My letter to Ai-chin

My dear Readers, I have a nice thing to announce. Yesterday I sent a letter to Ai-chin in which I expressed my best admiration for her music, art and everything that she gives us. Writing this letter was a great adventure and a challenge for me, because I thought carefully what to write – and – how to write, since I decided to use only Japanese. Despite the fact that I’m a mere beginner relying only on myself and on the pile of language books which I have been collecting, I think that I did quite well with this task, at least I hope so. Maybe some of you, dear Readers who know Japanese well, will enlighten me about my mistakes :) Here is the letter. The mystery of correspondence keeps me away from translating it into English :P OK., OK., I’m just a little embarassed.

All in all, the letter is already sent. I only hope that if Ai reads it, she won’t be offended by my miserable language attempts or potential socio-cultural improprieties (hope that it isn’t so bad...). I tried to write using some ‘safe’ sentence structures, in order to retain the message, even if I wrote anything in a some unheard of dialect of Japanese. I remembered to refer to Ai as ‘Otsuka-san’ and not ‘Ai-chin’ or ‘anata’, even though Ai seems to be so friendly and close to her fans. Generally, writing this letter was a relatively difficult task, but also very rewarding and satisfying. I think that I did my best to write it correctly and neatly. With time and further studying, when reading this letter once again, I certainly will find some errors or awkward expressions which shouldn’t be there. But as for my current knowledge in Japanese, this is more less acceptable.

In addition to the letter, I included a picture of my own, which you can see on the right. This is the ‘Love Letter Tour’ doll whose story intermingled with the songs during the concert. I love those small cute scenes – both for their plot and the realisation. The beautiful classic animation and those girl’s big, sad blue eyes appealed to me immensely. Inspired by the show, I took a pencil and I started sketching... Finally I ended up with a picture finished with soft pastels which gave the beautiful depth of colour. The scan doesn’t look as good as in reality, but believe me that the colours are lovely. Definitely, it’s my best work ever, even though I know that it isn’t perfectly ideal, e.g. the fingers are weirdly drawn. I wish the picture was ideal... Anyway, despite its faults, I liked the picture so much that I decided to send it to Ai as a gift. She does her best in creating music, making me feel happy and relaxed everyday, so I wanted to let her know that I appreciated it with all my heart by sending her something precious to me. I felt a little bit sorry to put the pic into the envelope and send far away with no possibility of getting it back. Nevertheless, I’m happy that I sent the original version. Sending a print would be just wrong :P I wonder if Ai-chin will be able to see it at all...

And when it comes to that, I admit that I have doubts whether this letter will reach Ai at all. I didn’t mention about it, but in December I had sent my first letter to Otsuka – care of Avex Trax. I included an IRC with a stamp, so Avex wouldn’t pay a yen for sending me anything back. But in fact, they haven’t replied me yet and I haven’t received any return of my letter, but it’s been 6 months now and I almost lost all my hope for getting any reply. In cases like this, I tend to get very impatient and anxious, so waiting in vain for something I care for makes me irritated. That’s why I decided to sent the letter one more time, but somewhere else – to Tokyo FM, where Ai has her weekly radio programme ‘LIFE-LOVE CIRCLE’. Maybe it will result in getting Ai read my ‘love letter’ and send me her autograph or at least an original promotional photo; maybe it will be another waste of time, energy and money. There are 2 options: the probability of reaching Ai-chin is 50%, so I’m trying to be optimistic :) However, even if Ai never sends anything to anyone, but she reads the letters and my gift could make her happy for the fact that she has devoted fans in faraway Poland, that could be enough for me (provided that I know about it, of course).

When I think about it, having anything from Ai would be great... I was extremely excited when I got a photo with the autograph of Hugh Laurie alias Dr Gregory House (my most favourite fictional character ever ^^). I know that I would be even more exhilarated holding Ai’s original photo... It’s my dream and I hope it will be fulfilled :)