About me

Early beginnings…

Being an animé fan as well as an avid music listener in my young, formative years, I naturally gravitated to Japanese music quite early on. Anisong carried me through high school, and introduced me more broadly to Jpop in my university days.

The music of Japanese idols became the anthems of my university and subsequent years thereafter. From the golden era of Morning Musume, through to the waning days of °C-ute, and then onto seiyuu idols like μ‘s and Aqours. I also enjoyed watching music variety shows such as Utaban back in the days of Morning Musume.

My journey up the hill…

Although I had briefly watched some “Nogizakatte, Doko?” in 2014 while in Japan, it wasn’t until late 2017 that I was properly introduced to the Sakamichi Series by a friend on Discord. By July the following year, I was attending the Nogizaka46 6th YEAR BIRTHDAY LIVE (6th BDL) at Prince Chichibunomiya Rugby Stadium, and by November I was charming up Matsuda Konoka and Hamagishi Hiyori of Hiragana Keyakizaka46 (now Hinatazaka46) at an individual handshake event at Makuhari Messe.

As the 2018 Sakamichi Joint Auditions happened to be held soon after the 6th BDL, I began following the adventures of these unknowns earnestly, whilst also brushing up on Nogizaka46 history.

Although I had won a ticket to the Nogizaka46 4^th Generation Omitatekai at Nippon Budokan, I was unable to attend.

However, since then I have been luck enough to attend the Nogizaka46 7th YEAR BIRTHDAY LIVE, the Nogizaka46 8th YEAR BIRTHDAY LIVE, and most recently, all four days of the Nogizaka46 Summer Tour 2023 at Meiji JIngu Stadium.

As you can probably tell, I mainly focus on Nogizaka46 these days, but I still touch base and follow the activities of some of the other graduates of the 2018 Sakamichi Joint Auditions who are now active in Sakurazaka46 and Hinatazaka46, though admittedly not as much as I used to.

With the addition of Hinatazaka46’s 4th generation and Sakurazaka46’s 3rd generation, I have all but stepped back from those groups due to the time and effort required to keep up with them.

My translations

I’m a native English speaker from Australia and my Japanese is basic at best, so I am not claiming to be perfect and I will probably make mistakes in my translations as I use this platform to help myself learn the language. While I will do my best to keep as much of the original blog posts intact, I will always strive to make sure the context and content reflect what is being conveyed, even if it’s not literally word-by-word. However, feel free to message me on Twitter if you find something glaringly incorrect.

For now I will be focussing on Shibata Yuna‘s blogs and magazine article features, but will occasionally branch out to other members if I feel they’re interesting enough and I have the time to commit myself to them.

I have branched out a bit and have the 5th Generation Profiles including some early blogs and magazine articles from Matsuo Miyu, Sato Rika, Inoue Nagi, Kawasaki Sakura and Nakanishi Aruno up as well for reference.

Recent online meet & greet charts have also been uploaded.

As of February 2025, the intention is that I will also be adding 6th Generation Profiles as they are released.