5 times; ft. Nino and a way to be.
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EDIT:
Hello hello, thank you for reading this far. I am going to do an appendix thing and explain everything I alluded to in this story! Please bear with me, I am only trying to spread the Arashi love!
So here we go:
1. In spring 2002, Aiba suffered from a collapsed lung in the middle of practice for Nice na Kokoroiki. He wasn't able to film what he wanted for the Here We Go! album's "all or nothing level up" as a result, I think he wanted to play the saxophone. He spent a while in the hospital and spent a lot of time thinking about his band members and wrote a very heartfelt letter to them, which he read aloud when they hosted 24-hour TV in 2004. When he was reading it, all the other members were crying, except Nino, although if you look closely I think he was bravely fighting back the tears (ducking his head a bit, lowered eyelids, etc). More information about Aiba's pneumothorax here (number 12).
2. Ohno has been busy filming his new drama Maou (which premiered July 4 2008) and I guess has not had anything to each since filming started or something because the boy is damn thin these days. On a recent episode of Himitsu no Arashi-chan (the calorie counting one, I don't know the episode number, sorry!) they revealed that he currently weighed 40 kg (that's about 88 pounds w-wtf) and Nino immediately quipped that he was starting to look like a plasma TV because he was so thin. He talks about fishing because it's a hobby of his to the extreme - he will go fishing and forget to sleep. And he's talking about Nino being a magician because Nino has been really into magic tricks lately since a previous episode of Himitsu no Arashi-chan and he must be pretty decent at it because I think he actually gets invited to perform at places? Can't remember where I read this though...
3. During one of their How's it Going concerts, it was Matsujun's 20th birthday. Arashi formed a group called the A-friends who would do some sort of celebration thing every time a member turned 20, and Jun as the youngest, was last. Nino wrote him a song and made him a CD. In the CD booklet, there are pictures of all the members wearing fake breasts; this is the marking of true friends, seriously. You can see the A-friends preparing for it here (it's after all the cracked out insanity). Also, Jun plays a big part in their concert organization so that's why he's fussing over the performance schedule. ALSO, Nino used to film segments for their show G no Arashi called Ni No Arashi, where he would prank the other members, and he totally did it during a concert once, and the whole audience participated. I'm not sure if the timeline works, ie. was G no Arashi before/after Jun turned 20? I'm reasonably sure it was after. I think. (Were Pikanchi Double and Rock You even out at that time? Haha... I got sloppy.) PS. Jun always works too hard and the other members totally know it.
EDIT'S EDIT: zheinpathos kindly corrected me: G no Arashi, Rock You, and Pikanchi Double happened after Jun turned 20 sooooo... well. Well I don't know, just go with it? I'm sorry! ;_____; m-maybe I should've done some research before I wrote them in, ack. Also I was mistaken about the time Nino spent in Hollywood, it was actually one month, not four. That has been corrected in the actual fic. Thanks zheinpathos!
HOLY SHIT ANOTHER EDIT: Guys. It was D no Arashi. omg am i failure as a fan or what
4. So recently, while rehearsing for their Dream A Live concert in Nagoya Dome, Sho had an accident and fell off the stage. He was quite hurt and broke his right thumb. He was taken to the hospital and seems to be recovering extremely well. His wrist guard is skin coloured so it's hard to even notice there's something wrong with it. I read online that Nino was the one who saw Sho fall and rode to the hospital with him and stayed there overnight. The scene the story takes place in is their game show VS Arashi, where it's an ongoing joke about how Sho sucks at everything and members often express worry about if he can win or not.
5. Well if you don't know about this please get out of my sight and don't come back until you do. Or, you can read this: so Nino played a lead role in Clint Eastwood's 2006 war film Letters From Iwo Jima, which is a companion piece to Flags of our Fathers, but from the Japanese perspective. He went to America to shoot it and as a result, for a length of time, Arashi was only four people. For appearances on Utaban and stuff, they brought along a life-size cardboard cut out of Nino as a substitute (I need to find a picture to link to because it's pretty hilarious). As a side note, I really enjoyed the film and Nino was fantastic, his talent really shines when he's not playing some high school kid as he seems to do in many of his dramas. Also I think he wrote Fight Song to serve as encouragement for both himself and the other members during his absence? (Where did I read this... can't remember... ack.)
6. For Arashi's 5th anniversary, Nino wrote a song called Sketch in appreciation of Arashi's fans. Sho helped out too with the lyrics! I think 500 limited edition CDs were handed out in some concert some time, so lucky people who got one!
Okay so there it is. IS MY OBSESSION SHOWING YET??
A: VERY YES.
Anyway so if there was any confusion I hope this helped!!