today's update...

Massive updates to the Concert Schedule page today. Fukuyama-san's scheduled out way into August already! I'll be updating the discography and, hopefully, the news pages later this week. Watch for them...

See ya later!

peace

Updates... I'll catch up eventually

Happy New Year, everyone ^-^

I updated the concert schedule page last month and forgot to tell you. Did anyone see it? Today, I updated the concert schedule page again. Huge update this time! Fukuyama-san is booked out way into the middle of June already!

It looks like JAM Project's next DVD just might be "Live at Budokan"! When I think Budokan, I think of all those live albums by stadium rock musicians like Queen or Led Zepplin. That's a big name venue!

JAM Project will be performing at the 14,000 seat Tokyo Budokan on June 12, 2009. Wow!

peace

Updates

JAM Project leaves for Europe today. I updated the the information on the Paris and Barcelona concerts. Also, added info about a new JAM Project CD to the discography.

In other news, Election Day is November 4th! Get out and vote!

peace

concert schedule update

Updated the concert schedule page with information about the JAM Project concerts in France and Spain. ^-^

peace

updates

Today, I added some new Fukujin information the concert schedule and discography pages. ^-^

peace

Happy Birthday, Yoshiki Fukuyama!

In Japan right now, it's currently 3:30 in the morning of September 14, 2008. Today, Yoshiki Fukuyama also turns 45 years old, just like I did last month. ^-^

Normally, I and a few dozen other people would go on his site's BBS and post "otanjoubi omedetou" there, but after all these months his BBS is still broken. When I asked him about it at Otakon, he said that the staff were currently in the process of renewing the whole site and that the BBS will be fixed then. Well, it's happened twice before that the renewed site was launched on his birthday. I'm hoping that will be the case this time too.

I'll keep checking his site today. If there are any changes, I'll definitely post them here as soon as I find out!

Anyhow, in the mean time...
Fukuyama-san, if you can see this (or the Japanese version that I wrote), Happy 45th Birthday!
^-^b

peace

updates

Updated the concert page. Plans are to update the discography, news pages, and the Friday Otakon report by the end of the day. Wish me luck! ^-^b

Right now, it's 3:00am. I lay down for a couple hours of sleep... oyasuminasai!

peace

Well...

It turns out that Fridays report isn't fully done yet. I started to write an entry in the Japanese version of my blog and it turned into a full mini Otakon report. Check it out, if you can read Japanese... or if you just want to see a couple pictures that haven't been posted on my site yet.

Tomorrow, it's back to work, so the next updates may not be until Saturday - but I'll try to be faster. ^-^b

peace

Otakon report under construction...

picture: Otakon 2008 - at press round robin with JAM Project on Sunday

It's been busy this last couple weeks since we returned from Otakon, but slowly the Otakon report is taking shape. The English version of Thursday's report is up. I hope to have Friday's reports done by tonight. Then Saturday and Sunday need to be done. Becca's been helping with some of the picture/video editing. I also need to make the Japanese language versions... anyhow, please be patient, and keep checking back.


Other updates will be made soon to the discography and concert schedule pages. Lots of news - both during and after Otakon. This is a very busy year for Fukuyama-san and JAM Project!


On a personal front, Eleanor ended up having to leave for Job Corp just days after we got back. We knew she would be going. We just didn't realize it would be so soon! Her part of the report this time will have to be in a separate article rather than mixed in with mine. There just wasn't time before she left. Too many other things to do, preparing for her to leave.


We did go down and visit Mom and Bob at the campground they are hosting at. It felt good to get into the open air and nature! I think the kids and I will do it again after Labor Day. I can never get enough of the mountains around here!

Well, this isn't getting my reports done. See ya. ^-^



peace

The family with all those cats...

Yea, that's us.

We've recently added a new member to our family. Her name is Tobi. She's about 2 1/2 lbs of total terror, and cute enough to get away with it.

That bring our total back up to 3 cats... and a rabbit - plus the half dozen or so feral cats we feed. The feral cats pretty much ignore her, as does our oldest, Kitty. Cali, on the other hand, takes every available opportunity to show the young punk who's boss by knocking her down a peg or three. Tobi's best friend so far is, interestingly enough, the rabbit. Drea and Tobi can be seen playing chase games all over the house. We can't help but laugh!

Lots of updates this last week or so... the news page, concert schedule, discography... I'll be adding a little more to the translations over the next couple days. Eleanor just finished redoing the "Smokey Mountain" translation for me, so that'll go up soon. I think she's working on "Tori ga Inai" right now. She's doing several translations to pay me back for the plane ticket to Baltimore...

Three more weeks. Just three more weeks and we'll be on that plane to Otakon where JAM Project will be playing in concert! We'll arrive on Thursday morning, find the hostel and check in, familiarize ourselves with where everything is, pick up our badges and press passes, then find our way back to the airport to meet Pedro's group at we're-not-going-to-get-much-sleep-are-we o'clock that night. (-o-) Ah, well, who needs sleep? ^-^b
It's going to be fun! I'm really looking forward to it!

Baltimore is the third stop on JAM Project's World Flight 2008 tour. They are heading out today for their second stop and a brief reunion with part time JAM member, Ricardo Cruz, in Brazil at the Anime Friends convention there . My friend in Sao Paulo, Flavio, will be our Brazillian eyes. Watch for his report!

Check out the concert schedule for the steadily increasing list of tour dates: Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mexico City... and even an occasional appearance in Japan!

BTW, first opportunity I get in Baltimore, I'm buying JAM Projects "Get over the Border" CD and Japan Flight 2008 DVD which go on sale August 6th. Will there be a World Flight DVD coming, I wonder...

peace

New laptop...

because the old one died T-T.

Windows decided to not work and refused to repair and now it's not finding the hard drive at all. I had some translation projects in progress on that computer that will have to be started over again. The biggest loss is some of Rebecca's songs and AMVs in progress were on there too. I'm still hoping to recover the data off that hard drive for that reason.

We really need to replace the external hard drive I was using for backups. (Someone dropped it and it broke...) That's the problem with these huge hard drives. The only thing that's big enough to back them up is another huge hard drive.

Well, the good news is I have a new laptop. Dan surprised me with it while I was in the middle of fighting with the old one. Bigger screen. Twice the hard drive space. Twice the processing speed. Four times the memory. Three year extended warrenty. It has Windows Vista, which takes a bit of getting used to, but all-in-all I'm happy with it.
^-^

Updates this week... Just updated the concert schedule page again during the night. Oh, and the release date for the JAM Project best album and Japan Flight tour DVD has been changed from July 23rd to August 6th. Sometime today I'll be updating the news and discography pages to reflect that.

I guess that's it for now. I'm still working on setting up the computer with the software I use, but gradually I'm getting back into the swing of things. Look for more updates soon. ^-^b

peace

It's been one of those days...

I'm writing this while sitting in a Starbucks waiting for my sister to get off work so we can carpool home. I'm probably going to crash hard when I get there.

A couple translation updates on my site this morning:

"No Border" - the first of many translations that Eleanor is doing for me to earn her part of the airfare to Baltimore in August. We're going to Otakon to see JAM Project together. ^-^b

"Skill" - the groovy thing about the NicoNico Douga site is that people write their comments across the screen. Lately the fans have been writing the song lyrics across the screen. I've finally got a corrected version of the song's intro and outro that weren't on the CD liner notes with the rest of the lyrics! Yay!

We've also found words to a lot of the rapping and background vocals in "Cry for the Earth". Eleanor says the words to the rapping change the song translation a bit... so we'll be revising the whole translation together on my next available free day. Look for it!

Oyasuminasai! zzzzz (I wish...)

peace

updates...

Today's updates: News, Concert Schedule, Discography.
No big essays tonight. I need to take the girls to a school event in the morn... and morning comes fast. I'm going to bed. Good night!

peace...

This week's updates...

Updates in English:
News, Discography, Concert Schedule, Anime Connections, and still working on the "internet appearances" page and translations.

Updates in Japanese:
News, Discography, Anime Connections, and still working on the "internet appearances" page.

Coming soon... Spanish?!? In an attempt to reach out to even more of Fukuyama-san's international fans, Pedro (with Nidia's help) has offered to help translate part of my site into Spanish! I'm quite excited about the prospect! Keep an eye out for it! ^-^b

peace

Happy Mothers' Day to all you mothers - and grandmothers - out there!

For today's breakfast, I wrote "kids plan it" on the menu. Half the house ate pop tarts and the other half poured a bowl of cereal. (shrug) Ah, well. I just took advantage of the fact that I didn't have to please everyone today and scrambled together some green onion, shiitake, spinich, eggs, and cheese. Yum!

I also used the fact that it's Mothers' Day to bludgeon my way into full control of the computer and the TV at the same time! (heehee) If I didn't still have to go to work in an hour, everything would be perfect... Right now, I'm eating and watching Electric Fire 2007 for the umpteenth time. It was expensive, but worth it!

I've also been watching clips from a TV special featuring JAM Project's Japan Flight 2008 tour. Wow! They just keep getting better and better each year! I look forward to he DVD going on sale! I suspect it won't be until after the world tour end next November though... They'll no doubt be adding a few clips from that to the extras disc like they did last year when members went to events over-seas. (If you have the DVD but haven't seen them yet, click on the airplane on the menu screen...)

Oh, for all you Becca-isms fans out there, I thought I'd shared with you the breakfast she just showed me she's eating: a bowl of strawberries mixed with broccoli and a cup of peanut butter mixed with Nutella. Well... it's good for her, at least. ^^b

I've done some work on my site last night and this morning. Anime Friends in Brazil finally made official the announcement that JAM Project's Brazil stop will be at their convention... just as we all figured, eh. ^-^ No doubt Ricardo Cruz will be joining them there since Anime Friends is his home territory, eh. I noticed in the Japan Flight clips that he's performing as a fully integrated member of the group now when he's with them. It made for a much smoother overall performance, and show-cased his own abilities better, than when he was just brought in as a featured artist for a couple songs during the encore like last couple years.

Speaking of encores, I saw the clip with them singing Skill just minutes after Fukuyama-san broke his collarbone... that guy is amazing! Aside from the fact that he wasn't bouncing around so much, there was absolutely no indication in his performance of how badly he was hurt! Wow! That's a pro!

On that note, here's today's updates list. Look for new entries on: the concert schedule page; the page following Fukuyama-san's recovery from the above mentioned broken bone; and I'm revamping the Internet Appearances and Concert Reports page - it's actually starting to have "internet appearances" info on it. (What a concept!) Working on, but not up at all yet: English translations for "No Border" and Disc 2 of the Electric Fire 2007 DVD.

See ya ^-^
peace

Update History Archive

I'm changing my index page and moving the update history into the diary. Here's the last few updates prior to today:

Alinda Sue's Yoshiki Fukuyama site
Concert Schedule, Discography,Main (News) (April 11, 2008)
Main (News), Concert Schedule, Discography, and Profile (November 3-4, 2007)
Concert Schedule, Lyrics (October 16,2007)
Discography, Main, Concert Scheduleand large Lyrics and Translations update (October 7, 2007)
Lyrics and Translations (August 23, 2007)

peace

Autism

Autism has come up a lot in the news lately. I think March was National Autism month or somethhing like that...

Interesting that, because Kirk's birthday is in March. Kirk, my son, is autistic.

He's quite a charming 24 year old with long curly "rock star" hair that he frequently wears tied back into a ponytail.

He loves food that begins with "P": pizza, pop, potato salad, and peanuts. He loves trucks, busses, and trains. He loves going places in our van. His favorite place to go is the dollar store where he can buy "eyes" (sunglasses), "hello" (toy cell phone), and "sky" (chalk).

He goes through a lot of chalk by drawing pictures of the "sky" on our patio. It started a few years ago after watching a fireworks display at a friend's Independence Day party. The next day he was drawing fireworks style arcs of color and proclaiming proudly that it was "sky". The sky changes with the seasons and events, such as the lunar eclipse we all watched a couple months ago. Suddenly, "sky" started to have a big orange circle in the middle of it...

I went to Border's to look for a book last fall. While there, I stumbled on an interesting manga story. It's called "With the Light Raising an Autistic Child" by Keiko Tobe. Originally called "Hikaru to tomo ni", it's the story of a family with an autistic son named Hikaru (translation: Light) and the everyday challenges they go through as they try to navigate their way through the special education system and society's prejudices. Some of the situations she goes through look very familiar to me.

Since I bought this one in English for a change, everyone in the house (except Kirk, of course) has gotten into reading it - even my husband. According to the Wikipedia entry, there are 12 volumes in the original Japanese, but only two volumes have come out in English so far. I look forward to the next one!

You may notice I'm finally getting back into writing in my blog here. Dan and I have both decided after eleven years that it was time to take a break from staffing Sakura-Con for a while. It feels strange actually having time to work on other things besides the con, but I'm finding I may just get used to this!

Right now, I'm in the middle of a gradual overhaul of my home page, cleaning up outdated links and tightening the design a bit... and there's the usual updates. Last week, I updated the concert schedule page and the discography and news pages (in both languages). This week, so far, I've updated the English version of the links page and overhauled the diary pages. Tonight, the plan is to revamp the index page and add another entry to the page following Fukuyama-san's progress as his collar-bone heals.

Oh! JAM Project has announced their USA stop on their world tour... looks like I'm going to Otakon in August! Of course, there'll be a report after. Look forward to it! ^^b

Till next time,
peace

Living with War

I just heard Neil Young's new album, "Living with War". You can listen to a streaming broadcast of the entire album, on his site. Check it out!

One of the things that has really disturbed me about this whole thing with Bush's pet project (the war in Iraq) is how sanitary it has all been. The administration has done everything they can to make this war as painless for the American people as possible. They would even prefer deploying and re-deploying the same troops over and over rather than activate the draft. Why? Because if we had an active draft, the American people might actually feel the effects of being at war. It quits being just another reality show and starts becoming actual reality.

As much as I hate the thought of a draft, I also hate the fact that the American people are not allowed to see the realities of war. Newsmen are not even allowed to photograph the flag-draped coffins of those soldiers who "give the ultimate sacrifice" following the orders of their Commander-in-Chief. Since they don't see it, don't feel it, the average American has become complacent. While our leaders send more and more of our sons and daughters off to war - and whittle away more and more of those freedoms that our sons and daughters are supposed to be fighting for through means such as the Patriot Act, domestic spying, ect - "inquiring minds" are more concerned about the marital affairs of the latest Hollywood celebrities than they are about the war or even about preserving their own constitutional rights.

Neal Young's new album, "Living with War", is a protest album, plain and simple. A protest album of the likes that you'd hear from Michael Franti or a 60s era Joan Baez. Will it change many people's minds about the war? Probably not... but maybe it'll be a catylist to wake those millions of us who are already against the war from our media hypnotized stupor and motivate a greater number of people to actually go out into public and and join in the protests shouting, "Stop this insanity now!"

I can only hope. I will never willingly give up my freedoms... and hope is one freedom they can never take away.

Listen to the album. If you want the CD, you have to pay, but it doesn't cost anthing to just listen. My favorite song off the album is the title song. ^-^

peace

Macross 25th anniversary

Hello, everybody ^-^

2007 will be quite a year! Not only will it mark the 10th Sakura-Con and my 25th wedding anniversary, but it is the 25th anniversary of Macross.

If ever there was a perfect year to invite Yoshiki Fukuyama to Sakura-Con, this would be it!

If you like Yoshiki Fukuyama and attend Sakura-Con or would attend if Fukuyama-san was a guest there, please join me in trying to convince Sakura-Con's Director of Relations to invite him.

Here's a copy of a message I wrote on the Sakura-Con message board:

This really makes me feel old because I was married by the time Macross came out, but it's recently come to my attention that 2007 is the 25th anniversary of the Macross series.

I know there are a lot of Macross fans out there. This is the year to make yourself known! It would be great to have some Macross related guests at Sakura-Con 2007!

http://scmb.sakuracon.org/viewtopic.php?t=13095

Post who you want to see at Sakura-Con 2007. Even if the person you want has already been mentioned, please, mention him or her again. Sabrina is looking at how often possible guests are asked for.

My personal choices:

One of the things that separates Macross from just any decent Mecha show (like Gundam) is the music. For that reason, I would like to see the main vocalists from the two main Macross series: Mari Iijima and Yoshiki Fukuyama.

As everyone knows, Mari Iijima is the voice of Lynn Minmay in the original Macross series. She's done several conventions and would no doubt be fun to have at Sakura-Con.

What some people may not know is who did the 99% of the singing voice and all the guitar work for the main character in Macross 7 - mainly because in the show and even on most of the soundtrack CDs the songs are all attributed to Fire Bomber, the fictional band in the show. However, if you look in the "thank you" section of the CDs and at some of the song writing credits, you'll see his name: Yoshiki Fukuyama.

Even for that segment of Macross fans who thought the only good thing about Macross 7 was the music would enjoy watching Yoshiki Fukuyama perform. I've seen Fukuyama-san in concert. Not only is he an excellent singer and masterful guitarist, but he's also friendly and just plain fun!

Aside from their involvement in Macross, both these performers are currently active. Fukuyama-san especially has been extremely active, both on his own (opening theme to "Overman King Gainer" and others) and as a member of JAM Project ("Panda Z" theme and many others).

Anyhow, if you'd like to see either of these people or others from Macross, we have to convince Relations to invite them. Please, click on the above link and post in that thread.

peace

Thank you for your support. ^-^

peace

Happy birthday, dear website!

It's a few days late, but Happy New Year!

It's been four years now since January 8, 2002 when I put together a few web pages "just for the sake of learning how to make a web site". I guess I'm still learning, because I keep making new pages for the site. ^-^b

I just spent the last few hours doing exactly what I did this day 4 years ago: adding new information to the Yoshiki Fukuyama profile page. It's hard to believe there were only six pages on this site back then!

Ever since Christmas, I've taken the time to slow down a bit and actually catch up on my web site and some email. There's even been a little activity on the BBS! I happy. (^^)

Recent updates in the Yoshiki Fukuyama site to watch for:
- actually finished creating translation pages for the Fire Bomber 2005 DVDs with the help of my daughter, Eleanor, and my friend, Pedro.
- Updated the discography page with some new, some updated, and some corrected (thanks, Zhane) information.
- corrected the titles of a couple songs on the lyrics page (thanks, Zhane)
- updated the concert schedule page for the new year and added new concert information
- checked, updated, and added to the links
- updated the news pages

The rest of this weekend is to be devoted to finishing email. After that, I need to spend the next week or so finishing some work for Sakura-Con. As soon as I can, I plan to get back to translating. As it says on the page, "the translations are done in no particular order as I get to them," but there seems to be a lot of interest these days in the JAM Project songs used in the show "Gravion", so I guess they are next on my list, eh.

There's also a wonderful TV interview transcript a fan in Japan wrote out that would be great to translate for everyone. Here's a link to the transcript:
part 1 http://nagashi.blog2.fc2.com/blog-entry-182.html
part 2 http://nagashi.blog2.fc2.com/blog-entry-183.html

I'll get get caught up, eventually - some year.

In other news, Becca updated her blog again... thanks to Jones soda and (yes, I'm going to say it) assholes. Your going to have to read it to find out exactly what that's all about. I found it quite interesting...

Well, see y'all later, eh. I promise it will be within the month.

peace