Neo Genesis - Volume 44 - Uruha & Aoi Interview

URUHA & AOI

The GazettE

Featuring Uruha and Aoi and their variously differing personalities as the cover piece of this edition. With the purpose of finding out about their daily lives, we asked them plenty of things and talked about a lot of private affairs, alongwith the 2 short interviews. Beginning with their views about fashion and their likes about food, right to the appearance of their rooms, let us take a look at the two people we were introduced to, whom we decidedly do not see onstage.

----Out of food, clothing and shelter, let us start with ‘clothing’. Are you particular about fashion?

Uruha - Fixations about fashion…..I guess I’m rather gaudy.

Aoi - Though Ruki has been the fashion delinquent of the GazettE since the early times, these days its Uruha……

Uruha - (laughs) Such a thing to……

Aoi - It was quite stylish even today, him ending up covering his head and all. What was it with the cap?

Uruha - Even if I did wear the cap, had it not been suiting me at all...(laughs)

Aoi - (laughs) Ah, is that so……

Uruha - No, because I’m not familiar with stuff such as the design, size and other finer details.

Aoi - Fashion is difficult,isn’t it……

----So, your point is that though you take the trouble to be particular about fashion, you are basically gaudy.

Uruha - Yes. But although I like things flashy, I end up wearing the same things for a long time, because I don’t got for shopping regularly. It gets boring (laughs). So, when I go shopping after a long time, I end up giving in to my desire for all things flashy. But well, I’m not all that gaudy compared to all the other gaudy people of the world, though by myself I do think of the places where I definitely want to display my flashiness.

----Do you have a favourite colour?

Uruha - Its black, I guess. It’s a calm and steady colour, isn’t it? For me, its black.

Aoi - As in, black blends with everything.

Uruha - Yeah. If there are some rather gaudy clothes, and if it’s becoming difficult to think which colour would match with them, it eventually tends to be black.

----What about you Aoi, in case of clothes?

Aoi - I have absolutely no interest……

----Are you serious….? This conversation cannot proceed……

Aoi - (laughs) No, no. Really. If there are just about 2 sets of clothes for wearing outside, I’m the sort to decide to get through that year’s winter with them. That’s because I don’t go for shopping in the first place.

Uruha - But well, even he has an overall gaudy look, doesn’t he, in one way or the other (laughs).

----True, even today, isn’t the style of your accessories totally flashy, with all the silver?

Aoi - Aaah, this style, it’s an obsession, you know. The shape and everything. Isn’t it ‘Hell’-ish?

Uruha - (laughs) He uses the ‘Hell’ lighter.

----Your personal lighter has a thought-out design. Doesn’t this have a slightly gothic feel?

Aoi - Hm. Recently, I haven’t been wearing any other brand other than this one. It’s a Hiroshima-based brand called ‘TAUJAN’, and I sort of want to visit their shop when I’m in Hiroshima for the tour. But really, basically, it’s because I don’t go shopping at all…… I just think I end up buying a stock for a season with my stylist. It’s inconvinient to go for shopping so many times, and I don’t feel like carrying so many carry-bags. I usually call up our manager, Sakai, and tell him “Get the packages!”.

Uruha - (laughs) That’s annoying..

----Right, what about the stage outfits?

Uruha - Ah, those are different. My personal clothes and the stage outfits are completely different things. Those are entirely different from normal clothes.

----Sort of, chosen keeping in mind the image of ‘Uruha of the GazettE’?

Uruha - Yes. Though the way I percieve that has changed recently. Earlier, I used to be all “I’m good~….”

Aoi - (laughs) “I’m good~”. And in a really bad manner.

Uruha - But even that, was just to gain some recognition……it would calm me down (laughs).

----The fans everywhere are definitely infatuated by the costumes in which your bare legs are visible (laughs).

Uruha - (laughs) Well…… I’ll think about it a bit; if it makes the fans happy.

----Aoi, what do you feel about the costumes?

Aoi - The brand new costumes make me murderous, you know. Something like this part (pointing at a part of the sleeve of the costume he was wearing at the time of the interview, where a part of the sleeve had folded into the black cloth). Such parts are to be tucked in, the nipples are to be somehow hidden, sort of thing.

----(laughs) Continuing with Uruha, it’s somewhat like how he fusses over exposing his legs.

Aoi - (laughs) But this is different from showing legs, you know. I mean, if you look we~ll, they may be visible, because the material of the cloth is thin in places. It’s a lot like the peeks (a stripper teases with).

----Basically it’s the sexiness, isn’t it, even though it’s of different types (laughs).

Aoi - Yes. That’s why I’m careful about the extent to which I can get aggressive. Something like, uptil where should I unbutton..

Uruha - And ending up unbuttoning all the way while you’re at it, I guess (laughs).

----Don’t the fans also end up expecting it then? What is your impression of what the other represents?

Uruha - You have a really slender waistline, don’t you, Aoi? I think it’s wonderful the way it’s always strapped around.

Aoi - No, that’s just…… It’s not actually a stray matter, I do it because when I’m onstage I store my energy in me, just in case (I need it there).

Uruha - (laughs) But really, it doesn’t look tough or anything. It’s just very clear how tight it is.

----So is it just the fruit of self restraint?

Aoi - No no. There aren’t any restrictions on my diet but…… I try not to breathe with my stomach, you see. I really hate how the stomach swells up with each breath.

----So would it be proper to say that you work hard to the limit of being moved to tears……(laughs)

Aoi - (laughs) It’s like I conciously breathe from here (pointing to his chest). It’s a weird thing to say, but there are also times when I feel like breathing with all my might. As in, “Ta~ke a deep breath!”.

----(laughs) Please don’t make yourself dizzy, certainly not in the middle of a Live.

Aoi - Well, that’s because it feels good to be a little dizzy (laughs).

----What about Uruha’s look, seen from your position?

Aoi - It’s elegant, isn’t it. I think it’s quite good. I can’t quite get used to the look, and isn’t it different from all the members (of the band)? Though Ruki got the curls, his look is still different and… Isn’t it fascinating !? (Aoi says the last part in Kansai dialect)

Uruha - (laughs) Why the Kansai dialect?

----You’re blushing out of having praised too much (laughs).

Aoi - No no no. I suppose it’s good to try and express something which can be expressed only by oneself.

----Well then, onto the next, about ‘food’. Do you like sweets?

Uruha - I don’t have them that much. I can’t take in too much sugar anymore, particularly after I’ve turned into such a heavy drinker.

----That’s typical of heavy drinkers, isn’t it? (laughs) There are a lot of people who don’t like sweet things.

Uruha - Yes. It’s goes something like, if you have sugary stuff here, you’ll feel like having more sugar through beer when you return home. After such a thing happens once in life, you’ll be happy with just sake (japanese wine).

Aoi - (laughs) Well said!

----I wonder what this means, from the point of view of health……(laughs). Aoi, do you have a sweet tooth?

Aoi - I absolutely adore sweets. Though I don’t have that much confectionary…… I love ‘Pie no Mi’! (chocolate-filled puffy pies) When I go to the konbini (convinience stores, much like the 24x7 departmental stores), I more or less end up buying it. That’s because I love anything that is a ‘pie’. Well, besides breasts, that is……(laughs). Well, that was a joke. Whether it’s a pie, or a Mille-Feuille, I like things which are lightly piled one atop the other.

----Pies have this, texture. Well, even if you like womens’ those, lets keep it at that and move ahead (laughs).

Aoi - (laughs) Definitely. Also, I like Baumkuchen too.

Uruha - Those are delicacies, if one has them, aren’t they…… In any case, I like stuff like popcorn. I have salty snacks too, like ‘Nori Shio’ (flavoured, salty potato snack).

----If it’s potato chips, then it’s ‘Nori Shio’.

Aoi - Ah! I had that, it said ‘Premium Nori Shio’, and that they were well flavoured.

Uruha - It’s absolutely delicious, isn’t it!?

Aoi - Hmm…… I was thinking on the lines of “Aren’t they like the regular ones?’……

Uruha - (laughs) Seriously? They’re different! I think they have a wonderful flavour……

Aoi - The salt is good, isn’t it?

Uruha - The salt is good, as well as the seasoning with the oil, then the thickness……

Aoi - That’s detailed…… I like Consomme.

----As such, do you go into the minor details of food?

Aoi - These days, I do, comparatively speaking. The catering services have always been there, and I’ve been going for meals with the staff recently. Though I’ve never been one to eat too much, recently I’ve been having a lot of the traditional sumo stew.

Uruha - I like stew too. The Korean style. Whatever one says, in the end, doesn’t stew go the best with drinks?

Aoi - It’s good, isn’t it~

Uruha - One can add vegetables to it, and one can also have it with fish. I like it spicy.

----Aoi, do you like spicy stuff?

Aoi - I don’t really enjoy it. There are those confectionaries with pepper in them. Uruha keeps having them and going “Spicy~!” at the same time. And I keep thinking how it would be better if he could just stop having them……

Uruha - (laughs) Is that so……

Aoi - He keeps yelling with an absolutely delighted face. As if something being that spicy is a good thing.

Uruha - I don’t exactly think it’s good…… But just the thought of giving it up makes me spread out my hands (laughs).

Aoi - Aren’t you the masochist when it comes to spicyness (laughs).

----Like loving till it hurts (laughs). Do you cook yourself?

Aoi - Not really~

Uruha - I, end up making stew. Or curry.

----Ah! Do you have something like your own recipe?

Uruha - It’s normal……(laughs). Just according to what is written behind the box, it’s quite ordinary. As for curry, aren’t there times when one feels “I want to have curry no matter what!” I cook it myself at those times, and I feel it tastes delicious (laughs).

Aoi - But curry is something one can’t really be bad at. If one spoils even curry, then that’s awfully……

Uruha - Hm. But stew is extremely difficult. When one adds the vegetables they loose moisture, and the taste gets too light, those adjustments, you know.

----Aoi, you don’t cook by yourself all that much, right? So what do you do in the middle of the night when you can’t call for home delivery services? At times when you just have to do something by yourself?

Aoi - I don’t eat! I’m more or less okay even if I don’t have anything for an entire day.

----Eh? Don’t you have any desire for food to begin with?

Aoi - No. I do feel like eating, but if it’s troublesome, then it wins over the desire……

Uruha - Doesn’t that basically mean that you don’t have an appetite for food?

----Incidentally, is there something you want to eat right now? If you were told that you could eat anything today, what would you go in for?

Aoi - Horumonyaki! (dish made of pork or beef, typical to the Kansai region)

----Here comes the strong stuff! Just as we were talking about the lack of appetite (laughs).

Aoi - It’s been my favourite, recently. Once I have good horumonyaki, I feel like having it again…… The intestines are really delicious!

Uruha - Aah! Whichever part it might be…… It’s delicious!

----You like stew quite a lot, don’t you? (laughs)

Uruha - Yes(laughs). Light, fatty pork is good, isn’t it? Doesn’t it pull? And if there is Highball (a mix of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks) to go with it, I’m……

Aoi - Wah, stop it…… I’m so having Horumonyaki again!

----After this interview is over, see if you can request the staff to get it for you (laughs). Right then, over to the last theme, ‘shelter’. How is the ambience of your home at the moment?

Uruha - Mine is unfaced concrete.

Aoi - The same.

Uruha - I did get involved in the interiors, and checked a few things…… I felt that something, somewhere was a little mismatched. People who do (get involved in) those things, do so, don’t they. But I did (the interiors) a bit, and it didn’t resonate with me at all, so I figured I simply had no interest in it.

----Isn’t it fun to be a little particular about the furniture, decorative pieces etc.?

Uruha - With all the bans and rules about mansions, is not being able to do much something to be sad about?......

Aoi - Instead, due to that, one even loses the will to place anything anywhere. Even in the living room at my place, there is nothing except the television, sofa and the table.

Uruha - Basically, one can’t really do much, if it’s a mansion. That’s why, (one wonders things like) what about the future…… I want a fireplace in my home, you know.

----It’s like a home in a snow-country, isn’t it (laughs).

Uruha - Being surrounded by the (heat of the) fire, sipping a Highball (laughs).

Aoi - If you want to be surrounded, you’ll have to re-stock it at midnight. Won’t the fire burn out?

Uruha - Aah. Is the fireplace the extreme end? Isn’t the wall there?

Aoi - Well, in case of the Japanese styled one?

----Is it the irori? (Japanese fireplaces, normally a square shaped area set in the floor in the centre of the room.)

Aoi - That is good! I want a room with an irori.

Uruha - It’s good~. I just want some fire, somehow (laughs). My friends from my hometown have it in their homes for certain. And more than a Japanese feel, it gives the place a designed air.

Aoi - Isn’t that because it’s warm? But a heater’s heat is different, it’s just a replacement to fire.

----Aoi, does your present home also not have many things in it?

Aoi - There aren’t. It’ll be the same, even in the future, when I build my own house. I want wide, non-partitioned rooms, with comparatively nothing in them.

Uruha - Aah. Your earlier living quarters were the same, weren’t they? It was totally non-partitioned.

Aoi - Hm. It stretched right from the kitchen to the living room, and seemed like a real big room. I don’t quite like rooms with a cramped feeling to them. I used to live in a 4 1/2-tatami (around 9ft x 9ft) room in the past so I guess this is in retaliation to that.

----In the old days, when you were still living in your own house, what did your room look like? Has it been simple since those days itself?

Aoi - Aah. In the old times, I used to do stuff like paste posters. There used to be band stuff. I’d zealously put up the stuff one got from buying CDs…… I can’t even think about it now (laughs).

----What was your poster-experience like? (laughs)

Aoi - There were posters of bikes when I was really small. After I grew up there were surfing posters and stuff. The television celebrities……

----Something like Metallica?

Aoi - (laughs) Even Metallica wasn’t there. Not even stuff of the television celebrities or musicians.

----Whichever way your interest lay, isn’t it?

Aoi - Yeah. Like trying and decorating my surfboard. Even now, if I return home, my surfboard stays standing against that wall, you know.

----Do you go surfing even now?

Aoi - I don’t! It’s cold…… (laughs).

----(laughs) At your present houses, what does your music-spot look like? The music-making room.

Aoi - Doesn’t it look more or less, ordinary?

Uruha - Hm. There’s the laptop and the keyboard is kept in front of it. Then there are the guitars and the effector lined up……

----So, the ideas for songs take shape as you tinker around, surrounded by all the equipment.

Uruha - Ah, no…… Well, largely, that is how it is, but for me, it’s impossible to manufacture songs this way, from something. Strumming the guitar right at the beginning doesn’t work for me. Something needs to really catch my attention first.

----Eh. As in, your vision doesn’t broaden (idea doesn’t develop) just by strumming the guitar?

Uruha - Yes. Once the initial shape of the song is in my head, I guess I’m totally like this (slumps in his seat with his head hanging). If it gets too cold there, I shift to my bed and go to sleep…... Then, if I go “Ah!”, I return and give it a proper structure. That sort of feeling. I don’t really work in the beginning (laughs).

----At the initial stages, it doesn’t work unless you’re inert somehow, does it? (laughs)

Uruha - That’s right. Sort of as if I’m mostly just sleeping (laughs).

----How about Aoi, as regards to Uruha’s way?

Aoi - It doesn’t work for me unless I play (the song) instantly. Unless I immediately play something that I’ve thought of just once, on the guitar, I can’t give it any shape. Then I save it in the laptop and then delete it, save it and delete it…… I go with that sort of concise method of creating.

----As in, you’re constantly strumming the guitar. Your method is a little different from Uruha’s, isn’t it?

Uruha - It is, isn’t it? I save them in my mobile phone. There are parts which suddenly strike me as being potenially good for an Intro, and I go, ‘Alright, the part starting from there’…… I tend to end up forgetting stuff, so I shovel it all in my phone. If there is a rhythm which I feel I never want to forget, I promptly speak it out myself.

----Like ~tatatata—n~…… As in, expressing the rhythm through imitation (of the guitar). As if listening to it to see what it feels like (laughs).

Uruha - It sounds absolutely horrible, you know (laughs). Well, that’s how I work and save it…… After I bring together the parts that I feel would sound good as one, I sort of shape out around one piece of chorus. And then, it’s over to his (Aoi’s) place during the pre-production.

----We talked about the exhaustive amount of equipment in an earlier interview too. If I’m not mistaken, Kai said, “Aoi, learn a bit by observing your house.”

Aoi - No no no. Of course, everybody keeps putting in all sorts of software, but…… What he meant was simply that my house gets used just like a studio.

Uruha - But that’s because there’s HD (HD is a well-known music-making software, and is (rated under) high-specification) loaded in it. Since there already is someone with such a computer, I end up feeling that it’s alright even if I don’t work all that much. Why do I have such a low-specification computer? (laughs)

----So, the Gazette’s pre-production takes place at Aoi’s house with everybody gathered there.

Aoi - Yes. He (Uruha) would never visit my place. Even if I called him, he wouldn’t oblige……

Uruha - (laughs) That’s because even if you called, I had no choice!

Aoi - Even if he’s asked “Come over today?”…… He goes ‘I can’t come once I’ve gotten into the ofuro (Japanese-style bathtub)’, or, on the contrary, ‘I feel gloomy’.

----For the beautiful body…… What would he go to your place for anyway? (laughs)

Uruha - (laughs) So keeping that in mind, Aoi rather quickly introduced us all to the high-specification system, and now everybody gathers at his place for working.

Aoi - 5 people, and the staff if they come over, in a small room, is a little beyond this, you know……(laughs)

Uruha - Aoi sits before the computer, and all of us surround him (laughs). Amid “Yes” and “Data”, the pre-production first takes place in Aoi’s living room.

Aoi - Hm. But it’s bad if the sound spreads around.

Uruha - It echoes off, doesn’t it. Creating in a living room is a fairly unique feeling. With that staircase being there……

Aoi - And with the ceiling being so high.

----Going by what you just said, it’s a spacious room, isn’t it? It isn’t stifling and seems comfortable.

Aoi - Yes. But it’s more or less lonely (laughs). There’s no one but me……

----At such times, wouldn’t it be nice to call the members over? (laughs)

Aoi - Nooo…… I’m incapable of being a good host, even if I call them over. Neither do I have the ingredients for food, nor do I have packs of beer. Even when everybody comes over for work, they have to go themselves to buy tea. That’s where a day starts from.

Uruha - (laughs) Hey, didn’t you buy it?

Aoi - I bought the paper cups too (laughs).

----(laughs) How kind! But despite such dismal feelings, the GazettE’s songs have been coming along. Even now, you must be right in the middle of making songs, isn't it?

Aoi - Well well, little by little, sort of…… We’ve only made it to the stage of arranging as of yet.

Uruha - But you know, they're quite good songs! How do I put it…… The one we’re making right now, is like a royal detour in a typical the GazettE style. There’s definitely this directness, of the sort we haven’t really executed recently. I think it’s going to turn out into a straightforward, upbeat song.

----I’ll be waiting for it with all eagerness!

Ducky's Notes :
1. There are two more pages of their personal interviews, one of each. I'll try to post them by next weekend :D
2. Uhm, when Aoi talks about *coughbreastscough*, well, he was talking about 'pies', and the japanese term for breasts is 'oppai', which rhymes with 'pie', so as you can see, like he said, he was, er, joking ;P
3. Being a capricornian myself, i totally understand Aoi's loneliness :(  Aww, poor thing, lemme hug yuu!!
 4. *clears throat* Some protocol now --> [Scans from gazette_daily at LiveJournal, put up by rawkstarr23] Much thanks!!!!