Misia - Everything (cover)

First Japanese cover song!

Practice & live show Asagaya

Two new videos of my time in Japan. I practiced with Satoshi Munechika to play at his live show and I must say it was the best moment of my life! I was so happy to sing for Japanese people and I want to thank Satoshi for making my dream come true!!

Melody music video!!

Video blog Feb 16, 17 & 18 | 2012

Trip schedule Japan!!

THIS IS MY FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/himeno16

I received my trip schedule today from Mochan and I am getting more and more excited every day!

I am still looking for a place to sleep for the last three days, so if you have time and space to host me, let me know!

You can find the original trip on Mochan his blog,

Mochan Blog Lleonie Japan trip 2012

I added my arrival to the schedule

Lleonie in Japan 2012

*Trip schedule

Feb 16 : 11:30u my flight to Japan from Schiphol Amsterdam 

(I will make a stop at Russia)

Feb 17 : 11:40u arrival at Narita airport 

(hope to arrive at 14:00u at Tokyo, hostel New Koyo)
(meeting with Yoshihiro Shiramizu @ Akihabara)

Feb 18 : TOKYO sightseeing
(meeting with Satoshi Munechika 19:00u @ Shinjuku)
(meeting with Kei Kinoshita)

Feb 19 : TOKYO sightseeing

(meeting with Jeroen en Noriko 12:00u)

Feb 20 : TOKYO sightseeing
(Sleep at Capsule hotel Asukasa Riverside)
(Go to Tsukiji Market with Lars Zwaanenburg)
(practice with Satoshi for 11 march, 19u Shinjuku south exit)

Feb 21 : TOKYO sightseeing

(meeting for dinner with Yuki, Shibuya)

Feb 22 : TOKYO sightseeing

(surfing @ Christopher Lindstrom his place)

Feb 23 : Go to SHIZUOKA

(Mochan his place)

 Feb 24 : Mt.Fuji sightseeing

Feb 25 : NAGOYA sightseeing & Party

Feb 26 : NAGOYA sightseeing

Feb 27 : Ninja village

Feb 28 : NARA sightseeing

Feb 29 : AMA NO HASHIDATE

Mar 01 : KINOSAKI ONSEN

Mar 02 : KYOTO sightseeing

Mar 03 : KYOTO sightseeing

Mar 04 : OSAKA sightseeing
Mar 05 : KOBE sightseeing

Mar 06 : HIMEJI  sightseeing

Mar 07 : HIMEJI party

Mar 08 : Go to SHIZUOKA(my place)

Mar 09 : KAMAKURA sightseeing

Mar 10 : SAITAMA sightseeing

Mar 11 : TOKYO sightseeing

(Live show Satoshi
We will play Melody at his live show!
3/11(SUN)
PLACE:ASAGAYA NEXT SUNDAY
OPEN/START　18:45/18:50
ADV/DOOR￥2500＋D/￥2800＋D
http://nextsunday.jp/)

Mar 12 : TOKYO sightseeing
(Meeting for lunch at Jiyugaoka? with Aleksandr Drozd)
(meeting for dinner with Keiichiro Nemoto shinjyuku east police station)

Mar 13 : TOKYO sightseeing  

(meeting for lunch with Lie??)

Mar 14 : TOKYO sightseeing
(meet for dinner with Mizuki 19:00u Akihabara SHOWA DORI EXIT)

Mar 15 : 13:05 my flight back to the Netherlands from Narita airport

*The places to visit

Shizuoka (Host / Mochan)

Mt.Fuji viewing

Nara (Host / Dessy)

Nara Deer Park

Nara is the oldest capital city

Kyoto (Host / George)

Kinkaku-ji temple

Maiko / Geisha

Osaka (Host /  Shenglian)

Down town area of Osaka

Kyotango (Host / JJ)

Ama-no-Hashidate (Natural bay bridge)

Nagoya (Host / Nico & Nika)

Nagoya is the 3rd biggest city

Himeji (Host / Adam & Shinobu)

Himeji castle

Video blog number 2!

OMG time is flying by and I am getting more and more nervous everyday! Please enjoy my second video and my third will be there before I go to Japan and I hope the fourth one will be from the airplane!

First video blog!

Here is my first video blog about Japan! I am pretty new to the video editing so I hope I will do better after more video's.





If you want to know more about:

Spirited Away

Casshern

Namie Amuro

Japan plan is done!

I will be going on a trip with Mochan, an activity organizer from Couchsurfing.org. I will be staying in Tokyo for one week and after that I will see much more of Japan together with Mochan and his friends! He is organizing some concerts for me and he wants to film me singing in different places in Japan, so I am very excited about all that!!

He told me some places he wanted to visit with me so I made a print screen of the google maps route of every place. I will see much of Japan :D

I am so EXCITED I just needed to share this with you guys :)

Lleonie - メロディー (melody) Second Japanese Song! (included my first as well)

I did record the first one so I will be looking for that recording for you, for now please enjoy my second song. Leave feedback on youtube, facebook or blogspot.



Thanks to Job Vlak



Thanks to Tim Schuurman en Tollak

Hatsune Miku - Vocaloid

In the future we don't need singers anymore, you will have a hologram of a singer and a program singing the lines for you. Where to expect this? In Japan ofcourse, Hatsune Miku is a performing hologram and very popular.

Watch this video first and than see how kids react to her performance. In the next video you will get an explanation about how they made her and the music.

Hatsune Miku - World is mine



Kids react to - Hatsune Miku

I AM GOING!!

A few weeks ago I finally bought my ticket to Tokyo, I am so excited!! I want to do my graduation project there with a research, a research about the differences between western and eastern pop culture. But thats not all, I will be making two songs before I go, one ballad and one up-tempo song in the hope to share my music with the Japanese people and getting their feedback. Ruben Wijga decided to help me with the songs, so I am very thankfull for his help.

Next thing is I have been contacting a lot of people in Tokyo through the couchsurfing website to see if they wanted to either have a chat with me, show me around or make music with me!! So far so good since a lot of people already responded to my message and would like to meet up with me in february!!

I am getting more and more excited as time passes by and I find myself with my head in Japan and not being able to concentrate well on my work, lets hope this will get better ;)

A Japanese organisator on te couchsurfing website asked me to cancel my room and come tour with him through all of Japan and make it a music tour with more people, but I am not sure whether I want to do that or not, at least not for all the time I am there (because I want to meet all the people I contacted).

What would you do if you were me? (keep in mind that I will be renting a room for a month)

Extreme Japan

Wikipedia on Burusera
 
Burusera (ブルセラ) is a Japanese word coined by combining burumā (ブルマー?), meaning bloomers as in bottoms of gym suits, and sērā-fuku (セーラー服?), meaning sailor suit, the traditional Japanese school uniforms for schoolgirls.

Buru-sera vending machine

They sell higher with picture

Burusera shops

Burusera shops sell used girls' gym suits, as well as school uniforms including Catholic school uniforms. They also sell other goods procured from schoolgirls, e.g. undergarments, school mizugi (スクール水着?) for physical education, socks, stationery, sanitary napkins, tampons, saliva, urine and others.





The clothes are often accompanied by ostensibly genuine photos of the girls wearing them. The clients are men who smell or otherwise experience the panties for sexual stimulation. Vending machines were once used to sell packaged used panties.

Schoolgirls used to openly participate in the sale of their used panties, either through burusera shops or using mobile phone sites to sell directly to clients. When laws banning the purchase of used underwear from minors were introduced in Tokyo in 2004 it was reported that some underage girls were instead allowing their clients (called kagaseya (嗅がせ屋?) or sniffers) to sniff their underwear from directly between their legs. Others chose to sell photos of themselves, throwing in the used panties for free.

In August 1994, a burusera shop manager who made a schoolgirl sell her used underwear was arrested by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on suspicion of violation of article 34 of the Child Welfare Act and article 175 of the Criminal Code. The Police exposed the company and the owner under suspicion of violation of the Secondhand Articles Dealer Act which bans the purchase of secondhand goods without authorization.[1]

Child pornography laws imposed legal control over the burusera industry in 1999.[2] However, burusera goods in themselves are not child pornography, and selling burusera goods are an easy way for schoolgirls to gain extra income. This has been viewed with suspicion as child sexual abuse.[3]

Prefectures in Japan began enforcing regulations in 2004 that restricted purchases and sales of used underwear, saliva, urine, and feces of people under 18.[4] Existing burusera shops stock burusera goods from women at least 18 years old — most of them are alumnae of high schools.

Japan for the uninvited

Enjo kosai (Compensated dating)

Enjo kosai is one of Japanese society’s most infamous phenomenon: schoolgirls dating older men for money. Although many encounters don’t involve sex, this prostitution of Japan’s youth has been cause for serious concern.

Telephone Clubs

Enjo kosai emerged towards the end of Japan’s 1980s economic boom. Young, middle-class girls had become used to an expensive lifestyle, funded by their prosperous fathers, but the economy was starting to fall apart. With their families unable to fulfil these materialistic needs, but discouraging them from taking part-time jobs, many girls looked elsewhere.

When you’re a middle-aged man, it isn’t easy to pick up schoolgirls. Where do you meet them? You’d look ridiculous if you started hanging around outside high-schools or purikura, and you’d soon get pestered by the police. “Telephone clubs” sprung up to solve this problem. These are places where men pay for a girl’s mobile phone number. Apart from that, all negotiations are between the schoolgirl and the dirty old man.

The internet has made telephone clubs largely redundant. Safer and cheaper, it also allows men to contact a greater number and wider range of girls. All he has to do is put an ad (“40,000 yen for dinner and sex”) on the message board with his contact details, and he can choose the most alluring response that rolls in.

Bura-Sera

These sugar daddies are usually middle-aged, married men with children of their own. Why do they pay so much, and take such great risks, to have sex with young girls? Many describe this craving as “tamaranai”, an “uncontrollable attraction”, which hardly seems to excuse the fact that they’re exploiting girls their daughter’s age.

“Lorikon” (Lolita complex) and “bura-sera” (the erotic fascination with schoolgirls) are crucial aspects of modern Japanese sexuality. The ubiquitous sailor-suit school uniform is as important a feature of Japanese pornography as breast implants are in Western filth. Bura-sera also drives the thriving trade in used panties.

Kogals

This widespread sexual fetish is exploited by the “kogals”, young Japanese women who wear school uniforms, loose socks, and heavy make-up as a fashion statement. Many of these girls finished high school years ago, but enjoy the attention the outfits get from men.

It’s easy to understand why middle-aged men want to have sex with young girls. But why do the girls do it?

Japan has always been a country where external appearances are important. Traditionally, social prestige has been held in material symbols (samurai’s swords and hairstyles, exclusive aristocratic colours), and nothing has changed. The rabid desire for flashy designer clothes, born during the economic “miracle”, hasn’t been stemmed by economic problems.

It’s not all about money and fancy clothes. Japanese children lead a restrictive life at home and school, so enjo kosai could be seen as a sexual rite of passage for curious young women.

There will be more later, for those of you who liked it :p

Music Video's I'm proud of

Well I do have a few video's I have on Youtube which sound very good and I want to share them with you guys. First there is Speechless from Lady Gaga which I covered for an audition called "the voice of Holland".



Next is a cover of Winter sleep by Oliva, she is a half American half Japanese singer. My sister and I sang this song when our grandpa passed away.



Next song is a selfwritten song and it has a very emotional subject for me. I had two friends who started to ignore me out of the blue and after 6 years I can write about it.

Japanese pop-culture obsession

I just love everything about the Japanese pop-culture and many people think it's a phase but I don't think so. It started when I was sixteen, I watched Spirited Away and fell in love with Anime.

After this movie I started buying other movies and series and it became an obsession to see new classic anime movies or series. I want to share a few series with you I really liked but if you want to know all the anime I have seen you can go to: MyAnimeList. My nickname is himeno16 and I got it from the first anime serie I have seen called Pretear and I really loved it. The serie is about Himeno who is 16 years old and our characters were a lot alike so thats why I chose this nickname.

After that I started to watch Japanese movies and "real life" drama series, my life changed after I saw the movie Casshern. The movie itself is a masterpiece but I also fell in love with the music.

I downloaded the original soundtrack and was really surprised that I really liked some of the music that was made inspired by the movie. I fell in love with a song from Chihiro Onitsuka called Borderline,

and after that I got curious do the Japanese have Pop/Urban music as well? They do and how, I fell in love with Japanese pop/urban and it felt like this was the music that was right for me. Somehow I also fell in love with the language and I get very happy when I hear something in Japanese. I've been telling this story to many people but it is very confronting to write it down like this, it really does sound funny. So after that I discovered Namie Amuro, a very famous pop/urban Japanese singer and performer.

I have more artists I really like, I will put a few more video's from them here since there are a lot of artists I like. This is Crystal Kay with It's a crime.

Here is Jade Valerie and she is from America but really famous in Korea and Japan. She lives in Frankurt and has a German producer where she works with. I really like her music for many years and she is my example when it comes to making music and performing.

This is Jade Valerie working with Emiri Miyamoto a Japnese violin Player, their album Saint Vox sounds really good.

This is Anna Tsuchiya a half American and Half Japanese and that is very special in Japan, I really like her songs and her acting.

But its not like I don't listen to western music anymore but I have more Japanese music on my Ipod then western music. Some other artists I really like are, Lady Gaga, The Veronicas, Britney Spears, Hadise (Turkish/Belgian singer) and Eminem. I realize it's not much, I thought it would be a little more artists.

Who am I? That's a secret I'll never tell

But ofcourse I will tell you who I am, this is a phrase from Gossip Girl you hear in the beginning of every episode. I never thought I would watch Gossip Girl, since I'm not really a girly girl type, but I guess there is more to this series than rich boys and girls. But enough about that, because from this tv show you wont get to know me really.

I wrote my first song when I was 12 years old, I wrote it together with my younger sister who was 10 years old at that time. The song was called People need Somebody and I sang it at a singing contest called the Voice in 2004, to bad I did not go through the next round not even in the next years when I tried again.



I guess this is where it all started, I mean I did sing before I wrote my first song, but when I did I was so happy I knew I wanted to write even more. But it's not like I did not sing before I wrote my first song, my sister and I made music video at the Megafestatie in Utrecht in 2002. We had to pay for the music video and it was 10 euro, what was expensive at the time for two young girls. My sister got so mad at me when she heard I uploaded the video to youtube, but later she could laugh about it. 


Well its not perfect but its nice to see how much I've learned in the last years, and how much I have changed.

Since then I've been writing songs and whenever I got an opportunity to work with someone who could make music and record I made a new song.

And when I wanted to enter the Academy for Popculture I had to record a few songs to get into the school. I needed three songs so I worked with three different people to get the three songs done in time.

I wrote this song when I broke up with a boyfriend, he was very upset when we broke up so thats why I wrote this song. I made the song together with Willem Deen.

I wrote this song when my first love broke up with me, I was very upset for a long time. I made this song with Bjorn Couwenberg.

I wrote this song for my current boyfriend, lyrics speak for themselves. I made this song together with Monique Bakvis and Pieter.

So I send this three songs to the Academy for Popculture and after that they invited me for an audition and I got accepted. And so I moved from Roosendaal (Noord-Brabant) tot Leeuwarden (Friesland) together with Dimtiri, my current boyfriend. Before I went to the Academy for Popculture I sang in a rock cover band called Sound Pollution, I was sad about leaving but it was to chase my dream to become a singer/songwriter. We made two demos and here is one of them.


I had a lot of doubts about chasing my dream to get into music, but I'm glad I did because making music is the thing I like the most. My artist name is Lovely Leonie, but since I think that is too long I made it Lleonie. lovely_leonie is my first email address and I still use it, it feels good to be the first lovely leonie, nowadays there are lots of lovely_leonie88 etc.