Change in Plans...

It's probably nothing new to hear that I'm planning to live in Japan for at least a year. This past spring I applied for one of the documents I'll need in order to get my passport and visa and originally I estimated that I would only have to wait until August to leave Toronto. But then August became September... and now it looks like it could be October, or November... maybe even after that! It sucks, because there are people in Japan who I want to see a.s.a.p. but it looks like the soonest possible time isn't really soon at all...!

But there's good news! Recently (today) I aced a job interview! Money is definitely something I need in order to reach my goal, so this is great. Better yet, I start on Monday! So, at least while I'm waiting to get all my documents processed I can make a fair amount of money. I'm sure I'll need it, since I'll have to live off of my savings for a while after moving to Japan--I don't expect to get hired there right away, even though I'll probably be looking for jobs as soon as I arrive.

The only thing is that I'll be working 6 days a week and finishing at 9pm every weekday night... so I'll have less time to make music while I'm working... -_-;;

But I'm aiming to keep my motivation and creativity up, and continue making new music~~! I'm extremely serious about it and I really want to be successful so there's no time to waste! I'll definitely be working on music during every spare moment. Wish me luck! :D

P.S.: We still don't have a name for our duo! Noooooooo~~!!!

AUGUST EDIT: I ditched that job already. Haha, it's a long story...

がんばらなきゃ！

As the title implies, I have to try hard! I'm pretty pumped lately and feel like there's a lot to do~ First, and most of all is recording music. The mic stand I was using to record actually belongs to AKA... and now, sadly, it's almost completely fallen apart at 663A!! But it's all good. The other day I picked one up for myself from Long & McQuade. And, although I was expecting to pay upwards of $40 or $50, luckily the stand I bought was only $30. Not too shabby!

So, now that I have a stand, I've been recording all this week~! This isn't the first time I've recorded something since A-KICKS left Toronto... but this is the first time that I'm getting some good results haha! My recording attempt back in late May was, uh... well you don't want to hear it, trust me.

In any case, the first song I started to record is just about finished! So I hope I can post that here when it's completely done. My producer and I (haha) have been talking about making a Japanese version of this song too... and that would be awesome!

And in other news... the Name Game is still going! And I'm really bad at it! We totally lucked onto the name AOA for our trio with AKA-kun, but for this duo... I got nothin'. Any suggestions?

What's in a Name

Because we have quite a number of songs together (both finished and planned), and we're aiming to shop our demo around to some record companies, A-KICKS and I are currently brainstorming as to what the name of our duo should be. The songs we've done with AKA KOROSHIYA are submitted under our trio group name AOA, but for these duet tracks we want to classify them under a separate entity.

I put together lists of ideas using a few different methods:

1. mixing the letters of our stage names together (this turned out to be harder than I imagined...),
   
2. combining our real names (but I'm told that DANIMITSU is ダサい)
   
3. putting together letters from the names of music styles that we like
   

That last idea isn't exactly a bad one but what I came up with for it was by far the worst of all my creations, maybe because we both enjoy so many different genres. To mesh them into a name leads to ridiculous results. Well, at least when I do it.

Looking for inspiration on the internet, I found that there are a few resources that attempt to help music groups and bands in this task by providing lists of names that have been suggested by other internet users. Sounds good, right? But there was pretty much no help there. On the other hand, if I ever create a metal band...

By the way, Happy Canada Day! (or what's left of it)