New album titled 'MADE IN JAPAN'

[Zeke.]

I think also, singles provide for the opportunity to deliver a concept. A mini "world" and environment can be fleshed out from the songs and turned into a visual spectacle. It allows for a bit of extravagance, and the world of Hamasaki Ayumi seems much larger and expansive when you look back on a year and see all the different places she took you with her paintings of works. It's like the door opens every 3 months and it's a new place to explore, a new vision to be seen. I miss that feeling of waiting for the door to open again, and the curiosity as to what we will be shown this time. As the release date gree closer, we'd all have our ears pressed to that door. We'd begin to hear muffled sounds (snippets, CM spots) - processing the tease of what's to come. That's how I remember it.

It happens once a year now, and it seems to close faster than ever before. Also, it rarely feels like a world at all anymore. It's like a closet door with creaky floorboards and cobwebs. You can tell someone made an effort to clean it up; there are finger trails left in the piles of accumulated dust - but you always feel like more of an effort could have been made to really make that room shine. And you think to yourself "ah, I guess this is how it is now," and you try to accept the fact. But, when you leave that room, and after the door shuts once more, you can't help but wonder if when the next time it opens, what it would be like to see the room completely luminous again.