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Speed (Japanese Band)
Speed (stylized in all caps) was a Japanese female vocal/dance group comprising Hiroko Shimabukuro, Eriko Imai, Takako Uehara and Hitoe Arakaki. All four members are former students of the Okinawa Actors School which also trained popular artists Namie Amuro and MAX. Speed made their major label debut on August 5, 1996, and became an immediate success. They would eventually become the most successful girl group anywhere in Asia with sales of over 20 million singles and albums in just three years and eight months. They disbanded on March 31, 2000, to pursue solo careers and to study. Following their disbandment, the group reunited several times for charity, but on August 20, 2008, they officially announced plans to reunite permanently. They made their comeback on November 12, 2008, with the single "Ashita no Sora." History 1995–1997: Early success The performers who would become Speed met at the Okinawa Actors School and formed a group containing seven to nine rotating memb ...
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Okinawa Prefecture
is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan. It consists of three main island groups—the Okinawa Islands, the Sakishima Islands, and the Daitō Islands—spread across a maritime zone approximately 1,000 kilometers east to west and 400 kilometers north to south. Despite a modest land area of 2,281 km² (880 sq mi), Okinawa’s territorial extent over surrounding seas makes its total area nearly half the combined size of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. Of its 160 Island, islands, 49 are inhabited. The largest and most populous island is Okinawa Island, which hosts the capital city, Naha, as well as major urban centers such as Okinawa (city), Okinawa, Uruma, and Urasoe, Okinawa, Urasoe. The prefecture has a subtropical climate, characterized by warm temperatures and high rainfall throughout the year. People from the Ryukyu Islands, Nansei Islands, including Okinawa Island, Okinawa, the Sakishima Islands, and parts of Kagoshima Prefecture, are often collectively referred ...
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Okinawa Actors School
is a school in Ginowan, Okinawa which has another branch in Osaka. It was founded in 1983 by Masayuki Makino who became the first principal of the school. Many of the school's former students became popular J-pop stars especially in the 1990s. Notable alumni * Namie Amuro * Hitoe Arakaki * Rina Chinen * D&D * Da Pump * Nanako Takushi * Folder 5 * Gwinko * Asuka Hinoi * Hisako Arakaki * Eriko Imai * Meisa Kuroki * Olivia Lufkin * Anna Makino * Ritsuko Matsuda * MAX * Misono * Daichi Miura * Reina Miyauchi * Hikari Mitsushima * Hiroko Shimabukuro * Minako Inoue * Speed * Super Monkey's * Takako Uehara * Yu Yamada is a Japanese model, actress and singer best known from her modeling work with ''CanCam'' magazine. Personal life On March 14, 2012, Yamada married Japanese actor Shun Oguri, and is a mother of four children, as of April 2020, according to re ... External linksYomiuri OnlineInterview with Masayuki MakinoSchool History Ginowan, Okinawa Sch ...
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Rise (Speed Album)
''Rise'' is the second studio album by Japanese band Speed In kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as ''v'') of an object is the magnitude of the change of its position over time or the magnitude of the change of its position per unit of time; it is thus a non-negative scalar quantity. Intro .... The album was released on 29 April 1998 and contains the singles "Wake Me Up!", "My Graduation" and their all-time biggest hit, " White Love". The album successfully topped the Oricon sales charts eventually selling 2.09 million copies making it the best selling original studio album by a female group in Japan. They later embarked on a summer tour titled "Rise Dome Tour" to promote their album becoming the first female Jpop group ever to complete the dome tour in Japan. Track listing # Rise # Sophisticated Girl # Another Sweet Field # Wake Me Up (Rise Mix) # White Love # # Reset 99 to 00 # Brand New Weekend (Varick Street Mix) # — (''Tropical Night'') # Too Young # My ...
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Nikkei Business Publications
, commonly known as , is a book and magazine publisher based in Tokyo, Japan. The company was established as , a joint venture of Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) and McGraw-Hill in 1969, and it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Nikkei in 1988. Nikkei BP is known well for its various magazines on segmentalized business and technology fields, and a direct-sales system of the magazines. Major magazines and websites *, a weekly business magazine founded as a sister magazine of Business Week in 1969, website iEnglishanJapanese *, a semimonthly electronics industry magazine founded as a sister magazine of Electronics in 1971. *, a semimonthly enterprise computing magazine published since 1981. *, a semimonthly personal computer magazine published since 1983, website iJapanese *, a monthly leading computer magazine founded as a sister magazine of Byte in 1984, and was ceased in 2005. *, a Japanese local edition of National Geographic published by , a joint venture of Nikkei BP and Nati ...
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Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in Australia, North Africa, North America and South America. While ballads have no prescribed structure and may vary in their number of lines and stanzas, many ballads employ quatrains with ABCB or ABAB rhyme schemes, the key being a rhymed second and fourth line. Contrary to a popular conception, it is rare if not unheard-of for a ballad to contain exactly 13 lines. Additionally, couplets rarely appear in ballads. Many ballads were written and sold as single-sheet Broadside (music), broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century, the term took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and is often used for any love song ...
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Dance Music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. In terms of performance, the major categories are live dance music and recorded dance music. While there exist attestations of the combination of dance and music in ancient history (for example Ancient Greek vases sometimes show dancers accompanied by musicians), the earliest Western dance music that we can still reproduce with a degree of certainty are old-fashioned dances. In the Baroque period, the major dance styles were noble court dances (see Baroque dance). In the classical music era, the minuet was frequently used as a third movement, although in this context it would not accompany any dancing. The waltz also arose later in the classical era. Both remained part of the romantic music period, which also saw the rise of various other nationalistic dance forms like the barcarolle, mazurka, ecossaise, ballade and p ...
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Odaiba
is a large artificial island in Tokyo Bay, Japan, across the Rainbow Bridge (Tokyo), Rainbow Bridge from central Tokyo. Odaiba was initially built for defensive purposes in the 1850s. The land was dramatically expanded during the late 20th century as a seaport district, and was redeveloped in the 1990s into a major commercial, residential and leisure area. Odaiba, along with Minato Mirai 21 in Yokohama, is one of the few manmade seashores in Tokyo Bay where the waterfront is accessible and not blocked by industry and harbor areas. The majority of the island is located in Tokyo's Koto, Tokyo, Kōtō ward, with the north and northwest of the island in Minato, Tokyo, Minato and Shinagawa, Tokyo, Shinagawa wards. formally refers to one district of the island located in Minato. Governor Shintaro Ishihara used ''Odaiba'' to refer to the entire , which includes the Ariake, Tokyo, Ariake and Aomi, Tokyo, Aomi districts of Kōtō, Tokyo, Kōtō Ward and the Higashi-Yashio district of Shin ...
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Starting Over (Speed Album)
''Starting Over'' Is Japanese J-pop girlband Speed's debut studio album released on May 21, 1997. It contains three singles: "Body & Soul", "Steady" and "Go! Go! Heaven" respectively. The album was hugely successful entering the Oricon Albums Chart The Oricon Albums Chart is the Japanese music industry standard albums popularity chart issued daily, weekly, monthly and yearly by Oricon. Oricon originally published LP, CT, Cartridge and CD charts prior to the establishment of the Oricon A ...s weekly charts at number 1 for three consecutive weeks. Track listing # Walk This Way # Body & Soul # Luv Vibration # STEADY # RAKUGAKI # # Go! Go! Heaven # I Remember # Kiwi Love # Happy Together # Starting Over # Starting Over: Walk This Way (Reprise) References Speed (Japanese band) albums 1997 debut albums {{Japan-album-stub ...
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Oricon
, established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ... and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as , which was founded by Sōkō Koike in November 1967 and became known for its music charts. Oricon Inc. was originally set up as a subsidiary of Original Confidence and took over the latter's Oricon record charts in April 2002. The charts are compiled from data drawn from some 39,700 retail outlets () and provide sales rankings of music CDs, DVDs, electronic games, and other entertainment products based on weekly tabulations. Results are announced every Tuesday and published in ''Oricon Style'' by subsidiary Oricon ...
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, cultural center of Southern California. With an estimated 3,878,704 residents within the city limits , it is the List of United States cities by population, second-most populous in the United States, behind only New York City. Los Angeles has an Ethnic groups in Los Angeles, ethnically and culturally diverse population, and is the principal city of a Metropolitan statistical areas, metropolitan area of 12.9 million people (2024). Greater Los Angeles, a combined statistical area that includes the Los Angeles and Riverside–San Bernardino metropolitan areas, is a sprawling metropolis of over 18.5 million residents. The majority of the city proper lies in Los Angeles Basin, a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the ...
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San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of 2024, San Francisco is the List of California cities by population, fourth-most populous city in the U.S. state of California and the List of United States cities by population, 17th-most populous in the United States. San Francisco has a land area of at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula and is the County statistics of the United States, fifth-most densely populated U.S. county. Among U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2023. San Francisco anchors the Metropolitan statistical area#United States, 13th-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S., with almost 4.6 million residents in 2023. The larger San Francisco Bay Area ...
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TLC (band)
TLC is an American girl group formed in 1990 in Atlanta. The group's best-known line-up was composed of Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas. The group enjoyed success during the 1990s, with nine top-ten hits on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, including four number-one singles: " Creep", " Waterfalls", " No Scrubs", and " Unpretty". TLC also recorded four multi-platinum albums, including '' CrazySexyCool'' (1994), which received a diamond certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). They became the first R&B group in history to receive the million certification from the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) for '' FanMail'' (1999). Having sold over 60 million records worldwide, TLC is one of the five best-selling American girl groups of all time. VH1 ranked TLC as the greatest female group, placing them at number 12 on the list of 100 Greatest Women in Music. '' Billboard'' magazine ranked TLC as one of ...
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