Check out Takumi’s NEW English youtube channel 🎵
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https://www.youtube.com/@takuway
Now, time to make tomorrow’s materials!
◼Magic Moment Theme
“STAND UP — Awaken to Your Mission”
◼Speaking order
① A surge forward from the origin: Katsunari
② Noticing your own value: Fujimoto
③ Making your life shine: Takuya
④ Opening up possibility: Keisuke
⑤ Putting learning into practice and widening your circle: Takumi
“You look busy — but are you slacking off on your life?”
Ayumu Takahashi once said that to me.
In that moment, time stopped for a second.
I’m busy.
My schedule is packed.
I’m working.
I’m meeting people.
So I figured I was “properly moving my life forward.”
But being busy and moving your life forward are not the same thing.
I’d really appreciate your support!
Open Chat: “The Society to Support Director Takumi Yamazaki”
You can join from here (nicknames welcome)
And it is turning out to be quite a handful (lol).
Honestly, it’s rough.
But it’s fascinating.
Because a version of myself I had never used before keeps coming out, one after another.
At the audition, to the actors:
“Could you bring the intensity down a little?”
“Add a bit more affection toward the other person, and let’s take it once more.”
Words like that come out of my own mouth.
And every time, I think:
“Ah — so this version of me existed too.”
I’ll start once I’m able to do it.
I’ll take it on once I have some confidence.
Because you take it on, what you need to learn comes into view.
Because you take it on, you see what you’re missing.
If you never step into the ring, you’ll never meet “the you who’s in the ring.”
“That Takumi Yamazaki is doing this for real.”
“That Takumi Yamazaki is breaking a sweat.”
“That Takumi Yamazaki is putting his life on the line.”
That has to come across, he said.
The moment I heard that, I thought, “Ah — it’s resolve.”
Not motivation.
Not talent.
It’s the same with this film.
I don’t want it to end as just “oh, Takumi Yamazaki started something new again.”
That’s what I go and tell them.
Take a high school baseball player aiming for Koshien.
Of course not, right?
In all the time leading up to it, there are the teammates you meet.
There’s frustration.
There’s growth.
There are memories you’ll never forget as long as you live.
Whether or not the dream came true, the process itself is packed full of life.
So lately I’ve been thinking: “Can’t we aim for exciting goals in exciting ways?” (as Keisuke Oshima puts it)
Whether a dream comes true or not.
That matters too.
But can you like the person you are on the way to making it happen?
Are you enjoying the road itself?
And it’s fine to go through a stretch of “I don’t know what my dream is.”
If you don’t have a dream of your own, it’s fine to cheer for someone else’s.
The Straw Millionaire is the same. (as Tanakacchan puts it)
Maybe the greatest fortune he gained wasn’t the mansion, but “the experience of being useful to people and being glad-hearted about it.”
A dream isn’t something you hold only to change your future self.
The moment you have a dream, “who you are right now” changes.
If you think only about achieving your goals, before you know it you start choosing only “goals that look achievable.”
But.
A little scary.
A bit reckless.
No telling how it’ll turn out.
It’s precisely a goal like that which makes who you’ve been until now not enough, and lets a new self come out.
Not slacking off on your life doesn’t mean staying busy all the time.
It means taking yourself to the places where you can meet a new self.
And properly enjoying the road along the way.
For me right now, that is “the movie.”
And the challenge of “A70”!
So then — what is your own big “here goes!”?
When I Listen to “Garasuzaka,” I Get to Meet the Boy I Was
When I was in elementary school, I loved Mizue Takada.
I saved up my allowance to buy her records, and I even wrote her fan letters.
Looking back, for a boy in elementary school, buying a single record was a big event.
Even when I wanted one, I couldn’t just go get it.
So I’d think it over again and again, still want it, and head out clutching my allowance in my fist.
The time spent listening to that record back home, the time spent wondering what to write in a fan letter — all of it was special.
Even now, when I listen to Mizue Takada’s “Garasuzaka,” something strange happens.
The moment the intro plays, time rewinds.
The scenery I was looking at back then.
That slightly embarrassed but uncontainable feeling of writing a letter to someone you love.
The me who needed no reason, no weighing of gain or loss, in order to love something.
Maybe memory doesn’t live only inside your head.
It lives inside songs too.
Smells, scenery, even the way your heart raced back then — all of it quietly preserved inside one song.
So when you listen to a song you’re nostalgic for, you don’t just remember the past — the emotions of that time come back too.
Music is a time machine.
And what it carries you to isn’t only a place in the past.
The me who loved someone with everything he had.
The me who listened so carefully to the one record he’d bought with his allowance.
The me who was nobody yet, but whose heart moved in a straight line.
Every time I listen to “Garasuzaka,” I go to meet that elementary-school version of myself.
And I remember, just a little.
To simply love what you love.
That feeling is something you never have to let go of, no matter how old you get.
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The Boy I Was, and the Dragons Today
When I was in elementary school, I always wore a Chunichi Dragons baseball cap.
Going to school, going out to play — always.
That cap was not just a cap.
The moment I put it on, I felt a little stronger.
It felt like I had become part of the Dragons myself.
When they won, I was happy.
When they lost, it really stung.
A baseball result could shake my heart that much.
As I grew up, my daily schedule filled out.
There was work, there was travel, and more and more to think about.
I’d assumed the boy who ran around in that Dragons cap had drifted somewhere far away.
And yet right now, that boy is back.
Because the Dragons are charging hard for third place.
On August 26, 2026, they beat league-leading Hanshin 4–0, a second straight win after the day before. The gap to third-place DeNA has narrowed to 1.5 games.
There aren’t many games left.
It isn’t an easy situation.
Even so, they’ve come within reach.
Cheering at a time like this is irresistible.
It isn’t only about winning and losing.
“It isn’t over yet.”
Seeing a team that makes you believe that gives me strength too.
Come to think of it, life might be the same.
It doesn’t have to go smoothly the whole way.
You can stumble as many times as you like along the road.
Don’t give up until the end — go take the one game in front of you.
Sometimes that accumulation carries you to a place you never imagined.
The Dragons I loved so much.
No — that wasn’t past tense.
I still love them, just as much.
Together with the elementary-school me in that Chunichi cap, let me cheer for them for real, one more time.
Go, Dragons.
It starts here!
Ayaka Monobe’s challenge!!!
Let’s all go together!
So exciting!
And Hayato is doing a live show too!
Please give this one your support as well!
Information related to Takumi Yamazaki’s Amway is here
Open Chat: “Takumi Yamazaki’s Amway Info”
●Osaka & Nagoya
The president of RIRAKU
Global Dining Inc.’s president
KAT-TUN Junnosuke Taguchi
I got to spend time with them!
With Yoshiyuki at the PLAYFULLY shoot
PLAYFULLY＋
Recording for “The Other Upline,” PAI!
It’s getting a refresh~
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After the other day’s acting rehearsal.
An outstanding lesson from Yuki.
The exercise where you prepare cushions and balls and hand them to your scene partner along with the line — electrifying!
The movie is moving forward, faster and faster!
Open Chat: “The Society to Support Director Takumi Yamazaki”
I share information here!
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Link to Takumi Yamazaki’s ENGLISH Book “SHIFT”
https://amzn.to/2DYcFkG
Original post (Japanese): https://ameblo.jp/takumi-yamazaki/entry-12976928740.html
