Welcome to Nono-land

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So I'm gonna be on radio again Friday night at 6PM EST! This time it is a slightly different joint show. I'm teaming up with a British DJ for a compare and contrast timeline show on British grime rap vs. Japanese Urban music. I'm super excited! I've been working on choosing my songs all day. It's surprisingly difficult to concentrate all of the Japanese Urban genre down to 24 songs.

Anyway, you can listen http://bit.ly/4rJ9u with that link there. Just throw that file in your itunes or media player.

DJ Nova and DJShowa Man - British grime rap vs. Japanese Urban
Friday 6PM EST - 12AM EST

Very excited!

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Happy Halloween everyone! I'm sitting here chillin' in my HALCALI costume of course. But more than that I wanted to post and tell everyone about my epic radio show I'm hosting today!

I'm gonna be on Radio Spectacle today with DJ Kiwi doing a Top of the Pops countdown of our top 40 favorite Japanese pop songs. Each. That's 80 songs! It's gonna be totally epic with lots of H!P and good stuff to go around. I promise.

If you want to tune in you can use this: http://listen.wgspectacle.com:8004/listen.pls

Just download that file and put it into a media player and it will stream our broadcast! It'll be on from 4PM EST until midnight!

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No joke. I've been jacked for the past 2 hours. Why you might ask?




No. Your eyes do not deceive you. HALCALI is number 4 on Oricon and number 1 on itunes right now. Like seriously. I don't know what I did to deserve this. Cause it is just ... amazing. Total vindication for all that I love. The world is literally a better place right now.

And they had a sweet new live of it too!



JUST SOAK UP THE FAME GIRLS. YOU DESERVE IT!

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Wow! Haven't updated in forever! Probably because I have been busy almost constantly with med school work. I've never studied this much in my whole life. And I don't even have a test coming up. I just study to be prepared. Well i'm probably just super paranoid, but it seems to be working out pretty well. I've learned so much and it's only been a month of classes. I can identify cells and structures just from looking at them in a microscope now. It's crazy how far i've come! And the more I study the better I'll get! Wooo!


Other than that...

I've met the Wonder Girls three times (and talked to them on the phone once) since coming back from Japan. They recognize me and know my name now. And Yubin knowing my name is one of the coolest things ever. One notch below HALCALI knowing my name. It totally makes up for the complete lack of money I have.

Well I've gotta keep on working hard!

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Less than a day till Japan!

I'm super excited, but totally nervous at the same time. I haven't had nearly enough time to look over my kanji and Japanese pre-trip due to my secret birthday project for Tony. I've been working on it for a super long time now... and I lost a good portion of my research for it when my desktop died. Restarting from scratch seriously dented my available time for Japan trip prep.

I hope I do alright! I'm excited to see my host family again! Money will be super tight, but it should be fun anyway!

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Cause sometimes I sit around wondering how I could have less of a life. And then I make another Wonder Girls contest video. This one took FOREVER since Premiere decided to eff up the video quality every single time. I still don't know why it is coming out so fuzzy. But it was passable so I decided just to post it anyway.





In exactly one week i'll be back in Japan! It's so exciting! I have to go out and get a few odds and ends for the trip today, like a new camera battery. Mine is obviously dead. Hope it's not too expensive...

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And whenever there is a new Wonder Girls contest I am there! With my trusty friend Dustin, we made a hilarious video for the become a FAN*TASTIC contest. They wanted a video of you professing your love for the Wonder Girls, and if you win you get to hand out flyers for them at one of their upcoming shows. We decided to do one better, and combine both of those.

Our video has us out on the streets giving our homemade WG flyer to random people and spreading the word of their US debut



You too can join the Wonder Girls Flyer Mission by downloading this flyer and posting it all over! --> http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ny2kzmyzwcw

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So apparently I booked my tickets to Japan just a few days too early. All the awesome concerts are LITERALLY happening the day I leave or a few days after. God how lame. I miss A-Nation by mere hours (nooo Koda!) and I miss HALCALI by a half day (NOOOO HALCALI!). With all the final summer lives dates being posted now I'm starting to grow increasingly worried that there simply won't be a trip defining live for me to attend in Japan. Seriously!?

Well fingers crossed that something else pops up! I need my summer concert dose and i really want it to be from a sweet Japanese gig.

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URGH. People in the K-pop community need to stop complaining about the Wonder Girls and Jonas Brothers mash up tour. It is seriously pissing me off. I don't like the Jonas Brothers either, but the Wonder Girls fans need to get past their dislikes and realize that this tour with the two of them is the BEST POSSIBLE THING for our lovely ladies. They will get more exposure and attention from this event than anything else they could do at this point. JYP is a mastermind to be able to pull this off.

So just stop complaining and wait patiently for everyone to recognize how talented the Wonder Girls are. If even an eighth of the people at the Jonas Brothers concerts listen to the Wonder Girls and start following them they will easily have hundreds of thousands of new fans.

Besides we now have English Nobody and Tell Me to look forward to!

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So apparently a group of us who danced on stage with the Wonder Girls in NYC were on the Wonder Girls Korean TV show. So now I'm on Korean TV professing my love for Yubin. I look like a dorkwad and I love it. I'm gonna call it now, I'm Yubin's number one American fan. I mean I made it far enough to be on Wonder Girls Wonderland saying I'm her #1 US fan. So I'm gonna say that it's official.

Start watching at around 2:30 to see YeEun punch Yubin in the face and steal her interview and then it goes into the segment with me and my friends.



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Just bought a plane ticket to JAPAN!? Yessss. I've been working a whole year to save up the money for this. And thank you tax refund for finally doin' it for me. I'm so excited. And so is my host family. I talked to them on the phone yesterday and they were flipping out and probably even more excited than I am. They wanna meet my boyfriend. Cause they insist tony is my boyfriend, cause why else would I live with a boy roommate. Oh dear.

So markin' my calendar, July 15-July 31st I am Japan bound. Kyoto -> Kanazawa -> Tokyo
I'm gonna start looking for concerts to hit up, so if anyone in Japan wants in on those (i'm lookin' at you greyface ) then we should totally do it.  

Oh goodness HALCALI.  If you don't do a live while I am in Japan I will be heartbroken.  Where is your new album you keep promising me!?

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Can't stop watching this video. Or the new wonder girls MV of Now. They just keep alternating on Youtube for me.

If you want a silly Korean MV where the guys are dressed up geeky Willy Wonka style this would be the one. Also I just can't get enough of this song... Needless to say I will have my eye on 2NE1 in the future.



So addictive...

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I've watched a lot of concerts in my day. And I was really looking forward to seeing Lady Gaga live as I heard it was a totally different concert experience.

And I think it might have been the best concert I have ever been to in my life.

That girl can do it all. She absolutely commands attention on the stage and is a natural at it. Plus watching her live was like watching a pop art performance, not a concert. It was FANTASTIC. The only shows I've been to that can compare on that level are GO!GO!7188, GAM, and HALCALI.

I would DEFINITELY go see her live again. Worth every penny I spent on the tickets. And I was lucky enough to snag the very last poster for the concert as well! Yay!

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Yeah another blog entry about the Wonder Girls. I promise I'll give it a rest. Eventually. For now just read this if you don't know much about the fabulous Wonder Girls. You might find my story about falling in love with them dragging you into Korean music as well!

( Ningin Wonder Girls Blog Contest Entry )

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Ooooh how do I begin this awesome story? I didn't want to mention anything about this unless something fell through and this didn't happen, but Dustin, Mara, and I got the consolation prize of all consolation prizes for our Wonder Girls' Dance Contest entry. We essentially got invited personally by JYP Entertainment to get some tickets for the NYC show, meet the Girls, and ... well dance on stage with them for thousands. It was ridiculous.

Here is my crazy story about meeting another one of my favorite Asian music groups. It's long and ridiculously awesome. And ends with this picture.



( linked to an absurdly long story about meeting the Wonder Girls )

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So it took us two weeks of prep work. And 3 allnighters within 6 days. I think i've gotten like 40 hours of sleep in 2 weeks and I feel like i'm gonna be physically ill from the lack of it, but it is finally done.

Our Wonder Girls Dance Contest Entry!

For maximum impact watch the original So Hot MV here first. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOavolYnrcU



Dustin and I had never worn high heels before so it was really difficult for us to learn how to do the dance. Mara almost re-broke her foot. I got violently ill filming the last day. And I think Dustin might not have slept for 50 hours straight in an attempt to get this done on time. We also made our own leopard print clothing so that Dustin and I could look exactly like Sun Ye and Yoobin respectively. So here's hoping we stand some modicum of a chance in the contest. There were a lot of stellar entries. But at least we know we tried our hardest.

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I feel like vomiting rainbows all over the place.

Now that I have everyone's attention... NEW HALCALI PV IS GO! And it is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard from them. When I heard it was gonna sample Chara I didn't really have that high expectations, but the song has blown me away. Like... almost Twinkle Star blown me away... Am I allowed to say that? Yes I dare to. When Yukari goes from the voice overlay with Chara's original song and then smoothly goes into a rap... I don't even know what to do with myself. I cried tears of joy when I heard it the first time.



HALCALI is truly one of the greatest groups in Japan. They have a constantly evolving sound that makes them stand out so much. Why does no one else appreciate this?! Dammit!

Just watch the PV and enjoy the mature, new HALCALI look. And then stay up all night thinking about how awesome it was. Just like I did. And shameless plug: go to www.halcalisensation.com to discuss it. I just want people to go to my HALCALI site too.

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This will be the best season of the L Word EVER!!!

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Yessss... Practically front row center for Yoobin. And after seeing their new remix of Nobody, I'm more excited than words can describe for this show.

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So the Wonder Girls are returning to the US for another concert in 2009. Officially now. They had said that they were going to do a US tour in March of next year, but now tickets are on sale. The tour is actually a JYP Tour... so am I gonna spring the money for this and go? I really want to, but I thought it was just going to be a solo Wonder Girls thing. Hmmm... Is there another concert that will get announced later? I don't want to drop $150 on tickets for a joint show when I could go see them solo later on.

Who am I kidding? I'll probably go see them regardless.

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