0409 Yamashita Tomohisa
vol. 32 Debuts

My surfing debut was the summer 3 years ago. A stylist that I was close to brought me to the ocean in Chiba. I was excited [precisely he used the work doki doki]. A pro taught me and I paddled very hard to the open sea. I did exactly as taught, and I was able to go ride a wave on my first try! When I first got on a wave, I thought "This is amazing! Because people know this feeling, they get obsessed!" It was a long board so it's easy to stand up, but when I stood up I felt so happy and it felt good. The other time when I went surfing, I was in the ocean for about 2 hours. When you're focused on surfing, you forget how time passes. When I noticed, time was passing really fast. Of course, if I was out there for 4 or 5 hours I'd get cold and have to get out, but 2 hours pass very quickly. It's just that much fun and I get calm and don't notice if I'm tired so it's scary in a way.  And, afterwards, I get REALLY tired. Of course, on the way back, I was sleeping. But when I drive, I don't play that much. Thinking about my current life and time, I don't go out to the ocean that much. Ideally, I'd go 1~2 times a week. It would be nice to live next to the ocean and go surfing everyday. Because I know of this type of world, I was about to debut surfing and I'm happy about that.

There are kids that after Junior High they change a lot and they have a "Highschool debut." For me, I didn't really change much and no one was ever suprised and said that I changed. I had blonde hair in the class picture for the last year of Junior High (lol). My blonde hair debut was in the 3rd year of Junior High [note: in case you didn't know all ready, Japanese High Schools are 3 years and the Jr High is 3 years, too] I went to a convenient store and bought blonde bleach and did it myself. It was my first time, but it turned out pretty well. I didn't tell my parents, and when they saw me with blonde hair, they didn't say anything either. When my friends saw me they seemed pretty suprised. There were people older than me at my school that had blonde hair, but I was the only one in the year. There was no one that copied me. The teacher acted just the way that I thought he would.
"I bet he's going to call me to the empty room and lecture me."
Just as I thought, at the end of the day he called me out and was really mad. But I was like "Teacher, you're mad" and I didn't regret it at all. When I was in Junior High, I wasn't scared of anything. I never thought about what would happen if I did something, and I didn't know a lot of things. When you actually fall and scrape your knee, you know how it hurts. If you know the pain, you're scared of falling again. I think that if you have never fallen, you're never ever scared of falling.  In that way, I think it's important to fall just once. Oh, and when I first got my ears pierced, it was at the end of the first year of High School. It was at my house and it was either Kame (Kamenashi Kazuya) or Jin (Akanishi Jin) who did it. And, I opened Kame's piercing. My first one was a normal gold one. I went to a store and bought a piercer and on my earlobe I marked the spot with permanent marker or something, and put ice on it. I was a bit scared before it was opened. (lol)

As NEWS, the first CD Debut "News Nippon" was in the November of 2003. In artist's PV's I've seen what recording studios look like. But seeing just people putting on headphones and having a mike in front of you, I had no idea how it actually worked. The first time I recorded a song, what song was it, I don't remember right now. When it was my turn to record, it was the first time I entered a recording studio. Across the glass there was a supervisor [director type person] who would tell me "make it louder here" or "make this phrase more like this" and would point things out to me. "Oh! So people make CDs like this!" I found out then. I wasn't nervous. It was fun because it wasn't exactly like the demo tape and the song changed through my singing. It was over quickly. It was different to the voice that I usually hear........ it felt so wonderous [or weird].

When I did "Seishun Amigo", it was a new unit "Shuji to Akira" and it was the theme song for "Nobuta wo Produce" so it was different than NEWS. The translation of the song to Japanese is "Seishun Friend". It's a song about a friend whom you spent seishun [Idk how to explain this ><;;; I guess youthfulness] with. And after that, I had my solo debut song "Daite Senorita". From the beginning to the end it's only my voice so I really got into that. When I had my solo debut I was really nervous and felt really responsible. After that experience, it became NEWS and I thought "I came back Home" and I felt strong. That doesn't mean that being solo was "Away" it just felt like I came back to where I started. We all changed and we're going to work hard in 2008, too.

The debut I want to do now, is of course World Debut! lol. At the Taiwan concert, the distance being far, and across the ocean, knowing that different people know about us made me really happy. To make sure more people know about me, I want to make that area broader.

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I finished! Yay. Please comment if you read this because it would be great to know that others read this as well ^^b
I tried my best, but please tell me if you anything is unclear or if I made a mistake, thank you!