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17 August 2010

Another excuse to look at teen girls in sailor suits: Japan's Idol Groups


OK, so I'm guilty of thinking that Japanese girls wearing sailor suit school uniforms, running along the Japanese streetscape are cute...
Whatever lolita complex claims you have against me aside, this is a catchy tune about summertime from the Nagoya branch of AKB48, called SKE48.

SKE48 Team KII performing at the World Cosplay Summit 2010
SKE48 is an all-female Japanese theater/idol group produced by Yasushi Akimoto. The audition was held during the summer and debuted in October 2008. SKE48 performs in the newly built studio in the renovated Sunshine Sakae in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, every Saturday. The first SKE48 stage was a revival of Team A's Party ga Hajimaru yo.
Akimoto was offered the chance to start a production in Nagoya along with the renewal of the Sunshine Sakae, when he was thinking of making his "48 project" a nationwide project. He had a couple of offers even from outside of Japan, so he decided to use Nagoya as the place to move on with the project. Akimoto has said that selected members from both AKB48 and SKE48 may release a single, rather than releasing two different singles.[1] But they released their first single in 2009.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's a song by their sister group from Tokyo, AKB48...  あたしいの制服はジャマをする, or "My School Uniform is Getting in the Way"

Before you start flaming me, remember what it was like to be in high school yourself?  I was the only one of my friends with a car and not-so-strict parents, so I could hang out even on a school night...  But my friends usually couldn't, and ESPECIALLY girls I was dating, so I ended up going home early anyway...  Again Japanese teenagers are just like teens everywhere else--in a hurry to be adults. What I didn't understand then though is that becoming an adult meant more crap I gotta do...  I wish I was a damn teenager or younger again now!!

Some info about AKB48...

AKB48 performing in Osaka, Japan, 2009.
AKB48 is an all-female Japanese theater/idol group produced by Yasushi Akimoto. Unlike other idol groups in Japan, AKB48 is theater-based and have their own theater in Akihabara (a district in Tokyo) where they perform once every weekday, and more than once on both Saturday and Sunday. The theater is set up on the 8th floor of Don Quijote. Some of the title songs released as a single have been made a tie-in song for a television show or a television advertisement. The name derives from a shortened, Romanized representation of 'Akihabara'.
AKB48 is divided into three teams: Team A, Team K and Team B. Currently, there are 16 members in Team A, 16 members in Team K, and 16 members in Team B, getting to the total of 48 members in AKB48. Minami Takahashi is the captain of Team A, Sayaka Akimoto is the captain of Team K, and Yuki Kashiwagi is the captain of Team B.
Again, from Wikipedia

All this aside, what are your feelings about Japan teen idol groups?  When I first moved here, there was Morning Musume...  They've grown now to covering China!  I never did understand that one, but I have lots of friends that had posters, CDs and DVDs of them...  Whether you're Japanese or Gaijin, tell me what you think about this!
Posted via email from ...all about starrwulfe...

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