All The Best, Byunghun-ssi

LBH on Tokyo FM 16/12, audio clip courtesy PlanetBH0712

Our utmost gratitude to Jiji at EverythingLBH for this wonderful and very heartwarming translation.

LBH in Akimoto Yasushi’s Tokyo FM radio show on December 16, 2007

Akimoto: Tonight we invite Mr LBH here on my radio program. The interpreter is Ms Nemoto Rie. After the concert of Arena Tour, he joined our program on Nov 25.

LBH: I have just finished the show. I have only one more stage to go. Today, I also commented after the performance that I’d been worried if I would be able to accomplish such long and hard days. But I feel like the time has passed so fast. There are some new discoveries today and many things I have gotten throughout these stages. I guess I would be able to realize some other things later, maybe after awhile, but one thing for sure is that I can realize at this moment I gained the power and confidence after I have done this work..

Akimoto: At first, I met Mr LBH in S Korea and also we had some other meetings in Hong Kong. I imagined that Mr LBH, probably thought and wanted to say like…“What? Should I do this?” When I first handed out the planning form, what did you feel?

LBH: At first I thought you were kidding me. Lol
I thought it got to be a joke.. (laughs)
I thought maybe Mr Akimoto gave me the plan to make me surprise. Mr Akimoto sometimes makes me surprise and feel uneasy. But as a series of the whole process has passed, I slowly realized what his real intention was. I’d also realize that his intention was that he wanted to let me feel new emotions through the new experiences, etc.. and I always feel he really made me discover various things. After a while, I may feel more new things, I wanted to show my real personality that I often does not show in the movies/dramas.

Akimoto: For those who could not see the show, I would like to explain about the content of the show. At first, LBH ssi comes out to the stage dancing and then there are some performances such as cooking, a Korean fictitious show and LBH, himself is a MC of the show, and LBH asking another person played by himself some interviews; “Do you have a gf?” “Why don’t you get married?” etc. The questions are to draw LBH’s true colors. After those games, he reads poems and plays piano that he had been practicing for a long time. Also there is the original music in “Nuovo Cinema Paradiso”, and a song composed especially for this Arena Tour which he sang, at the ending, as well as a short video of the tour. One thing that I believed was that he is a genuine actor. Last year, at the Tokyo Dome, I saw him reading a drama, and there is a video on the screen, even there were only those two performances, he made the audience burst into tears. In short, since he has a genuine talent as an actor, I believed for sure that he is someone who would be able to do anything.

LBH: This time, I had to do this work tooth and nail. There is dancing, and I hesitated at first but then I had a second thought that maybe once in a while it is ok to challenge such a mischief(?). I usually don’t show these kind of facets to unknown ppl. I mean there are several characteristics that you rarely show in public but you would naturally show to your sister or your mother, something that you cannot show because it is very embarrassing. But I thought well.. ok I can show my real personality to the fans.. well, I had nothing to hide or hesitate as there is nothing to be scared of. So I kind of changed my way of thinking completely.

LBH: But one day, I happened to see a TV, there was a video of my stage.. I thought hey.. it was only for my fans.. not for TV…

Note: stage = the Arena Tour concert

Akimoto: The theme of the concert this time is “to show Mr LBH’s true face” but what I really wanted to show to the audience was “his sweat”. Usually I ask actors/musicians questions as “why do you want to do this concert?” So I asked Mr LBH when we first met. What he said was his objective is to meet fans in person and wanted to give the fans something as a gift which is priceless that’s really well-worth and that doesn’t come very often. In this sense, he wanted to put the value to the present as making effort, how much energy and time he has put before the concert is meaningful. It means that between the time of his movie filming, Mr LBH had also been practicing dancing, and playing the piano which were what he truly wanted to do.

LBH: On the occasion of the Arena tour, I have thought of many things. I imagined what is the main plan for the concert that they have in their mind including Mr Akimoto’s idea, my guess was this; Mr Akimoto and others were expecting how I would get through this mission, to make it work with hard effort. They probably wanted to show my real face through the struggles. Or I might make mistakes and get confused, probably Mr Akimoto wanted to see my struggling face, so I’ve started to think that I’ve got to do the perfect job.. (laughs) that I wanted to fail to live up to his expectations.. (meaning to show how he had struggled^^)

Akimoto: (Laughs) so you had such eagerness.