rosie's livejournal

Hello everyone! I’m writing this entry as a kind of review-ish one. I’m going to write about my apparition in SONG OF TOKYO EP21 featuring Sakurazaka46!

First of all, I remember waking up in the morning with one of my friends, Kat, sending me a dm liking me to some reddit thread asking for keyaki/sakurazaka46 fans from overseas! She was like “hey, don’t you like them? I thought that might interest you!”. This was so exciting but at the second I had to fill out the google form, my head went blank! Like. What should I say? It’s not like I was doing this to be picked but more like I so wanted to show my love for them words wouldn’t come out.

There were a bunch of questions like how did I discover them? What about them makes them special to me? Do any of their songs resonate with a personal experience of mine? I think… I probably spent… A day or two? Figuring out what to say but I finally ended up sending out my application. Also I must say that Kat helped me a lot to figure out what to say, so I’m really thankful for her, again!

Some days passed and then, we reached April 1st 2021. I have the habit of checking my mail everytime I wake up, so as always, this is the first thing that I did. I remember my boyfriend was still sleeping and I woke him up with me nearly yelling “I WAS PICKED!!!” to which he replied “neeeh…?”

I basically got an email from one of the people working from the show, telling me they wanted to hear more from me and wanted to set the interview to next sunday. I agreed to pretty much everything and agreed to conduct the interview on Sunday morning. (8:30AM FR TIME) Obviously, due to the pandemic the interview was to be made online!!!

I spent the week contemplating my life and wondering if I should speak in Japanese or English and decided to speak Japanese for the interview (spoiler: I did not DHUIZH). I also had massive anxiety because I felt like I didn’t belong here and I nearly canceled.

D-Day arrived and I woke up super early to wash my hair and do pretty make up for the occasion. I spent so much time polishing that goddamn eye-shadow lmfao. I logged in teams, there was a person working for the show and also a translator. They asked me if I could speak Japanese, so we spent a few minutes talking in Japanese (and being 日本語上手’d). They tried pronouncing my city name so many times I had to type in the chat eventually lol. They asked if I wanted to do the interview in Japanese I said alright then I suddenly panicked and asked to switch in English because I was too scared of making a mistake and making a fool of myself. It’s fun because I expected them to use super awkward keigo with me but they spoke full tameguchi I was so disturbed lol.

Basically the person from the show asked me some questions in Japanese, mostly the same as the one in the google form.

At some point they were like ちなみに、推しは誰？(btw who is your oshi?) and I answered “Oh, it’s Masumoto Kira!” and they looked sooooo surprised I’m not sure they had heard this from the previous people who were interviewed. They asked why and I was just like “She’s totally crazy, it speaks to my soul.” The translator bursted into laughter and the other person was like “eh? what? what? what?” but we talked about her for a while before switching to the 3 center system. They asked me what’s my opinion about it and who is my favorite out of the three. I said it was Hikaru (and went on a huge gay monologue about her) but for this release, I was really impressed by Karin and also the LGBT theme of her center song and how positive this was (to me). I remember this super vividly because the person from the show who was taking notes suddenly jumped on his seat like I’d like to know more about this!!!

They asked me about my own sexuality, how I felt when I came into terms with it, if it was the stanning the group who made me realize this, and if I ever experienced rejection. So this is when I talked about that girl in my 2nd year of high school I had feelings for, who totally ignored me after I confessed my feelings (which is close to what happens in karin’s mv).

Until the very end, they were super clear that I might or might not make it to the final product and I was like, nah this is fine if I don’t make it though, this was a great experience. They told me to refrain from talking about it on social media and told me when they would air the show. For some reasons, I think I mixed time zones because I was totally caught off-guard when the show was aired a few days ago lmfao. Until the very end, I thought I would not be part of it, also my stream was lagging so I was super nervous. Then I got several messages from friends who were watching at the same time like I SAW YOUR FACE!!! I GOT EVEN MORE NERVOUS. And then, I SAW IT. My big forehead. ON TV. With my favorite girls ever! This was so scary!!

This is funny to me because they kept that part where I was laughing super awkwardly, they suddenly asked me to say, like, a love declaration to them? I freaked out like, oh my god, I don’t want them to see it lmfao. I’m glad they cut out the sound though. Otherwise I’d have made a fool out of myself. My mum was also watching it real time from her house and she was spamming me with texts and emojis and pics of my face lmfao. I got some feedback from some Japanese fans, this felt super warm.

I must say this feels super unreal now, I never managed to get really noticed by any of my favorite idols so to be featured on TV with some of them?! Unreal. Listening to Guuzen no Kotae feels different, listening to the girls feels different now. It’s a new emotion, and I will treasure it forever. My only regret is that I shouldn’t have panicked and speak Japanese but well, I tried my best!

Thank you NHK for these memories!!