Decided to make an on-going download index of the Tokyo Live shows for all the multigroup fans out there. All links lead to MEGA folders, with files at 1280x720 (re-encoded as necessary). I'll throw new episodes into the appropriate folders as they're available.


Tokyo Live 24 (2014.03.31-2014.04.11) → Tokyo Live 22 (2014.10.19-2015.09.27)
Tokyo Live 24 (2014.03.31-2014.04.11) → Ichigen-san (2015.10.18- ) *updated 2016.03.20

Little Tokyo Live (2014.10.08-2015.06.24) → Little Tokyo Life (2015.07.01- ) *updated 2016.04.06

Original sources: B級動画, monster3104, 帽_misono-universe, marumon, oahoaix, Harvesttu, tabemono, -小77777-, 湮3259812, 瞬麺餃子RP棒棒棒, A老Ra板shI娘KK, Senya, z小恶魔zz, boru_ardk45, 裕翔yuto1993, aru-nagisasemi, 钱钱akane, Natsu, WWWiico, Bbnn

Everyone predicted that I would fall off the updating wagon soon enough, but I didn't realize it'd be that quickly! Every few days I'd be like "ohgosh gotta post" and then I'd just never get around to it, so now's the time! I will do it! Here's a super boring and rambly rundown of my last few months:


- Late March/early April: Went to my cousin's wedding in Indonesia with my mom, which was a super fun and fulfilling trip. It was really nice to be with my extended family, even though I couldn't navigate the language enough to speak back when spoken to (I'm one of those "understands it but can't produce it" kids), and even though I basically know nothing about them. There was something so comfortable and familiar about those people and that culture, even though I don't actively think about it as being a part of who I am; it was nice to spend a week reminded that I have this whole chunk of people on the other side of the world who care very much about me even if I only talk to them once every ten years or so. I know family is really messed up for a lot of people, so I feel incredibly fortunate and grateful that mine are such a good bunch.


- Early May: Needed a change of scenery, so I made a quick trip to Japan that coincidentally(?!?!) lined up nicely with Golden Week/Johnny's WEST in Yokohama Arena! Fancy that!! XD What an amazingly fun concert that was, even though we were the ~loud Americans~ and Meghan basically had to keep to herself the entire time because I'm pretty sure she was ashamed to be seen with us. :'D That makes my third Johnny's concert (after Arashi and Kanjani8 in November-December), and I feel like I'm ticking them off at a good pace. :3

I also had a tour and pseudo-interview with the company I'll be working for when I move to Japan. I... actually don't think I've talked about it in any detail here, but basically:

( moving to Japan and thingsCollapse )


- Late June: Some random folks I kind of knew from college got married. William asked me to be in his wedding party as a "groomsperson" (was the title I gave myself), and I was Real Cute, NEGL (I bought a black jacket/vest/skirt to create the femme version of what the guys were wearing, with the tie rented from Men's Wearhouse). It was actually a bit overwhelming how fun the weekend was and I don't think I'd be able to adequately express what it meant to me to be there, but generally, it was one of the best weekends in a very long with a bunch of old friends. (Also got to spend a day with the illustrious Tey, with whom I saw animals and a lack-of-animals and it was just... so fun?? Glad we were able to make it happen. ♥) Goodbyes were a little surreal because I realized it'd probably be the last time I saw many of them for a long time (probably not until the next wedding, or longer); I don't even know if Japan is going to be a permanent home for me or if I'll come back to the US at some point, and that makes this feeling even more intangible/difficult to process, but I'm really glad that I got to spend such a special weekend with so many of the faces I love.


- Lately: Been in my weird anxious phase about my high school trauma (basically watching my friends become better friends with each other and leave me behind) and writing complex (can't read fic because it makes me legitimately sick to my stomach to read good writing, even though plenty of those same people tell me they love my writing). But I want to write more because sometimes I do feel really good about writing, but a lot of it is that I want to prove myself and have people recognize me as ~so good~ or whatever, and that feels kind of weird and rude and unnecessarily competitive to me. Eh, eh, life, adulthood, eh.


Hm, I'll learn how to make these entries interesting someday. XD Um I wanted to end with something about Bun-chan because I love him so much, but I actually have nothing specific to say. Just know that I love him so much.


A little happiness: I got new running shorts yesterday! To fend off that weird tan I've developed while wearing running pants where my shins/calves are super tan but my thighs are super white. I actually think my thighs are incredibly gross, but it's not my problem how other people feel about seeing them. :D More exercise means they'll be less gross someday anyway, so~

Good news! My friend I hadn't heard back from is doing well! She, in fact, didn't get my text because of the giant photo of my cat. Technology can be so petty when it's jealous of my cat's excellence. :(

I also messaged my old boss from my part-time job at UCLA just telling her I was thinking of her and thanking her for all the stuff she taught me that I'm using in my current position. She sent me a message back all touched and happy to hear from me. This reaching out to people thing feels really nice.


The weather has been glorious this past week so I'm trying to get back into running. I don't like that I'm one of those people who stops during winter, but I feel like death running around a track/on a treadmill so I welcome the relative sunshine and warmth. I'm hoping that I'll soon be able to start biking to work again, too, but assuredly the weather will become terrible again and we'll have 30 more years of winter before spring finally arrives.


I want to be one of those people who can talk about her uninteresting day-to-day in an interesting way, but developing that skill takes a lot more effort than sitting in front of the computer and staring at moving pictures for a while. Alas.


Today's little happiness: My mom packs my lunch every morning because I'm a helpless 27-year-old so I often don't know what's in it until I pop open my tupper/bowl. Today was rice, beef, and broccoli -- simple but delicious. :D

In an effort to do that reaching-out-to-people thing, I sent a text to a friend I haven't talked to for a few months, but she hasn't responded yet and I don't know if she 1) changed her number, 2) hasn't had a chance to respond yet for whatever reason, or 3) simply didn't receive it because I also attached a giant photo of my cat. It's nice that I'm in a healthy place mentally/emotionally where I'm no longer anxious that not having heard back from someone means that they hate me or don't want to talk to me because I've done something wrong or whatever (because what an awful feeling that is), but I'm still very much the kind of person who starts to get frantically worried if I don't hear from people. So I'll wait a few days and then maybe just send her an e-mail if she doesn't get back to me. XD


I made a new icon! Look at how perfect Bun-chan is!!! I invested in a permanent LJ account back when they were on sale years ago so I have all this icon space that I'm never going to fill up because I'm not good at making icons, but every once in a while I give it a shot and have a new icon to use, and it makes me want to post a journal entry even though I have nothing to talk about except how I texted someone but she hasn't texted me back.

I was chuckling to myself earlier about how I've been sifting through idols I'm obsessed with pretty quickly over the past year, but on some level it seems like a natural arc as I fall into fandoms and dig deeper and watch old stuff with ~new eyes~. Ultimately I've discovered (rediscovered?) a bunch of new (renewed?) people in a bunch of different groups that I love lots and I'm really happy to have so many good people I want to support in Johnny's fandom as a whole.

But it's very very official now. Bun-chan is, in fact, the one for me.


A little happiness: I got a cat shawl from one of those young and hip shops along Takeshita-dori when I visited Japan in December, and I decided to leave it in the office because I can't actually control the temperature in the space. It's currently keeping me warm/protecting me from the evils of the world.

I've always had a lot of respect for people who actually keep in touch with their friends, so I've been trying to be a little more aggressive about reaching out to people when I think about them. What happens fairly often is that someone will message me and I'll be like, "Hey, I was totally thinking about you the other day! :D" and it feels fake even though it's true (because I think about people randomly all the time), so I'm going to make more of an effort to actually let people know when I'm thinking about them instead of being the one to have to be contacted.

It's hard sometimes, especially when it's been a while and I'm not sure what all to say, but I know from my end it's always nice to hear from old friends even if it's been a long, long time. So I'ma be that person! Wait for me, friends...!


I forgot to include a little happiness in last night's post, so have a few recent ones:

- The other day Boss N told me that he ran into my dad on campus, and naturally I wondered if they actually recognized each other since they'd only met once before. Boss N was like, "Oh yeah, I called him by name and we talked for a few minutes!" That evening my dad mentioned that he ran into Boss N and I was like, "Yeah, he told me you actually recognized each other!" But as it turns out my dad just kept up a conversation for a few minutes while trying to figure out how he knew Boss N, and the only reason he figured it out was because Boss N eventually brought me up in conversation. XD Oh, Pa. I will be forever angry that I inherited the inability to remember where I've met people from you, but you gave me a good laugh that I won't share with Boss N lest it breaks his heart.

- Last night my dad brought home Singaporean noodles and they were mild enough for me to eat without suffering too much.

- I had a 7am tutoring Skype session scheduled with one of my Japanese tutees this morning but she cancelled because she woke up without a voice, so I had an early morning with nothing to do. The fact that I'm happy about this probably makes me a bad tutor but eh.

- I'm listening to this week's 7raji right now, and I'm just really glad that Yamada has grown up in recent years and my feelings about him have turned around. He's still my least favorite in the group (because unfortunately someone has to come last in a ranking), but generally I feel pretty good about his existence these days.

After nearly two years of scrambling to build and manage a new institute essentially by myself (it's been two bosses and one person who actually does all of the everything), we've finally hired a new guy! And with that I finally got the promotion and raise that had been promised to me at the beginning of the fiscal year last summer, since I finally have someone under me and can finally justify to the compliance powers that be that I deserve a better title since I'm ~no longer buying coffee~ and whatnot. You're now reading the LJ entry of an Assistant Director~

Just in time to get ready for a sooner-than-later move to Japan that very few people know about, oops. XD My bosses know and are happy that I'll be following my dreams, etc., and a few close colleagues know, but mostly the faculty fellows and other staff who've seen me put everything together for the past two years have been congratulating me and thanking me in advance for my hard work in this new position that they're saying I've deserved for so long, and it's a very weird feeling because people are sending me so many happy thoughts while I'm suffocating on my own guilt for wanting so badly to leave.

To specify, I have a tentative/proposed job offer from a company in Nagoya whose president we met when the institute went on a faculty delegation to Japan last December. Over super fancy shabushabu dinner that was so fabulous the cow meat came with a birth certificate, he turned to me and said, "I'm going to hire you," and I was like "lol okay dude" and he was like, "No, I'm serious. :|" Boss N is like my dad and he just wants me to be happy so he talked me up all through dinner, and here I am a couple months later just waiting for an official offer. Details forthcoming, as they're settled.

Was obviously hoping to be with Massiel 5ever in Tokyo so she could stress out my cat and we could share a shoe collection, but Nagoya is sufficiently between Tokyo and my heart's real hometown, Osaka, so I'll make visits when I can to see all the faces (celebrity and otherwise) that I love.


Speaking of which, my Twitter these days has been bogged down, for better or for worse, by a whole gaggle of Kansai children. These folks I've peripherally known of/followed for years have in the past few months swallowed me whole, and now I'm desperately, irrevocably in a bad way with Bun-chan. I added him to my tessellating Nino/Pikachu background today and I feel like there's nowhere else to go but down into the soul-crushing depths of actual love in a way I never love celebrities. Recently Brigit tortured us with a renewed favorite Johnny's ranking, and when I was asked where Bun-chan would fit (because he's a Junior and thus not included in the ranking of debuteds) I realized he actually, literally, for real real wouldn't fit anywhere since no one has ever made me feel the way he does -- not even Nino, who has defined who I am and shaped me as an individual and been so, so important to me that he will always and forever be my Favorite. Even so, even so, Bun-chan is the first ever in this strange new category of indescribable feelings and it seems like I have no choice but to let myself sink into them.

So here I am. What am I supposed to do with myself? What have you done to me, Bun-chan?? D:

We'll continue to report on this story as it unfolds.

Last night I took a jump rope, some free weights, and the mysterious exercise ball that I'm 90% sure William and I found left in our summer apartment nearly seven years ago, and I lugged them down into the cold, unfinished basement to spend a few minutes moving. There's a stationary bike down there, too, poached from some neighbors who, for reasons that quickly became apparent to us, decided it was a piece of junk they were willing to shoo away for $5.

I subsequently fell asleep curled up on the couch in a bundle of Pokémon blanket, and I've spent today sore, either with the strain of unexpected exercise (because while I move my legs to run I rarely move anything else) or the weight of the poor decision I'd made to try at all.


I'm enjoying writing about my life in long form and it's resulting in this strange attempt at dryly humorous prose. I'm sure soon enough I'll transition back into my noisily erratic emoticon-ridden spurts of nonsense.


Today's little happiness: I did my taxes wooooo. I actually enjoy the tax-filing process because I'm at heart a process logician but I never get to play much with numbers. :<

My phone does this thing where if one file in a directory has an image attached to it, that image infects the directory and becomes the "album image" for all of the files inside. It isn't so bad when the directory is actually an album with an album cover that should be attached to those files, but when it's a headshot of a random middle-aged woman that was associated with a radio show file that then becomes associated with the 250+ backlogged radio show files I have in that directory, it means that I'll be staring at this random woman for a very long time until I make it through the entire directory.

At some point she'll become warm and familiar, like a dear friend watching over me, and when I finally get through the entire directory and clear it out I'll find that my life is a little emptier without her smiling face, but for now she makes me incredibly uncomfortable and I nearly drop my phone every time I look at the screen while listening to music and her face is staring straight back at me.


Tonight I went to a (free! delightfully free) concert that I wasn't planning on going to. It took some time for me to warm up to one of my office suitemates who, upon first encounter, struck me as relentlessly direct and unfriendly, but over time I found that she was interested in engaging with me as a peer and was happy to discuss any commonalities we found -- including, as it turns out, classical music. I ran into her in the back room at the end of the day when she was lamenting that she couldn't go to a Wagner/Debussy vocal performance at the university's performing arts center, and she asked me if I was interested in European classical music and I mentioned that I happened to be a classical violinist by training. So she trotted me back to her office to look up details about the concert, and right then and there she called the box office for me and let me reserve a free ticket under my name.

At first I was reluctant to go because I'm the kind of person who wants to stay at home forever, but in the interest of good will toward this suitemate -- and, yes, appreciation for classical music -- I went and had a nigh-spiritual jolly old time. I'm not so arrogant as to believe that music has more of an effect on me as someone who identifies as a musician -- that's unfair and untrue (and that's the very magic of music) -- but I would wager that I've at least had more opportunities than many to directly engage with and reflect upon the role music plays in my life. So it was nice to sit for a short and intimate program and spend an hour appreciating just how much music means to me.

Between the two I prefer Debussy because he so masterfully straddles the line between delicate and desolate, and all you can do is let it unravel you.


That was supposed to be my little happiness for the day but all the words I had about music made it big and ruined everything! So my little happiness is the fact that I updated my LJ profile yesterday (since my last profile's table coding got messed up with the LJ revamp and needed to be redone) and I still quite like it today. It strikes the perfect balance between friendliness, pretentiousness, and thinks-she's-clever-ness that defines me as a human being.

It's been a long, long time since I've updated this thing, and while I still check my f-list several times a day, I think I've forgotten how nice it feels just to talk about myself into the ether to the handful of ears still roaming around.

I've been trying to be more health-conscious (more mentally and emotionally than physically, because at least physically I have a sense of what I need to achieve my goals even if I'm not actually doing a damn thing), and one of the things I've been working on is being in a healthy, happy headspace -- cutting out bad thoughts about myself and about other people, trying to be less judgmental and more open to appreciating the good around me.

Anyone who's following me on Twitter knows that my Johnny's a la mode is Johnny's WEST's Hama-chan, who is, behind all the panic and absurdity, an Inocchi-level sweet dude and good person. Hama-chan ends his Jweb entries with that quote attributed to Mother Teresa about how you should be careful of your thoughts because they become words become actions become habits become destiny; the way Hama-chan lives his life so, so conscious of and grateful for the people around him -- so that he can look back on each day without regrets, so that he can be glad that he said or did the things he said or did to the people he encountered -- is very much the kind of day-to-day I aspire to in my own life. I can't say that I'm there yet because I'm still a douchebag on a daily basis even to my closest friends, even if in my head it comes from a place of love and concern but out loud it's criminally insensitive, but it's nice to know that there are people out there who do live up to that ideal. Hama-chan makes me want to be a better person -- all my idols do -- and isn't that just wonderful?

A small happiness to end this post with: a while back I saw some Pokémon figurines at Target, purportedly from some Pokémon board game I didn't know existed, and I saw a pack that had Wobbuffet in it. Wobbuffet is for whatever reason my brother's internet "persona" -- all of his Twitter icons have been various states of Wobbuffet -- so I bought the pack and put the little Wobbuffet figurine on his computer to wait for him to come back from class. Neither of us ever brought it up -- though I know he knows it was from me because my parents wouldn't know what it means -- but after some time he changed his Twitter icon to a photo of the figurine, and that's about as much acknowledgment as I need.

Looking forward to being back on LJ. Talk to you again soon, friends. ♥