Risa Watanabe: Sigh, sadly all good things must....

 

 .... come to an end but for today not talking about this blog! Of course it's about Risa's tenure with Keya and most of this spur of the moment post will be devoted to her departure though think she may be with the group for another week. Off the path for a few lines but if I was talking about this blog it is a good question on how much longer it will continue. It's been a decade and had no kind of plan when it began, just have been going with the flow. But do wonder about things five years from now, will I still be inspired to keep this up but perhaps more importantly how many faves will be left to post about? May not seem it but so many are in the 28-34 years old range so wouldn't think I could do posts for them five years from now. Not going to go into things like that today but as I was planning this post some of those thoughts popped into my head.

 Was going to work on a Keya group post instead of this one as I don't think we'll be hearing as much from them in a few weeks. But there will always be time to do those posts and decided who else these days do I prefer talking about? Risa of course and actually as I've mentioned a few times there's been no one over the last three years who I'd rather do a post for. Now that her Keya activities have for the most part come to an end that'll mean many less posts. But not for a while as there should be 3-4 more posts in June though they may not interest the casual fan. Do have Risa's farewell concert so would like to have a post or two for that and it was a long show as you would expect. Plus she was the focus of last week's 'Soko' show and hopefully last night's too so that could be a post or two also.

 Would also think there should be a few other random things coming up so in June there should be two pots in this vein and am also holding back a mag spread for one of them. So most but not all things for today will be for her graduation and first off are these blog pics from that final show. Keya's group blog is called 'Diary' if you want to visit there as she should be doing posts up until May 31st. Then it will be locked but open to read until June 30th when her section will be archived. Eight blog pics here from the second and then first generations.

 Risa will continue modeling for the Non-no magazine, besides that we'll just have to wait and see for hopefully other activities. These are some new pics from their site, they're with her mate Mizuho as both will be sharing a spread in their July issue.

 This set is from Non-no's June issue and am also holding on to one brand new spread.

 Seems Risa has done more activities in the past three months than she did in the last two years combined! Still have been able to have ten solo posts a year for her but wish this spurt had started much longer ago. She's really been making the rounds doing interviews for her Keya graduation and also for her 'Memorial' photobook that came out a week ago. This set of superb pics are from the Model Press site and the link to the interview: Model Press interview

 One more interview and also have the link to it which was with the Real Sound site. In this one she talked mainly about the photobook and she did come up with the theme to it plus I think did much of the designing which she said could be part of her future: Real Sound interview

 This is her fourth post in less than three weeks so obviously that meant not a slew of newish pics as we've hit the end. For the finale have some pics from the Keya group site which are from yesterday's graduation show and there were more of them. But as mentioned do have Risa's final concert so would rather talk about it in a pair of posts and there could be 200 screenshots between them! The two shows took place at the Yoyogi National Gymnasium Stadium in Shibuya and for the first time since the name change to Sakura they performed some old Keya tunes. Mainly the songs from the subunit Aozora to MARRY and those were honestly my top Keya songs. Will get more into more detail in those concert posts which will be done next month, few pics from the show and also the setlist. AEON is a Japanese credit card company which has had Keya cards for many years. The group has done too many videos for them to count and Risa had appeared in just about every group one. That's now come to an end with her graduation but AEON did just release a special video for her departure which has some new footage but also some older and you can view that after the pics.