[truehappiness]

Originally Posted by tasking

I thought I remember it saying that stuff was broken and what not too.

I found the article. It was written by some random SG newspaper that's no longer around anymore.

BIG STAR, BAD REP, JAPAN'S PRIMA DONNA AYUMI HAMASAKI

HONG Kong fans may adore Ayumi Hamasaki, but not two of the country's top hotels.

Both have blacklisted the 29-year-old J-pop queen after two unpleasant experiences, said Japan's Flash magazine.

When she was in Hong Kong in 2002 to shoot a pictorial book, Ayumi apparently organised wild parties in her hotel suite.

She even broke a glass panel inside the room and refused to pay - until her record label had to step in and apologise.

More recently in December, when she was in Hong Kong for the premiere of the Takeshi Kaneshiro film Confession Of Pain, she stayed in another hotel and created more ruckus with more parties in her suite. It apparently earned her another blacklist.

That's not all. Ayumi, who is arguably Japan's top-earning songbird, is also known to be an extravagant diva who can pay for a spanking new five-storey bungalow worth one billion yen ($12.7m) in cold hard cash.

When in Singapore to attend the MTV Asia Awards in 2002, she splurged on a $1,000 lobster and crab feast at Newton Circus for her entourage of 20.

Not only does she travel with 10 bodyguards, but she once flew her five pet dogs with her to Korea for a job, together with their own entourage of 12 pet groomers.

Also, she reportedly employs five personal masseurs to take charge of different parts of her aching body.

And Ayumi can turn nasty at times.

While shooting in New York last year, she reportedly fell out with a hair stylist and insisted on this person leaving her entourage.

As all flights were full, she herself forked out more than 10 million yen ($127,000) to charter a plane to fly the stylist back to Japan.

This sounds very odd since Ayu's usually too busy to have parties when she works and stays in hotels. Something tells me that there's no basis for some of these rumors. I can buy see paying for her home in cash though... apparently there are rooms that she's never been in? I wonder if she owns several floors of an apartment complex.

Originally Posted by RingoSparkle

The album covers look so cheap... WHAT WHERE THE GRAPHIC DESIGNERS THINKING??? They look like some magazine ads for cheap stores. I've always been a fan of Ayu's amazing outfits, but what happened to her outfit this time? WHERE IS THE OUTFIT???

That was actually the concept she was going for, I think. But it's a bit too 'simple' even for tabloid covers.