Ayumi Hamasaki

Profile
Stage Name: Ayumi Hamasaki 浜崎あゆみ(Hamasaki Ayumi )
Nicknames: Ayu (あゆ, also see CREA)
Birthday: October 2, 1978
Birth Place: Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan
Zodiac: Libra
Blood Type: A
Height: 157cm (61.8 in ; 5'1")
Weight: 40kg (88.18 lbs)
Measurements: 80cm-53cm-82cm (31.5 in-20.9 in-32.3 in)
Favorite Female Entertainers: Keiko (Globe), Miyazawa Rie, Matsuda Seiko
Musical Influences: As a child she listened to rock music (Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple), because she was influenced by a relative. Now she likes listening to soul music such as Babyface and En Vogue.
Favorite City: New York
Favorite Actors: Nicolas Cage, Miyazawa Rie
Favorite Movies: The Bodyguard, Betty Blue, Leaving Las Vegas
People I Respect: People who have things I don't have.
People I Dislike: Liars, people who don't say hello.
Current Interest: Collecting white things for my room
Favorite Food: Biscuits (maybe my staple diet!), cakes, chocolates, kimchi (Korean marinated cabbage)
Favorite Things to Read: Most of the fashion magazines. Modern-language translations of the Manyo tanka poems are especially interesting. Poems of Giniro Natsuo, Aida Mitsuo, etc.
Lessons: Piano, Japanese calligraphy (5th rank), abacus calculation, Japanese flower arrangement, Kumon-shiki study system
Biography
Although Hamasaki lived with her mother, she was primarily raised by her grandmother. She has vague recollections of her father as he supposedly divorced her mother and left the family at around the time she was five, and she has not seen him since. She grew up in a very liberal household where she was expected to do what was right for her without her mother intervening in her affairs, since her mother was always out working to support the family.

In her youth, Hamasaki started her modeling career as a model for a local bank.During high school, she was considered a delinquent because she dyed her hair and wore short skirts, both of which were considered extremely unconventional in Japan at that time. She did not enjoy her time at school much and did not get along well with the teachers. She found studying chemistry a very easy thing to do, but eventually dropped it because she found that it didn't seem necessary to make a living.

Occasionally, Hamasaki would go from home Fukuoka to Tokyo for short periods of time, to do various modeling jobs and during her stays,[6] she would make friends with people she met at work. After graduating from junior high school, she had her mind made up to go to a senior high school in Tokyo. She took entrance exams to Horikishi Gakuen (art/entertainers school) together with her friends, and she was the only one to fail — much to the surprise of herself and the school.

When taking the entrance exams again, Hamasaki ventured from her former talent agency SOS (targeted mostly at young models) to Sun Music, because the chief of SOS felt she would not do well because of her short height and would do much better in other activities, such as appearing on television.

Hamasaki reportedly used the pseudonym Kurumi Hamazaki once during her works, as she acted in low budget dramas like Miseinen and b-movies like Sumomo mo momo; however, she did not find success.

Hamasaki recalls the times of her activities in show business as a terrible period. She felt she simply couldn't quit her agency as she lived in the agency dormitory at the time, and she needed her jobs to make a living. She remembers the confusion she felt when acting in dramas with people she had seen on television back in Fukuoka. Also, she was unable to understand many of the girls in the business, who acted flamboyantly towards photographers during photoshoot works and were often selfish, which gave her the impression that they were very silly. This resulted in her having a lot more boys as friends rather than girls.

In order to release pressure and forget about her confusion, Hamasaki would spend her free time wandering the streets of Tokyo, shopping, and dancing at clubs in the Shibuya district with her friends.

She finally decided to leave show business after finding out about certain aspects that did not feel right to her. For example, many photos from some of her photo shoots were not used afterwards, and while working on television productions, not all of the footage would end up in the final product.

Hamasaki decided to drop out of high school at fifteen, something she vaguely remembers by sending a fax message with the words "I quit." written on paper. The reason for quitting was because she did not want to see the people and teachers anymore, feeling conspicuous among them, as her appearance and looks were different to others' in the entertainment school.

Around the time when Hamasaki dropped out of both high school and the talent agency, where her contract was soon to expire, her mother was coming to Tokyo to start a new job. Ayumi went on to live with her together in the apartment her mother rented. As peaceful days entered her life again, she would once more go back to spending long hours having fun with friends in fashionable places in Tokyo's entertainment districts