Taiwan’s J-pop fans have been pampered over the past year with concerts by Japanese superstars such as Ayumi Hamasaki in November and Namie Amuro in June. Tomorrow, another heavyweight act in the form of pop crooner Ryuichi Kawamura takes to the mic.
A far cry from the glitz and glamour of Hamasaki and Amuro, Kawamura was the vocalist of famed glam rock band Luna Sea (月之海) from 1989 to 2000, before embarking on a successful solo career as a balladeer.
Mostly known in Taiwan for the theme song I For You from the Japanese TV series Kamisama, Mou Sukoshi Dake (神啊!請多給我一點時間) starring Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武) and Kyoko Fukada, Kawamura wowed fans with his smoldering voice and his matinee idol good looks.
Since the breakup of Luna Sea, Kawamura branched out to become a singer/songwriter/musician, actor and record producer. His solo debut album entitled Love sold 3 million copies, establishing him in 1997 as the best-selling male singer in Japan ever. As a songwriter/producer, he is hotly pursued by other acts such as Shizuka Kudo, Noriko Sakai and Hong Kong’s Kelly Chen (陳慧琳).
Kawamura’s last performance in Taiwan was with Luna Sea in November 2000. Tomorrow’s Ever Fadeless Melody gig
is Kawamura’s first solo concert here.
Apart from new material from his latest
album Piano, which was released in April,
he will perform classic hits including Love is …, Ne, - Only Love -, Julia and a solo
rendition of I For You. He will perform some songs a cappella.
In the J-pop world, populated with highly packaged music acts, Kawamura is a rarity who can boast that his live performances are better than his recorded work.
Ryuichi Kawamura Live in Taiwan 2009 Ever Fadeless Melody (河村隆一2009台灣演唱會永不褪色的旋律) is tomorrow at 7:30pm at Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall (國父紀念館), 505, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路四段505號). Tickets are NT$900 toNT$3,600, available through ERA ticketing or online at www.ticket.com.tw. On the Net: www.kawamura-fc.com.
Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire, says our gut is a “complex machine.” “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” Verma says. “In a general gastroenterology clinic, the most common conditions we see are irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastroesophageal reflux disease, inflammatory bowel disease and constipation,” says Nisha
The arithmetic is straightforward and uncomfortable. By the end of 2025, Taiwan had committed itself to a 50-30-20 electricity mix — half natural gas, 30 per cent coal, 20 per cent renewables. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’s (MOEA) own monthly energy reports tell a different story. Natural gas reached 47.8 per cent of generation last year. Coal stood at 35.4 per cent, comfortably above its target ceiling. Renewables came in at 13.1 per cent, well short of the 20 per cent Taipei had pledged a decade earlier. Installed renewable capacity reached roughly half of the 12 gigawatts (GW) the government
Last week US President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether he would speak on the phone to the President of Taiwan. “l’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody. We have that situation very well in hand,” Trump said. This marked the second time in a couple of weeks he had said he would talk to the President of Taiwan. In 2016 he famously took a call from then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), when he was president-elect. Despite warnings that the apocalypse was nigh because of a phone call, the world quickly forgot about the conversation between two democratically-elected presidents.
May 25 to May 31 Few believed that apples could be cultivated on a commercial scale in Taiwan’s high mountains. When horticulturalist Cheng Chao-hsiung (程兆熊) first proposed the idea in 1955, both American and Taiwanese colleagues dismissed it as implausible, arguing that temperate fruit could not be reliably grown on a subtropical island, especially on rugged terrain. However, it was this terrain in the Central Mountain Range where many Chinese Civil War veterans were resettled in the late 1950s. With limited job prospects and no family in Taiwan, they were placed on cooperative farms aimed toward self-sufficiency. Some say the conditions
RSS