6 Things to Organize and Store Your Johnny’s Goods

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Becoming a fan or collector of anything raised the question of how exactly to your organize all of the goods accumulated from said activity. Johnny’s (and other idol groups) have many types of goods to collect with many different high and low end options to help you organize them. Over the years I have collected and used my fair share of these organization items, so here are 6 products to help organize and store your Johnny’s goods.

1. Ticket Holder

Johnnys has now started to go away from the paper ticketing system for some of their artists in favor of digital tickets, but there are still many shows that have paper tickets to collect. A regular photo album to store all of your tickets in is ideal, rather than spending money on an expensive “ticket holder”, and it works just as well. I have another post I wrote a while back where I talk about this particular item, so check it out HERE if you are interested!

2. Uchiwa Storage Box

Now, you might not think that this is revolutionary, but I am telling you that this has changed my storage game for all of my uchiwas – which used to be shoved into a drawer, laying flat and taking up too much space. This particular one is from a series of idol storage/ protective goods that the “3 Coins” shop (or 300 yen shop) produced in Japan a few years back. It was only supposed to be a limited run, but it was so popular that they brought it back permanently and added more to the line. This uchiwa box in particular I wanted because I needed a place to place my slightly too large uchiwa collection I’ve accumulated over the years. It can safely fit about 20 uchiwas inside and though it’s a bit flimsy at times, it does the job for 300 yen ($3 USD) and keeps your uchiwas tucked away together safely in one place.

3. Streamer Holder

Credit to Tower Records Japan

Credit to Tower Records Japan

This is the newest addition to my goods storage and another game changer for me. Over the years I had collected so many streamers from concerts that they also ended up in my “Johnnys goods drawer of doom and chaos”. One day while browsing in Tower Records with a friend, I spotted this and I was mind blown. I bought it right away and now my streamers are organized and the holder itself looks really pretty on my shelf… and also looks like I put effort into storing my Johnnys goods, instead of leaving a pile of them sitting at the back of aforementioned drawer.

You can also find this at the 300 yen store, but the one that I decided to buy was a bit pricer and from Tower Records for just over 1000 yen or $10 USD. It is sturdier than the 3 Coin store one and is magnetic to hold the opening shut.

4. Photo Album for Shop Photos

Shop photos are one of those staple items that all Johnnys fans eventually purchase. Over the years I have accumulated hundreds of photos and have organized them in these photo albums from the 100 yen store. I believe these particular ones are from CanDo, but any photo album of your choice will due! I personally don’t like inviting a ton of money into storage for shop photos, because I have a lot of them, so I just hop on over to the 100 yen store and get mine. LOFT and Tokyu Hands will also have them, but for a higher price point.

I personally organize mine by member and group, so I have individual albums for each member (for NEWS I buy all the photosets at the concert) and then I have a separate album for group photos. Feel free to organize yours however you please!

5. Glass Cup for Showcasing Penlights

Once again, going back that “Johnnys goods drawer of doom”, all of my penlights also used to be in there. After a while, I wanted to proudly display my favorite ones in my room to always look at, but I didn’t have a way to keep them standing up. So, I be-bopped my way over to the 100 yen store (more specifically Daiso) and saw they had so many options for mini cups that are the perfect size to place your penlights inside of them to stand them up. For my larger penlights, I have a bit larger glasses but for the most part they are the smallest glasses I could find there.

6. Binder for storing magazine scans

If you are an idol fan, you are probably buying magazines to read interviews with your favorite entertainers. Some people want to keep their magazines in restive condition, but after you buy them year after year, they start to pile up. After the first time I moved inside of Japan, I realized I had accumulated WAY too magazines over those 2 years and decided to cut them up and take out only the pages that I wanted to keep. It would reduce space in my apartment and make it easier to sift through all of the scans that I wanted. I am still not done, but I have accumulated a large amount of binders filled with magazine scans that I have cut out over the years. The magazines come in all different sizes, so I normally pick a normal size A4 binder with extra pocket refill, as well as an XL wide size binder meant for fashion magazines to make sure all of my bases are covered.  Below is the Rakuten link to the ones that I have bought, but you can also go to any stationary store, like LOFT or Tokyu Hands to buy it. I tend to buy in bulk when I buy them, so its cheaper to buy them on Rakuten. If you are not looking to buy over 1-2 of them, LOFT and Tokyu Hands is probably the best to buy them at. Make sure you don’t forget the re-fills for them! They only come with maybe 10 pockets inside.

A4-S Size Binder

Magazine Binder

This is an amazing way to organize all of your magazines without the extra room and weight attached!

What would you be interested in buying? Are there any other goods that you don’t know how organize or store? Let me know in the comments below!

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Questions About Living in Japan – Is It Hard to Get a Job?

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Questions about Living in Japan #1

Living in Japan can be a challenge for foreigners and for people looking for information before making the leap to move over here. I reached out on Instagram and asked followers there if they had any questions about life in Japan, and I got some great responses! I want to answer each question in an individual post, so this is the first of a series of posts that I plan to make on questions about living in Japan. The first question is about getting a job in Japan and about the working attitude.

Question 1: Is it hard getting a job there [in Japan]? How is the working attitude there?

Finding a job for a foreigner can be easy for a native English speaker wanting to teach English, but outside of that it can be kind of difficult. A lot of people use teaching English as a spring board to getting a non-English teaching job after. You have to have a high level of Japanese for non-English speaking jobs for the most part, maybe not an engineer or programmer, and you have to prove you want to live here for the long term…. as per my experience. You should also have experience in that field that you want to work in (masters degrees counting in my opinion) as with any job back in your own home country. You also have to be aware that it is competitive out there. Just because you can speak English and Japanese fluently doesn’t mean you get an easy foot in the door. There are tons of Japanese-English bilinguals out there and the competition is tough… you have to have to have some sort of other skill that you can contribute, not just language. 

As for the working attitude, I can only speak for non English teaching jobs, but for the most part Japanese people are very hard working and expect the same from you. At the beginning they might be sympathetic to you, but they will teach you Japanese business practices bit by bit, if you don’t know them already, and expect you to follow them. Some of these include coming in before work begins to prepare for the day even though the work day hasn’t started yet, radio exercises (Yes… my first company made us do it EVERY single day), answering the phones even though you are a foreigner, etc. 

Some of these things are company-specific though. The company culture differs from company to company and the size of the company as well, so keep that in mind. I suggest when going for an interview, have a list of what you are looking for in a company and during the interview ask smart questions to see if that company is a right fit for you. For example, if you want to travel overseas a lot, a job just sitting at a desk won’t be right for you. If you want to work on new projects all the time, a job where you are taking over from someone else and the job is pretty much decided is probably not a right fit for you. If you want direct communication with your boss, ask for details about what type of working environment you’re walking into.

There are many ways to ask questions in interviews to see if you will be a good fit for that company, and don’t be afraid to…. an interview is just as much them interviewing you as you are getting a feel if you want to work for them. I made that mistake so many times because I was desperate to get out and move on to “something better” when in reality it wasn’t the best fit for me. I’m on my 4th company here in japan and I finally found a right fit for me but it took me about 3.5 years to do so… so with that know sometimes you might not find that perfect job fit right away and you can quit if you want. 

On the other hand, I highly recommend you try to stick it out in a company for more than a year though so it doesn’t seem that you are job hopping constantly. There are cycles of liking and disliking your job, just like in your home country, and there is a difference between being harassed/ not agreeing with the company values and wanting to leave after the honeymoon period has died down. You might also be going through some tough projects or work at that moment, so I highly recommend thinking very throughly about why you want to quit before you do and also have something lined up before you leave so you can pay your bills.  

Let me know if you want information on how to quit your job in Japan properly! I’ll consider making a blog post or video about it in the future. Also, if you have a question about living in Japan please answer in the comments below! If you have experience with jobs here as well, feel free to comment your experience.

Seasons of Japan – July 2017 | nihonchique

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Seasons of Japan July

July was a very busy month consisting of job hunting, my mom and sister visiting from America, and lots of traveling! I took my mom and sister around Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Himeji, and Hiroshima. All of those places are some of my favorite in Japan. This was the month I truly realized I love photography and traveling. Unfortunately, in the months following afterwards I didn’t get the time to do much of any of that, but it is something that still lingers in the back of my mind quite a lot.

I guess life gets in the way and balance becomes hard when you start a new job, especially one that doesn’t have consistent days off.  Taking from the future,  the the time from then until now was a hard journey that I still am on at the moment. Juggling friendships, boyfriends, new hobbies, and a new job is extremely difficult and still something I am not too sure how to handle. Though that is the case, I feel a lot more wiser than I was back in July of last year and I am continuing to grow.

Despite that, July was an amazing month of traveling and I was finally able to take my sister around Japan for the first time since I had moved to Japan 5 years before. I visited Fushimi Inari, Miyajima, Todaiji, Nara Park, Himeji castle and more, eating our way through many parts of Japan, as my sister is a Major foodie! I am glad she enjoyed all of the food I recommended to her.

Would anyone be interested in a Kansai travel guide? I think that would be fun to make and I can introduce you to some of my favorite spots in the Kansai region! Let me know in the comments below if you are interested.

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Visited the famous Todaiji Temple in Nara! 🦌

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Miyajima with the little sis @prncess.di ⛩!

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Seasons of Japan – June 2017 | nihonchique

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June 2017. This is the month that marked the last in a chapter of my life. I can’t believe it has taken me this long to get past this month in my life, almost like my blog was kind of frozen in time until I figured out what I was doing. I still now dont know what I am doing and what direction I am going in, but in June 2017, I had the huge high of the NEWS NEVERLAND tour in Tokyo dome with a close friend, followed straight after by the disappointment of hearing that the department/ website in my company I was working for for a year and half would be shutting down and my contract would not be continuing because of it. I was devastated and was extremely hurt that a company I had worked so hard for for a year and a half would just cut me so simply, but despite this I took this as a learning opportunity and got searching for jobs as soon as possible. (Spoiler, I found one and started it at the beginning of August 2017!).

On the topic of the NEWS NEVERLAND tour in Tokyo Dome, that was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had in my life. “U R not alone” since then has become my anthem and even when the DVD came out in January of this year, I cried again right long with them at “U R not alone” and had no shame. As I said in the 4th picture, the end of the NEVERLAND tour isn’t the end, and we truly are not alone. NEWS has been along with me on this journey for almost 10 years now. I feel like I have grown with them and they have supported me all of these years, almost half of them being in Japan.  Thank you NEWS. Thank you and I look forward to seeing you in Hiroshima for the EPCOTIA tour in April, 2018!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playing in a Magic: The Gathering Tournament for the first time – Hareruya Osaka’s first “Ladies One” tournament

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A few months ago, my boyfriend introduced me to Magic: The Gathering and was surprised that I had never heard of it, as I am from the country that it was from. As an adult, I was never really into card games, or games in general, but as a kid I used to play Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon – though probably not by the proper rules. My interest in games waned as I got into High School and got into Johnnys, anime, dramas, fashion, and cheerleading before deciding to pursue Japanese and business in University, and then eventually moving to Japan…. which you can say is THE land of card games. I would say that the majority of the people around me didn’t really play card games, or weren’t games in general, which also contributed to the waning interest. That changed when by boyfriend asked if I wanted to learn how to play and I gladly accepted, as I wanted to know what this world was about.

We started to play together at my apartment on the living room table with 2 decks he purchased just for that purpose, and then  about a month and a half ago we went to a card shop and I bought my first starter deck (DINOSAURS FTW!) and from there he helped me add some cards to it to boost it a bit. It is still a budget deck, probably only spending a total of around 3000 yen in (about $30 USD) which included the initial deck + some modifications to it so that I can play in a tournament.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of playing in my first ever Magic: The Gathering tournament!

No, I did not win by any means… in fact I lost every game that I played… but the experience was the most important part. This was Hareruya Osaka’s first “Ladies One” tournament and there ended up being 6 of us playing. It was a casual, Ladies only tournament and it was honestly a lot more fun that I thought it would be! I was extremely nervous, as this was my first time and I know how competitive these types of events can be, but all of the players were extremely nice and helpful to a newbie like me, explaining everything to me as the games went on and asking if I wanted any advice on how to play.  They were overjoyed that there were more than 4 people participating, so that the tournament could happen, especially since there doesn’t seem to be many female players in Japan. A lot of them had gotten into the game through their significant other, like me, so it was nice to chat about that and about women in the game in-between rounds, how long we had been playing, and how we got into it.

I’m glad that my first tournament was a ladies tournament, as it gave me more confidence to play and get stronger seeing other women play and be into a seemingly pretty male-dominated game. I think if I had played in a regular tournament, I would have been a lot more nervous and would have wanted to practice a lot more before I entered into a tournament for the first time, but this was a perfect gateway for me into playing more competitively, especially in Japan where the language isn’t my first language. I honestly hope that this event becomes a regular thing, as it would be nice to play against other women again and make it more accessible to other women who were like me and dont have the confidence to play in regular tournaments yet.

Do you play card games? What do you think about women in card games? Should there be more ladies events to make it more accessible to women? Let me know in the comments below!

Seasons of Japan – May 2017 | nihonchique

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May began with me ending Golden Week in America. After wine country at the end of April, I toured around San Fransisco for the first time and it was awesome! Properly saw the Golden Gate bridge and even had a night tour of Alcatraz.

After I got back to Japan, I went on a short day trip to Arashiyama (嵐山）in Kyoto with a friend and biked up to a temple called Otagi Nenbutsu-ji ( 愛宕念仏寺)in a mountain with beautiful statues. I was then wished away for a day trip for work to Kochi again where I ate Katsuo Tataki (鰹のタタキ), a way they cook the fish and Katsuo is “Skipjack tuna”, for the first time (DELICIOUS!)

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San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge 🌁

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Night tour of Alcatraz!🔦😱

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鰹たたき！🙃🐟 Katsuo Tataki! 👍🏻

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NEWS – NEVERLAND Album Review | nihonchique

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Who doesn’t want to be a kid forever and go to Neverland? For NEWS’s 2017 album release on March 22nd, 2017, they chose “Neverland” as the theme and made it unique to them, complete with a steampunk feel.

General Overview

The album is a fusion of narration and regular songs. The songs themselves don’t follow a particular pattern or genre, except for the title song “NEVERLAND” and the final song written by GreeeeN “U R not alone”. The narration takes you through NEWS’s NEVERLAND and introduces different parts to it, such as the jobs that the members of NEWS have in NEVERLAND, the 7 elements that make up NEVERLAND, and how to enter into NEVERLAND. The album serves as an introduction to and the base of their 2017 tour NEWS LIVE TOUR 2017 NEVERLAND, in which they continue the theme through.

Editions

First Press Limited Edition

-16 songs
-28 page booklet with special packaging.
-DVD disc containing 「NEVERLAND EPISODE. 0」and the making.
-Key to enter NEVERLAND
-ID for a special NEVERLAND streaming video online. (Limited time available to watch)

Regular Edition

-16 songs from the limited edition +4 member solo songs (Total 20 songs)
-20 page booklet.

Stand-out Songs

NEVERLAND

The title song of the album. This one has a strong impact with the tribal like sounds fused with an almost Arabic like sounds, combined with the tempo changes. The one part that I don’t like is the little children chanting the 7 different elements in the middle of the song, as I think it looses the strong impact but I understand that they probably wanted to speed up and slow down the song a lot and have a variety of that.

Brightest

This was NEWS venturing into a more dance/ club music like genre. I like how it wasn’t really intense, but it had a really catchy beat. Every time I hear this song, I want to get up and dance! Though it was a bit fast, the lyrics were really easy to remember because of the beat of the song.  Both this one and “Silent Love” I could envision being played in a club or being used for dance choreography.

SIlent Love

This has to be my second favorite song on this album besides “U R not alone”. Though I don’t know the genre of this song, it is a genre that has been popular over the past year or so around the world, so it was nice to see NEWS incorporating that into their music. I think it’s the chorus that really makes this song, combined with the light rap by Massu.

U R not alone

Written by GReeeeN for NEWS, I thought this song was one of the most impactful songs on the album. I have a translation of it here on my blog, so if you want to hear more on my thoughts about it, click here! All the feel for this song… all the feels.

Final Thoughts

“NEVERLAND” has been one of my favorite NEWS albums since their “NEWS” album in 2013. 2016’s “QUARTETTO” had a theme going on, but I thought they didn’t quite take it all the way through the album, to the tour, etc. This year with NEVERLAND though, they stepped it up and took the entire theme through the album, to the tour and really immersed the fans into their version of “NEVERLAND”, which turned out to kind of be a combination of Neverland and Wonderland, I thought. (Yes NEWS, there is a difference between Neverland and Wonderland.) Though the theme wasn’t perfect, I liked how the narration on the album told us a story about the world and then fully immersed us into it during the tour. After a while, I stopped listening to the narration parts of the album because I knew them by heart, but for theming purposes I thought it was amazing. Johnny’s always does an amazing job of theming and I hope that NEWS will continue to do themed albums like this every so often!

For the solo songs this year, I wasn’t too impressed overall. Shige’s “Ayame” performance during the tour was amazing, but as just stand alone music none of them really captured my attention like previous years. Tegoshi’s “I’m coming” was a bit of a surprise and the first time I heard it I literally spit my tea out while I was drinking it thinking “So it REALY was THAT meaning….are children really going to come see this live??” (I swear I am not a prude, I was just generally surprised at the different direction that Tegoshi was going in this year.) Massu also took a different direction this year with his cover of “Forever Mine” which was beautiful and really showcased his singing abilities, but I miss his dance songs (as I tend to gravitate towards dance music and more upbeat music naturally… unless its “White Love Story”… I will forever love and cry at that song. No shame.) So, if I had to pick a favorite this year it would be Koyama’s solo “Nyanta” because of the light rock feel to it and the theme of his song, which was hit cat of 19 years, who passed away in December of last year.

What did you all think of this album this year? Let me know in the comments below!