| .Miyavi Related Frequently Asked Questions. |
Q. What's Oresama?
Q. Where can I buy stuff?
Q. I wanna join his official fan club! How do I do that?
Q. I wanna buy a Miyavi DVD (Oresama, Hitorigei, Hitorigei 2, Hitorigei 3, limited edition DVD, etc.). Will it play in my DVD player?
Q. Where else can I get stuff or even more information?
Q. I love Miyavi's piercings. Do you know where I can get them?
Q. Who's Noriko?
Q. Who's Megumi and why did Miyavi sing a song to her?
Q. What's Miyavi's real name?
Q. But didn't he use his real name in Oresama?
Q. I read in an article on Night in Girl that he stated his real name though!
Q. I read his last name in an issue of Fool's Mate though. What's he trying to do?
Q. Birthplace/hometown? I thought it was all just Hyougo!
Q. Where is the info about his Korean last name?
Q. What does PS Company stand for?
Q. Your discography says that track 4 of Miyavizm is "Pop 'n' Roll Koushien (Baseball)", but isn't it Dappunroru?
Q. Your discography lists Aho Matsuri with only that as the title, but doesn't the title have two parts to it in both kanji and katakana? And some places list the title as "Ahou Sai -Aho Matsuri-"
Q. I was reading the bio of Miyavi you have up and who the flip is Muddy Waters?
Q. I saw Hey Hey Hey/I read your instructions for purchasing tickets in Japan and I was just wondering, what the hell is a PHS?
Q. I was reading your translation for the ticket purchasing method for concerts and Japan and I'm so confused! What's up with this post office stuff?
Q. Why is Miyavi so mainstream now? I wish he was still Indies.
The only thing that's really happened is that he's on a major recording label, which is a world in which chart rankings and hits matter a lot so he has to write songs that appeal to a larger audience and that explains the discrepency between his major career and when he was Indies. He's definitely pretty popular, but he's nowhere near as influential as other artists like say Gackt, Ayumi, Crystal Kay, or CHEMISTRY.
For a "fun" way to try to get some insight into this, I actually recommend the anime, movie, and manga "NANA" originally written by Yazawa Ai. While not directly Miyavi related, it can kind of give you an idea of the world that Miyavi's operating in although probably not a complete understanding.
Q. I really dislike all the music that Miyavi's putting out right now. Why is he changing? Is he pop now?
Q. Is Miyavi visual kei?
Q. I want to send Miyavi mail/packages! Where do I send it to?
§168-0064 “Œ‹ž“s™•À‹æ‰i•Ÿ3-49-11 ƒƒ]ƒ“ƒfƒ…ƒ\ƒŒƒC101
Romanized form:
If you're really nervous about it getting there, just copy and paste the Japanese address and tape it to your mail. The post office actually doesn't care which form you use just as long as "Japan" is clearly marked on it somewhere. They'll get it where it needs to go after that. You should note that you probably shouldn't expect a reply back because Miyavi is a busy man, but if you send him like clothes or something it's been reported that there's a chance you might see him wearing it or something one day.
A. The movie that Miyavi made about himself...sort of. He also calls himself this and tends to have a big attitude. "Ore" meaning "I", and "sama" being the honorific used to honor someone like royalty or like...really important together should give you an idea of how huge his ego is. The movie Oresama is somewhat about himself. He travels to 1984 and meets himself for some random reason and impacts the lives of his younger self and a struggling new rocker named Shinii. It's somewhat entertaining and more of a fanservice movie and the dates are actually fudged (a lot) between the age of his younger self and his actual age, but it's definitely worth watching if you're interested in him or a huge fan.
A. Check the links section. Starting May 22, 2007 you can also check on iTunes.com for Miyavi's major albums.
A. You can't. The official fan club isn't open for overseas fans. I've heard of some sites that will sign you up through them as a third party with a "fake" address so that you can join, but I don't currently personally know of one.
A. YES. It will. CDJapan and most shops often times don't change the region coding information when they add items to their catalogue, but rest assured all of Miyavi's DVDs are *ALWAYS* all region. When you get the DVD, if you just check on the back you'll notice that the shop didn't bother to change the info on their website as the logo there clearly says "ALL". Other artists though often have DVDs that "lie" in that it'll be marked 2, but it's actually all region, so for those instances you just have to do research on the DVD, but this is not so for Miyavi. His distributors seemed to have had the foresight to make them all "all region".
A. Google. The links section, and the rest of the thread provides MUCH information so you should not have much of a problem. If you're still feeling really helpless with it though, feel free to ask.
A. You can probably ask someone to stick the hole in you yourself, but the lipring and earring you can find at for sure at Jpophouse. It is expensive though. I hear, however, that the types of piercings Miyavi has though aren't really that uncommon and you can get a good gauge sized one by just asking your piercer. icon_3nodding.gif
A. She's the hostess of a show where she interviews a lot of rock artists.
A. Megumi's the wife of the host of LFX. Apparently the host wrote lyrics and had Miyavi write a song and sing it.
A. Miyavi doesn't want his real name spread around anymore, so it's best not to ask/find it.
A. There were a lot of things that were fudged in Oresama. Just call it the magic of movie land.
A. Actually if you read Meesh's FAQ, she states there as well that that entire interview/bio thing was fake cuz Miyavi's a joker and likes to lie about things like that sometimes.
A. Yes, oddly enough Miyavi seems to be okay with people knowing his last name. I suppose the logic behind that is that his last name is fairly common and as long as you don't know his first name, it's alright.
A. They're actually different as of the November 2005 edition of ROCK AND READ magazine. This is the same magazine where Miyavi admits his half Korean ancestry. He talks about how his grandparents lived in Tsuruhashi in Konohana Ward in Osaka City so he was born in another area in Osaka City known as Nishikujou which is also in Konohana Ward. Most other places with this information cite the locate as "Nishikujou, Japan", but this is actually an incorrect citation because Nishikujou isn't a prefecture or even a city or even a ward. It's a very specific area within one ward of the city (it actually could be a street now that I'm looking at addresses in Konohana). For hometown, it's still considered to be Kawanishi City, Hyougo as the place you most affiliate yourself with and consider your "hometown" can be different from your birthplace. These days after confronting his mixed ancestry and becoming a more worldly artist though, Miyavi seems to have departed from connections from any specific locality.
A. It's actually also in the November 2005 edition of ROCK AND READ magazine. Miyavi mentions how his last name is Lee and how he thought it was cool when he was little because there was Bruce Lee who shared the name too. icon_xd.gif
A. Two things actually. If you look at the logo it says both "Phalanx of Swashbucklers Company?" and "Phonetically Syndaclism Company". Personally, I think the former makes a lot more sense. icon_sweatdrop.gif
A. No, it isn't. Some site somewhere made a mistake in their katakana and a lot of people who can't read Japanese took that for truth and it spread like wildfire with people writing "Dappunroru" on their pages and mislabeling songs. The correct katakana for it is "Poppunroru" which basically turns into "Pop 'n' Roll". How someone can get a po (ƒ|) and a da (ƒ_) mixed up is beyond me though since they don't look alike. Is katakana really that hard?
A. Yes, but BOTH still just say "Aho Matsuri". Technically, the kanji should be correctly romanized as "Ahou Matsuri", but the subtitle in katakana "Aho Matsuri" acts like furigana for the kanji in that it *TELLS* you how to read the song title and what the title is. Writing the title doubly or even rewriting "matsuri" to its other kanji reading "sai" is actually an incorrect reading and redundant.
A. Muddy Waters is an American artist from the Chicago Blues scene during the 1960s when a lot of African Americans moved into urban areas for work. The Chicago Blues scene is regarded as the roots of Rock 'n' Roll as when bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones came out, they were trying to make music that was reminiscent of Muddy Waters and other artists related to Chicago Blues. If Miyavi looks up to this man, then he sure knows his rock history and seems to be trying to get back to the roots of the music he loves. icon_3nodding.gif
A. A PHS is basically a cell phone only older than what's referred to currently as a cell phone (keitai denwa) in Japan. It's basically a portable phone, which translates for us in the West simply as a cell phone, but in Japan there was a whole time when the bulkier ancestor to modern cell phones were called something else. Whether or not the term applied to cordless phones, I'm not exactly sure. On Hey Hey Hey though Miyavi did remark that when he first came to Tokyo, one of the only things he had was a PHS. In Final Fantasy VII as well, they use a PHS as a communicator to change parties, so one can only assume that it means more than cordless.
A. The instructions only apply if you're in Japan. In Japan, you can pay your bills and do a lot of bank transactions simply by going to the post office and filling out the proper forms. It seems to be pretty common that artists will sell tickets to their performances through this method or even on occassion sell goods this way.
A. Well, actually he's not really "mainstream". It's not actually that Miyavi's mainstream because he actually isn't *that* big of a popular culture icon, so let's get that terminology straight first. "Mainstream" implies that Miyavi would be getting a rather large "media blitz" and that he's "everywhere" and part of the fads and such of popular culture that everyone gathers around. While it may *seem* like that sometimes just from the Miyavi fans you may meet from here and there, it isn't actually that he's "mainstream" because he isn't that big of a media influence to warrant that label so much as it's that his fanbase has grown because he's reached more people. The same goes for "visual kei" in general because visual kei is a niche market subculture amongst Japanese music. Its overall popularity in Japan is actually pretty negligible compared to actual mainstream artists.
A. Well, he's not really "pop" now so much that he's experimenting. Yes, he's done a few pop tunes, but many people also confuse his lighter acoustic work for "pop" which it isn't. Miyavi's a more well-rounded type of artist, so he doesn't really like to stick to one thing too much. That can be a good thing or a bad thing in the outcome of his music because inevitably some people won't like it. However, I think it's important to note that by experimenting, he can probably "open doors" to do something that's unique by incorporating ideas from different aspects of music rather than focusing on what's been "traditionally" so in established music genres. More than just being one thing or another, you can look at the situation as that he's trying to "grow" and the end result may very well be something wonderful that we'll love and deserve that he wouldn't have been able to get to by playing and making the same kinds of things all the time. If people didn't experiment, revolution or even evolution wouldn't occur, so I think it's enough to appreciate the fact that he's trying to take his work seriously and trying to just expand himself as an artist and test some stuff out.
A. Yes. Visual kei by and large is a subculture amongst Japanese rock that emphasizes look and appearance in a number of ways and Miyavi has *NEVER* strayed away from that although his music style has changed. Visual kei in itself though is *NOT* defined by the type of music the band plays, and thus that is partly why Miyavi can still be classified as such. The subculture itself is very much a fashion rather than musically linked. Further evidence of Miyavi's continued tie to visual kei culture, however, can be found in his albums and music as well as quite blatantly in various places on his official websites. Even further proof that he's still considered among visual kei artists is the fact that he *still* appears in magazines like Shoxx, which features visual and shock bands and artists. Miyavi's very much not a shock artist, so guess which one he falls under?
A. Send it to his management company's office. This is the address and all you need to do is just address it to Miyavi.
—LŒÀ‰ïŽÐPS COMPANY
JAPAN
§168-0064
Tokyo-to Suginami-ku
Eifuku 3-49-11
Maison du Soleil 101
Yuugen Kaisha PS COMPANY
JAPAN