音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

Like what I said in last week, I was going to try baking a cheese cake.

I got the recipe from Diana's Desserts, and collected all materials needed. Then, in Saturday afternoon, I started.

Because of the experience of making petit fours in last week, I knew that I had to beat the mixture completely, if not, sugar would still be lumps but liquid. This time, all works of mixing and beating went well, and I was very satisfied with the "noisy" beating work.

However, the problem came. It said in the recipe that I needed to bake the cake in waterbath… I've never done it, and I didn't know anything about what and how. "Well, just give the temperature it requires and maybe it would be fine." I thought, and did.

And what I got was not like a real cheese cake. LOL

Only say the taste, it's not bad. It tasted like cheese, of course (it required 250g of cream cheese, gosh)! It got harden, but didn't become brown; the shape… it didn't look like fluffy, yet it just looked like a piece of cheese pudding, although it was harder than a pudding…

I searched afterwards for a more detailed recipe, and I got a better one. Finally, I knew what the so-called waterbath was. Seems I mustn't make a cheese cake without it. Fine, if I can find those waterbath required baking apparatus, I'll try it again.

Since I would not find them out currently (and I don't want to buy them), the next week, I think I would just try to bake petits fours again. ^^;

Everyone has the first time to do something. Now, let's see what happened during my first time to bake a cake.

I always wanted to try baking cakes; after my final, I found a recipe for making petits fours online randomly. Why petits fours? I've no idea too. Because "petits fours" was the first thing floated up in my mind. I guess, it's must because Akiko Shikata's music box album… hmm, who knows?

Anyways, as that recipe, I collected everything needed, and followed the instruction. However, I was a bit surprised by the "1 cup of sugar" – that's really a lot! Using the mixer was also interesting – that was my first time to use a mixer either, by the way. I didn't know that one would make so much noise. As the instruction, I made a bowl of thick mixture of egg white, sugar, flour, shortening, butter, vanilla exact, and milk. That smelled so nice – OMG!!

When I poured the mixture into the baking pan, the problem was out. The mixture was way too sticky, and thus, it's hard to get all of them into the pan at one time. I'd got to use a spoon to get the rest off from the bowl. This would be the reason for why the surface of my final baking stuff wasn't that flat. Also, later, when I cleaned my measure tools, I suddenly realized, I added too much vanilla extract! Only one teaspoon (tsp) was needed, yet I misread it and added one tablespoon (tbsp) of vanilla exact into my mixture. So, my cake was tooooooooo sweet, although totally that was not bad. x_x

The cake itself was not like the ones of the food mart. Mine tasted like that of lacking enough mixing. Because the whole cake was not very flat, after cutting it into small pieces, I thought it's not easy to coat them with jelly. As a result, since I've already prepared some dissolved jelly, I had to put it into refrigerators for making solid jelly… likewise, it was difficult to cover the cakes with cream… so I just kept mine without any garnish; yet I tried to write on the surface, but the icing "pen" was so hard to use! XD

Although I got only some fake petits fours, it had lots of fun. I wanna try again soon!!

↑my baked fake petits fours lol

@pixiv

Today I just listened to eufonius' newest album: "ねじまきむじか 2 (nejimaki musica)". The song "虹の電車 (Niji no Densha / Rainbow Train)" is so cute. Thus, as usual, I wanted to draw something for this song.

Is it true? I always think eufonius' cute songs fit girls have short hair (because the melody is so joyful? ^^). So I chose Chisato in this work, although firstly I wanted to draw Yuka... I don't know how come I changed my mind... XD

As for the background, I took a long time to google search for a good one. It's not necessary to find an exactly picture has both of a rainbow and a train, but I just wanted to find such a picture. I can't credit the original author of the photo I finally found; I just wish the author would not mind using his/her work ^^;

April 12-15, 2010

KOKIA, REAL WORLD, released on March 31, 2010.

Comparing to the two "balance" albums, which were her new (full length) albums in the last year, "REAL WORLD" is obviously more excellent and adorable. I don't want to skip any songs when I start to play it, although there are songs that are not very impressive. Her three iTunes singles were included in this album too; this is very valuable because there's nowhere to find the lossless version of those iTunes releases!

The theme of "REAL WORLD" is "life and death". A pretty large topic, isn't it? I loved its jacket first. The background was the Sahara Desert. Sky and sand, blue and gold; there is almost no life, yet there is life. Desert is kind of a boundary between "life" and "death" on our planet; and derived from there, what kind of music KOKIA will bring to us this time?

I like large topic, I like to think about life and death, I like KOKIA's music. I believe this album would be very nice; that's why I preordered it soon after its release was announced.

Now, it's free time to talk about the album itself!

First, I want to say something about my favorite song in this album: "Road to Glory～for Dragon Nest". I have much to say, but I don’t know where I should begin… I loved it even before one time of complete listening, and soon after, I made 200 consecutive plays of it. People were saying that I was listening to that song like crazy ^^; but… everything is so nice in this song: the introduction, the arrangement, the harmony, the lyrics, and, of course, KOKIA's voice. One point I have to mention here is, in the very beginning, when the introduction just ends, KOKIA sings in some self-made language: "Sakkati busueiwou Krazare immunerume". Oh my god!! I was like, "what? Am I listening to a new Akiko Shikata song?" Although this feeling only stayed for a bit while, I still insist to say this song is pretty Akiko Shikata like, no matter how many I listen to it! Then, after I listened to it for more times, I found there were something very familiar: Hikaru Nanase's arrangement! I have become a Hikaru Nanase fan since I've watched the anime "Phantom". I especially love her way of arranging. Talk more about music theory isn't my strong point; it's difficult to describe exactly the special charm from her arrangements. I just love and can (sometimes) recognize it. So did that time. That was Hikaru Nanase's arrangement! Waaaaah~~~ I really think Hikaru Nanase is good at making music with a fantastic theme; KOKIA is always good at singing with ANY kinds of music. The two have excellently made singles like "KARMA" and "Transparent". Later, I believe lots of people have also listened to songs made by the two from "Ar Tonelico Hymmnos III -Side Blue". What an unbelievable combination!! This song is incredibly epic!

The song "最終上映 (Saishou Jouei / Final Screening)" attracted me and made me to make 50+ plays within 2 days. I even drew an image picture for it! The ambience of this song is a bit weird (?). I mean, it gives you a feeling of being in an imaged world. Sounds from a winding-up music box are firstly brought out, and then, the background sound effects (some specially made sounds, uneven drum beats, the "sound-of-coin", etc.) were introduced to make out this imaged world. Similar hint is also in the lyrics: "Welcome to the magic world" is its first sentence. XD In the lyrics, things like "a world under the magic which won't disappear, no seed, no proof; I was from a giant's dream, small and fragile…" What I feel was like time has gone back to the beginning of 20 century, and we are watching an old silent film (sounds weird? ^^). By the way, although not exactly, of the ambience, this song is a bit like her "Pinku no Zou (ピンクの象 / Pink Elephant)"… hmm, don't ask me why, I just think so!!! Also, KOKIA sings in the song for many times of "Pappadiya." I wan to know what it means!!!! That must be KOKIA's special spell, isn't it?

"U-cha-cha" is also kind of special. Many people would think it's a new song. But you know? This song was firstly performed in (as far as I know) in 2002 on her live, "That's why I was born"! – On that live, a stream of drum beats introduced that song, on the dark stage. KOKIA was dancing with the beat; her shadow was the only thing you could see at that time. Then, the drum stopped suddenly, her shadow lay down as well. Then, the drum beats came back, with a brighter feeling. "U-cha-cha" was sung by her, with a gentle and slight voice. Finally, here came KOKIA's singing. The melody flowed out at a rather free pace; the ambience was like what you would feel from a night of darkness to a dawn of lightness. On that live, her voice was a bit unstable (being tired after dancing? ^^;), yet I like that style of singing. XD However, in the "REAL WORLD" version of "U-cha-cha", KOKIA's voice sounds more stable and strong and mature. With a different arrangement, the feeling of dawn was not in the new version anymore, but the new version does sound like an even brighter early morning. Dark – light – even brighter, that's what I felt from listening to two versions of "U-cha-cha". This is really a nice song can make you feel comfortable. (you may watch that live here, starts from 1:40)

Another very beautiful song, "ジュゴンの空 (Dugong no Sora / Dugong's Sky)", is what I'm going to talk about. At my first time of listening, I didn't find out how special it was, but after a few times, I suddenly realized it's a very delicately written work. The "ha-ah-ah" part in the introduction, together with the dugong voice (although I think that sounds like a dolphin's lol), was extremely beautiful! The introduction gives its listeners a scene of a sea under a stretch of orange twilight. The melody is peacefully and a bit sadly flowing. The lyrics alone are very "environment friendly," because – it mentioned things like "save the species in danger" and "we human have to save them," and so on. What does the sky being seen in a dugon's eyes look like? It must the same peaceful and vast like their home, the sea. The blue sky, the blue sea, and the blue planet, we are all living there, we're seeing them everyday, and we really have to protect them from being erased by human activity. In this song, KOKIA's gentleness has introduced all of us to a place of absolute beauty and naivety. Every time when you listen to this song, stop all things you're considering; just relax your mind, and feel the sweet breeze of her voice.

Now, I want to switch to her iTunes releases. The three "main" songs were included in this album, although others are very good too, I have to talk only about the ones in this album.

"君をさがして (Kimi wo Sagashite / looking for you)" is in typical Jpop style. But since the singer is KOKIA, this song isn't just as ordinary as most Jpop songs. Everything in this song is gentle like a breeze. Softly, KOKIA's voice echoes around everywhere. Although this isn't a song I especially love, I can still loop it for tens of times!

"single mother". I have to say this one is a song from the real heart. As soon as I heard the piano in the introduction, I believed that would be a very nice song – and I was right. Like others' comments, the song itself is like a story; the lyrics is so touching that I even tried to translate it with my crappy translation skill ^^; But anyways, I really love this warm, gentle, delicate and beautiful song.

"孤独な生きもの (Kodokuna Ikimono / we are all lonely)". This song is very encouraging and adorable. We are lonely, yet we're not all alone. The song itself is still in standard Jpop style, but also, it's full of hope. When you're lost, listen to it; no matter what happens, there is always someone beside you, supporting the lonely you. Just keep going, keep chasing your dream. Then, you're not alone anymore; you will become the "someone" who supports others…

"音の旅人 (Oto no Tabibito / Traveler of Sound) " is a song full of ethnic influences. I love its arrangement (OMG Hikaru Nanase must be the person who arranged it! I can't tell now, because I haven't received my ordered CD ^^;). This is a beautiful song, and it fits the ambience of the album jacket – the Sahara Desert – very much.

"REAL WORLD" would be the most special felt song among all songs in the album. As a song has the same title to the album, it has a very effervescent ambience, and thus gives the album a lively impression (because other songs are rather gentle and even a bit sad). However, personally, I prefer KOKIA's not-so-lively songs. ^^;

Overall, this album is really, really nice, beautiful and impressive. Other songs so far I haven't mentioned, including "Birth", "Love is us, Love is Earth", "私が見たもの (Watashi ga Mita Mono / Things I Saw)", and "この地球がまるいお陰で (Kono Chikyuu ga Marui Okagede / Because the Earth is Round) " are all typical KOKIA-ish songs. Now, however, I'll just stop commenting on the rest ones, but that "Birth" fits the feeling of an opening song very well; either its title or its whole feeling.

Finally, I'm at the very last song.
"the woman".
Before the official release of "REAL WORLD", the promotion video "the woman" had already been available on youtube (unfortunately that video is time limited). As the last song, "the woman" is a very good choice. I can't stop remembering the scenes in that video… *__* but, even without the video, only the music can get you into a world of gentleness. The melody is so calm – the song relaxes our minds, introduces us to the vast world, where we can see the blue sky, the golden ground, and the endless horizon. Feel the breeze, feel the air, and feel our existence.

Real world, it's in our eyes, it's in our hearts. We embrace this world, and this world embraces us. Everything in our life isn’t a dream; even though it may have gone away, it's still in our memory.

We're here, in this real world.

—What are needed in this world, include water, air, and this "voice."—

This is my third OFFICIAL My Opera account (I have more two accounts but they're just used for testing). The reason for me to change my account again, was… I want this username.

Only that?

Yes, only this… I can't help. I really love this username.

Everything began from my email account changing. That was also my third official email account. In January, the Hymmnos albums "Ar Tonelico III" were released. I was immediately infatuated with KOKIA's "EXEC_COSMOFLIPS/.". That song was really an epic!

A few days ago, for some propose, I wanted to email someone with an address that no one knows. Thus, I'd got to make a new one. I firstly wanted to use my computer's name, which is "kosmoton". However, … that username was unavailable!!!??? How come? I've never thought that name was not unique. Then, I had to think up for a new name.

What should I use?

KOKIA… use one title of her songs would be nice. But what? Suddenly, I remembered "cyouwa", which means "harmony", but my thought was switched quickly to another name, which was very nice too, that was, "cosmoflips".

Very nice, no?

But, again, that was not available!!!??? Someone has registered that name earlier!! OMG!!! I was a bit frustrated, that name was so nice, but I can't use it… Well, why not try to modify the name? To change the "c" to "k" would be a good idea. In German, lots of words have a "k" instead of a "c"! And, Lucky! The "k" one is alive!! So, my new email address was born like this.

But the story was just begun. Since I love this song so much, as well as its title, for days I can't stop thinking about the nice name, and the idea to pervade every online nook I like with this username was floating up little by little. Yet that was just an idea, I did nothing really with the new username but changing my youtube account since the former one was tied up with my old email address and thus I couldn't change the logging email account.

At that time, I was playing around a Japanese Internet service: Ninja Tools. They have a series of nice service including homepage, blog, counter, analyzer, etc. Different from other service, they supply a bunch of domain names, and I did find some domain names I very like. However, I've never wanted to make a personal homepage, because 1) I'm lazy, 2) I don't know what to put into the homepage, and 3) I have an almost-homepage-like blog.

Then, I tried their blog service. Still, there're many domain names to be chosen. I got one: noir.go-th.net. Fits me, no? Such a nice name! It also supports javascript, which is not supported by my current blog host. I also dug up lots of nice blog templates (well, Japanese blog templates are most very nice and cute). The domain name, the all-supporting feature, and the template…

I was almost going to switching using that blog. But… I didn't want to leave MYO. After 3 days of struggling on whether or not to change, I decided to change finally.

I looked at my MYO blog again. Everything was so nice. What I especially love are the "archive" page, the BBCode-like blogging box, the horizontal menu, and the album service.

No, no. I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE. THAT'S TRUE!!!

But… THAT domain name is so nice…………

Dilemma.

I thought I should compare the two.
MyOpera: I started to use since 2006, custom CSS is supported, the BBCode-like editing way can avoid html messing, the album, the archive page, the about page, the menu bar, etc. But, the domain name is a bit long, and it has no javascript and complicated html code supporting.
Ninja Tools: I fell in love with it soon after I tried it, so it's really nice, CSS is supported too, it supports all html codes, it has nice domain names, but I don't like the functional html editor for posting, and it has no archive page, no about page, no sticky post (at least I didn't find out), no horizontal menu bar.

In all, functionally, I love MYO; of appearance, I prefer Ninja Tools.

Hmmmmmm…………

Function is the more important!

I didn't dislike my current Opera username, that's unique to me. But it's not as cool as the ninja domain. To convince myself not leaving MYO (it was true that I was even going to write a farewell post), I must have a cooler username.

You know the end. You've known the story about my new email address.

Within two days, I moved all my posts from both of my MYO accounts into the new one. Then, I added all my art works, deviantART logs, youtube cover logs, and also fixed some broken links.

That was hard, but I finished.

I was very, very satisfied.

I'm still staying on MYO, I really love it. I tried to change (I also planned to sing the song "time to say goodbye" by KOKIA for it), but finally, I'm here, with all my stuff in my new comfortable nest. From now on, not only I'm blogging into a new, cool address, I need not to add links to my other online places.

Everything has been linked together.

I don't want to move again, no matter how nice that service is. I'll just stay here, enjoy my simple, neat, and adorable blog service.

Or can you think up an even cooler username?

@pixiv

This drawing was inspired by KOKIA's song "最終上映 ([saishou jouei], which means [final screening]". I loved this song immediately after I listened to it! ♥

So I thought, what kind of image can fit that song? The background should be very unstable, I mean imaginary. The character should have something like that in an old film (for me, the "something" was an old-styled [?] parasol. But I'm not sure if the one in my drawing is really like an old-styled parasol... ^^

After the main drawing work, I was thinking about the designing overall. I added film frame strips at both sides of the picture, and adjusted the colour of the background (the original colour was very dark jujube colour) picture I found in my picture pool.

About clothing. I didn't think much and just drew as what I thought at that time. But later, some people told me it reminds them "Card Captor Sakura". Well, look at the colour again... that's... so true. lol

When I just read about that the release of album "yorlga" would be postponed from the official yorlga blog, I was pretty astonished. However, I realized that was not true; after the long ellipsis, it was clear that the posting date, in which the kinda scary news was just an April Fool. orz…

If that were true, it's not funny. I've been waiting for reading more information about that album since a few weeks ago. I probably buy this album… well, 75% currently.

Noriko Mitose and Yoshitaka Hirota, the two can really make good music! I was attracted by Noriko's transparent voice at the very moment when I first heard her singing. About, Yoshitaka Hirota, I didn't know very much but I think he is a high skilled composer. One of the two's works "Kataha no Kotori" stood out from all other songs in a collaboration album "message." Then, still the two's work, "XaaaCi," was especially noticeable among the whole album "Ar Tonelico III side red."

I listen to some doujin music, but I don’t like most of them – in most times, doujin music sounds mediocre and even badly crazy. Even though in case of Noriko, I like her voice, but without a good melody, I can't say I like all her songs. Luckily here came Yoshitaka. Having the same interests, the two always have fun on making music, good music.

"Yorlga," their next release, will be out on May 19, 2010. So far, there are two interviews about this project, and the official homepage has also a blog. I'm keeping tracking every piece of information about it; I got excited, I fell in love with this project even before any trail listening available!

I think, the real moment to really love the project would be the time when I saw the profile page of its homepage. The light was a bit gloom, the color tone was nostalgic, the background and the clothing were 19-century-ish… my thought was immediately pulled into the time of Sherlock Holmes. Nice ambience!!!

Later, the more I read their information, the more I love this project. Combining eastern and western styles, in an imagined yet reality-based world, around the theme of a mystical ore "yorlga," with Noriko's crystal clear voice and Yoshitaka's attractive noisy-in-harmony composing, I'm looking forward it.

They've mentioned about the tracks. Before the final decision of track titles, they called them with the core of each song – "yorlga", "sekai (world)", "hana chiru ya (a night when flowers fall)", "oiran (courtesan)", "yume kai (buying dreams)"… – they all have a nice "core"! They also decided to cover the "famous" song: "Soshuu Yakyoku (Soshuu Nocturne)". Waah, everyone covers it!

And I'll probably pre-order it sometime♪♪～