Peter's Japan blog

Arrived in Akihabara at 9h30, strolling around a bit to kill the time.
10h: Ishimaru store opens, and go up to 5F to get and pay my 2 dvds. Was standing around a bit to see what others were doing. Didn't learn much so I just took my printed email and gave it to the guy behind the counter. He knew right away what it was and what to look at and didn't even ask anything so everything went perfect xD. Got my 2 dvds and received the event ticket! With 2 stamps on it as I got 2 dvds. Still had 1.5 hours until I had to be back here so went to eat some donuts at Mr. Donut ;p

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Today's Shinahachi Live started just a little late, and both Idoling and YGA members came on stage to do their New Years greeting. Then after a few talks, this Shinahachi Live started with the Idoling part first!
They started off with Eve. From what I can remember,other songs were (not exactly in that order and a few missing): Meniwa Aoba..., Ganbare Otome, Kimi ga suki, U, Don't be Afraid and finally Shokugyo: Idol. There was also a special request song sung by Maipuru and Yurippe from SMAP (don't remember the title). I like music loud, but it seemed to get louder and louder near the end, especially the last song was a bit over the top. The song has got an awesome live vibe and is good loud, but don't overdo it... all the rest was okay though. Overal I liked it very much :-)

After a short break and a little game on stage between Idoling and YGA, the YGA part came up. Already a few people had left by now, but there was still a lot of people left. I must say most YGA fans like Idoling, but not all Idoling fans seem to like YGA, which you can see with some people just standing still during their songs. I was also totally unfamiliar with YGA songs, and well, I liked the bass in their songs and they had some interesting hand movements with the crowd, but I'm not converted :-)

At the end, someone random was chosen to get a picture on stage. When the girls asked his favorite member, he seemed verbally and visibly disappointed because his favorite girl (Umeko) wasn't there, and then said like: well if I have to choose, Sakacchi is okay.

After the ending talk of Idoling and YGA, came the final cherry on the cake: the handshake event! The 4 Idoling members participating in the handshaking were lined up in order, Endou #3 first, Tonooka #6 second, Yazawa #7 third and Sakai #14 last. I had prepared something to say,but I think nothing came out and it did go very fast, so here goes. Got nervous when I saw them standing there, and came up to Endou first, I shook her hand and I noticed she wanted to do it properly and her time to give a rather firm handshake and she said happy new year in Japanese (I think), I don't remember what I blurted out,but 3 seconds go by quick and next was Tonooka. She also said in her typical beautiful wide smile "Shin-nen akemashitou,omedetou" (happy new year in japanese), then came Yazawa (my favorite), she just said arigatou (thank you) but she noticed I was a foreigner so changed to english and said "Thank you" (quite good,not the usual sankyu) and I said "Thank you" back and I also quickly added "See you tomorrow!", and then came Sakai (my second favorite), she had immediately seen that I was foreign (she might have heard it from Yazawa next to her) and said "Thank you" right away, I also said "Thank you" back and "See you tomorrow" and she kept waving back and looking at me,and doing thumbs up! I was (and still am) so thrilled my 2 favorite members actually had a reaction!

Can't wait to shake their hands again tomorrow, when Tonooka will be switched with Yokoyama, so it's still with my three favorites (Endou,Yazawa & Sakai). And I will be in 4th row tomorrow, today was 9th row, it will be realllly close!

So today has finally come, New Years Eve, the day of Idoling!!!'s two 9th Live concert and a Countdown Live concert! Had met up early at 8am with my friend kei from Malaysia to be early at the concert hall as the sale of the goods would start at 10am and there were bound to be already people standing in line. We arrived there at 8h40 and we were right. Already about 150 people were lining up inside. But after a while they moved the end of queue outside in front of the building, which was a lot colder...

So we started lining up and then a japanese guy came to us and asked who our favorite members were, he then left and returned with some trading cards of our favorite members (for kei this was Umeko #11 and me he gave Yazawa #7). He obviously had a lot of doubles which is likely why he gave them to us, a very friendly guy who we would meet again later that day. Another friend of us had also arrived and started queuing a little behind us. So the line started moving at 10am and it would still be until 10:30am before we got to buy our goods. While queuing we saw Uematsu walking around a few times (he's one of the assistant directors of the show) and Kadosawa looking at the people lining up from a balcony (he's the main producer and brain behind Idoling!!!).

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Merry Christmas everyone!
I'll be going to Tokyo again for New Year celebrations from Dec 27th until January 9th and I've got some awesome stuff lining up! ;p
This will be the first I will not be using reseller shops for concert tickets! (maybe just 1 but I'm not sure yet). I've been in Ayumi Hamasaki's TeamAyu fanclub for about a year now so I was able to get into the ticket lottery for the Countdown Live tickets and I won 1 ticket for the 31st concert! I might go for a ticket for the 30th as well,but I'm not sure yet. I want spare a little bit of money ;p

Then I have the Idoling!!! part. They are doing their 9th Live (twice!) and Countdown Live concert on the same day, the 31st! That's 3 concerts! Unfortunately, due to Ayumi Hamasaki's Countdown Live, I can't go to Idoling's Countdown Live, and due to time constraints, I'm only doing the first 9th Live concert! But I've been able to secure 2 tickets for frst 9th live (one for a friend), one for the second 9th live (for friend) and one for CDL (for friend). All fanclub tickets,so they should be good seats.
Idoling's last Shinahachi Live in december is the 26th, and I'm only arriving the 28th, BUT Shinahachi Live is also in January, the first two being on the 7th and 8th, and I'm only leaving Japan on the 9th! So I've also got tickets those two!
And it doesn't stop there! Luck has it that Yazawa Erika (my favorite Idoling member) is having a DVD release event on January 8th at Ishimaru! (even though the dvd was already released on Dec 18th) So lucky me! I pre-ordered 2 copies of the DVD at Ishimaru for the event participation. It is typical for such events that if you buy more copies (of the same dvd) you get more in return. One copy gets you a signed cover. Two copies gets you a signed cover and one chekki (a chekki is like a polaroid photo) together with her! There were also 3- and 4-copy things,but didn't find those really necessary. I'll have my picture together with her, so that's enough for me! And there's a photo session for everyone anyway to take pictures of her in turns. Now I'll need to see that I'm early on the day to get my event ticket, which will then be randomly chosen for the order to enter the event hall. I hope I'll be able to get somewhere in front ;p.
There's only one more thing that I can hope for about Idoling, and that is a studio recording, as they're usually in the beginning and middle of the month. But since it's the holidays break and January usually has Futarikkiringu episodes (1 member with Masuno) there aren't many studio episodes, but I keep checking the site and hoping :-)

Besides all these concerts and events, I'll also go to Comiket 79 like last year. Apart from that, the usual sight seeing (although I know Tokyo already pretty well ;p), but I'll be taking lots of pictures and videos and try myself some timelapse videos again, but this time using my new tripod ;p.