Up Next: I Hear Your Voice

Entering into the category of “Dramas It’s In My Best Interest to Watch Since My Friend Won’t Stop Talking About Them” is the recent K-drama Neoui Moksoriga Deulleo (I Hear Your Voice), and having just watched the first episode, I have to say that I can already see right away why she’s been RAVING ABOUT IT so much! A drama that seems at times a mixture of Family Melodrama, High School Comedy, Sci-Fi Paranormal AND Crime Mystery, the story of I Hear Your Voice concerns a High School student named Soo Ha who has the uncanny gift of ESP- when He’s looking into the eyes of someone, he can hear their thoughts, and the life of a young up-and-coming woman lawyer named Hye Sung who’s still struggling to make it.

At first you have no idea how the two might be connected, but as the story unfolds, you find the two have a dark past between them… Seems when was just a child, Soo Ha was involved in a car accident and witnessed his father being brutally murdered. The only witness to the crime was a young Hye Sung who, though threatened by the criminal that if she spoke of what she saw, she would be killed next, bravely took the stand to put the murderer away.

Fast forward to the present and we see that because of the incident, Hye Sung has become a lawyer working within the justice system, and Soo Ha, now a school student, has become a focused young man, who has spent his growing up years getting fit and sharp with fighting skills (as well as those aforementioned mind-reading powers) because of a promise he’d made to Hyesung all those years ago: to protect Hyesung from the criminal. But when they finally meet up again in the present day, things don't go quite the way he planned...

My friend Car has been just gushing about this drama for the past few weeks, and it eventually reached that point where I as better off just watching the show since she was telling me the whole story ANYWAY! Going online to check it out, I found the drama starred quite a few actors and actresses I'd known, including Lee Jong Suk in the role of Soo Ha and I was pleasantly surprised to see actress Lee Bo Young in the title role of Hyesung! This might be worth checking out, I thought, and cautiously downloaded the first episode.Well, that first episode just BLEW ME AWAY, the second episode just as good, and so now I’m in the process of getting the REST of them! So Far, So Good!

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Part Three of my Dal★Shabet Obsession Arrives!!!

It’s been just about one month to the day since I opened my eyes to the wonder and charms of Dal Shabet, and with this third order of DS goodies, I can now proudly say I’ve pretty much got all of their official releases! 
Can’t believe I once thought I’d be satisfied with only their latest releases- once I fell in love with them, I knew I needed to have ALL the Dal Shabet albums, including their earlier stuff, and I'm sooooo glad I did, so many of the other songs on the albums are freaking awesome, songs like Hottie off the Supa Dupa Diva album and Just Stop from Pink Rocket are BIG faves now! 
   Besides the aforementioned album Supa Dupa Diva, this latest (and, for the moment, final) shipment contained Dal Shabet’s mini-albums BLING BLING and Viki’s last album HIT U.  The BLING BLING CD came with a card of Serri, and the HIT U CD came with a trading card of...Kaeun! Seeing as how the card I got for the Bang Bang Album ALSO was Kaeun, It seems I’m quite lucky when it comes to Dal Shabet’s most athletic member!

  And as you can see in the pic, the other part of the order was to treat myself to my ever-growing love of uber cutie Jiyul- both she and Ayoung (and at some earlier point, Viki as well?) all made the covers of MAXIM KOREA, Holy Toledo, when I saw that sexy Jiyul on the cover, I was like I NEED THAT ISSUE LIKE NOW!!!!!! Haven't needed a MAXIM so much since my Catherine Zeta-Jones days! LOL. Maybe later I'll get the Ayoung one, too, as she's one of my favorite members too. Hell, I love ALL those girls!

Yep, I'm a Dal Shabet Maniac (can I sincerely call myself a DARLING now?), we'll see how long I can sustain this emotional attachment! Should have leveled off by now, but I keep finding new clips, interviews, and performances that show me new elements about them, making me LOVE them more and MORE!

 PS: Besides the wonderful Ayoung/Jiyul pictorial, this issue ALSO came with a smoking hot photoshoot of SPICA's sexy Jiwon! How's THAT for a cool bonus?!

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A Wild KARA Sighting!

Haha, been enjoying all the celebrity guest appearances in the episodes of Galileo like Kiritani Mirei and Aoi Yu among others, but the gal that appeared on Episode 10 in cameo as a humble secretary was one that I just did not see coming! I was like, "Hey...that girl looks familiar....looks like....HARA!!!" LOLOL, made me laugh out loud!

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What Dreams May Come: The Haunting New Drama "Double Tone~Futari No Yumi"

Just started watching the incredibly haunting and melancholy drama Double Tone/Two Yumis, the strange tale of two women named Yumi, one a simple housewife and the other an up-and-coming designer, who uncannily see each others' lives play out in each others'  dreams.! At first only mildly curious about the dreams they've been having, their fates take a darker turn when they find out that the dream are not only real, but are separated by years... years in which one woman has apparently passed away! A J-drama with a decidedly David Lynchian twist!

The drama stars pretty actresses Nakagoshi Noriko (last seen by me in Lucky Seven, though I admittedly don't remember her) as designer Yumi Nakano and Kurotani Tomoko (who I hadn't seen since appearing as the ex-wife of  Takano Bucho in Hotaru No Hikari) as troubled housewife Yumi Tamura, two awesome actresses who make this show really something to watch!

Such a gripping and thought-provoking drama, I was crushed to find that this show is only going to be 6 episodes long, so rather more like a long movie than a drama proper, but perhaps that's all for the best...a very linear tale like this certainly doesn't need any unnecessary sub-plots or characters to get right to the heart of the situation!

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Truth In Advertising with Jiyul

Jiyul wears a self-descriptive tank top t-shirt in an animated performance of “Bling Bling” that echoes my gushing sentiments about her exactly! 

At first I couldn't really see what the letters on her tank top spelled out,but soon enough Jiyul was posing in the perfect positions to read the lettering, and I just HAD to laugh at how PERFECT the words were!       

 Though I'm at the stage where I'm really loving each and every member soooo much, Jiyul is still the apple of my eye, and that shirt spelled out JUST what I was thinking at the time I watched this performance! Don't know exactly where she got such a perfect accessory, but you know what they say- if ya got it, flaunt it! Indeed:

Now that's some REAL truth in Advertising!!!

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Part Two of my Dal★Shabet Obsession Arrives!!!

Got my SECOND shipment of DAL SHABET goods in today! Technically, they came in yesterday, but once again my working schedule was such that I’m never home when the mailman arrives so had to go pick it up at the post office this morning- but it was WELL worth it!

Dal Shabet Photobook "For DALing"

Got two awesome collectible Dal Shabet items, the first one being this GORGEOUS , THICK 250+ page Photobook called “For DALing”, which I think (judging by what I’ve seen online) was originally paired with the girls’ mini-album “Have, Don’t Have”; Unfortunately, by the time I got around to wanting it, the set had long since sold out and gone away, so I had to find someone selling the book by itself.  Such a Cool Book, featuring the girls in various locations and times, from their trip in New York...

To studio time recording the Have, Don’t Have album, shooting the Mr. Bang Bang MV as well as free time with the girls running around town shopping together! Man, this book was just chock FULL of new favorite pictures of the girls!

The other item I was thrilled to receive was what is SURE to become the centerpiece to my entire Dal Shabet collection- an autographed copy of their second mini-album PINK ROCKET, signed by all six of the (then) current members, Subin, Serri, Ayoung, Jiyul, Viki, and Kaeun! Paid a pretty penny for it, too, but when I saw it up for auction, I just HAD to have it!

Autographed Dal Shabet "Pink Rocket" album

  Going to now spend some time listening to the Pink Rocket CD while once again flipping through the Dal Shabet Photobook- Can’t wait til Part THREE of my Dal Shabet Shipment comes in! Updates Soon!

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Reading & Writing with Dal★Shabet

Up until this point in my K-pop fandom (nearly one and a half-years in), though I’ve picked up the meanings of the various and oft-repeated lines of dialog and phrases heard in songs and variety shows (Otokke, anyone?), when it came to understanding the Korean Hangul writing, it was simply beyond me.
   It wasn’t until Dal Shabet came along that I suddenly had an actual desire to read those strange characters written and wanted to make an actual effort to learn the characters- Seems that after watching Dal Shabet videos incessantly online, I found that I could easily recognize part of their name in Korean, which I identified as “a C followed by a kanji “to” and a number2”: 달. Feeling quite proud of myself for even recognizing THAT much, I began to want to know EXACTLY what each symbol meant, and so FINALLY after all this time, I went online and began to study the writing in earnest!
   Fortunately for a TOTAL Hangul newbie like myself, Korean culture is BIG TIME online, and I easily found a bunch of really great places which taught Hangul in easy-to-understand lessons! Using the instructions that taught the basic sounds attributed to each character, I learned enough that I began to experiment writing names on my own! I tried to write “Dal Shabet” using the lessons I’d learned and came up with this:

Well, that wasn’t quite right, as I was still learning the “breakdowns” of the language, (which words are identified as “uee” and which are ‘ooi”, etc) but after figuring some of it out (as well as the fact that the “s” sound is pronounced with a “t” if it’s at the end, I realized it was actually written like this:

But it was a start, and my next project was to try and spell all the Dal Shabet members names using the lessons I’d learned…to limited success- as you can see my original guesses written on the left had a few errors here and there (only Serri and Jiyul spelled without mistake)...After I checked my answers, I corrected the mistakes in red (on the right), but at least I understood what had been written wrong and WHY. I was learning! Not Bad!

  For my next lesson, I wanted to see if I could translate members names using only the written Hangul and my lessons. I decided to try and see if I could figure out all the APink members names, since, Eunji and Naeun aside, I didn't know any of the members. Finding a Hangul listing of the girls' names, I wrote out what I thought the Hangul spelled out (in blue) and when I was done, I checked the chart’s names listed and saw what I'd translated wasn't too far off what their names really were! Hey-those lessons work!

  Got a lot of studying and memorizing to do, but hopefully these lessons will “stick” and I’ll be able to better read things like Member and group names as well as the titles of the albums and songs I’m into! See what a whole lotta Dal Shabet Love can do for you? LOLOL! Nothing Drives Like Obsession!!!

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SNSD's "Love And Girls" Is Here!!!

Amidst all this Dal Shabet excitement a small package from CD Japan arrived with the latest Japan release from Girls Generation, and as usual, they remind me at once why they’re at the utmost TOP of my K-pop faves! Just a  few days ago I was telling a friend how SNSD was one of the few groups where I’ve loved each and every CD and Single they’ve put out, and their new single “Love and Girls” and its’ sweet “Lingua Franca” continues the awesome trend!!! Just PURE POP PERFECTION!!

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