Hello. I'm a HINOI Team fan and a Asuka Hinoi fan too. I'm a Japanese. I knew them through YouTube 1 year and 3 months later than the time when HINOI Team stopped their activity (in Feb. 2007). I was surprised by their excellence at singing and dancing, because they were not famous in Japan. And I knew that even Asuka as a solo singer couldn't release new single for 1 year. (She had come back to her solo career since that time.) Then I hoped that many people would come to know them. So, I began uploading their songs with translated lyrics in English. I hope all of you enjoy my videos of HINOI Team and Asuka Hinoi.

Some people ask me to send files of my videos of HINOI Team or Asuka. I don't accept such requests. Because the fundamental reason of their stopping activity was that their CD sales had been so bad, though a direct cause of it was Keika's withdrawal. (In Japan million seller CDs are not so rare. But each sale of HINOI Team's CDs was only some thousands except "Night of Fire" which a lot of Japanese people bought because of a famous comedian "Koriki Choshu" rather than HINOI Team.) I don't want to spread illegal files over the world and to diminish the sales.

You can buy CDs of HINOI Team or Asuka at reasonable prices through "YesAsia" (or through some stores in Amazon's "Market Place" [for example, "MUSICJAPAN"]). Or you can request iTune Store to distribute the songs of HINOI Team or Asuka (though I don't know whether it will be accepted or not). I strongly recommend their album "Super Euro Party" which contains all songs released before it and other new songs (It contains 70% of all the songs by HINOI Team). If you buy this album and 2 singles released later, "Now and Forever" "Dancin' & Dreamin' "(Dancin' Baby), you will have all the songs by HINOI Team (except few special versions of same songs). And if you buy +DVD versions of the album and the two singles, you will have almost all the video clips that were recorded in studio (not live performances) , except videos of two special versions (Koriki version of "IKE IKE" contained in "KING KONG" and Para Para Version of "Sticky Tricky and Bang"). [Please note that the region code of the DVDs is "2" (Europe, Japan, South Africa, Greenland and the Middle East [including Egypt]), not "1" (USA and Canada).]

I'm often asked the reason why Keika withdrew. I think we don't have no reason to doubt the truth of what she wrote in a private Blog i.e. that she had to concentrate herself on the study for entrance examination of a high school (She wrote that she had a dream and she had to go to high school in order to realize it). Other countries' people often don't understand it, because they don't understand Japanese society. In Japan the ratio of junior high school students (in compulsory education) who go on to high school became more than 90% in 1973 and it has never dropped into under 90% since then (it was 98.2% in 2009). The people who didn't go to high school are regarded as "not ordinary" i.e. "drop out" in Japan (although there are high schools where any students can enter, such high schools have bad reputations). No parent wants to settle his (or her) daughter in such a position, because it will give big influence on her future, for example, on her (ordinary) jobs and marriage. So I suppose that Keika's parents persuaded her to withdraw. If Keika had been a boy or HINOI Team had had high popularity, the story might have been different. But she was a 14 years old girl in compulsory education (by the way, the age of adult is 20 in Japan) and HINOI Team had very low popularity (most of people in Japan don't know HINOI Team even now). Keika might have some little troubles or complaints, but I suppose they were not the main reasons to withdraw. Even if she had no complaint, she would have to withdraw for the study (I have the ground for believing that her results of school study dropped considerably in autumn of 2006). Moreover some HINOI Team fans predicted in late autumn of 2006 that the next single (Dancin' & Dreamin') would be the last CD of HINOI Team and wrote that they had some information about it from Avex (music label). I guess that Avex had decided it mainly because of bad CD sales and ineffectiveness for promotion of "Super Eurobeat" series. On the stage of the last event (tiny live concert in Osaka, Feb. 2007) Keika insisted to perform "IKE IKE" (the debut song) at an encore, which had been decided to be "Aishiteru" (the only one original song by HINOI Team) beforehand, and after the stage she cried bitterly before her mother. Do you think the girl, who did such actions, wanted to withdraw from the bottom of her heart? I don't think so. (Later she wrote in a private Blog that she had wanted to play their memorial debut song "IKE IKE" at the last stage and that her heart would be with them [other members] even thereafter.)