Photobook Interview with Hey Say 7

Credits to: http://community.livejournal.com/itsu_made_mo/

Yamada Ryosuke
The piece that I liked the most during the concert was “Asia no Yoru.”(Asia’s Night) But, I’ve played that song over and over again in the last concerts and butais (plays) so inside me, it’s been a little bit overplayed. I thought that if I had just sung it, the fans would be tired of the song… so I added a vigorous dance to it! One point about my costume for my solo piece that I really cared about is the fact that I put magic tape over the places where the button was supposed to be on my collared shirt. It was so that I could change quickly into it, and also so that I could quickly take it off <3. It was my idea to take off my clothes during the solo. The way that I took off my clothes depends on how I’m feeling that… I think. If there’s more fans yelling, then definitely I’ll take off more clothes♪I’m very happy that the fans are excited just by me taking off my clothes. Because at home, after I take a bath and I’m walking around the house with nothing but shorts, nobody says, “Kyaa~!” My mom just says, “You’ll get a cold so wear something” and that ends (laughs). I’m very happy that people get excited just by watching my uncool body. (According to my electric dictionary, “dasai” actually means tasteless/crude/hick/unfashionable. But I think cool will do.) If everybody can get happy, then I’ll take off however much clothes I need to <3.
I often play the card game millionaire with the other members in the hotel rooms, and we all get very excited about that. (I had no idea what the millionaire card game was so I researched it. Basically, you want to get rid of your cards the fastest. You pass out the cards to all the members, until the cards are all gone. Then, the first person puts down a card. The second person must put a ‘stronger’ card down than the first person. The strongest card is the joker, then 2,1,13,12,11,10,9,8,7,6,0,5,4 and 3 is the weakest. If players don’t have a stronger card, or they just don’t want to put down a card, they can pass however many times they want to. The person who’s cards are gone the fastest is the winner. )Playing cards comes with a batsu game (punishment), and if you lose, then you have to keep on doing gags until you make everybody laugh. It’s pretty hard-. I don’t really know the rules of millionaire in the first place, and even when I think I had a strong card and I have a lot of confidence in myself, the other members say, “You can’t put that card down!”… I risked my body and did the batsu game. What I did is a secret, because it was very embarrassing (laughs).
I practice my back flips during the time I had in the tour. Now that I think about it, I wasn’t really in the back room a lot. If I normally live, there’s not a lot of space that people can practice their back flips, so I used the wide stages that we used throughout the tour to practice♪. Thanks to that, I could only do one at a time at the beginning of the tour, but now I can do a lot in the row! But, when I don’t practice a lot on my back flips, I slowly couldn’t do them all in a row and I got very depressed… Even now, I can’t do them (laughs). When the winter all-country tour starts, I’ll re-practice them.



Yuto Nakajima
My best memory of this time’s tour is the fact that I got to celebrate my birthday twice! The first time was at the Fukuoka concert, and when the MC started, the fans all started singing, “Happy Birthday to you-“… I reaaally didn’t know anything, so I was reaaally surprised, and I was reaaally happy, and although I was a little bit embarrassed, I cried (laughs). At the Sapporo concert, my birthday had already passed so I assumed that nothing would happen, but they sang again… It was the first time in my life that such a humongous amount of people wished me happy birthday. Thanks to that, it was one unforgettable birthday! Everybody~, thank you~!!
My solo corner, at first, wasn’t supposed to do it with Chinen. But, when I was choosing the songs and “You&You” came up, both me and Chinen liked it. On top of that, the first time I heard that song, the image of me and Chinen dancing came up. So I asked Chinen, “Do you want to do it with me?” and he accepted. During the song, I challenged a new type of tap dancing. There’s this part where there’s tiny little steps while turning, and the speed is so fast that if you look from far away, it just looks like I’m just spinning (laughs). In this song, Chinen also challenged tap. Although Chinen has this image of being amazing at dancing and acrobatics, and also amazing at sports, but he’s actually not that good at tap dancing. It was really rare to see that side of him, and it was somewhat cute ♪. Okay, I have to intrude. EVERYTHING Chinen does according to Yuto is cute period.
After the concert, I realized how thankful I am towards the fans. They all had to pay not only the ticket fee, but also transportation fees and possibly even hotel fees. I was really glad, and I wanted all of them to go home with the best memories, so I made sure I went as close to the fans as possible. Oh, but once I did go close to them, and somebody said, “Imitate Tamu (dog)!”, and I really fretted then! Well, I did say, “Wan wan!” but they laughed and I was so embarrassed… Of course, singing my heart out and dancing vigorously is very important. Because of that, I ran a lot during the concert, and danced a lot. I want people to know me as JUMP. I will work hard so that when people say Nakajima Yuto, they also think about JUMP!








Chinen Yuuri
During the tour, the card game, “Millionaire” was a huge hit! The people who were really into it were me, Daichan, Keito, Hikaru-kun, and Ryutaro. Ryutaro was so weak that it was funny, and every time he lost. When the game is over, the loser has to show his card to everybody, and Ryutaro shows is strong cards as if he’s saying, “I’m not going to lose this time.” While he’s glorifying over his cards, the game ends (laughs). I’m pretty strong at that game ♪To win this card game, it’s important that you have quick reactions and instinct! Even in the hotels, we were all playing cards. There was even one time when we were all so concentrated in playing cards that we fell asleep while playing. It was very fun!
To me, the concert is like a festival. We sing, dance and meet the fans… there’s no other time when we’re as happy than when we do all those things! First thing we do when we go up on stage is to fully enjoy everything with our hearts. When we laugh and smile and have fun, we think that our feelings can expel to the fans. Oppositely, there are a lot of times when we get energy from the fans. Like the JUMP call. Right before the start of the concert, we all listen to everybody’s voices and wait below the stage. When I hear our voices being shouted, I get extremely excited! I always feel as if the fans are pushing my back during that moment when we appear on stage. At the Fukuoka concert, there was a JUMP call 40 minutes before the start of the concert and we were all surprised. All your voices were heard in the back room ♪
I hope to change something about myself so that the fans can enjoy a different part of me. For example, in this time’s tour, I did a duet with Yuto-kun called “YOU & YOU” I challenged tap dancing, which I’m pretty bad at. I tried tap dancing during “SUMARRY” but I could never get it right… I’ve always felt as if my feet would get tangled (laughs). It took a lot of time memorizing the dance, but whenever I was in trouble, Yuto-kun helped me so practices went smoothly! I think that me and Yuto-kun makes a pretty good combination in this song.
I feel it even more now that I’m doing a lot of things solo, so being with JUMP makes me calm. Different from friends or family, knowing that you have people at your side is the happiest feeling in the world. With the 10 of us, I want us to be stronger than ever before. I want to be big as Arashi, my admired group, so that we can have concerts at the Kokuritsu! Wait for us, Kokuritsu~!






Morimoto Ryutaro
Even before the concert started, I’ve always wanted to have a performance with a stick. It just looks really cool. Yamachan had done a performance with a stick once so I asked him about it. Then he said, “The dance is pretty difficult.” Since I’m that type who hates to lose, I’ve wanted to challenge the stick even more after he said that to me (laughs). Because I want to become better at dance. I have to overcome all the challenges! Overall, in the actual performance, I did a dance with a song called “DANCE” using a stick. As the title suggests, it’s all dancing and no singing at all. Takaki-kun asked me, “You should sing,” but I felt that singing was too fast for me. Right now, my body is extremely energetic so rather than singing, I want to use all my energy on dancing. At the very end of this song, I look at the camera and say, “Everybody~, I love you~ <3” This was, oh lord, so embarrassing! I’ve never said that before, and everybody’s watching, and my face takes up the entire screen at the front of the dome… But I was very happy that I got to dance a lot ♪But the solo was full of embarrassing moments… I think
The thing I’m always excited for during tours is that the catering is different each time we go to a different place. Within the members, I’m on the side that eats a lot. If I didn’t have anything to do, the only thing I would do is to look through the catering room (laughs). The one thing I remember the most is the chicken fries at Hokkaido. That moment when you eat the chicken fry, you can hear the crunch! It was the first time that I’ve eaten such good chicken fry ♪ After I eaten, I would usually play games and be really lazy. Then 30 minutes before the start of the concert, the fans would say, “JUMP, JUMP” and do the JUMP call and that’s what I wake up with. When I hear that voice, I think, “I don’t have time to play around!” and get extremely nervous and I go under the stage really quickly.
My goal for now on is to become as funny and to be able to talk like Hikaru-kun! During the MC, I can’t keep with everybody’s talking speed, so I couldn’t find the right time to talk. And it happens all the time too. I want to be able to talk more normally. I plan to talk a lot more in the upcoming concerts and strengthening my talking abilities, so please watch out for that ☆








Okamoto Keito
It was really fun touring the different places in about a month and a half, and time passed by really quickly. I usually don’t go on vacations, so to me, this tour was like a vacation and it made great summer vacation memories. Out of the memories, Osaka made a big impression on me. Whether it’s at the hotel or at the concert dome, everybody was speaking in Kansai-ben (an Osakan dialect) and that dialect was really fresh and I was really happy. When I was listening to them, the Osakan dialect somehow slipped into our conversation too (laughs). The fans were all really funny and we all got excited a lot. But the hurdle for making them laugh was quite high. (Osakan people/ western Japanese people are known for their funny comedians, hence it is harder to make Osakans laugh then Tokyo-ians) During the MC we said the same joke that we told the other fans in other different places and they laughed, but not the Osakans… and there were a lot of times when that happened. Kansai’s wall was pretty thick! (He means that it was hard to make them laugh.)
This time, my solo song was called “Babylon –babyylon-“ and it was originally supposed to be the BGM that connected the circus scene with “Hayakuchi Bugi.” (I’m not really sure what this Hayakuchi Bugi is… BGM= Back Ground Music.) At first, I was supposed to say, “Welcome to the Hey! Say! Circus” in English, but I really wanted to sing~. Then, adding lyrics to the BGM became “Babylon.” We can only meet the fans during concerts, so I wanted to have a fun time with them and I wanted to return all the fan’s cheers to them. But when they said, “Do a backflip,” I couldn’t do it. Sorry. I was on this really thin stage, and it was like, “I want to do it, but it’s definitely too dangerous to do it here…” So instead, during the encore I did a backflip on the main stage… did you guys notice?
After the concert was over, we’re all still really high so we did all sorts of crazy stuff in the hotel rooms. I spent a lot of time with Daichan, so we took pictures with us wearing shower caps, and making the loser of the card game Millionaire do one-time gags until he makes all of us laugh. But, originally Daichan and I don’t really make people laugh. So we never lose. And when Daichan did lose, I didn’t laugh for 20 minutes. It’s not like I was bullying him, but his face when he was trying to come up with the gags was really cute and I promised myself, “I won’t laugh yet.” In the end, Daican said, “Hizakozou!” and I laughed and it was over. (Not really sure what “hizakozou” means… Knee child? Wtf). He was just sticking his knee out, but it was somewhat funny. It seemed like a school excursion and it was really fun!