I spent about an hour surfing on YouTube to procrastinate doing actual work or J-Term reading. It started because this Shimatani Hitomi song was stuck in my head and I was trying to figure out what song it was (I’m not a huge Shimatani Hitomi fan by any means, but this song was very catchy). From there I ended up jumping from video to video, before I found this:

The song is “Shooting Star.” It was originally recorded by this 90s group called “HIM,” and was later covered by a singer named Hattan Amika. The song was used as the theme song for this Japanese drama called “LxIxVxE” that I watched exactly one episode of. Nonetheless, I did love the theme song, and I remember thinking that the actresses from the Japanese drama were pretty talented…or, maybe just pretty.

I didn’t realize till a little later that the actresses were from this music group called “SPEED.” Aside from the fact that I liked the theme song of the drama two of the members appeared in (which, I emphasize, was NOT sung by SPEED but rather by Hattan Amika), this group was notable to me for three reasons: 1) the group was started in Okinawa, 2) they shot their most popular single’s promotional video right here in Hawaii, and 3) my college friend James Wang was in love with them. I’m posting this video partly in honor of this song that I still really like, but also partly in honor of James Wang, who I still consider to be one of my closest friends, even though he’s gotten married and relocated to Japan.

The group broke up back in 2000 but got back together about four years ago (has it been that long? I feel very old.). Mind you, I did not realize that this group existed until after they had broken up. The video above was made before they broke up the first time, which helps explain why they all look so young!