Thank you. :). I can understand his knee jerk reaction though. I didn't mean to be offensive, but just to make the point that it's interesting to me that the people who think there is a rift between her and mstay in general seem to be people that are either Japanese themselves or who have lived in the country for sometime. That says to me that there is some cultural element here that is not getting across well.

^ I wasnt making a knee jerk reaction. I was stating a fact. Which just goes to show that you cant make assumptions about anything.
You are right, im not there right now so i cant know whats going on at that level of things, but going by a cultural view point it would be more along the lines of her being banned if she wasnt on any show mainly because of the harmony kind of thing.
If anything, her going to other music shows makes MS look back because they havn't 'invited' her. Where as if Ayumi didn't have the time and her not being able to attend is a different matter altogether.

I think we'll never get any proof, i think we need something like a tweet or a message from ayu or MS, and we'll never going to get that IMO.

I still think there's a chance Ayu apologized by voluntarily not showing up anymore, in a way to punish herself, knowing that MS is one of the most popular music programs.

Normally I wouldn't think this, but my old dorm manager here, in a way to apologize to the school and self punish himself for the things that some students in the dorm were doing, shaved his head.

Obviously they're different actions, but similar in the sense that it's self punishing yourself.

But, who knows. If she was blacklisted, she kind of deserved it from the standpoint of the show. It's her job, she failed to make it back in time and didn't book plane tickets. I mean, she -knew- she had to be back in Japan at a certain time, why would her staff not have booked round trip tickets? Also, she doesn't need her entire staff with her. She needs what, her and a few body guards? She could have had body guards hired and waiting for her in Japan even. It's not like her band was with her. The entire situation was really strange.

No. Logically, they cannot omit an artist from a ranking that has been made public knowledge. And a television program will never purposely and blatantly make reference to a blacklisting - it's bad for business. Just another wonders of the world of Japanese entertainment.

@tokyoxjapanxfan that could be possible too. What makes me doubt it though is that she didn't admit any personal responsibility for missing the show.

They probably didn't know when they would be done with the shoots, so it's one way tickets usually? I'm pretty sure Ayu always goes over their scheduled timeframes when she comes to the USA, haha.

As for the staff members, she likely had all of her hair/make/costume/stylist/nail staffers with her in New York at the time as well.

Ayu is hardly busier now than she was during her peak...:thud

^ of course there is a difference between now and then. Also she has never really done something like this before.
5 releases in 5 months, the lives, CDL, traveling all around the world for who knows what.
its pretty busy.

If Arashi, Akb etc can find the time for music station, Ayu can too no matter what. :)

On the opposite end of things, I'm happy to see that larc will be on mssl even though they have nothing really to promote. I think this is maybe the third year now that they've done that. It's kind of rare for tv performances in this industry to perform just for the sake of performing.

Edit: Scratch that, turns out L'arc has a concert DVD coming out the next week, haha.

I am pretty sure she was busier when she was doing the A BEST promo than now. Just because she split one mini album into 2 EPs doesn't mean she worked more than when she's recording a regular album, considering she's done little to nothing to actually promote it and the upcoming compilation album...well I doubt she'll have much work to do...

Exactly.

whatever with MS, i'm still happy that she will appear on FNS, HEY3X and KOUHAKU!

only two mistakes, but then MS has already banned her is just..... OTL... oh well~~ just saying.

Well, I know it only sounds like two mistakes, but in the 20 year plus history of music station, there are only 3 times that I am aware of that someone has missed a performance and two of them were Ayumi. The other one was Tatu which was just hilarious. They were there for the shows opening and then up and left right in the middle of the show before they performed.

There may have been others, but I just don't recall, so if anyone else knows, please feel free to chime in.

^ why did they leave? o.O

^ As far as I know, no concrete reason was ever given. Maybe they weren't aware that the format of the show is you have to sit and watch all the other artists and got bored and left? lol.

Luckily there was an actual band performing on Mstay that week (I think thee michelle gun elephant?) so they, literally, filled in at the last minute and played a second song.

I know that at the end of the year FNS and kouhaku are the most popular music programs so I wonder if tv promo will be of any help in the future without MS (not at the end of the year)?

1 was already serious enough and she did it twice... wasn't 1 of the performance a theme / big event too?
It will cost the producer a lot of trouble to replace the timing as they try to drag the runtime. It wasn't as easy as you think it is...

:thud WOW that was beyond rude...

awwww I'm so excited I'll see ayu on tv in one hour!!!

too bad there is not MSta, because I loved her lives there