Miyawaki Sakura (HKT48), Yabuki Nako (HKT48), and Honda Hitomi (AkB48) suspend their activities with their respective Japanese groups while promoting with new KPop group, IZ*ONE, for two years and six months. This comes according to a statement from their new label, Off the Record, released September 24th.
I have an interesting story to tell. I have told this story to plenty of people, and if you know me, you’ve probably heard this story as well. But this story explains why I have been all about Miyawaki Sakura and the St. Louis Cardinals. I really love telling this story, so if you’d like to read on… Back in February of this year, I was still somewhat trying to find myself as a fan of Major League Baseball. I gave a trial run with the Oakland Athletics, but if anybody is familiar with the Oakland Athletics in the 2014 season, you would know that the season was the closest thing to a Greek tragedy. Simply put, I was kind of wondering whether or not I picked the right team to support. Keep in mind that I was someone who owned several MLB team’s hats just to try to find the right team (i.e. Dodgers, Giants, Yankees, Twins, Royals, Cubs, Mets, Pirates, etc.), and picked the A’s because they seemed like the safest option. Meaning that no one really hated them. I was in Las Vegas at the time, and I found a nice looking cap for like, $12. It was a St. Louis Cardinals cap with the 2013 World Series patch on it (which interestingly was a World Series they lost). I actually enjoyed wearing this cap while walking around the Las Vegas Strip. At the same time, I was catching up with Majisuka Gakuen 4, which had Miyawaki Sakura as the lead character that season. That was the most Sakura I had seen at the time. Keep in mind that I used to be real indifferent about Sakura, and honestly not care that much about her. But little did I know that both Miyawaki Sakura and the St. Louis Cardinals would define my entire 2015. From February until May, I was working as a dietary aide in a nursing home. Some of the responsibilities I had included preparing food on a tray line, washing dishes in pretty unsanitary conditions, and delivering carts of coffee and food for patients. Never in my life had I felt so alone and disrespected…the outfits we had to wear looked rather silly, no one followed the “English only” policy as 90% of the staff spoke Spanish, and I felt disrespected by everyone: nurses, patients, fellow dietary aides, etc. I worked long, painful hours, I got paid minimum wage despite owning a Bachelors degree, and I was motivated to get the hell out of there and work somewhere else. I felt not only physically drained, but also emotionally and mentally exhausted. What does this have to do with Sakura? Just listen. Because I was alone during my lunch break, I would pretend that there was a girl who always stopped by to visit her grandmother at the nursing home. This girl would usually visit at the time I had lunch. She noticed that I had an AKB48 member as my phone wallpaper when she was walking past (at the time it was a photo of Watanabe Mayu), and then told me how she was a fan of Mayuyu for a while now. We became good friends at the time. I told her all about the crap I had to go through working as a dietary aide on a regular basis, I told her about some of the friends I have who also like AKB48, and I told her about how I am trying to find a Major League Baseball team to really root for next season. What was this pretend girl’s name? Her name was Miyawaki Sakura. And she said she was a diehard Cardinals fan from Maplewood, MO. By June, not only did I pay attention to two the games and current rosters of two teams (Oakland/St. Louis), but I also paid a whole lot more attention to Miyawaki Sakura. I followed a Sakura fan page on Facebook, I had one of her mobame photos as a phone wallpaper, and every time I saw her perform in a concert or on AKBingo!, I would get hyped up. I did this because I pretended Sakura was my closest friend when I needed one the most. I paid a lot more attention to the St. Louis Cardinals at the time, more so than the Oakland Athletics. The A’s season was crumbling fast while the Cardinals were doing well. I still would pay attention to the A’s, but when I saw them live at Angel Stadium (Anaheim) and O.Co Coliseum (Oakland), they lost both games in blowout fashion. With the Cardinals, I only saw them live once this year, at Dodger Stadium (Los Angeles). However, I was kind of timid to wear that Cardinals cap I bought in Las Vegas given that there was a lot of bad blood between the Cardinals and the Dodgers (the Cardinals eliminated the Dodgers in the playoffs two years in a row). Given the incidents of violence that occurred in Dodger Stadium, I did not want to put myself in what could have been a painful situation. Thus, I wore a Dodgers cap to the game even though I wanted to root for the Cardinals. That was a loss on my end, as 35-40% of that stadium was filled with Cardinals fans. The Cardinals won that game, and I was frustrated for not representing the team not only I truly wanted to root for, but the team Sakura was rooting for. I was mad for being scared. Because of this, I took the time and effort to really dig into the St. Louis Cardinals history. I researched the Cardinals teams of old, including the Gashouse Gang of the 30s and Whitey Ball of the 80s. I learned to embrace the hate rather than grow timid to the masses. I watched highlights on YouTube and I purchased Cardinals jerseys. I did all of this because I kept thinking about Sakura. Yes, I was pretending that an idol from Kagoshima was my closest friend, but I was happy doing this. I’m still doing this to this day, and I’m still happy! Every time I see the St. Louis Cardinals, I always think of Miyawaki Sakura, and vice-versa. The funny thing is, in August I went to visit Las Vegas once again. While walking around the Strip, I was rocking my good old St. Louis Cardinals cap I bought there in February, and some guy walks up to me trying to sell tickets for a show. This is how the conversation went: Guy: Hey, what’s up man? Cardinal Nation up in here! Me: That’s right bro! Guy: You from St. Louis? Me: Nah, but my girlfriend is. Guy: That’s what’s up. You have a photo? Me: Sure! This is what she looks like: Since then, I have gone with this story every time someone asks about how I rock a Cardinals cap. Even though I’ve done plenty of research on the team and all of the famous St. Louis Cardinals I would need to know to call myself a Cardinals fan (i.e. Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Dizzy Dean, etc.), I always seem to say “because my girl is from St. Louis” and then bring up a photo of Sakura. I want to have fun with this, since the Cardinals are not exactly well received where I am from. Thus, I think I may follow the St. Louis Cardinals for the rest of my life. I am already trying to plan a trip in June to St. Louis just to see them hit home runs and strike batters out in Busch Stadium. Don’t get me wrong: I still will root for the A’s as well, whether or not they win or lose 100 games. But I am much more hyped with the Cardinals, and don’t mind rooting for a team several other fan bases hate. I am willing to embrace the role of being hated, because who cares what those people think anyway? Look at me now. I quit my dietary aide job for an overall better one as a behavior interventionist. I am looking forward every day to St. Louis Cardinals baseball and whatever the hell the real life Miyawaki Sakura is up to. If you didn’t know already, Miyawaki Sakura, of HKT48 and AKB48, released a photobook this month. The self-titled Sakura photobook was so good that it sold over 60,000 copies, which means it’s sold out in Japan. Fortunately, the local Kinokuniya Bookstore in Los Angeles managed to have two copies for sale, so of course I did not hesitate to pick one up. But how good is it? Is the first Miyawaki Sakura photobook worth the price (1,500 yen in Japan and about $23 at Kinokuniya before tax)? Let’s take a look. Some photobooks can come with either a photo you can trade with others or even a two-sided poster. This one comes with different posters depending on which one you buy. You won’t know which poster you get until you take off the plastic wrapping. The one I have is of Sakura in a bikini in the forest. Yeah, I’m not taping that poster in my room mind you. As soon as you open the photobook, it’s a photo of Sakura sitting on a cherry blossom tree. Throughout the book, you see Sakura in normal casual clothes (or sometimes a seifuku) in various settings: sleeping inside a bus, relaxing on a boat, fishing in a harbor, running in a park, and playing at a playground. Of course, you get your fair share of bikini gravure shots, which are commonplace in 48G-related photobooks. Honestly, you see more bikini gravure in standard issues of Young Animal or Weekly Playboy, so if you expected a book filled with Sakura bikini shots, that’s not the case here. She’s still cute regardless, and you have an entire book filled with the cuteness that is Miyawaki Sakura! Who needs bikini shots anyway? One thing that bothers me about the photobook is just how much it skips from setting to setting. The pacing goes like this: two pages with Sakura in a Japanese metropolitan bus, then two pages with Sakura next to a cherry tree. Some photobooks, such Kizaki Yuria’s Peace and Shiraishi Mai’s Seijun na Otona, keep it consistent with the photo settings. For example, you get ten or so pages of Shiraishi Mai at the beach but they aren’t scattered throughout the photobook. Rather, they are all in one section. Miyawaki Sakura’s photobook doesn’t do that. All the photos seem to be shuffled around, so you get a new setting once you turn the page. This takes away from the experience the photobook is giving you. Other things you see in this photobook include a few shots of Miyawaki Sakura during concerts (such as the Young Member Zenkoku Tour), Sakura backstage, and Sakura in rehearsal with other HKT48 members. You also get a few pages that talk about Sakura’s life story, including pictures of her when she was younger. It’s a nice thing to read at the end of a photo collection. That is if you can read Japanese. There is also one part of the photobook that puts it in the “risqué” category, more so than anything in Weekly Playboy or Young Animal. There are some five or six shots in this photobook that consist of Sakura in a bed. The only problem with this is that Sakura is possibly not wearing any clothes and is covered with a white blanket. I say possibly because there are photos where Sakura’s back is exposed and it does not look like she is wearing a bra. To some this would be all fine and dandy, but the issue that arises here is that Miyawaki Sakura is only 17 years old. This issue was addressed on CDJapan (a popular import website) with Sakura’s photobook was pulled from the site. How you look at the photos is based on your own moral judgments as to whether or not it’s okay for Miyawaki Sakura to have photos like that. I will not post the photos on this review since that will spoil the “surprise”. But in my opinion, I can understand why CDJapan pulled the photobook. I can also understand why some people may find the photos too risqué for a 17-year-old. I wish Sakura waited until possibly April of 2016 to take photos like this so it would be a non-issue, but the photos are there. If you buy the photobook, all you have to do is just skip over those few pages. Overall, Sakura is a pretty decent photobook. This is not the best photobook released this year (so far I have to give that title to Yamamoto Sayaka’s SY), but this is still a good photobook for all you Miyawaki Sakura fans. I would put this photobook higher than Nishino Nanase’s Fudangi, but not higher than Kizaki Yuria’s Peace. Obviously for the Miyawaki Sakura oshi, it’s a must buy. For the individual who put Sakura in their Top 5 or maybe Top 10, it’s still worth a buy if you can find one. But for everyone else out there, your best bet would be to sit this photobook out and possibly purchase Mizugi Surprise 2015 once that comes out. I have a very strong feeling this is not going to be the last Miyawaki Sakura photobook. Give it at least five years and she’ll have a new one ready. -Nathan (L4verra) |
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