Thought-Dump Japan 2014 Part 1

So what kills blogging is not twitter, it’s a grueling schedule of a) line up early for goods/events/etc b) events c) post-event hangout d) post-even hangout pt 2. e) oh hey it’s 4am. f) repeat.

But I’ll take this time to write up some stuff. I hope to go to bed soon so should be short. Right.

IM@S movie. It’s kind of an interesting thing. It’s like, say, The Passion of the Christ in that what you bring in is as important as what you get out of it. I can see that for “true” fans IM@S is a guaranteed one-hanker. For me it’s 0.5-hanker. Shows you how far I have to go. Although I have to say that I kind of immunized myself by listening to the soundtrack first, so if you want the pristine experience you have to avoid the OST. M@STERPIECE is okay though. I would say the OST is worse than even that 30-second PV that shows you the concert, because some of the tracks used and arranged … is already tear-jerking for an anim@s-class producer.

Oh, I’ve only seen it twice because it snowed pretty hard on Friday and made it tough to get around. Not that stopped me from staying up until 2AM because of WUG.

I heard good things about WUG from Milk Lariat attendees but the guys I hang with are already experienced with normal idols so it’s kind of a hard thing to say how good they really are, other than that WUG fans are crazy.

The butai aisatsu events–I’ll write it up on the blog.059pro.us site. It’s hard because I don’t really understand Japanese but I’ll provide at least some links? And more on the movies, obviously.

Yukarin @ SSA 2/15… It’s great. It’s a classic Yukarin live. She has a good time with the fans, although now I’m pretty sure her MC skills are on par or better than the average anime convention emcee, Japanese version. The best parts of Yukarin live are:

• King Record style old school seiyuu music (50% of the time)
• Crazyass oukokumin calls (the other 50% of the time)
• The jokes, like making funny on her family’s expense, or the joke videos (she doesn’t beat around the bush like Hocchan for example).

You can get info like set list and the key notes from other places but here are some links before I forget.

https://twitter.com/paranda_update/status/434720406126075904

https://twitter.com/paranda_update/status/434720477005619203

https://twitter.com/paranda_update/status/434720578797199360

https://twitter.com/paranda_update/status/434720808154329088

https://twitter.com/paranda_update/status/434721179257954305

Yep. It’s quite endearing.

https://twitter.com/paranda_update/status/434717262730117121

What else? Not much else. It snowed in Tokyo on Friday. Hard enough to get 6″ in some places. That’s no big deal for someone who lives in an area that just got 2’+ of snow the past month, but Tokyo rail system just don’t handle snow very well, in terms of delays and such. Not a surprise really, given the volume they go through on the regional JR lines. It does making walking around a huge pain. The snow turned into rain pretty quick on Saturday and it was the kind of wet-coldness that really sucks, because it feels cold even when the temperature is well above freezing. It’s probably still more pleasant than waiting for a hotel van in Toronto, outside, when it’s like 15 degrees F.

So I had a crazy flight, because US east coast got hammered last Thursday. That didn’t turn out to be a major problem but it did screw up my travel partner and delayed his flight by 2 days. Sucks, because he really wanted to see Yukarin and that made it impossible. I instead had a really long layover.

What else? I did the first sentence thing a couple times. A-Button is a great place to visit because Shin is a great guy, but also lots of random and well-connected guys would also go there. I sold an IM@S 2/22 ticket to some guy there and it was like, LOL. OK. And it did turn out we had an extra…

I hung out with afore-linked @Paranda_update a lot the past few days because he is a legit Oukokumin, and when you go to one of these things, that’s the best way to roll. A-Button owner is also a big Yukarin fan and well-known among Oukokumin. Also, we love the same kind of eats, so I had Kikanbou for brunch today and… well it’s great, but not “mashimashi” and being the kind of food you eat after all night out drinking and an hour after you woke up.

Though food-wise I haven’t had much special stuff… Cow tongue, izakaya fare, honey toast at all-night karaoke, etc… I guess A-Button’s curry could be special, if you are into curry.

Oh, there’s a KOTOKO concert I went. If I had a phrase or idea to sum up how I feel about it, it would be “I missed her, and I didn’t know how much until I saw her again.” She’s coming back to Raleigh for Animazement, which pins that con up pretty high on the Memorial Day Weekend anime con fight. I’ll probably write it up separately.

A few hours ago we also had the most awesome kaigai drinking/eating party in Akiba. I guess it’s something you just had to be here to get. Ask me about it sometime in person if you are actually curious what semi-drunk Love Livers do.

Shoutouts to new bros I met like Driller-san, Alvin and Tora-san, and the folks I kind of already knew via the grapevine but now finally met!