Friday, August 21, 2009

Today's Band: Ayabie and Word of the Day

Hello everyone! I come bringing a few different things for you to read. I'll start off with a word of the day. Since I just finished the drama, "The Flowershop Without Roses," I'm making today's word the word for flower. Hana (花)is the Japanese word for all flowers, and more specifically, Bara, is the name for a Rose, or Roses (as there aren't really plurals in Japanese). And continuing on in that thread, I'll share my thoughts on the drama. This is one of the better dramas I've seen in a long time. It has romance in it, but it delves far deeper than that. The makers of this one do an artful job taking something so seemingly simple on the outside (a father who raises his daughter alone after his wife dies in childbirth, and a new blind girl in town who is drawn to him), and making every single character deep and complicated. The makers do a great job of splitting each character to show their inner demons or conflicts while still holding onto the pure person they were when we first met them. Every episode serves to complicate the web weaving everyone together. It was well acted (especially the little girl playing Shizuku), it was real, it was great. A pleasant surprise for me was when Tetsuji Tamayama cropped up out of number (on my Top 5) list, and he looked gorgeous as ever. And, without giving anything away, I will tell you that no little children are crushed to death in the lumber/construction yard, despite how foreboding the episode titles sound. So rest assured there.

And lastly, I'm going to intro the band Ayabie. Ayabie came together in 2004, made up of Aoi (Vocals), Intetsu (Bassist), Takehito (Guitarist) and Ryohei (Guitarist), with a nameless support drummer for their concerts. The next year they had a debut album, and found their permanent drummer in the ever-talented Kenzo. However, the band hit a few bumps in the road when in 2006, member Ryouhei left the band over disagreements with the members and went on to form his own successful band, Megamasso. Despite this small snag, Ayabie pushed on and found current guitarist Yumehito, and the band's lineup has remained the same ever since. Ayabie has had the good fortune to tour Europe twice, first in 2006, then again in 2007, and came to America for a small tour in 2008 (Aoi also doing an MC part on a small DVD magazine release in California). Ayabie announced at the beginning of the year that they were going major, and their debut major release came out just recently in May of this year. This band is showing no signs of slowing down, and I look forward to seeing what more they have in them.

4 comments:

  1. Tell me more about these non plurals..

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  2. Yeah. Tricky huh. Pretty much the only ways to make things plural is to add 'tachi' to a word (which you can only add to a few words like me, you, etc. (watashi (I) + tachi = us/anata (you) + tachi = you all). The only other way I know to do it is to add a counter (like 3 dogs, 5 forks, 10 people), which necessarily shows that the nouns are plural. Of course, this leads to the evil force of different counters. Everything in Japanese has a different word for how you count different things.

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  3. How are you able to tell that there is more than one of something without using a counter? Is there a word for a/an in japanese?

    Take Bara for example. How would you say "I picked you A rose"?

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  4. For that, you would have to use a counter. So you'd have to say "I picked you one rose" or just "I picked rose" and leaved it up to interperetation. It so sucks. There's no a/an in Japanese. Makes things mildly difficult, I must admit.

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