Dran

I'm Karen, or Dran to most. I'm one of a small number of Idol fans in Scotland - living on the east coast, just over the Forth from Edinburgh and Midlothian.

I got my introduction to Hello! Project back at the beginning of 2007 after stumbling upon an episode of Matthew's BestHit TV featuring Yoshizawa Hitomi. Actually, at the time I was looking for videos of singer hitomi, and didn't fully realise that it was a totally different person til a bit later. Of course, a lot of things were referenced in that show which I had no way of understanding, but I did learn one thing. This Yoshizawa Hitomi was a member of a pop group known as Morning Musume, and they appeared to have pretty catchy music (and cute girls), judging from the excerpt of the Go Girl ~ Koi no Victory ~ PV that I saw on the show. I looked them up, and became ever-increasingly in love with Hello! Project and (then) Yoshizawa Hitomi.

Then Yoshizawa graduated that May. I kept myself occupied watching old episodes of Utaban or Hello! Morning, but as those slowly began to dry up, I also started to lose interest on Yossy, who had done very little since her graduation.

Then in 2008 I was taken by storm by a new, fresh group known as Berryz Koubou, and member Sudou Maasa in particular.

Later that year I created my blog, Berryz Kyuuden, to talk about the latest news and releases, not just from Berryz, but from various Hello! Project groups and artists. The name, as you may have guessed, means Berryz Palace and is a direct reference to the Berryz Koubou 2007 Summer concert, titled Welcome! Berryz Kyuuden, which was my first ever Berryz concert, and, to this day, still one of my favourites.

At the end of the year, I then went on to create the Church of Maasa, a blog dedicated, as the name would have it, to Sudou Maasa. I still hold, and no-one has ever contested the claim, that this was the world's first H!P-centred religious movement, and followed a discussion on Hello! Online which led to the proclamation of the Church.
 

(Sampled from Berryz Kyuuden ~ About)