I have been feeling a little ill today. I think maybe all of the stress and depression from the last few days have been getting to me. Or I’m just sick. I dunno.

So I watched a few old episodes of Morning Musume variety shows.

I’ve told the story before of how I started with my journey of learning Japanese – I saw their “English lesson”, saw all of the neat characters scrolling across the screen, and told myself I’d learn what they meant. Several years later, I largely have succeeded. There’s one or two sentences I still don’t quite understand, but what was gibberish to me is no longer gibberish. So yay me?

But what has always struck me about Morning Musume is how supportive they were of each other. Sure, they took the mickey out of each other all the time, like when they’d pick on Nakazawa-san for not being married and being nearly thirty, or they’d pick on Ishikawa-san for being a prissy princess, but you could tell it was (mostly) all in fun. They were all in it together. I observed early on, when I started watching AKBingo, they AKB48 was not like that.

Bet you didn’t know this meme came from Mini Moni?

Time moves on. I saw a news article recently where Yoshizawa-san (Yossie) was busted for drunk driving. She was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for five years. There were also other scandals, such as when Kago Ai was removed from the group. There was a bit of infighting too, such as when Koharu Kusumi and Michishige Sayumi were kind of at odds. Nothing’s perfect, not even idol groups. People move on, idols move on, and are replaced. Such is the nature of idol groups, entertainment in general, and life.

But it sure is nice to just spend a little time with them. It makes life more bearable somehow. Even if they’re just entertainers.