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Damn, it’s really been six years since I got this blog.

I originally started this in the hopes that it would revive the energy and enthusiasm I had for writing about pop music that I had when I was in high school, but Life™ got in the way and I ended up abandoning it with several drafts and unfinished ideas. I kept the domain in the hopes that someday I’d come back but I had little hope.

But here I am! I have opinions again! I have the smallest bit of enthusiasm for pop music! I enjoy idols again! I haven’t felt like this in a long time so I’m hoping to keep up this momentum. Maybe I’ll have a new years resolution or something and actually post instead of saying i’m enthusiastic about blogging again and then leaving for 6 years.

In the past six years, i’ve grown to like a lot more music, and listen to bands and singers in genres I’d never imagined I’d be a fan of. I’ve met great people through shared musical interests, been to concerts and lives and shows, been back and forth between the US and Japan 3 times, and have had incredible opportunities related to the music industry.

Sometimes I fear I’ve become too cynical to enjoy the things I liked when I was a teenager, but then I’m introduced to a group or artist that brings me back to being 15 years old listening to songs while I chatted with friends on MSN messenger or played games.

I thought I had fallen out of love with idols as I watched the Japanese music industry favor alternative idols and then Kpop, only to realize that I was looking in the wrong place. Groups I thought I could never get into again due to my favs leaving have stolen my heart again and I’m listening to the same music I did back in 2012, and I’m having so much fun.

Since this will absolutely be my first and last post of 2024, here’s a list of my top 10 jpop songs of the year, in no particular order:

  • FancyLabo – Sugar Sugar
    • I was lukewarm on Night Tempo produced idol unit FancyLabo’s earlier tracks, but something about this track grabs my attention and doesn’t let go.
  • FRUITS ZIPPER – BABY I LOVED
    • Every other musician and idol trying to emulate the distinctive sound of 80s pop music is missing one thing: the Stock-Aitken-Waterman driving beat, but this song has it and instantly jumped to the top of my favs
  • GOOD BYE APRIL – Yoake no Ressha ni Tobinotte
    • While the song was released late 2023, I didn’t discover it til after my trip to Japan earlier this year. Another song from a group trying to emulate the sounds of yesteryear, GOOD BYE APRIL’s 2024 releases have done nothing but impress
  • iScream – Shiny Shiny
    • While I was disenchanted with a lot of mainstream Jpop’s steady transition to a Kpop inspired sound, I am still not immune to a good pop song.
  • XAMIYA – RON
    • A surprise appearance from a song i listened to entirely on a whim from my Youtube Recommendations, both of XAMIYA’s songs made a strong showing and have me looking forward to seeing what else the project makes.
  • Lucky Kilimanjaro – Kemonomichi Hei ga Odoru
    • While LK’s releases this year didn’t impress me as much as the last year’s Kimochy Season album, this was absolutely the standout from this year’s two sister EPs.
  • De De Mouse & Milk Talk – Beautiful Criminal
    • Another random youtube recommendation, this song immediately jumped into my top ten most listened to songs of the year and I find new favorite tracks every time I go back through Milk Talk’s discography
  • MONO NO AWARE – Onaji Kama
    • The best part of having good friends is recommending music to each other and helping to influence each other’s tastes. I had listened to MONO NO AWARE’s 2019 album and wasn’t impressed, but something about the theming and sound of their 2024 entry The Buffet really captured me
  • Wednesday Campanella – Carolina
    • Suikan’s whimsical and nonsensical songs about personifying random things are some of my favorite, and Carolina’s chili pepper family reunion is no different
  • Mega Shinnosuke – Ai to U
    • Megashin was another artist whose previous album became my whole personality, but subsequent works didn’t impress me until this single dropped earlier this year. Ran is also adorable so seeing her in the thumbnail of the MV always brightens my day.

So there you have it. An update on my life and some of my favorite songs of the year.

In 2025 I hope to write more and hopefully loosen up a bit from my earlier entries on this blog. It’ll be a learning experience for everyone.

Happy new year!

Hello All

RyanLeave a comment

Hello everyone! Welcome to my newest blogging venture: Wotaku Hakase, or Otaku Professor. My name is Ryan and I am a 25 year old man living in Pittsburgh.

After a long (8 year) hiatus from blogging, I have decided to come back to the works when I realized that I was not done having opinions. (Is someone ever done having opinions)

This blog is based around my love of Japanese culture as well as my love of being a complete nerd. In the past, I have primarily blogged about idols or Japanese Pop Music, but my interests are spread much farther and I feel like I have a lot to say. To express that extension of my hobbies, I have made the theme of this blog considerably more broad to allow myself many different categories.

Since this post is an introduction, I will give a little more information about myself and my interests.

As stated above, my name is Ryan and I am a 25 year old man living in Pittsburgh. I have been interested in Japanese culture since I was 5 years old, and been interested in Japanese music since I was 14. My other main hobbies include drinking beer and playing video games, with a huge and healthy dose of sleep.

Running with the blog’s title, I will be separating this blog into at least three categories for my posts: Idol Hakase, Game Hakase and MaruMaru Hakase.

Idol Hakase (アイドル博士) will be for my  posts regarding Japanese, Korean or American pop music. It is a broad term, but for the most part I will mainly be writing about Japanese music.

Game Hakase (ゲーム博士) is for posts about video games. I have been passionate about video games, especially RPGs, since I was in elementary school, but never really used an outlet to talk about my opinions apart from idle conversation with friends growing up.

Marumaru Hakase (○○博士) is a miscellaneous category. If something I choose to blog about doesn’t fit into one of the above categories, it will fall here. If I write about something enough, I will create a new category for it, but in the meantime they will end up here.

As a disclaimer, I never actually finished my degree (I studied linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, but had to leave for personal reasons), so the concept of me being a professor on these subjects is entirely a thematic choice.

To elaborate, when studying Japanese, one of the professors at my university jokingly referred to me as an Idol professor in class, especially considering my (at the time) near encyclopedic knowledge of Hello! Project and AKB48. Since that joke is still a common occurrence in conversation with that teacher, I decided to utilize it here as well.

I aim to update this blog regularly, so I hope you’ll join me!

Also: This post was pretty tame, but anticipate a lot more… colorful language in the future. I have absolutely no filter.