[Scan and Translation] Cawaii! Feb 2005 cover story

[isaac hiew]

Ayumi Hamasaki : Always our princess

Ayu’s year 2004 is finally closing… The last big news on 2004 is all about her latest album, “My story” and also her private life, plus some personal fantasies… so let us know Ayu complete in this moment…

In the end, it’s still going back to short hair style!

I don’t know why I would always cut my hair at every year’s end. I remembered that my very first blonde short hairstyle was also at that same period. While on last year I just did the same thing to my hair straightforwardly… Even though at that time I thought “Yeah! My hair is long! So happy! ” but I would kept on doing the same thing over and over again, maybe simply because I just love short hair, it might also because this is my style!

Now under guitar special training~

On every year’s end, I’ll be thinking things like, “Oh yeah! What happened with that thing?” “If I start this does it still have the time to complete it?” which is some kind of a feeling that I suddenly wanted to do a certain jobs badly. Therefore, this year I wanted to try is, “Oh, I wanna play guitar!” Actually I tried a few times back then but I just can’t pick the skill up nicely… , but then I set a goal inside myself that I must reach a certain level that would enable me to perform on the stage live! So everybody, please look forward to my performance~

It feels happy if we can date to meet in the street..

Well… I realize that perfectly myself, because I can’t do that in the reality. But to be true, I once thought that my current life was so boring, such as if I just having a party or have some outings, the first thing in the next morning, I’ll be in the tabloids being exaggeratedly “scooped”… that was scary! (laughs) I do sometimes wanna take the subways like every normal Japanese citizen does, or doing something like hardly combing the crowd in front of the Cyuuinu Yaku statue (note) and yell, “I finally see you!” to my best friends that I saw from far away. It is a feeling filled with happiness. Those things were quite common for me during my high-school era and it is taken for granted, but I didn’t notice these little things during that time, I felt a bit regretful though…. Hey, why am I complaining? (laughs)

Although I don’t want to become a real princess, but I still have the mood to become one, and it’s high!

I always feel that princesses are unfortunate; they always seemed to giving others an impression of having a stressful life. So, that’s definitely no way for me. (laughs)

I would rather be a free common girl than being a princess, but then, I of course love the feeling of being shiny and graceful or bouncy! Girls do feel over the moon with that sort of thing. It’s good too to turn the flavour of the day with a surreal feel, but today it seems a bit overboard. (laughs)

The very first album that I felt very OK and exciting with!

Me myself have a perfect one-word definition for this album : Rockish. For a person like me, who is always being at the extreme border on everything, from the tune selection, self composing and lyrics writing until the compilation and mixing, I spend a lot of time and effort into this, and often during the recording, I would have a good vision saying that this will be a good album, just like the album’s name “My Story”, it talks all of my personal feelings and flash-back since my first debut until present.

At the same time of the album’s compilation, I would view and judge the album in the third-person perspective to try determining the overall balance-ness of the album, followed by putting in various tracks with different styles, but this time it hit the jackpot; not only that the overall is integrated, which is better than my expectations, also I wrote the lyrics of what I really wanted to express, while selected my preferred music style… such a free attempt without any restrictions naturally produced a rockish album. I really wasn’t meant it, but when I normally listening to songs, I would always choose rock songs therefore it’s no harm done.

To sum up, this album does truly expressed what’s in my mind it really feels great doing this, it even made me realized some parts of me… Until now, even when I considered several issues when writing a song, such as seasons or a change of a trend, I do sometimes being required to write something that I don’t intend, like “sing ballads during winters”, but, that’s because I too wanted to try that, so it’s really nothing to complain about.

Since the single “INSPIRE” I can finally doing things I really wanted to do, thus I started to planning something which is not a seasonal theme but a freely theme. Luckily, I have enough time so I can take my time during lyrics writing and compose tunes that I wanted.

If I have to choose between lyrics writing and singing, I would definitely take lyrics writing with no doubt! It really can let me know that I like being a creative singer. In fact that’s the only thing I’m truly good at and let go of living pain out of me. It’s just like “BOOM!” being plucked out from the bottleneck! It’s been so long since I had that feeling last time! (laughs)

Every time when I finished a song it will be a “,” , then when another song finished it’s a “,” again. Then when I wrote this song named “0000” then it is a “.”. This is what this album truly gave me. It is not only having the greatness of achieve or completion but the good feeling of conquering bottlenecks of creativity during the making of this album. The completion of this album makes year 2004 very meaningful for me, and so I wanted to continue more freely in the year 2005. Although I can now fully use of my space but I wanted to further use any free space available, I think maybe this is the way that can only make me see and experience a lot more things. This time, this album considered to be reached a new phase of my career. And I felt I’m a brand new self again in this phase. Therefore, I hope every one can listen to my “self-confidence work” by heart this time, and do stay tuned for a brand new Ayu in the year 2005!

Translated by Isaac Hiew
Translated from Cawaii!
Chinese International Edition
Vol. February 2005
Translated on 15th January 2005



Side note: The statue thingy is a famous tourist attraction and a good place to meet up your dates and your friends at Shibuya, Tokyo.

http://www.tcvb.or.jp/ch/image/tokyo...kyo/e_hati.gif

Ayumi fashion caption

Page 2 (Ayumi with a white dress)

Ear rings: 8295 yen / Baby Doll
Luxurious lamp: 9800 yen / Ash and Diamonds
Flowers and fur set on the microphone: 7500 yen / Vacancy Club
Pink fur: 1449 yen

All stores above are under Claire’s and can be found in front of the Harajuku Station. Others are Ayumi’s personal items.

Page 3 (Ayumi looking in front)

Zebra-style doll dress: 9900 / Besty Johnsson (PEACH JOHN THE CATALOG)
Inner layer yellow shoulder-strap dress: 9870 yen / Besty Johnsson (PEACH JOHN THE CATALOG)
Neck chain: 10290 yen / DelilaH
Bangle with diamond chain: 52290 yen / Baby Doll

Others are Ayumi’s personal items.

Page 5 (Last Page, Ayumi with a leopard dress)

Leopard strap blouse: 10290 yen / DelilaH
Long fur:30450 yen / FACETH
Bangle on the left hand: 4095 yen / G2?

Others are Ayumi’s personal items.

Notice: This article/picture is translated/scanned by Isaac Hiew and should be posted in Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai only . If you would like to use this piece of article/pictures on other online websites or printed material, please kindly send a PM, email or notify me on MSN Messenger for permission.

All currency stated are subject to change on current price tag shown on the date of publishing.

All ownership rights are belong to Miss Ayumi Hamasaki, Avex Trax, Cawaii! Magazine Taiwan and Japan. This article only serves as a share for those Ayumi Hamasaki fans who only understands English. So please don’t sue me, dude. :-P