Fantastically Foreign Friday Vol. 3

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As promised, this week’s music spotlight belongs to none other than the amazing F.T. Island. Debuting in 2007, the five-member band has met with incredible success across Asia, with their single, “Theory of Happiness” grabbing the #1 spot on Japan’s Oricon Daily chart earlier this year. If chart ranking mean nothing to you, have no fear because listening to just one of F.T. Island’s songs is enough to impress you. Their pop/rock sound is taken to a whole new level with the vocals of Lee Hong Ki. Seriously, every time Lee Hong Ki starts to sing I feel like I’m going to melt, his voice is just. that. good. *sigh*

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If, after downloading all of F.T. Island’s albums and singles, you still can’t get enough of Lee Hlee hongki nail bookong Ki, you can watch him in We Got Married-Global Edition or you can check out his book of nail art, which was released earlier this year…if you can get your hands on a copy. The pre-sales alone caused Nail Book to take the top slots on the Tower Record’s book and magazine charts and it’s been a bestseller since its release. The fact that it’s sold out on Amazon, with no indication of if or when it will be available again, should give you some of idea of just how popular Lee Hong Ki is. If anyone out there knows where I can find a copy of this book, please let me know! o_O

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As much as I’d like to go on and on about Lee Hong Ki and the rest of F.T. Island, I should move on to this week’s drama, Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo, which just happens to be the most recent adaptation of one of my all-time favorite manga, Itazura na Kiss. Starring Honoka Miki and Furukawa Yuki, MK:LIT follows the story of Aihara Kotoko, an ordinary high school girl with a severe crush on an extraordinary boy, Irie Naoki,  who turns her down flat seconds after she confesses to him. If that weren’t bad enough, Kotoko’s house is soon after destroyed by a meteorite and she and her father are forced to move in with her father’s childhood friend who just happens to be Naoki’s father. Things only better from there as Kotoko and Naoki find their lives intertwining in ways they could have never imagined.

 

So that pretty much does it for this week…enjoy and I’ll see you next week for another edition Fantastically Foreign Friday!

Fantastically Foreign Friday Vol.2

Last week I introduced you to one of my favorite Japanese bands, ONE OK ROCK, and one of my all-time favorite K-dramas, You’re Beautiful. If you took the time to watch any of You’re Beautiful, you probably spent the last week with songs from the show stuck in your head and if you’re at all like me, you’re now wondering where you can find A.N.Jell’s album. Unfortunately, A.N.Jell only exists in K-dramaLand *waaah!*  but the three talented actors that make up A.N.Jell are also musicians which means you can get your fill of Jang Geun Suk (aka Hwang Tae Kyung), Lee Hong Ki (Jeremy) and Jung Yong Hwa (Kang Shin Woo) without having to watch episodes of You’re Beautiful every day for the rest of your life. *Hooray!* While I’d love to introduce you to the work of all three of these amazing artists at once, I feel like I would be gipping them of their time in my relatively small spotlight, so this week I’m going to focus on just one and that would be Jung Yong Hwa’s rock/pop/alternative band CNBLUE.

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CNBLUE debuted in Japan in 2009 with their first mini-album Now or Never and released their first Korean mini-album, Bluetory, in 2010. Since then, CNBLUE has released several albums and mini-albums in both Korea and Japan, all of which have met with incredible success. The band spent a good portion of this year on their Blue Moon World Tour while somehow managing to find time for both Kang Min Hyuk and Jung Yong Hwa to film for upcoming K-dramas. Kang Min Hyuk is currently starring in SBS’s newest drama Heirs (which you can watch here http://www.dramafever.com/drama/4274/Heirs/) and Jung Yong Hwa’s newest drama Mi Rae’s Choice (aka Marry Him If You Dare) is scheduled to release next week. How these guys find time to release new albums, tour and act is beyond me but they do and we love them for it, which brings me to our drama of the week but first, check out these videos from CNBLUE…


If last week’s drama and this week’s band wasn’t enough to get you hooked on Jung Yong Hwa, this week’s drama should do the trick. Starring Jung Yong Hwa, Park Shin Hye and Kang Min Hyuk (to name a few) Heartstrings follows the story of two college music majors, one majoring in modern music and the other traditional, and the sparks that fly when the two go head-to-head to prove which musical style is best. Being a fan of Jung Yong Hwa, Park Shin Hye and music in general, this rom-com is one of my favorites as it’s another drama full of great music and that classic love-hate relationship of which I can never seem to get enough. You can watch the first episode below and the rest of the series on DramaFever here…http://www.dramafever.com/drama/3934/Heartstrings/ and if after that, you still can’t get enough of Jung Yong Hwa you can watch the premier of Marry Him If You Dare here, http://www.dramafever.com/drama/4320/Marry_Him_If_You_Dare/ later this week and then join me for the newest DramaFever drama club where I and two other bloggers will be discussing each week’s episodes in-depth. Until next week…enjoy!

 

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