from here to here

First of all: Happy birthday to our friend Nights4 Saturn :-)))))

Remember last week's cartoon? Well, here are the caps from the new Meringue without silly captions:

The last pictures prompted Fumi to ask the question: Why he is giving his business card to this high school girl? Sukebe! I hope Matsuura will slap him. :-)))

mangomalte found the cover ofAya's 2008 calendar on yesasia and dared to critizise my work on her fingernails (okay, so it was a bit too much - but the boss wanted it!!!)
Fumi of course realized the intention: It looks like fishing lure for trout, yes? feather? and nail is hook! Here are some more images from that calendar: ORDER IT!!!! Alienpyon especially liked the top right photo and Matt thought that it was better than this year's.

Quintaxos found this performance on veoh which was correctly identified by Alien as being from the 2005 Kouhaku Utagassen (of course available in the RS folders):

Matt followed with a bunch of old and new official images:

Matt also uploaded a little video showing Aya's moving part(s) from a GAM performance. And no, it wasn't my doing. I wouldn't dare. Fingernails can hurt. And Alien added: I doubt Ayaya forgot to put on her bra, so I wonder whoever got into so much trouble just to make "them" shake, rattle and roll. Yeah, I hope figernails hurt a lot!

Marcello posted even more previews from the Double Rainbow album and mister.mori was lucky enough to see the famous 3hour Hey!Hey!Hey! special in which Aya...well let's mm tell himself (btw I'm tried to use spoilers, but the text was too bright when highlighted...):
spoiler 1: Matsuura's outfit isn't exactly hideous, but it's not that great either. bigger spoiler: bright pink spandex! spoiler 2: she sings one of her new songs off of Double Rainbow, HAPPY TO GO! bigger spoiler: and believe it or not she actually messes up at the beginning. (remember, this is a LIVE broadcast) To which Matt replied: but she did screw up in a charming way :-) As for the wardrobe: In addition that little party hat you normally put on your dog's head for its birthday. That's her reaction at the end after the screwup: I like the song, has something Kylie-Minogueish in her best phase. Lol. Amoz also provided some hilarious caps of her reaction to DJ Ozma's Spiderman dancers coming too close for comfort: whhich reminded Matt of the first time she encountered them in the Sakigake special... Needless to say all of Aya's Hey!3x show bits can be found in the RS folders, including the sequence in which she draghhed BoA onstage to meet the Korean boys from TVXQ (or DBSK) mnuguyen was kind enough to provide a little summary of that talk: Basically, Aya just asked BoA if she was ever going to receive her birthday present this year (Aya's birthday was in June, in case you didn't know) and BoA said that she had to go to Korea for work so she didn't get a chance to see Aya. BoA said she didn't forget though and she promises to give Aya a present... sooner or later. Tohoshinki's Chang Min just wanted to tell Aya that when he was in middle school (in Korea) he saw her Momoiro Kataomoi PV and thought she was really cute...
Btw you can find the whole show on jpopsuki.

We found a new Aya fan in reina* and were happy to see sLaVe4MM make a welcome appearance in the thread, commenting on the Hey!3x: I had no clue Ayaya was going to be there as well! It's the first time I've heard from her in a while (yes, I have been out of the H!P loop). But it was really cool. I did some searching... does she have some new single or something, or was she just a special guest? I thought maybe it was a GAM event, and was excited to see Miki, Aya, and BoA, but it was just Aya and BoA (and it reminded me of their nice specials together going out on the town). It was cute, she was hyper, and dragged BoA around. They really are friends. I thought after their little period of hanging out together earlier this year, it was never gonna happen again and it was just some sort of "celebrities showing that they have friends too" sort of thing. But this was really cool to see them together, acting normal - like real dorks. Not only that... but they had matching ridiculous outfits! Why are all the talented singers dressing more conservative and ajuuma* like?! We get it! You don't have to show your sexy body off to be respective, but I mean I'm not talking about dressing like Koda (cuz then I'd be crushed)... but the outfits are so... Anyway, I''m starting to speculate if BoA got her change of style from hanging with Ayaya too much now.
*ajuuma = Korean word for old lady. I guess obaachan would be the equivalent of it in Japanese, just not in the grandmother sense.

Thanks to zam and jukocho-love Matt learned that Aya will have a new radio show starting October and was finally able to properly reply to mister.mori's mention of her business card (which I have dealt with in week 36 though already)

The last of the new Gogo no Kocha cms appeared (and here are all three in a row: ),
as well as scans from "Weekly Playboy" magazine:

silenceglaive brought up an interesting point: Just listened to Egao and I wonder if anyone has mixed feelings towards it too. On the one hand it is a really good ballad and Aya sings beautiful as always... But on the other hand I feel the song could have been much better if they didn't have had her singing that high in several passages. It's like "Okay you can sing beautifull and with power and passion .. then we will make it a challenge and make it 2 notes higher".
Maybe a bit lower in notes would have done it better? Or am I wrong ^^? (btw you can never be wrong - just have a differing opinion :-))) Some replies:
mangomalte: ^ didn't really think about that. i don't really have any problem with the high notes.
Matt: And in some respect you're right, silenceglaive. It was a bit of a show-off. But at least it was different, something she hadn't attempted before that drastically.
Azagrath: You're right, the vocal melody (especially in the middle section) is at the top of her normal range a lot of the time. I usually prefer her singing in a lower range myself, since she can use her the low end tone of her voice as well. Egao doesn't have that. She has a beautiful and soothing voice, but she's no Whitney Houston (or whoever else with that kinda voice, just an example). I much prefer something like The Last Night or Watarasebashi, where she uses alot more falsetto for the higher parts, as opposed to really high in her normal range.
silenceglaive: You completely got my point Let's hope it was just to proove she can do that too and sing lower next time ^^
Alienpyon: "Egao" has some pretty low parts, too. If the pitch of the entire song went lower, then those low parts would go... ehm, "lowest"? In any case, it would be much harder to sing those parts. I certainly agree, her singing in this single is quite unusual. I don't mind, of course, I love the song, but I have a feeling that the key will change in live performances; those high notes are hard to pull off outside a studio. Ayaya is a wonder, though, so, who knows, maybe she take them even higher!
Matt: Yep, I was wondering myself if she would sing it that high-key in concerts too. And it never hurts to try something new. It certainly was a surprise to hear

Maiko^o^ (the lucky bastard) showed us his ticket for the upcoming Aya tour. Which made the faces of all other members turn green from envy, including Matt's - that is until Fumi reminded him that he is paying money to your future wife, yes? Think about your family retirement plan! :-)))))

HAVE FUN, MAIKO!!!!!! And give her all our best!

Quintaxos reported that during an anime convention he'll be attending they are going to screen an Aya concert! Way to go, Sweden!!!

Matt then reported the upload to the RS folders of two versions of the plaid skirt commercials for Glico Pretz that atstrbcks was asking about a while back (plus two Fuji TV briefs about the making of these spots:

Also new in the folders are the Musical Real Audition!! and a quiz-like edition of muSix from 2002 with Morning Musume, Zone and w-inds . Matt didn't know the exact date for this one, but Aya was wearing the outfit she wore on the show for her Momoiro Kataomoi performance on February 16 . As Sherlock "sville" Holmes found out it was in fact the March 31 episode.

The last pic inspired Fumi: We should have a Cowgirl Contest in H!O, yes? Matsuura thread can host, yes?
And N4S was the first to reply: , followed by sville: Oh, and it doesn't have to be the case that a cowgirl is not scared of horses, right? (We're all human beings, so are cowgirls.)

Lastly there were the caps for the new Meringue, with some cute facials expressions by Aya (but also with those pink spandex from Hey!3x...:

Cya next week :-)))