''Love Cook'' is

Ai Otsuka is a Japanese singer-songwriter from Suminoe-ku, Osaka, Japan. She is a popular artist on the Avex Trax label and is best known for her 2003 hit " Sakuranbo", which stayed in the Top 200 Oricon Weekly Singles Chart for 103 weeks. A piano player ...

's third album released on 14 December 2005 under the

Avex Trax is a record label owned by Japanese entertainment conglomerate Avex Inc. The label was launched in September 1990, and was the first label by the Group. History Two years after Max Matsuura began a career distributing studio albums from othe ...

record label. It was released in four formats: CD only, CD+DVD, CD+Photobook and CD+Picture Book. The latter two are limited to 150,000 copies each, and feature different sleeve case covers. The picture book illustrations are hand-drawn by Ai herself. Three singles were released before the album: double A-Sided " Smily / Biidama", " Neko ni Fūsen" and "

Planetarium A planetarium (: planetariums or planetaria) is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation. A dominant feature of most planetariums is ...

". "Smily / Biidama" and "Planetarium" were the first two Ai Otsuka singles to reach the #1 spot in

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 ...

Weekly Singles Chart, and, having sold more than 300,000 copies each, are among her best-selling singles. All three singles are in the Oricon Top 100 Singles for 2005. On the other hand, "Cherish" had already been released as the final track in the various artists album '' Love for Nana: Only 1 Tribute'', a homage to the

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

. Many songs from ''Love Cook'' were used for commercial purposes as part of the artist's endorsements. "Smily" and "Biidama" were background songs in two TV commercials of Lion, a personal hygiene products company. "Neko Ni Fuusen" was featured in the

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

W31T commercial. "U-Boat" was image song for the 2006 TV advertisement of Meiko Gijuku, a

private school A private school or independent school is a school not administered or funded by the government, unlike a State school, public school. Private schools are schools that are not dependent upon national or local government to finance their fina ...

. 'Cherish' and 'Planetarium' were used in music.jp TV spots. 'Planetarium' was also an

image song In Japan, an image song or character song is a song on a tie-in single or album (often called an image album or character album) for an anime, video game, drama, manga, or other commercial product that is sometimes sung by the voice actor or a ...

of the 2005 TBS live-action

dorama , also called or J-drama, are television programs that are a staple of Television in Japan, Japanese television and are broadcast daily. Format All major Television networks, TV networks in Japan produce a variety of Drama (genre), drama serie ...

Hana Yori Dango is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yoko Kamio. The story takes place in the fictional Eitoku Academy, an elite school for children from rich families. It tells the story of Tsukushi Makino, a girl from a middle-class ...

. ''Love Cook'' is Ai Otsuka's best-selling album to date and her first album to pass the 800,000 mark, which was accomplished once the promotional "Love 9Cook Tour" started. On March 9, ''Love Cook'' won an award at the

Japan Gold Disc Awards The is an award presented by the Record music Industry Association of Japan in the field of music. The Japan Gold Disc Awards have multiple Grand Prix categories, including: Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year (download and ...

for being one of the best albums of 2005. Total sales now stands at 835,333 units and the album has stayed on the Oricon TOP 300 weekly chart for more than 52 weeks.

Track listing

References

External links

*Oricon Style (2006)
Oricon Web Site
{{Authority control Ai Otsuka albums 2005 albums Avex Group albums