Two Yu Aoi posts one after the other? We truly are living in the new Yu Aoi Era. xD
On the 1000th (!!!!?) issue of Brutus, Yu talks about a skirt I only seem to recognized. MYSTERY SOLVED! Travel Sand is such a vibe, remains one of my favorite Yu Aoi’s photobooks because I loved Yoko Takahashi’s look for it.
Now, if only someone would get her to talk about this beanie, which I’ve been looking for the last twenty years.
New movie alert with Kenichi Matsuyama and Etsushi Toyokawa. Sakura Ando also supposedly appears in the film.
This is what ‘being obsessed’ with someone for a few years means, right? Noticing and nitpicking the little details normal people don’t pick up. I’m always eager to hear of new Yu Aoi movies and projects, even if I’m not as enthusiastic as before. I do get a kick whenever I see her act and she does her best smile making my day.
During my second watch, eager to watch that smile again, I noticed something…
(more…)
I know that except from my 5th Year Anniversary Wiki Update [1], things have been usually pretty quiet on the Yu front. It usually is pretty slow during these months, as Yu’s activities tend to pick up by August all the way into December, January and February.
Though my fandomess (that’s not even a word) has diminished, Yu still has a special place in my fangirly heart. I would totally be giddy with a new movie, and specially with starring on a new jdrama (as a lead, not guest). I’m not as an ardent fan of Yu’s passion for shaved ice, so those books are missing from my collection, as well as her first few photobooks. But as you can see, I’ve kept on supporting her any way I could.
I’m still waiting to catch Vampire. The Shunji Iwai Festival team on Weibo told me it would be “soon” when I get to catch it on a proper online channel, so I’m crossing my fingers.
I do miss that doki doki feeling I used to get when this fandom started. Maybe I’ll re-watch Osen to recapture that feeling. LOL
I have been looking… for years and years for that perfect beanie [1] I saw Yu Aoi wearing on her Travel Sand book. I’ve looked at thousands and thousands of knitted hats of all types, but none has ever struck me the way that beanie had on those beautifully printed pages. The colors, the material… the amount of the openness of the weave, it was perfect.
Slouchy, with ears, pompoms, tails, tails with ears and pompoms… the ones with scarfs knitted out of the beanies… my collection might not be vast, but it’s certainly varied. I’m also terribly cheap, so I really can’t see myself paying $45USD for the Mango Knit Beanie with beads or worse… £216 for this Inverni Monnier Freres cashmere beanie — as awesome as they are.
This search for the perfect beanie is becoming an OCD of mine. I need help.
Urgent help.
Hmm, I had planned a batch of Yu Aoi related posts that meant something, but I couldn’t find the photographer’s name for this photoshoot. And I even tried different ways… like her name + journal standard + photographer in English and Japanese, and ended up in Chinese websites xD
Did I tell you that my last Chinese lesson was professions? LOL
Anyway, this special project was a collaboration between Journal Standard and Yu Aoi for last December.
Yu-chan will be gracing the cover of H Magazine… again. She was previously on the cover with Ninomiya for a Tekkon photoshoot… and then she was on the Futari no H cover. I have never been able to find high quality scans of that Futari no H shoot… so if anyone has, let me know.
Also, a quick reminder~ Uso. has officially been released. You can get it through HMV Japan… though I pre-ordered it, and they emailed me with a delayed message. BAW~
On the Futari no H link, they mention Travel Sand and Yoko Takahashi. They say Yoko and Yu make up a dream team. xD They do create magic together. You can still buy Travel Sand [YesAsia][HMV JP][Amazon JP
I think both books are pretty big sellers… it always goes out of stock, and if I recall correctly, my Travel Sand book (or is it my Dandelion one?) is already a second print.
I am a geek!
I use Photoshop like crazy.
Nowadays, I take loads more photographs than my student days, but to be honest, I hate re-touching photographs to get rid of wrinkles… or how I like to call them, expression lines.
I love funny faces, big smiles… but then again, I also delete minor things like distracting marks (if it’s too distracting) and choose over-exposed for light purposes, as well as soft light to decrease the hard shadows that make wrinkles pop out~ after all, women don’t like to see their wrinkles
black and white also works wonders~
one of the reasons why I love this photo of Heidi Klum, though this photo of Marion Cotillard is also a good one of a different type~ and just for the sake of crazy good looking faces, here’s Carmen Kass.
and Greta Garbo during her 1945 days~ I’ll love you forever, Greta xD
Anyway, what’s up with this post you say?
Well, photographer Peter Lindbergh speaks a bit about on this article by The New York Times – Smile and “Say No Photoshop” – and I have some pics to illustrate his views… of not-retouched models! *legasp!*
“My feeling is that for years now it has taken a much too big part in how women are being visually defined today,” Mr. Lindbergh said in an e-mail exchange. “Heartless retouching,” he wrote, “should not be the chosen tool to represent women in the beginning of this century.”
LOL
日本語で最初のポスト！
「トラベルサンド」はすばらしいです。
これは私のお気に入りの優ちゃんの本。
の写真は奇麗が思う。
ヨーコ-さんはかっこいいです。蒼井優も。
このビーニーが大好きだから。
みんな。。。このブランドは何ですか？
知らないよ。。。
君は知っていますか？
ごめんね！これは全て私は書くことができます。
日本語は難しいですね！
Well~~~ that was tough.
Wanna know what it says?? I sure hope I did this right~~
Of course I thought what I wanted to say first,
so I hope the Japanese I tried to use did the job I intended…
Well, not exactly a scanlation because I’m not thinking about scanning my book. But I was thinking of translatings… or trying to translate Travel Sand to practice my Japanese. Writing, and all… I’ve been transcribing the first chapter, which includes a Hollywood postcard, the letter, and then a bunch of captions on scattered photos.
Of course, with the help of Google Translate (and its funny translations), Rikaichan and the damn Kanji dictionary. This is helping me with my writing as well, because I can’t read all the kanji, so I write them with handwriting input… though sometimes I get it wrong, it’s quite effective.
I was wondering, if any of you… (I know you’re out there because that Travel Sand post has quite a few views) were interested in me posting that. Leave a message.
I know I said I wasn’t gonna post any proper scans of the book, but since I wanted to make a new wallpaper with one of my fave photos in the book, I thought it would be good to tease all of you. xD I want that beanie, does any of you know where to get one?? I told my mom that’s her knitting style, but she claims she doesn’t have any idea how to knit a beanie, she said she can maybe make a scarf like that and wrap it around. LOL
Photo is not complete because I had to crop the shadow that appears from scanning too close to the spine of it. It is a pretty decent sized scan… the wallpaper is 1680×1050, but I’ve also got a fullscreen one sized 1280×1024, in case you want one… though I haven’t posted it. Original scan filesize is 5Mb. xD
**EDIT**
If anyone knows where can I get this beanie/tuque/toque, let me know! In the meantime, if you want to buy one of the caps that appear on the photoshoot:
Mi Vida es a Toda Madre @ MeshHat.com
God Only Made a Few Perfect Heads the Rest He Covered with Hair –
Hippie Knitted Beanie –