you won the Mastercard.  It’s a fun idea!  The DJs weren’t making it easy and kept using deceptively similar songs.  Ryuuichi was judging the techno songs and he was being super picky about the furi.  But it was taking too long that way so they gave it to the guy who danced “Get Up” even though he made a mistake in the sabi.  It was a really weird nerdy guy and he looked so serious when he was dancing.  Nobu and Nori were yelling “you’re Ryuuichi!” while he was dancing haha.  Then he fell on his knees when Ryuuichi gave him the mastercard.  weird guy.

The winner of the eurobeat mastercard was Jasmine, with Go Speed Racer Go.   The gaijin were representing last night. 

Then each member of Starfire gave a message on stage.  Ryuuichi’s was: “I’m looking for a pupil so I can focus on being a movie star.”  He’s done with parapara I guess.  I guess Nobu isn’t a good enough pupil.  Ryuuichi is pretty irreplaceable. 

They also celebrated Ke-tan and T-rrex Ryohei’s engagement.  They each got their own bottle of champagne to down.  They’re a heavy drinking couple  ^^;

Then we drank and danced until the event ended at 6am.  After Starfire finished we went to Denny’s down the street, which is the only restaurant open at that hour in that neighborhood so everyone goes there afterwards.  It’s fun because you can have eggs and bacon with Ryuuichi and Bancho sitting at the table next to you.   Not many people were there this time so it wasn’t that great.  But having food and water after a night of drinking is a great idea.  That’s probably why I was only a little hangovery this morning.   

It’s too bad that Starfire only happens once a month because it’s such a great event.  I’ll have to check out the all you can drink special at B-1 Dynamite this Wednesday.

Hi, Heather again. 

I’m going to try and make reports on all the major events I go to each month 

Last Sunday was SEF Delux and it was the 4th anniversary special.  I think it was Alex who made a comment recently about how SEF lives in the present and I think that’s very true.  SEF itself has been around for ages, but they’re only celebrating the 4 years since SEF Gold became SEF Delux.  On the other hand, Starfire also has an anniversary this month, their 11th anniversary.  Starfire has changed venues countless times but it’s always continued as Starfire.  They keep a lot of connection to their past, ie always mentioning Twinstar. I think it’s good that they remember where they’ve come from.  But I guess SEF does things a little differently.

SEF had a prize raffle as part of the anniversary celebration.  I’ve never won anything in any of these raffles(;_;)  They gave out two bags of avex goods(avex logo hand towels etc), two bottles of champagne, free entry to SEF for a year(I wanted this!) and a trip for two to a hot springs resort in Hakone(this would be nice too but I don’t have anyone to go with  ;_;) But that was the only special thing they did for the anniversary event. 

Starfire is doing a raffle at their anniversary event as well and I love the Starfire raffles because the dancers bring personal items from home to give away haha.  But I heard that Starfire might be giving out a one year pass that lets you get into Starfire for 1000 yen.  That would be nice.  Starfire always goes all out for their anniversary – performances, special guests, etc.  I’m looking forward to it.

There was a good turnout for SEF this month.  Recently SEF has been turning into a gyaru circle hangout place because Uga invites all his gal circle friends.  9LoveJ used to be the place to see drunk teenage gyarus but no one goes to 9LoveJ anymore. 

The lessons this month were:
WHEELPOWER AND GO! / DEJO & BON
Ecstasy / EROTIC

SEF is so serious when they teach the lessons.  Uga was a little bit late getting on stage when it was time for the euro lesson and Yano chewed him out on stage… >_<  And they’re so meticulous when they go through the song with the count.  Starfire lesson time is more like watching a stand up comedy routine. 

After the lesson they had tequila matsuri time, which is when they give out free tequila shots to everyone.  I never make it through SEF sober what with the tequila matsuri and the evil bartender who makes my drinks 90% tequila and 10% orange. >_<

Next month SEF is on the last Sunday of the month which means the big 3 events are all back to back in one big parapara weekend. Sounds tiring, especially on the liver!

I don’t know if these reports make sense to people who have not experienced paraibe in Japan but I hope they are somewhat informative and interesting. ^^ 

coming up next:  Starfire 11th anniversary report!

DNS vol. 4
Air date: 2/17/11

Tonight’s special was BEST OF 2010 and DIMA.

There’s been a lot of controversy lately over the shift SEB has been taking in lowering its BPMs.
This time I wanted to see how well those songs deal in a setting alongside parapara-style tracks.
A few don’t work very well, but the majority of the tracks seem to fit right in when adjusted.
Almost as if they were meant to be faster.
Maybe my ears are fatigued by high-speed BPMs now!

To help push Dima’s digital release campaign, one of tonight’s sets included his most popular from the last few years.
The label is currently publishing unreleased, previously released, and original versions of tracks, all in extended format on popular download services such as iTunes and Juno Download.

1. David Dima – Yoko (Extended Version)
2. Max Zero – Loved In Tokyo (Extended Version)
3. Dream Fighter – Stormbringer (Extended Version)
4. Big Warez – King Of Samurai (Extended Version)
5. Aleky – Labyrinth of Love (Extended Version)
6. Judy Crystal – Tell Me Why (Extended Version)
7. Stephy – Speed Demon (Original Version)

This is definitely worth it for Yoko and Tell Me Why (if you weren’t around during music-master.tv) alone.
If you missed out on the stream but still want to hear Judy Crystal’s last known (I think?) track, Dima Music has samples, artist updates, and more on their FB page.

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Hi everyone, Heather here.   I’ve heard that people like reading reports about parapara events in Japan so I’m going to start putting event reports here. 

As I think you’ve all heard, last week avex held an event to promote the release of Super Eurobeat vol 210.  The three big parapara clubs (SEF, 9LoveJ, Starfire) came together and all together danced 210 songs nonstop on a live internet show broadcast on niconico douga (kind of like Japanese Youtube).   They had a similar event last year to promote SEB 200 but it was a much bigger scale this time. 

I was really happily surprised when the Starfire organizer Bancho invited me, Max and Jasmine to dance with the Starfire members in the niconico douga show!  It was definitely one of my to memories in Japan.

We got to go to avex headquarters and surprisingly you can just walk in.   In the waiting room each club had their own table  (J, SEF, Starfire) and the top dancers from each event were there. We were with Starfire of course.  Starfire’s team
was all three members of T-rrex, Hitoshi, Ke-tan, Harumi, Take, Negiko, Bancho and Piyokan. 

Choushu Koriki, the comedian who helped spark the 4th boom with his comedy act using Night of Fire, was there too and it’s always fun getting to see celebrities in person     It looks like he’s gained weight.  

Also, it was cool seeing all the work that goes on behind the scenes at nico douga.

The “nico nico dancers” also danced a few songs in the show but it was really kimoi.  Otakugei is scary stuff.

We were told to bring a costume for the filming.  SEF and J put a lot of work into their costumes but the Starfire people didn’t have much.  They had to stop at Donki on the way and buy outfits. The yellow aprons the girls wore were pretty cute. There were boxes of costumes there that you could choose from but they were all Juliana’s bodycon/avex race queen type outfits. The black sequin dress I wore was something I found there. I’m glad I wore that and not the maid outfit I brought.

SEF went first, then J, then Starfire was last. I was expecting SEF to be really well practiced and serious business but they were pretty casual about it. The viewers loved Luigi(Uga). (no wonder, he is pretty hot). 9LoveJ was super serious business. They were in the bathroom rehearsing all the songs on the list before they went on. Meanwhile Starfire started drinking at about 10pm haha.  It was true Starfire style as everyone was saying.  Hitoshi had Korean makkori and campari…campari shots made me want to die >_<

Harumi-san is so nice♥ Even though she’s a parapara veteran superstar she’s so friendly. She always says hi and when I took a picture with her she said “nakayoku shite kudasai.” I told her “Harumi-san daisuki” and she said “Everyone says that but they’re actually Satomi fans.” haha no I’m a Harumi fan really!

Shota (ex-waros) randomly showed up after hearing about the event online. Somehow he got stuck with the job of holding the sign in the back but he was pretty popular with the viewers. 

And speaking of ex-wltp members, Eri was there with Matsuno-san. I guess they’re still together, if that’s the right way of putting it. Eri looks better in person than she did on wltp. She seemed nice from the little bit I talked to her.

Starfire went on sometime after midnight I think. We had a Starfire team huddle before we went on and Bancho talked about how parapara is about having fun and that tonight is a chance to spread parapara to people outside of the scene. I think our set was very true to the Starfire spirit and it was so much fun. It was amazing dancing on the same stage as the professional Starfire dancers. I messed up so bad on so many songs.   After watching the videos from the show I realized a lot of things I need to improve about my dancing.   I was trying to smile while I danced but after seeing the video I actually wasn’t smiling much at all.  >_<But it was still amazing.

Max was super popular. The screen was full of people commenting “makkusu kitaa” haha

They interviewed the 3 of us gaijin but I rambled too much.   They asked how foreigners learn about parapara and I tried to explain about the Parapara Paradise game arcade but I was just rambling.   The viewers just wanted to see Max anyway so that’s ok. I have no idea what if any comments people made about me but it’s probably better that way.

For the last 5 songs everyone came on stage and danced together. The last song was Night of Fire with Choshu Koriki of course

Afterwards we signed SEB 210 posters and took a group photo. They said that a total of 90,000 people watched the event, compared to 30,000 for the SEB 200 event last year. That’s 3 times more, wow! Matsuno-san said that it’s thanks to Starfire. He said he really wanted to include Starfire in the SEB 200 event too but wasn’t allowed to (when avex and Starfire were not on good terms).  Also, SEB 210 sold out on amazon during the course of the show!

It was after 3am by the time we finished and 7A said that she was taking everyone to an izakaya for the after party. It was all courtesy of avex, nice. Everyone couldn’t fit into one room so we had a Starfire room and a non-Starfire room. We were sitting by Shintaro and it turned into English conversation hour. He has really good English which is cool, but after 6 years in Japan I’m really sick of having the “What Japanese food do you like?” conversation… At least no one made any comments about chopsticks :p It’s tough because being gaijin is what got us on the show I’m sure but I also want to be a person and not a side show act.

I’d say the show was a great success and thank you everyone who watched and took video.  I really hope that they have events like this more than once a year, and hopefully it can be used somehow to bring more attention to the parapara scene. 

DNS vol. 3

Air date: 2/2/2011

What better way to kick off National Aishuu Month than with loads of Elena Ferretti and Annerley Gordon

In preparation for the Bemani section, I had to wade through a gross amount of pseudobeat Konami lets pass as EUROBEAT in their games. It’s that generic sounding (as if eurobeat wasn’t enough already) “euro” that doesn’t -quite- carry the authenticity that SEB tracks do. I think out of all of the offenders, Akiba Koubou’s sound is the most believable (not including Y&Co.). That said, there’s still something about their music that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it’s the fact that Nagisa gets the majority of their better produced tracks…or that their intros all sound the same synth-wise….or that they have the word AKIBA in their label’s name.

As usual, thanks to everyone that stopped by tinychat and took some time to listen to the stream! Your continued support keeps us going

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