2007’s Kohaku means the one the year before the last. I’ve got the latest one as well, but I’m not in any hurry to watch it. The one I did watch over the weekend was hosted by Nakai Masahiro and some Tsurube guy I had never heard of but who had the most annoying voice I had ever heard. The two of them had ZERO chemistry and Nakai seemed to be frequently frustrated at Tsurube going off on one tangent or another, reminiscing about random things. Nakai himself is a terrible host. His very presence just trivializes the whole event, and those clothes! Ewww.
The show itself was very bland compared to the previous year’s and the one before that. I watched both of those and enjoyed them thoroughly. I got some good songs out of them too, and found out about some new artists I’m still following even today (Tokunaga Hideaki in particular). In contrast the song that got the most rise out of me in this one was “Oshirikajiri mushi.” 
Let’s see, I also liked Hirai Ken’s song Elegy and the last 4 songs by Wada Akiko, Sakamoto Fuyumi, Mori Shinichi and Itsuki Hiroshi are some of my greatest favorites. Everything else was a complete wash.
While we’re on the topic, I watched an NHK special on B’z the other day. Talk about zero chemistry again, those guys have like, none, and yet they work so well together. It looks like outside of music production they don’t have much to do with each other. Like they respect each other but don’t particularly like each other. Matsumoto came across as rather bossy, Inaba as some retiring mousy recluse. And he’s so thin now, what happened!? Of course it’s entirely possible that NHK edited their footage to make things seem that way. I wouldn’t put it beyond a TV station. Anyway, the title of the special was (I think) 「大ヒットの秘密：２０年目のＢ’ｚ」so they trailed B’z for 6 months to find out their secret. In the end the “secret” to their success is: They work like dogs at it. Gee, I could have told you that to begin with!
I want to get better at Japanese, I’ll need to work like a dog too. And that’s all for today
