chansung | Memory Log: How I Got into Arashi

I'm 28 now. When I started liking Arashi, I was probably 14 years old. I remember that exactly moment, when I felt that feeling we all know.

Before Arashi, my fandoms had been mostly traditional in the sense they were usually books, series. I had Star Wars toys, read lots of Draco / Harry fic, and dabbled in the Lord of the Rings fandom. To be honest, my interest in Japanese media mostly came from Sailor Moon and reading manga. Growing up in Canada, I tried not to stick out too much, I wanted to assimilate as much as possible, and I thought that liking things like Harry Potter was an acceptable level of nerdy that most people could get on board with.

My sister had started reading Hana Yori Dango and pushed it on me. My parents were getting annoyed with how many manga volumes we were having so we were determined to find the next volume. Another google click, LJ link, I ended up on a YouTube link for Hana Yori Dango the drama. I remember telling my sister, "Dude! Look there's a real live action Hana Yori Dango! We haaave to watch it."

We circled across our old Macintosh desktop (we had one of those colourful purple plastic see through ones). We watched the entire series without moving. I remember the last episode took so long to buffer, and I was screaming at the computer when Tsukushi runs to the airport. My first impression of Matsujun was that he was really weird looking. His face reminded me of like something out of a manga. I was not down.

I started to fall in love with the drama, the music and discovered hey Domoyoji is in a band. I watched the PV for WISH, but it didn't really phase me a lot. I did get very much into JDramas after that, ended up watching Gokusen and 1 Litre of Tears without much thought about Johnny's.

I let it pass. I continued to get deeper into the Veronica Mars and Smallville fandom** until... I found out they were making a Hana Yori Dango 2. I watched the first episode and fell in love with Love So Sweet. I was like, oh yeah that band Ara...Arashi? I also watched the PVs for We Can Make it and Love So Sweet which you could find on YouTube at the time. I died. WHO were these boys? Were they Japanese backstreet boys? Who's this cute one (Nino)? From there I never looked back. I immediately told my friends at school, in an ironic sense I had gotten into this boyband which started as something funny I would show but it got pretty deep. I started to learn names, oh the Nick Carter one that's Nino... the weird looking eyebrows one that's MatsuJun. It took me a long time to learn Aiba's name. I started searching everywhere for content, luckily it was the golden age of LJ and I was hooked.

As we talk about firsts. So more firsts!

First Arashi Variety Show?
My first variety show was Mago Mago Arashi, the episode were Jun and Aiba cook for this little girl Hina. The episode where Jun yells at a Furby, Aiba makes a meat stuffed pepper and pepper stuffed meat. I was hooked after that.

First Pairing?
Ohmiya and Jun/Aiba were very popular back in my day. Definitely Ohmiya.

First downloaded media
We Can Make it PV and CMs like O'Zack during hte Time era.

Ichiban
Jun-baited of course. I think officially Ohno or Sho now, but definitely Jun for a long time.

First Merchandise or Goods
A Popolo from 2006? A Jun Uchiwa. The 24h 2004 Jikan Terebi yellow You are My Soul Soul t-shirt.

** Is anyone else following the Allison Mack cult case / trial. I CAN'T GET ENOUGH