音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

fake KOKIA-zou was made by me ^^

The basic idea was born in the last week. Suddenly I wanted to create an English fansite for KOKIA for no reason. That day was April 29, the same as KOKIA's debut date, nice.

The very beginning would be in more months earlier. A friend of mine ever asked me one day.
- "You like KOKIA so much, do you want to make a fansite for her?"
- "A fan site? What would you like it to be? www.cyouwa-oto.net?"
I said this imaged domain name immediately, because she was the owner of the Yuki Kajiura fansite (that is, www.canta-per-me.net), that would be my parallel thinking (you see, both domains were named under a song title)… well, don't you think so? XD

However, at that time, I didn't yet have the desire to create a site: it needs time and energy. But, a few months later, that was, on April 29, I was like being spelt and got the strong desire of making one.

Of course, like I've said before, I know it needs time. I firstly searched online, after confirming that there were no any really active fansites available (based on first 3 pages of google search), the idea became one of my tasks.

Now, I want to talk about my thinking about KOKIA. I think I've talked about it for many times on this blog before about how I like her music, and my thoughts about them. But… have I ever written something more detailed about how I knew and fell in love with her?

I guess not, so let me say it here.

I knew KOKIA from her song "ありがとう(Arigatou)" in 2006 summer. I just liked that song and didn't think she's my favorite. Then, in the beginning of 2007, I listened her single "調和oto / 愛のメロディー (Cyouwa oto / Ai no Melody)", and thought "ah, this artist is very nice." Yet I still didn't consider her as one in my top artist list. I can't deny that at that time, I was a big fangirl of Yuki Kajiura, so I mainly paid more attention on Yuki Kajiura and related artists but KOKIA.

In 2008 February, I by chance listened to her new album "The VOICE". Although I still didn't think KOKIA was in my top list, I have already started to listen to that album once and once again (till now, this album is still in my top album list). I liked that album, and finally, I started to take more look at the artist: KOKIA.

I listened to almost all of her music during 2008; her rank in my artist list was increasing day by day. Yet my favorite artist was Yuki Kajiura.

I didn't think I would change my mind about my best artist at that time… but the fact told me, that I was wrong.

Yuki Kajiura's No.1 position kept until the end of last June. I watched KOKIA's Live in Paris in 2007 DVD. That was the FIRST time I cried because of listening to music. I myself didn't know the reason either: My heart was full of happiness from listening to her music, but tears were coming out uncontrollably. Why I was in tears? Even though I felt so happy!!

Later, I thought it should be her unique charm. The voice was so gentle and the melody was so warm. When you listen to her music, you would feel like that nothing was left out; everything was like being blessed to be in the eternal heaven.

After watched that concert, I started to play all her music in my library like crazy. According to the record of last.fm, I played her music more than 1000 times within one week, and I even didn't try Kalafina's new single because I just wanted to play KOKIA again and again. Also, thanks to my crazy playing, KOKIA made her top position in my artist rank. Finally, there was an artist beat my to-love-only-Yuki-Kajiura rule!

I still love Yuki Kajiura's music, but not as much as how I used to be anymore.

Start from zero was such a big effort, but I managed to organize all data I had since last week. Although there is still much of stuff being missing, I thought the current site was enough to be put in public.

The most interesting part was about writing the "decipher 'gematria'" post. It was impossible to decipher it if only based on data we already had. I even took three or more hours to write down the booklet lyrics and try to order each letter from the lyrics in the correct position… but, I gave up due to lack of data eventually. orz…

Anyways, since yesterday night, my fansite was finally available to all people around the world. I will do as much as possible to update the site and make it better. I will also try to translate more articles about her and her music. I don't know how I can do, but, because there is the love, I believe…

Everything is because of love.

Like what I said in last week, I was going to try baking a cheese cake.

I got the recipe from Diana's Desserts, and collected all materials needed. Then, in Saturday afternoon, I started.

Because of the experience of making petit fours in last week, I knew that I had to beat the mixture completely, if not, sugar would still be lumps but liquid. This time, all works of mixing and beating went well, and I was very satisfied with the "noisy" beating work.

However, the problem came. It said in the recipe that I needed to bake the cake in waterbath… I've never done it, and I didn't know anything about what and how. "Well, just give the temperature it requires and maybe it would be fine." I thought, and did.

And what I got was not like a real cheese cake. LOL

Only say the taste, it's not bad. It tasted like cheese, of course (it required 250g of cream cheese, gosh)! It got harden, but didn't become brown; the shape… it didn't look like fluffy, yet it just looked like a piece of cheese pudding, although it was harder than a pudding…

I searched afterwards for a more detailed recipe, and I got a better one. Finally, I knew what the so-called waterbath was. Seems I mustn't make a cheese cake without it. Fine, if I can find those waterbath required baking apparatus, I'll try it again.

Since I would not find them out currently (and I don't want to buy them), the next week, I think I would just try to bake petits fours again. ^^;

Everyone has the first time to do something. Now, let's see what happened during my first time to bake a cake.

I always wanted to try baking cakes; after my final, I found a recipe for making petits fours online randomly. Why petits fours? I've no idea too. Because "petits fours" was the first thing floated up in my mind. I guess, it's must because Akiko Shikata's music box album… hmm, who knows?

Anyways, as that recipe, I collected everything needed, and followed the instruction. However, I was a bit surprised by the "1 cup of sugar" – that's really a lot! Using the mixer was also interesting – that was my first time to use a mixer either, by the way. I didn't know that one would make so much noise. As the instruction, I made a bowl of thick mixture of egg white, sugar, flour, shortening, butter, vanilla exact, and milk. That smelled so nice – OMG!!

When I poured the mixture into the baking pan, the problem was out. The mixture was way too sticky, and thus, it's hard to get all of them into the pan at one time. I'd got to use a spoon to get the rest off from the bowl. This would be the reason for why the surface of my final baking stuff wasn't that flat. Also, later, when I cleaned my measure tools, I suddenly realized, I added too much vanilla extract! Only one teaspoon (tsp) was needed, yet I misread it and added one tablespoon (tbsp) of vanilla exact into my mixture. So, my cake was tooooooooo sweet, although totally that was not bad. x_x

The cake itself was not like the ones of the food mart. Mine tasted like that of lacking enough mixing. Because the whole cake was not very flat, after cutting it into small pieces, I thought it's not easy to coat them with jelly. As a result, since I've already prepared some dissolved jelly, I had to put it into refrigerators for making solid jelly… likewise, it was difficult to cover the cakes with cream… so I just kept mine without any garnish; yet I tried to write on the surface, but the icing "pen" was so hard to use! XD

Although I got only some fake petits fours, it had lots of fun. I wanna try again soon!!

↑my baked fake petits fours lol