Oh, Japan. I love you too!

TODAY WAS AWESOME.

First we decided to go and do something actually related to Japanese culture. We went to Asakusa (touristy type place) today, and went to Sensouji temple and the Kaminarimon gate. It's funny to see the differences between Chinese, Korean, and Japanese religious places. Chinese temples are GAUDY (but in the best possible way), Korean ones are fairly plain (or at least the one I saw), and Japanese ones are kinda in the middle. ALSO PAGODAS!


The pagoda at Sensouji!

We transfer trains at Ikebukuro, so we always are making random Ikebukuro West Gate Park references (which is amusing, since I have yet to see it... though I AM going to watch the first episode today!). Well today we ACTUALLY went outside to the park. It was cold, and dark, but Nagase was ONCE IN THAT AREA, and that is good enough for me!


Ikebukuro West Gate Park, Nagase not included...

( Akihabara (WITH OTAKU), and The Lockup restaurant )

After we took pictures in a picture booth (we've done it EVERY SINGLE DAY so far). We have a set of poses based on inside jokes that we do. Our next set will be based on Big Bang, which is highly dorky and funny.

We then were still kinda tipsy, so we bought some cigarettes, and smoked like bad kids. BAD KIDS. Apparently when we drink we feel like smoking. It's weird.

Anyway, tomorrow is another day of awesome!!

Long Long Long Rant

GD in possible trouble for his concert

(both sn0tcat and I collaborated on this post! Yays)

Okay, so this is fucking ridiculous, and I'm pissed.

The thing is, we were both at the concert. IT DID NOT OFFEND US IN THE SLIGHTEST. We're not scarred for life. We didn't see people who were scarred for life. The Koreans were enjoying themselves. They were CHEERING. No one fainted from the use of English profanity.

I've read the translations for both "Korean Dream" and "She's Gone" (both of the songs that the censors had issues with). I don't see anything in them that would cause the album to be rated 19+.

In "She's Gone", the lyrics mention alcohol use (after being dumped), say "fuck it down shit" (which doesn't even make sense), and the ending slightly mentions violence as an afterthought. The performance was REALLY GOOD. During it, the audience was screaming, and loving the video. Both Lisa and I were kinda like "uhhhhh" at the end when he killed her (and when Aimee was on stage), but the overall effect was great. AND IT'S NOT LIKE HE ACTUALLY KILLED HER! And seriously, on IRIS, TOP fucking snapped a girl's neck. ON CAMERA. How does that compare to the concert video where it happened off camera? And afterward, he was all upset. It was sort of like a Jekyll and Hyde thing, where he wasn't himself when he was chasing her, and snapped back to himself after.

For "Korean Dream", maybe I don't get it because I'm not Korean, but I see literally nothing wrong with this song. GD says "Motherfucker", but as far as we can tell, the song is about both GD and Young Bae's dreams, and how they got to where they are now. It's kinda inspirational in that sense. And obviously the performance was fine.

What the censors are saying, that drug use and violence are hinted at in the songs, well I don't get that. It's like the censorship of the 50's, with Elvis's songs and dancing being deemed too inappropriate. It's fucking ridiculous.

The best part is, when we were in Korea, and saw GD's album, at no time did we see any sort of sticker on it that said it could only be purchased by people 19+. So, maybe the government should try to enforce their own laws a little bit more, and not blame the artists. And really, they need to review things before they're released (or at the latest, on the day of release), NOT TWO MONTHS LATER. Because, really, at that time everyone's already bought it or uploaded it so any others can listen to it.

I think the major thing is that the PARENTS should pay more attention. OF COURSE GD was going to perform both "She's Gone", and "Korean Dream" at the concert. He only had a set number of songs. And since the album is 19+ (and it's not like it wasn't big news when that happened), they really should have expected it. And yes, I did see young fans at the concert, but do you honestly think they haven't heard or seen stuff like this before?

We just want to go to Korea, and bring GD (and all the other artists who are having the same sort of stupid issues with the government) to the US, where at least they'll have creative freedom. We also want to bring Joon (from MBLAQ) so he won't get any more scary fan letters written in blood by a girl who slit her wrists...

I think YG's statement about the whole thing said it well.
“Also, although this is a separate matter from the controversy, we would like to mention that for a lot of artists, a solo concert is a big dream as well as a big pressure for them. Usually on music programs, they perform a couple of songs, whereas in a solo concert, an artist must lead the audience for more than 2 hours by himself. We feel that artists feel pressured to show extreme performances in some cases due to the huge amount of expectation put on them.”

ALSO VERY PISSED ABOUT THE DVD GETTING EDITED. At least we were some of the lucky few who got to see it all.

Some people in the fandom are like "I want to go to Korea and protest"... if it got to the point where jail time were involved, I'd go too.

Anyway, end pissy rant....