[femtrooper]

What I find annoying is that whenever people ask me about Ayu they have nooooooooooo idea who she is and thus put it down. It's like, "Oh, J-Pop is so lame..." I'll be honest, a lot of it is...I'm not into tons of J-Pop because a lot of it is sucky...but Ayumi Hamasaki is different. She's a brilliant artist, not just 50 girls dancing around together in a band which is what I think turns people off. People have a preconceived idea about Japanese music and they are sooooooooooo wrong. Personally, I love music from all over the world because if it feels good and sounds awesome, I could care less what language it's in. I just love world pop! There's something different about Ayumi Hamasaki though, she's a star, an artist, and a role model. She's not what people think. So when I tell people about her, people usually think, "Oh, some lame J-Pop thing..." ARGH! NO! I told people I went to CDL and they looked at me blankly, like, "Who's that?" It's kind of annoying how sheltered people are about music...like it has to be in English or it's weird. I hope that preconceived notion will one day change and that saying you love Japanese music, or whatever will be like, "Oh cool, who?"