Left home ridiculously early out of boredom and since from looking map wasn't quite sure how easy it would be to find but as it is not a glitch in finding it(I was helped by noticing local area map in the station that showed station and the hall. And lots of big store names in between giving me easy landmarks to follow. Took picture of map to my phone and had very detailed map which to follow. Beats the google map screencaptures!).
Arriving to hall I was astonished to see the place actually have lots of waiting fans. 2 hours to the concert hall to open and this crowded? Whee. Not only early bird it looks like. Well spent little time browsing concert goods(and buying couple). Then I headed to city to look around. In there I dropped in at Tower Records(one of the biggest music/anime/movie sellers in Japan. The store in Shibya has whopping 9 floors...). Turned out bit interesting timing as there was event I had heard of but never seen(and obviously then never been to one!). Specifically there was idol singer(maybe 15-17 year old?) promoting her 2nd indie single by doing handshake event. So she was there standing and line of guys from early 20's to ones with gray in hair were waiting for chance to shake hands and chat a bit. For a while pondered on joining the line just for laughs and see if appearance of this huge gaijin(think I might be bit over head taller than the girl...) coming to shake hand and chat in Japanese would get ANY sort of reaction besides the standard idol-smile "happy to be here talking to you" ;) Probably not since the idols can play their role pretty well(part of the job description!) but who knows. And it's not like it would kill me! At the very least would get chance to use at least bit of Japanese. But not knowing anything about her(not even name) chickened out...
Feeling actually pretty stupid about it. Not really event that would be "dream come true" to get to shake hands with idol singer I have never heard of before in anywhere but then again it's not like it would cost me much(line wasn't even ridiculously long) and would at least have been new experience. Should have just taken the chance since it happened to be there. Ah well. I can survive not having that experience!
Today got to witness lots of cars that had ads of bands and were playing out their newest releases(presumably) from speakers. Hard to walk streets here without hearing music from SOMEWHERE. If not from some big screen monitor then these cars by the very least :D
Back to concert venue to wait still a while. During the wait one of the weirdest encounters I have had here. Here I was sitting when this young female came and practically begged several of the waiters(me included) to take one of the cd's she was carrying with(one being song sung by Berryz+their sister group, another one was from the sister groups production). Not buy one mind you. TAKE one. I said to her I don't have any money with me(true that. I had blown all I had taken with me! I had maybe 50 yens(less than 50 cents) with me!) and she said free. I asked why and she said something about waiting. Dunno. Maybe she actually works for the company organizing these concerts and is giving free bonuses to particularly long waiting fans or something. That or very kind girl but since she was so insistent on giving took the combo song cd in the end. Wonder if customs will actually believe I was almost literally begged to take this for free :D Might end up paying the import fees but 250 yen or so won't kill me.
Speaking of kind people I learned again today You can't accidentally lose ANYTHING here. Hopping to train I swiped the wallet to IC-card reader to pay the trip and in the process seems 1 yen coin dropped from the wallet. Didn't miss that one(was interested in getting out of the way of Japanese behind me) and entered train. Female behind me HAD noticed it and actually picked the coin and came to give me back. I was surprised(to say the least) when she was handing me this one yen(less than 1 cent) coin until I picked enough of what she was saying to realize I had dropped it.
Seriously. She went to trouble of picking up and returning ONE YEN COIN! Holy smoke.
Well the concert was pretty similar to the one in Osaka so won't go over the full concert again. Just some differences.
First difference happened while I was waiting for the concert. There I was sitting in my seat playing igo with my phone for lack of better things to do when I spotted bunch of female looking shapes and whole audience went nuts. Looking at clock told me it was still 20 minutes so wtf was this? Well as it turns out it was the girls who make up newest band under the umbrella Berryz are part of. Some of the Kenkyuusei's(that I mentioned in Osaka concert report) got their big dream fulfilled and got their own band. So they made introductions(I got laugh when one of them mentioned her goal being ATM to remember names of her classmates. Having had trouble with that myself could feel sympathy for that one!) and then sang their first single.
(And yes they ARE young. Looks like junior high students all of them based on the introduction chat so what...12-15 year old?)
Then the concert began. Having already been to this once I could concentrate on details and just enjoy even more of the show. Unfortunately had bit of bad luck in that even the variable parts of concert were almost all same as last one. Bummer! So rather than hearing "Loving you too much" I got to hear the "I love picnic" again. Maybe that's depending whether it's evening or day concert?
Speaking of Miyabi not sure but she might actually have changed her hair style(AGAIN! She's the most busy one of the band in hair style changing. Colour, length and cut is changing all the times it seems). Not sure but think she didn't look same in Osaka.
Solo songs were almost same though order changed a bit. But first I got to hear new one. And realized who was coming up before she even appeared when hall turned to green(spotted that the light bars people were wearing have indeed button to change colours). How on hell they knew the set list enough to know what the variable performances are today? Anyway the green indicated that Yurina(the tall one I mentioned) came and seeing how I love the way she looks in the costume she was wearing for this part(for reminder it was the pale gown I found absolutely stunning). So certainly had no trouble with this change!
After this Momoko in her pink super-cute cloth(and that silly mini-cape!) came, followed by Risako doing her sexy shy boy song(and again might be slight change to Osaka. Could swear she wasn't wearing the hat in Osaka).
And speaking of Risako today's main colour among fans seemed to be red(Risako's colour). Knew she had birthday sometime around April these but spotted one fan with red shirt that had the birthday marked up. 4th of 4th so the youngest member turned 19 3 days ago. Coupled with being lead singer no wonder hall was red. Surprised there wasn't some sort of birthday related chat from the band actually.
And captain(favourite!) played out her Sprinter again.
Yurina got another task to do in this concert so rather than do the evil step sister performance she had to say something related about Shibuya(ward where concert was held) for 2 minutes.
That pretty much covers the differences between the concerts.
After concert I walked from shibuya to harajuku(just for fun), went to shinjuku, walked around there a bit, ran into some girl doing street performance playing guitar and singing(what's with running into music everywhere today?) and finally returned home.
Tomorrow is Myotsuji temple so another trip outside the Tokyo!
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