[T~M] Kasai Tomomi trading cards!!!!

A few days ago I received my box of Kasai Tomomi trading cards (for those who don’t know, they were released on August 22nd 2009 selling for 6300 yen per box) It’s not only Kasai who is releasing cards but Ono Erena, Maeda Atsuko, Itano Tomomi and many other idols are also releasing them. I’m not too surprised idols are doing this because trading cards seem to be an effective form of merchandising, not to mention they’re a lot more fun to collect than PB’s in my opinion. Several years back I was an avid collector of Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh trading cards (and I still have them all stashed away somewhere in the attic) so buying these Kasai cards really did bring back wonderful memories. The thing that amuses me about Idol trading cards is that I was always under the impression that a lot of trading cards are aimed mainly at kids, this most likely isn’t the case with idol ones because some of them have revealing pictures of girls in skimpy costumes and cards with actual cut up pieces of bikini’s in them lol, but the thought of school kids trading Idol cards still makes me laugh My school days would have been a lot more fun if I was trading cards with pieces of bra’s and panties stuck in them instead of trading Pikachu’s for Snorlax’s.


Anyway because I don’t like putting my dirty hands all over the cards whenever I want to see them, I scanned all of the ones I got so I can look at them on my computer instead. Unfortunately I didn’t complete the regular set of 72 cards, but if I did it would kind of ruin the point of them being ‘trading’ cards right? So here they are (sorry about the quality and specks of dust, but the scans are a lot bigger than the real cards and my room is filthy lol. Please don’t put these anywhere else without giving credit):


Regular set (front and backs):
I’m missing numbers: 9, 21, 36, 42 and 48 so if you want to trade just contact me. The ones I have available for trade are numbers: 7, 8, 17, 23, 44, 46, 47, 65 and 66, but I’d be willing to trade for others too I guess.

Special cards:
As well as the regular cards, you can also get special ones such as signed cards, costume cards, polaroids plus others. These are the non-regular ones I got:

For those who want to download all the pictures, you can get the rar file HERE

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Overall I’m incredibly impressed with these cards Not only because they look fantastic with Kasai being both cute and sexy in a lot of them (on top of her looking beautiful in ALL of them), but because I think the box was fantastic value for money. I would love Kasai to have her own photobook, and I’m puzzled as to why she doesn’t have one yet, but if I had to choose between a PB or trading card collection, I’d definitely choose the cards (but I still hope we get a PB eventually too). Apart from the small size of them, the photo’s on these cards are just as good as any you’re likely to find in a photobook, and you also get the awesome bonus of being able to acquire something special like a signed card or even a piece of the actual costume she’s wearing So yes, definitely worth the money I paid for them, and I’d say they’re worth more to be honest.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, out of all of the cards I got, I think my favourite would have to be card number 69 ( ), she looks amazing in that one. I’m not sure what my favourite costume is because they all look great and there’s a lot of variety in the styles, but if I had to choose I’d probably pick the one with the lollipop because I like that set a lot…and I love me some loli’s…I mean lolli’s

Finally here’s a picture of the trading card box along with the packet the cards came in:

[T~M] Aji onchi: Oishii!!!

I’m a little late but for those who don’t know, Chivor and Massuharuka have been kind enough to start translating Tomochin’s blog, and since Kasai is like:

-The strawberry to her cream
-The chocolate to her vanilla
-The Tsuji to her Kago
-The sun to her moon
-The Ryu to her Ken
-The hot to her cold
-The Mario to her Luigi
-The kick to her punch
-The Goku to her Ve…Krillin
-The left to her right
-The Ant to her Dec
-The yin to her yang
-The line that crosses her t and dots her i
-The butter to her toast
…etc

I feel it’s more than necessary to write about it here. You can find it at the aptly named “Aji Onchi”. If you’re like me and didn’t know what the name meant at first, then it’ll be interesting to know that it’s a reference to her AKBingo/0ji59fun appearances where she thought everything was tasty, even the unusual stuff. I think it actually means something like ‘taste-deaf’ (i.e. someone who can’t separate the food that tastes good from the food that tastes like sweaty feet). I’m so hungry right now I’d probably eat anything too *cries*

Anyway I’m looking forward to reading more blog translations from you two! Keep up the good work

[T~M] The 16th of November 2008

[I'm really sorry for posting this late. I was planning to post this on the 17th, but there has been too much stuff happening in the last few weeks (along with me being so goddamn lazy), so just pretend I posted this then lol.]

As I’m sure you all know, Kasai celebrated her 17th birthday on the 16th of November 2008, and I hope you all took the time to wish her a happy birthday. Even if you didn’t, her blog posts show that she almost certainly had a fantastic time, and I really couldn’t be happier for her <3 I also celebrated my 20th birthday on the 16th, so instead of letting loose the Kasai fanboy within for this post or writing a whole page on why she’s great, I figured I’d use this rare chance to NOT write mainly about Kasai for once (BLASPHEMY!) and instead write a little about myself and my weekend (because of this, I’d advise anyone who uses this blog only for the Kasai info to stop reading here! I predict a lengthy and pointless post ahead. You’ve been warned).

First off, my actual name is EDevil (not really, but that has a nice ring to it), a Filipino born and raised in England. I know I didn’t need to mention that, but usually when I say I’m from England, people automatically assume I’m a 6′4 caucasian male who *insert English stereotype*, which I’m not. I’m currently an undergraduate student studying Computer science at the University College London (UCL). My interests and hobbies aren’t anything special I guess: videogames, computers, Japanese stuff, martial arts and the odd sport. The only thing that matters here is that I’m a big AKB48 fan. I first found out about them in early 2007, before the release of Keibetsu shiteita aijou (which btw remains my favourite single). The first thing I was advised to do was to pick out a favourite member. Initial favourites don’t always remain so over time, but it’s a good way to really get stuck into a fandom like AKB48.

I think one of the first things I looked at in the AKB48 thread at jpopmusic was a list of the girl’s names and birthdays. I noticed one of the girls had the same birthday as me, and so I thought that was pretty cool. I then looked through the Aitakatta PV and made a gif of 2 girls who I thought stood out (the gif is HERE). I posted it at JPM to see if anyone knew who they were, and to my surprise one of them was the same girl who had the same birthday as me. And so it began…

Luck? Divine intervention? I actually have no idea what I would have done if it was Takamina who had the same birthday, maybe I would have chosen her, I’ll never know (but the thought of what it’d be like if I was a Takamina fan is pretty funny. Takamina is every kind of awesome, I love her). What I DO know is that first impressions aren’t everything, if I wasn’t supposed to be a Kasai fan, then I would have started supporting someone else a long time ago, regardless of whether or not we were born on the same day, which to be honest is pretty trivial. Almost exactly one year later I took a trip to Japan (it was more of an AKB48 trip than a Japan one seeing as I probably spent more than half of my budget on them). I experienced a lot and was lucky enough to actually meet Kasai a few times, although just the first meeting was enough to ensure that I’d support her forever. Several months and many crazy theories later and here I am. I actually ended up failing my first year (hence why I’m still a 1st year student), and my 3 week Japan holiday during the revision period coupled with my EXTREME case of procrastination might have had something to do with it, and yet I regret absolutely nothing. My life has been delayed by one year but I’d easily give up many more years and many more hundreds of £’s if it meant experiencing the best 3 weeks of my life, because they seriously were THE best 3 weeks ever, and I doubt that will ever change. Simply magical. On the plus side, even though I failed spectacularly, I did get a 1st in Japanese lol!


So anyway, my weekend started really well. On Saturday, myself and a few friends went wondering around London. The basic idea was to have a Japanese themed day, where we’d get some food, get drunk…and go bowling. That’s about as Japanese as you can get in London lol. First we went and grabbed some lunch at a Japanese restaurant in Chinatown. London’s Chinatown really sucks, it’s just one main street with maybe a few other shops scattered here and there, but I guess it’s better than nothing. We were hoping to get a special £4 lunch deal for students, but unfortunately they stopped doing that, probably because of the terrible economic situation (seriously the GBP is useless right now). I ended up getting some Tonkatsu ramen, which was really nice. After lunch we went off to the “Japan centre” to stock up on some much needed alcohol. The Japan centre is a shop that sells a bunch of Japan related stuff (food, magazines, books, utensils etc), it’s also a restaurant, but I haven’t eaten there because it’s pretty expensive. We ended up getting some free sake samples from this very excitable old Japanese shop assistant. He was quite helpful, giving us tips on which drinks are the best etc. However personally, I don’t really care for ‘quality’, as long as it’s reasonably cheap and gets the job done. Which is why my friend and I split the cost for a £10 bottle of plum wine, while my other friend spent something like £33 on 2 bottles of sake lol, he also brought some Korean soju, which tastes almost identical to sake. After that we headed next door to the Japan centre bookstore. I didn’t tell my friends why I wanted to look in there, but I actually wanted to take a look at their selection of magazines to see if any AKB48 related ones were available. They actually did have a few, like Weekly playboy and the ones that Maimai and Kasai appeared in once. However we couldn’t look in any, and since we were standing at the dodgy magazine section right next to the counter (why did they have to put them THERE), we slyly walked away without buying anything…and also because this creepy white guy saw what we were looking at and started sniggering at us lol. We then went off to some park to consume our newly purchased alcohol. Getting drunk on a park bench in the middle of the night must have made us look like a bunch of tramps and/or criminal youths. But we were drunk so we didn’t care haha (NOTE: Please drink responsibly).


Here are some pictures that my friend took. The first one was taken in Piccadilly circus, which is right next to a lot of Japan related stores and is a pretty popular tourist spot. The second one is of the view from our chosen drinking spot. It was getting pretty dark but in the distance you can see the London Eye, another popular London tourist attraction. The great thing about this part of central London is that a lot of the interesting spots are so close together, perhaps even more so than in Tokyo. It means that you don’t always have to rely on the crappy London transport system.






When we left the park, it was already a bit late. In the winter, the weather makes England seem so depressing, however I have to admit at night it can look amazing.






We decided to go to the Trocadero, which was right down the road. The Trocadero is probably my favourite place in London, it has almost everything. I would say it’s better than Akihabara’s Don Quixote (which also has almost everything), because it’s bigger and has way more stuff, but the lack of an AKB48 theatre automatically makes the Don Quixote many many many times better. Also even though the arcade is big, it doesn’t have as wide a selection of games as the arcades in Japan (or maybe that’s just because of my personal preference)…the games are pretty damn expensive too. Below are some pictures from inside. The first is of a sweet shop, it reminds me of one I saw in Japan. The second was taken from one of the upper levels. Not a very interesting one but ah well.






So anyway the whole point of going there was to go bowling while under the influence of alcohol. To be fair, anything under the influence of alcohol would be fun, but we chose to go bowling because our university’s Japan society usually have an event called ‘Sake bowling’ (the name is self explanatory) around this time. However due to some booking problems, they had to postpone it until next year, thus we decided to take matters into our own drunken hands. We had to wait a while before we could bowl, because the place was quite packed. Thankfully we had more than enough entertainment to help pass the time. The photo of me below was taken when we had a go at this 4 player shooting game. The game itself sucked balls, but we got to use some big ass guns which is always good.





After playing some other games we finally got to bowl. It was funny because our lane was messed up, all the bowling balls kept getting stuck at the other end, so one of the staff members had to go and fix it. I’ll spare you the details of the actual game and just post the results. Halfway through it was clear I wouldn’t win, so it was just a fierce battle for 2nd place which I ended up winning right at the end hehe. I’m not sure if the alcohol helped me or not, I suck at bowling. Erm…try to ignore the names, I’m such an immature bastard >_<





We finished the day by going to this chinese cafe for some food and dessert, after which I went back home for my last 15 minutes as a teenager. As with virtually every single day of the last 4 years, I spent those precious minutes on the computer, browsing the internet, chatting to people etc. I know it’s not just me, but special occassions just seem to lose their appeal as I get older. I remember being a kid and being the happiest person in the world when I got a foam dart gun for my birthday. Nowadays I doubt there’s any material object that will make me feel that happy again. Christmas and birthdays all seem like normal days to me, of course I still appreciate everything and am still very happy just to have survived another year, but I just miss all the excitement I got when I was younger. Even now, the thought of all that lost youth should make me sad, but I’m not, that in itself is depressing lol.


My birthday didn’t start out too well, I woke up feeling sick so I stayed in bed for several hours until the afternoon. At about 5pm the family and I went to meet my sister so we could go out to eat. We ate at this chinese buffet place which was incredible, I love it. So much selection and the place itself is slick. All I’d eaten beforehand was a bowl of cornflakes, so I stuffed myself with about 3 plates worth plus dessert, delicious. We got back home and I was already exhausted, but before long it was time to cut the cake and all that. I don’t have a particular favourite type of cake, so when I was asked the day before about what cake I wanted, I just said it’s up to them. They ended up getting the sweetest and creamiest strawberry cream cake of all time LOL! It was actually TOO creamy, it was 80% cream, and more like a cheesecake/creamcake hybrid.


So in the end, apart from the dinner and cake, it was a fairly normal day. To be honest I wouldn’t have it any other way, I rarely have the chance to spend some quality time with my family, so it was a nice way to celebrate. Not to mention it was a Sunday so I had early lectures the next day. Maybe next year when I celebrate the big 21 and Kasai celebrates the big 18, I’ll try and organise something special, but for now I’m very happy.


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Fortunately despite my ability to usually do things 2 weeks later than planned, I was still able to find the time to whip up some birthday banners for Kasai before the 16th. The inspiration for the CDollar came from the failing economy and the US Presidential election:






The design was based on the $50 dollar bill.


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Finally, I’ll mention here that the 16th was special for another (non-birthday related) reason:





Yep, this blog received its 8000th view on the 16th. Well technically it happened on the 17th, but I’m sure it was still the 16th in some other part of the world lol. To be honest I’d still continue this blog even if it only had 10 views, but it really does mean a lot to me that people are actually taking time out to read these posts. So thank you, and of course a big thank you to Kasai Tomomi!





Well that’s all for my birthday weekend, not the most exciting few days ever but I just felt I needed to write something different on here. There’s only so much you can write about Kasai before you start to think you ARE Kasai haha…but seriously, normal blog translations (or as normal as it gets) will now resume.

[T~M] TomoTomo no Yagi-san oide~!!!

I really do try to keep my fanboyness away from Chuu Sekai, but this time is the exception. This afternoon I was sitting at my computer in my freaking pajamas eating freaking honey nut bloody cornflakes while listening to this week’s “TomoTomo no Yagi-san oide~”. So there I was, eating away, still half asleep and still with bed hair. Around eleven and a half minutes into the show I hear Kasai say “let’s move onto the last message…”. She then proceeded to read an email that I had sent in…

You can listen to the whole show right here, or you can read the summary below:

REVIEW/SUMMARY OF ‘TOMOTOMO NO YAGI-SAN OIDE~’ ON THE 11TH OF AUGUST 2008

(My Japanese really sucks when it comes to listening, so I’ve missed out a lot of things, and the things I have included are probably wrong. Sorry about that. If you understand what they’re saying please feel free to correct me or fill in the gaps. I’d really appreciate it).

Anyway so the show starts as usual, and I have no idea what they’re talking about in the first 2 minutes. Eventually they move onto a new part of the show and start reading out messages sent in by listeners. The first message is sent in by a person who works at a place near the beach. He talks about his job and some of the troublesome things that he has to do. He asks TomoTomo about things that have happened during any part-time jobs, and what kinds of jobs they’ve had to do. Kasai says she hasn’t had a part-time job before, and mentions something about newspapers. Tomochin talks about something that happened during an AKB48 event. I think she said she saw the beach and wanted to work there, because in manga working at a beach house seems fun.

For the second message, I think the person asks whether they’d be the ‘boke’ or ‘tsukkomi’ in a comedy act. They seem to prefer being the ‘boke’ because the ‘tsukkomi’ requires timing which Tomochin finds difficult. I think Tomochin says Kasai is like a ‘tsukkomi’, but Kasai hasn’t noticed.

The third message is from someone called ‘Cinderella bouzu’ lol. He asks the two whether they’d rather be male or female if they were born again. He says that after thinking about it, he would rather be a guy again, because being a girl seems tough. He says that he feels like Tomochin would want to be a guy and Kasai would want to be a girl if given the choice. As predicted, Kasai would want to be a girl, because she can use make up, get her nails done, and wear pink. Tomochin says that being a girl again would be OK, but after thinking about it, she’d rather be a guy. I don’t know what her reason was but it might have been because guys can do more stuff. She says that if she were a guy she would join the soccer and basketball clubs in school. I think she says that guys can do all sorts of stuff and so it seems like fun.

They eventually get to my message (yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay). Kasai reads out that it’s from a 19 year old called ‘エド’ (‘Edo’. This is just a pen name I used, it’s an abbreviation of my real name) who’s from London. There’s a short pause and they sound surprised. She continues reading and after saying that I like her the most (but also like Tomochin and the rest of AKB48), you can hear Tomochin say a pretty annoyed “arigatou gozaimasu” and they giggle a bit. I actually included that because I wanted to show that Kasai was my favourite without offending Tomochin, but I think that backfired and it makes it sound too obvious that I mentioned her name for that very reason. Here’s a pretty direct translation of what I wrote (everything except for the ‘thank you’ at the end was in Japanese):

“Itano-san, Kasai-san, good afternoon, I’m Edo. Kasai Tomomi-san is my favourite but I also love Itano-san and everyone else in AKB48. Right now I’m living in England, but every week I look forward to TomoTomo’s radio show. However my Japanese isn’t very good. Some day, I’d really love to hear TomoTomo having a conversation in English (e.g. TomoTomo’s hobbies, favourite things…or even names of animals). Anything is fine, but all in English. I’ll continue to study Japanese more and more, and I’ll always listen to TomoTomo’s radio show. Thank you very much. Do your best OK? Thank you!!”

After reading it Kasai says “but isn’t his Japanese good? Even though he lives in England” *dies*. Tomochin’s quick to start speaking English and says “I like…I like…dog food” LMAO!!! They start laughing and Kasai starts having a go at Tomochin, saying that’s inexcusable and then lists food that she’d normally say. Tomochin keeps saying that it was a mistake, and Kasai says that she thinks that was really bad. Tomochin then continues to say “I like…dog…I like dog…dog food…do you like…what…whatsu…whats…animal…do you like” *insert loads of laughter* It should be noted that I was shaking and pissing my pants at this point. HILARIOUS. Anyway they realise how stupid it is but they continue anyway. Kasai says “I like…hamster…chiyuu”. Tomochin then gives up and says she can’t do it, but you can still hear Kasai trying to speak English. Tomochin then begins to give Kasai a little English lesson (THE IRONY!!!). She says you should say “what _____ do you like”, for example, if you wanted to ask what food someone likes, you would say “what food do you like”. Kasai just says “OK” and moves on lol. Tomochin says to end it there, and Kasai begins a 10 second rant, to which Tomochin just says “yaaaaay” rofl. Kasai seems pretty annoyed, and in her defense, Tomochin says that if they make the people of the world laugh, wouldn’t that make them happy? Kasai reluctantly agrees and says that Tomochin should do her best so that the people of the world will listen. Tomochin seems distraught, but they continue to the next part of the show anyway.

For the next part of the show they do a little play where Kasai is someone working at a takoyaki stool at a festival, and Tomochin plays various customers. They then talk about some stuff afterwards to wrap up the show.

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After coming back from my last trip, I didn’t think it would be possible for Kasai to make me feel this happy again without me actually being there in Japan, but I guess I was wrong. Hearing Kasai read out something I wrote, and hearing the two of them laughing so much because of it. Absolutely indescribable. It’s like killing 200 birds with one stone. It must be doing it’s damage to my health though, I’ve been having a constant adrenaline rush all day. It kinda hurts.

[T~M] Idol Natsu Monogatari

This isn’t one of Kasai’s blog entries (the same goes for any of my blog posts with a ‘[T~M]‘ on it) but a few days ago Kasai and Tomochin appeared on a TV show titled ‘Idol Natsu Monogatari’ (‘Idol Summer Story’). It was about the production of Kasai’s and Tomochin’s first (and last) single as a duo, and on the show you can see can see this process from the moment they found out about the project, to the final recording of their debut song. The duo named themselves ‘SUMMER LIPS‘, and will be performing next month. You can find their website and more details and clips HERE.


Well that’s probably enough explaining, you can see the show for yourself. I uploaded the entire show on Youtube, and you can find PART 1 here:





Things to look out for:
-Kasai wearing cat ears
-”oojobojobo ningyo boojobo boojobojo”
-The entire dance lesson scene
-…
…
…
erm…after the dance lesson scene I’ve kinda lost my train of thought, but there were other memorable bits. Anyway ENJOY THE SHOW!!!

Special thanks goes to Makistar

[T~M] Kasai Mao – 河西舞桜

THIS IS NOT A TRANSLATION!!!

I need a bit more time to translate Kasai’s blog entries, so instead I’ll post some trivia. In the future I’ll post any Kasai/Chuu Sekai related news, information or random trivia under the Tomo~media category. None of the posts under this category will be translations of Kasai’s blogs.

Kasai Mao (also known as Kasai Manami), born on April 13th 1988, is the older sister of Tomomi. She is currently the leader of the idol group Survivё, and used to be a U-15 gravure idol (although she was actually older than 15 at the time – she had changed her birth year to 1991).

Survivё – アイシテイル (Aishiteiru)

^Tomomi wasn’t kidding when she said people say ‘Kawanishi’ instead of ‘Kasai’ lol. To finish, here’s a picture of the two sisters together (I’m not sure if it’s correct but I think it says something like “the two, playing together for the first time in ages”):





Special thanks goes to Shin @ Stage48