A message I sent to the band was read by TOMOMI on the radio last Monday (23.11.20)!

SCANDAL is currently doing a weekly show every Wednesday called SCANDAL Catch up on Tokyofm. The programme is sponsored by Meiji Apollo which is a brand of strawberry chocolate confectionery, in the shape of the Apollo command module. Honest.

Anyways, when I filled the form on the website a few weeks ago, I wasn’t hopeful of getting it read on air. I did think of writing the message in 日本語 (using what I know and hours of cross referencing on Google Translate, text books etc) but I did it in English as I was sure some of the messages from non-Japanese fans were not written in Japanese originally.

I think I remember what I wrote but I’ll try to transcribe the message based on how TOMOMI read it (this isn’t an attempt at translation lol) – in her adorable monotonous voiceover tone just like that time when they visited BIG BOSS in Ochanomizu:

“Maharaizu-san, a Malaysian fan living in the UK. Hi, SCANDAL. I am a Malaysian fan currently in the UK. I’ve been a fan for 10 years and have seen SCANDAL perform live 13 times (SCANDAL: Oo oh!) – Singapore twice, Japan six times, London twice, Amsterdam once, Vienna once and Hong Kong once. です。（何？何？They band was also ooh-ing with the list read out) This is because I love SCANDAL’s music. One of my fav moments was four years ago in Amsterdam when a friend and I bumped into TOMOMI (probably the reason why she was selected to read my message on air) , Nakajima-san and the director for the road docu , during which time both of us excitedly went ‘えぇぇー!!!’ (full on die-hard weeb fan mode, I’m afraid, and if you check out the DVD you can hear this bit – I was facepalming when I heard TOMOMI reading this bit while laughing).

“I also have a crazy hobby – I collect guitars (the next bit sounds a bit all over the place no thanks to Google Translate, but I’ll write what I actually said) . I have all the SCANDAL signature guitars, my fav being MAMI’s Strat and HARUNA’s Telecaster. I even have the CANTA guitar (defo can hear the missus’ えー! here, with HARU saying すごい、ね). I’m sorry (もし訳ありません, Google, like, really?!) RINA – I can only collect your signature Pearl drum sticks, although I do own a Roland V-drum kit (the missus oooh-ing again with the others).

“I hope all of you keep well and I can’t wait to see SCANDAL perform live again soon. 頑張れ、ね！”

Then TOMOMI said while the fan message came from the UK, the quiz for the quiz for this segment will be a topic from Malaysia, which was greeted by laughter from the band. The missus’ ehehehehe… めっちゃかわいい。The quiz was about KL and the question was about if one looks at the name Kuala Lumpur, what is at the convergence of the Gombak and Klang rivers.

The responses were quite hilarious even on the first listen as I understood some of the answers (the missus said 地獄 – jigoku/hell ~ so funny lah you). TOMOMI got it right in the end with an enthusiastic 泥！ (doro, meaning mud) after a few additional clues provided by the staff. SCANDAL HEAVEN has the full translation of the quiz’s response here.

I didn’t get much of what they were discussing after the KL quiz but thanks to the aforesaid SH translation and listening to the broadcast again, TOMOMI was astounded that we knew who Nakajima-san was when we bumped into her in Amsterdam. I actually got to speak to him at the merch booth after the Vienna show talking briefly about photography, seemed a nice chap. RINA (I think) said it was cool that I got to bump into TOMOMI et al., and then MAMI sounded like she was cheekily emphasising the phrase ぶつかったんだろう、ね (“bumped into, ehh?”). HARU asked if this happened near the venue’s entrance (I recognised the word 入りまち) and TOMOMI said yes (more like I think so lol). MAMI also went on about the many times I had seen them everywhere, like 6 times in Japan (日本に六回でしょうか) and TOMOMI sounded impressed I had seen them that many times (１３回見てくれて) – all these with lots of ねー！ from the rest. I was fanboying when I was listening to all this, and right now while writing this post.

The lasses went on about how they noticed a group of overseas fans seem to also follow them everywhere on tour and even on one-off shows, which is really cool. TOMOMI thanked me (okay okay… all the die-hard fans, too – I’ll let you lot have this one) and the missus gave a resounding ありがとうー！ (with the others giving another ねー！) at the end of this segment.

This wasn’t the first time I “appeared” on a radio/TV programme or audiovisual media with SCANDAL in my ten-year fandom. I’ll write a short post on this topic in the blog some other time.

In the meantime, I’ll be playing this podcast on repeat.