Does Ayumi know English?

[fantaisie.sign]

She came to New York I believe for vocal training. If you look at the extras on the LOVEppears 2nd disk, you can see pictures (?) of her visit to New York. I have the LOVEppears CD somewhere, but can't put it in right now because my drive is busy. Plus she came to the US to film the Daybreak PV and most recently INSPIRE.

Ayu's definitely not fluent, but she does know a few key English words like "Thank you," "I love you all," "Come on," "Okay," "Hello," etc. (see MTV Asia Awards "M" performance, tour performances where she talks to the audiences.) Hikki, of course, has no problems crossing over since she's exceptionally fluent in Japanese and in English.

Or you can look at it this way: Ayu is "fluent" in engrish, not English. (see Real me PV, Everywhere Nowhere, Dolls, forgiveness, LOVEppears commercial where she says "Hamasaki Ayumi. New ah-roo-bah-mooh. Love ah-peee-haaas.") But at least she tries.

By the way, check out the "Mr. and Mrs. Donut" commercials that are all in English. Ayu says "May I?" perfectly, "No" perfectly, "Thanks" perfectly (in the commercial where she is pretending to be a guy), but says "Sankyu" ("Thank you") with a horrible engrish accent. It's kinda cool to see her talking in 2 fully English conversations, even if the commercials are only 30 seconds long.

ETA: To my dear friend below, great minds think alike. Hehe.