Hi again! I’m a little bit late in these news, but I’m so damn excited. This actually made my interest in JPop and JCulture in general come back. Sawajiri Erika is back to Japan, she spent some time living in the UK married to a much older guy (I know, I have seen this kind of story before) and doing nice things, like going to a Led Zeppelin concert (oookay). Now the bitch’s back, and she’s going to divorce the guy and, really, I couldn’t be happier.

First, I really love Erika. Her drama “1 Rittoru no Namida” is well-loved by maaany Jdrama fans, and it was really important to me at a certain point. But what I really like about her is that she is totally different from a lot of japanese idols. The girl ACTUALLY IS a bitch. She has the fame of being arrogant and bad-mannered, she was always involved in rumors about fighting actresses-groups and she supposedly made people call her “Erika-sama”, and all this actually sound so LOL to me (is it just me or japanese gossip is always more exciting? I don’t know, maybe it’s just cause it’s from such a faraway country :p). Things worsened because of her betsu-ni incident. I’m not sure why, but there’s something about her that’s really interesting, you never know what she’s going to do next. She announced the divorce and the reporters are going CRAZY. Appearently she was getting criticized once again for a list of exigences made by her husband or whatever. Now the he’s reaaally messed up with some financial problems, poor guy.

But I don’t care about her personal life, I really think Erika is very talented.  Her acting chops are nice, she has great body language. But most of all, the girl’s FIERCE. I love her as model, her photoshoots are not what you expect from your standard idol, they are stunning. I don’t know how much she is actually part of the process of creating her image, but she seems pretty aunthentic to me. She’s is aware of who she is, she’s not trying too hard to be cute or sexy.  Also, it looks like she really prepared for this comback, because she looks prettier than ever.

Anyway, I really love the songs she released as ERIKA and the Kaoru Amane song also. She’s kind of a rock chick, even though the style is pretty much the standard american comercial rock kind of thing. She actually has a good voice, I like the way she whispers in some point of her songs, I just don’t know if she can sing live. She may sign with Avex, and that would be pretty awesome, specially if she’s really cooperating with Matsuura Max. It just worries me a bit that she may try to change her ways. The japanese audience (actually, this happens in the whole world) is pretty critical and scary. If a person does something publicly criticizable, this person HAS to be punished. It happened to Erika, Koda Kumi and Tsuyoshi from SMAP and it’s kinda sad that she’s objectified as this  kind of martyr, but she’s a different kind of artist, one that japanese media isn’t really used to, that’s probably why she’s so hyped. This sounds funny, but I think that it’s so rare to find an openly arrogant artist in Japan. Anyway, her attitudes’ reasons are still a mistery for me. Maybe that’s why I like her.

I can’t wait to hear what she might realease, and she’s pretty succesful as a singer. Her latest magazine spreads are awesome and I’m glad to see someone coming back to give a little more colour (and some juicy gossip) to the JPop world.

I’ve been addicted to “Dear…” for about 3 months. I don’t know what’s going on with JPop right now, since I haven’t been able to keep up with nothing last year. What it seems to me is that, lately, each year a new pop/r&b idol (ex: Thelma Aoyama and Kana herself) explodes with some hits and poof: disappears again. There’s nothing new and expressively interesting in JPop, and the most famous singers, like ayu and hikki, don’t release anything too different (actually, hikki hasn’t released anything in Japan for 3 YEARS already, BIG bummer ). It all seems boring, and it kinda makes me quite sad, seeing how addicted I was to JPop 2 years ago… Maybe it’s just me.

But I’ve been liking pop music long enough to know that I don’t rationalize things too much: a good song is a good song, whether the singer disappears or not, or whether the song is totally refreshing or not. For me, both “Dear…” and “Best Friend” deliver, the lyrics are really touching, and I can’t stop singing the melodies all the time. Kana’s voice is really sweet, and, let’s admit it, that’s what’s most important for me in music. While there are good pop songs that can keep me addicted, I’ll keep listening to JPop.

I’ll be honest, I only got interested in K-Pop in the middle of this year, until then I only liked J-Pop. What called my attention in korean music was, how can I say, the fact that it’s more… poppy? I don’t, I just really enjoy it and even though I don’t know a lot, I think I know enough to point the highlitghts of this year. See what those were after the jump!

• Wonder Girls: First of all, I have to say this: I love the Wonder Girls. I love LOVE them. I know they’re an  idol group with stupidly addicting songs and that SoHee can’t sing live, but I can’t help it, it’s stronger than me. I just love them more everyday (except for SoHee). Having said that, 2008 was undeniably their year. Starting with their last year’s hit “Tell me”, their popularity just increased as this year they had two other hits “So Hot” and “Nobody”, both making them become more and more known outside Korea (they even appeared on Perez Hilton’s site) and making them win several awards recently, including MKMF and Golden Disk Awards. Since September they’ve done a incredible high number of “Nobody” peroformances, in every single version and style you can imagine. Now they are loved by many netizens who keep waiting to see what their next addicting-coreographed-conceptual song will be like, and I’m one of them Not only that, they already have their own cooking TV show, and JYP doesn’t seem interested in slowing them down anytime soon

• Big Bang: Big Bang, oh I love them too, I can’t possibly describe how much I love “Haru Haru”, it’s probably one of the songs I loved the most this year (together with “Nobody” ). The song has an almost perfect combination of classical instruments, rap (which I don’t usually like) and a cool beat.  Oh, and DaeSung’s voice in one of the verses gives me goosebumps. Even though it sounds like a dance song, it’s still really touching. I love it to death. The video was great as well. Just for that they deserve to be this year’s top group, which they were, together with Wonder Girls. They were the only group to have 3 hits this year and, in my opinion, they’re one of the best korean groups. They do their own music (at least G-Dragon and T.O.P do) and, diferently from the Wonder Girls, I really like all the members. And it’s not just me, since they won several awards as well.

So, I love the Wonder Girls and I love Big Bang, so I must be a WonderBang fan, right? Yes, you’re right, I’ll talk about this later.

• Other important comebacks: Apart from my two favourite groups, other huge artists made their comebacks this year: DBSK, pop diva Hyori Lee and Korea’s star Rain. I’ll be honest again, I only downloaded DBSK’s album, the other two didn’t grab my attention at all, even though I like some of Hyori’s songs. But I watched many of their perfomances and I know how well-loved they are. DBSK came with a new album, “Mirotic”, after achieving a level of sucsess in Japan that only BoA has done until now among Korea’s popstars. The title track os the album is GREAT, and, yes, it is another of my favourite songs this year, and so it was with Korean public (I think my taste is kinda mainstream, huh?). The album was a big success and they won awards in MKMF and Golden Disk Awards as well. Hyori came back with her new album “Its Hyorish” and I don’t have much to say because I don’t feel like researching anything about it  at all. Oh, she did an amazing performance with Big Bang on MKMF, THAT was great. Rain came back with his “Rainism” album and an interesting concept, something related to magic sticks or so. Whatever~

So, that’s it. I don’t know much about K-Pop (yet). Hopfully next year I’ll give a much more detailed summary, like the one I’ll do about J-Pop in the next post. For now, I’m REALLY excited for all the year-end’s korean Gayo Daejuns, there’s going to be a DBSK x Big Bang Special Stage, a mini-drama with Big Bang and SNSD, a special stage with Hyori and Rain (hottest duet ever?) and, of course, Wonder Girls How awesome is that? I can’t wait!

Merry Christmas, I’ll probably come here again before the new year. Don’t eat too much and enjoy your gifts!

I’m drooling all over it! Next post I’ll talk about music, wait for me!

Goo Hye Sun hopes this face and this hairstyle make her look younger.

Hello. So, I’m on holidays right now, and what’s the best thing to do in such occasions for a nerdy boy like me? Watch dramas of course! And while downloading these dramas, what do you do? Obviously anticipate other dramas! And how can you not anticipate a drama with a promo poster like the above one?! Everyone is talking about the Korean adaptation of Hana Yori Dango, or Kgotboda Namja, that’s going to premiere on January 5th, 2009.

I myself have been a HUGE fan of Hanadan for, say… 4 years? I knew the manga and could totally relate do the story, so I fell in love with it. Then came Meteor Garden, the taiwanese adaptation, that was almost like reading the manga again with poor production and bad actors (but entertaining as well) And so came the jdrama, which everyone fell in love with, and had a great production with memorable cast, wonderful music and great chemistry between the main actors. So, how can you make a better adaptation than that?

Of course everyone is comparing this new version to the japanese one, and talking about how GHS is too old to play the part, and how the production is too similar to the jdrama’s… Well, I’ve been reading everything (I mean, EVERYTHING, and I’m a busy boy XD) about this drama, and I’m pretty confident it’s gonna be good. I know GHS from Nonstop 5 and I do think she can pull off the funny and strong side os Tsukushi. Other than that I can’t wait to see Han Chae Young’s Shizuka, Kim Bum acting as a playoboy (come on, HE’S A KID) and, especially, Lee Min Ho as Domyoji, he has THE Domyoji face, I can’t freaking wait to see that.

Sadly, in Jdramas there doesn’t seem to have anything as exciting for me. The last Jdrama I finished was Atsu-hime, and I’l talk about it later, but other than that, I haven’t watched many dramas in 2008, for lack of time and interest. In the next season the Gekku (Monday @ 9 p.m) drama will be Voice, a drama about forensic pahotlogy students who try to solve the mysteries of the corpses they examine (?). How tacky is that? It doesn’t grab my attention at all, but I’ll probably watch it because of Eita (and because it’s a Gekku).

Eita is obviously happy that he’s going to be the lead in a Gekku.

There’s a drama with Karina and Tamaki Hiroshi, another with Ohno, one with Kamenashi Kazuya… Jdrama world seems so boring these days >:( Sigh, I’ll probably spend my time finishing Nodame and watching Hanadan. I intend to talk about every episode of Hanadan I watch here to share the excitement, so wait for it!

Bye

The Coffee Prince crew don’t get it at all.

Well, I suppose I have to make some kind of introduction before anything. Depite all, this blog isn’t a Coffee Prince fansite I just really like this drama, and yes, I love Yoon Eun Hye, she’s cute no matter what anyone says.

So, what’s this all about. I’m a brazilian boy who just really enjoyed reading all kinds of review blogs about jdramas/kdramas/jmusic/kmusic/whatever and decided to do my own blog, since I love watching/listening to all those things but not always have the chance to share my opinion about them.

About the name of the blog, Cloudy Noon is the name of a song from the OST of  Hana Yori Dango. There’s no deep meaning, really, I was just running out of ideas. At least it shows how important the Soundtrack of a drama is for me.

It’s hard to say what I like exactly, you’ll find out as I post. I have no big ambitions with this blog, so I don’t intend to feel pressured to post regularly on it. But I hope somebody reads it, ’cause I do intend be the clearest possible in everything I talk about, since I’ll be practicing my english as well. So, whoever reads this, I hope to be helpful, or that you at least have some fun here.

See you soon!