[H!P] Morning Musume in LA: Anime Expo DAY 0 – Row E3 ASSEMBLE~

July 1st (or Anime Expo Day 0) was the unofficial start to the expo. Unofficial because there’s not a lot to do on this day apart from pick up your admission badge and any Main Event tickets you pre-purchased online. This day was particularly important for those wanting good seats for the Morning Musume concert, as concert tickets are handed out with the best seats going to the people who are first in line (i.e on a first come first serve basis). The schedule looked like this:

ANIME EXPO DAY 0:
15:00 – Badge pick up begins
16:00 – Main Event ticketing booth opens

It opens at 3pm, so what do Vanishing-Point, Philip and myself do? We get there at 5am of course lol. None of us wanted to take any chances as this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and there was no way I was going to sacrifice a possible front row seat for a few hours of sleep. Front row seats to H!P concerts in Japan cost hundreds of £’s for someone like me, whereas everyones tickets here cost only $20 (ours were free because of a hotel promotion offer). I knew roughly what time people would be getting there from reading the forums, and it looked like the earliest time people would be getting there was around 6am. A lot of people weren’t even in LA then, so I was glad I got to LA days before. The point is, we wanted to make sure we were there first. We woke up at around 4am to get ready, and we would have brought Thonkz with us too, but he was still sleepy so he said he’d get there later. I just threw on my Stage48 t-shirt and we were off. We hadn’t actually been to the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC) yet, but on our way back from the airport the day before we saw where it was in relation to our hotel. It was still dark when we stepped out, but the sun was slowly beginning to rise and when we got to the LACC 10 minutes later the sky was more of a dull blue colour. It took us another 10 minutes to walk around and find out where we had to line up, but there was no one there so we came back to the front of the LACC to relax and scout for other people.

A few minutes later we spotted two guys walking towards us, possible concert goers maybe? They were called Tora and Ricardo. Tora tried to act like he wasn’t there for Morning Musume concert tickets, but once I introduced myself and told him why we were there, that’s when he admitted he was there for the same reason Ricardo went to scout the area while the rest of us chatted for a bit. I always thought I had an obvious English accent, but while in LA, a few people didn’t even know I was a foreigner until I told them I was from England. I kinda wish I didn’t tell Tora because most of the time I spoke to him he kept replying in an English accent lol, I have to admit his accent was pretty good though…well at least better than many other attempts I’ve heard. Several minutes passed and we were worried about where Ricardo went off to, so we walked to where we saw him last and waited there. Eventually another guy walked towards us who didn’t know where to go exactly, his name was Kurisu. We all stood around for a bit until Ricardo phoned to say he found the real place to line up, and it ended up being on the other side of the building to where we thought it was, so it was a good thing we found out now When we got there there were already about 10 people waiting, but they were all cosplayers so I’m not sure if they were there for the concert tickets (today was also the day for cosplayers to get their costumes checked and stuff). It didn’t matter since even if we were 10th that’s still a good position. It was then that another Momusu fan arrived, I heard him talking to someone with an English accent so I asked him where he was from and if he’s on any forums. His name was zorrander
which was very cool because I knew him from Hello!Online (not properly because I was still just mainly a lurker there). I’d always assumed he was an Aichan fan like me because of his avatar on the forums, but he’s really a Risa fan. We talked for a bit and then some security lady told us to line up by the flagpoles because we were all blocking the front doors at the time. For some reason the other 10 people who were there before us weren’t too fussed about moving so we made it our chance to run and get first position in the queue lol. Tora and Ricardo were at the front with the rest of us just behind them.

I knew we were gonna be waiting a while so I brought a poker set to help pass the time. Ricardo and Vanishing-Point didn’t want to play, and poker sucks with only 3 people, so I had to ask some people randomly if they wanted to play. In the end there were 5 of us playing: Philip, Tora, Kurisu, Yo Jimbo (he was the guy standing behind us in the queue) and myself. Around this time I also saw Matt_D and InsaneLampshade arrive. I’m a massive cock so I just told them to get to the back of the line which now had around 25 people in it Paul wasn’t there because he had a Press pass and was planning on getting an interview with Morning Musume later that day. One group of people tried to cut in front of us by saying “we were here really early but were at the wrong place and so we deserve to be at the front”. They really should have checked before telling us, because their idea of “really early” was 6am They then walked off to the back of the queue, and it was funny in a weird sadistic sort of way I won’t bore you further with the poker details, but lets just say I sucked. I think it took a while to get through just a practice round lol. After poker, Kurisu and Yo Jimbo taught us how to play a Filipino card game (I forgot the name but I think it’s called ‘Big 2′ over here). I also remember being a bit surprised to see that Kurisu has Aichan and Kamei Eri tattoo’s on each arm, well not really, it’s just the kanji for Ai and Kame, but that’s still some hardcore dedication. It’s quite clever because even if he stops liking the girls, he can just say that the tattoos are there because the kanji are cool (they mean ‘love’ and ‘turtle’ respectively. Kurisu loves turtles). It’s a lot better than having someone’s entire name or face tattooed, like that guy who got bullied for having a massive picture of Dumbledore tattooed on his back before it was revealed that Dumbledore is gay That was basically what we did for like an hour.

It was then that things started to get a little interesting. Whilst browsing the forums, Kurisu saw that someone was saying the concert tickets WON’T have assigned seating and that seating would be allocated on the day of the concert, and that the info came from the guy who was organising the event That was a right kick in the balls as the whole point of us being there at 5 in the bloody morning was to get good seats Strangely no one else seemed too bothered seeing as we were there already and there was nothing we could do. However I had a good idea of what I wanted to do, because even before hearing that info, I was having thoughts about leaving and going to the airport instead (it was confirmed earlier that Momusu were arriving that afternoon), especially after the airport failure from the day before. Being at the front of the queue was making it harder to decide what was more important, but now I had a proper reason to leave. I told the rest of the people around me what I planned to do, and then I went to tell Matt_D and InsaneLampshade about it. They weren’t buying it at all and were quite skeptical. I don’t blame them, why would Anime-Expo (AX) release those important details just hours before it started, and why would they sell reserved tickets if there were no real benefits to gain? It was one persons word against another, but I decided it was best to go to the airport anyway just because we knew for a fact that Momusu were arriving that day and even knew their plane number and everything. My attempts to convince them wasn’t completely wasted, as one Mexican guy called Amakza overheard our conversation and asked if him and his friend Edgar could come to the airport with us I went back to the front of the queue to think about things further. There was no way I was leaving the line without having a backup plan in case things went wrong, but that’s where things got tricky. The plan was to give all of our registration information (AX badge details and personal ID) to one person, that way even if we didn’t make it back in time, they could still pick up our badges for us, and also so we could go back to our place in line if we DID come back in time. Before leaving our hotel I mentioned to Thonkz that I might be going to the airport and that he should be at the LACC to hold onto my ID, but Thonkz wasn’t there yet so someone else would need to stay behind. It must have been a hard decision but Philip kindly said he’d stay, and so did Ricardo, Tora and Kurisu. I felt really bad but I’m also extremely grateful to those guys because without them we wouldn’t have been able to go. Zorrander (who was now talking to chibilolli) needed a bit more persuasion, but eventually everything was set and we were ready to go back to the airport Here’s a picture of us (shamelessly stolen from Amakza’s blog lol) at the front of the queue:

The time was around 7.30am I think, and our group now consisted of: Vanishing-Point, zorrander, Yo Jimbo, Amakza, Edgar, chibilolli and myself. I hadn’t spoken to chibilolli yet, but I knew who she was because she used to be active on Stage48 a few years back. I remember reading her AKB48 experiences when she went to Japan in 2007, and she had even sent me an awesome Berryz Koubou photo set. It’s those experiences (along with InsaneLampshade’s, Matt_D’s and everyone elses) that helped me out when I went to see AKB48 myself I told her my name and straight away she said “are you CDevil?” which really shocked me, I didn’t think she’d remember. Anyway we were in quite a rush because it was so last minute. We decided to head to Yo Jimbo’s hotel (the Holiday Inn) which was about a minute away so we could get a shuttle to the airport ASAP. Unfortunately this meant leaving the banner back at the hotel. I was kinda gutted since we did work hard on it, but it was for the greater good…but then as we were crossing the street to get to the Holiday Inn, we saw Thonkz standing across the road, and he had our banner in his hands He basically saved the day for me there, I was so happy to see him (and with perfect timing too, any later and we would have missed him)! He took the initiative and checked the forums before leaving the hotel, and of course he saw that post about the flight details and the non-assigned seating and figured we’d be going to the airport. He was Super Thonkz from that moment onwards. When we got to the Holiday Inn, we tried getting the reception desk to call a shuttle for us, but they weren’t able to for some reason, I think it’s because it takes time to book it and we’d have to wait like an hour or something. Luckily these 2 guys with cars heard that we needed to get 8 people to the airport, and so they offered to take us. We split into two groups and we were off.

The 8 of us arrived at the airport and it didn’t look like there were many fans waiting, but it was still early I guess. We went to that food place again and had some breakfast (I had a fruit salad and a smoothy). While waiting, we watched H!P videos on Amakza’s laptop. I say ‘videos’ but I can only remember watching the PV and live performance of Berryz Koubou’s “Rival”. We were talking about how bad Risako sounds when she sings that really high note lol. Like a lot of Risako lines, I end up liking them the more I listen to them, so after hearing it a few times I didn’t think it sounded too bad. It was here in the food place where we discovered that we were sitting with a celebrity, Edgar (Amakza’s Mexican friend) is actually famous among H!P fans because he’s the leader of a fan club that appeared on Japanese television (you can see the video HERE) Naturally we all took the time to shake his hand.

^After eating, we went back to the same place we waited the day before and set up the banner. It was easier now because there were less regular people and thanks to Yo Jimbo we had some tape to stick the banner onto the barriers. What followed was more waiting, but it felt better because more and more fans started to arrive, fans from all over the place. Quite a few JPM’ers were there with their H!P t-shirts, and then JPHIPsters arrived with their H!P t-shirts…and there I was wearing a freakin’ AKB48 t-shirt What a muppet! It’s only because I wasn’t certain if I was coming to the airport that day People were telling me to button my shirt up to cover it, but I was standing behind the banner so hopefully the girls wouldn’t see it, one of the good things about being short I guess I met some very interesting individuals whilst waiting, including: Ayu_Hikaru and her friends from JPM (she was one of the main people organising the JPM AX stuff), differentstory12 and her sister (I knew them from the very nice OPV they made for the Morning Musume OPV contest. I’ll talk about this more later), daigong and the JPHIP crew (the admin of JPHIP. When I saw him, I greeted him and we shook hands and stuff like we knew each other…then I told him I don’t actually post on JPHIP and he looked so disappointed ), Bryan and Jen from Hello!Ranking (they were the organisers of the much anticipated Hello!Party that was going to take place after the concert), plus some other cool people.

Anyway it was getting closer to their arrival time which was around 11am. I was getting worried thinking it might be possible they won’t show up, but then a Japanese camera man and his team arrived who claimed to be working for UFA (the agency that manages Hello! Project artists) so that helped calm and excite people at the same time. During this time they started interviewing people on camera which was very cool, Yo Jimbo and Amakza were interviewed, so they may end up on a future DVD or something As this was going on, people from other flights were walking passed our banner wondering what the hell a “morning moosoom” is, I heard the security people mentioning this quite a few times, even the day before. Of course there were others who knew Morning Musume and were genuinely excited, even business men waiting for other people to arrive. There were guys and girls who looked at the banner and laughed, and there were people who just stared at it with really puzzled looks. Either way it was very entertaining watching peoples reactions, although I was kind of embarrassed seeing as I was next to the banner. There was one old airport staff guy who kept looking at the banner and the calendar that Ayu_Hikaru had put up, he was proper eyeing the girls up on that calendar, what a perv (not that I blame him) There’s even a picture below with him caught in the act.

^That guy annoyed me a bit because he was pulling trolleys, and about 10 minutes before the arrival he left a whole row of trolleys lying in front of us. I was scared they were gonna be in the way when they arrived, but thankfully he moved them when he came to get another look at the girls on the calendar lol. The excitement was insane (could we really be that close to seeing them only a metre away???!!!), everyone kept checking the screen to see what the status of their flight was, first it was early, then delayed, then on time, then delayed again, and then finally it changed to ‘LANDED’ Everyone got their cameras ready, and more people started joining the crowd, and there was even a little girl and her mother standing on the other side waiting for them but they were told to move by security……lol. We waited for some time, maybe close to an hour after it changed to ‘ARRIVED’. That’s when I started to panic again, because now people from the flight after were coming out, people from Singapore airlines and ANA Just as everyone started to get worried, two Japanese wota arrived who were probably on the same flight as Momusu, everyone started cheering and they joined us Then about 15 minutes later two Japanese girls saw our banner and said “Morning Musume? Oh they’re coming soon, just a little longer” And just as they said, a few minutes later we were graced with the divine presence of Morning Musume. Words alone cannot describe it, so myself and others took videos and pictures of that monumental moment:

^Well there’s the video I took, it’s so embarrassing and I can only imagine how spasticated I looked, but I was unbelievably happy and I’d easily do that again! I’m not sure if you notice but at 0.27 I tried to find Aichan but couldn’t see her because she dyed her hair black and wore sunglasses, I honestly thought it was Nakajima Saki from C-ute lol. So instead I shouted for Reina my 2nd favourite just because I could recognise her. You can hear daigong shout “AIBUTT” at 0.28 which was hilarious (because Aichan has a nice butt) One new thing I noticed that day was that Junjun has very sexy legs, phwoarrrrrrrrrrrr. There was a guy waiting with us who was on the same plane as Momusu, but didn’t know who they were, so when someone asked to describe them he just said that “the one in a white skirt had nice legs” haha. There’s also a bit of Stage48 advertising in that video, completely unintentional I swear Below is another video that someone took, it’s good because they have a steady hand and they were standing right behind us, so you can see most of our group running around and stuff which is funny.

There are several other videos too which you can watch by typing ‘morning musume la’ in Youtube and searching for videos of their arrival. However what none of the videos show is what happened immediately after they left, all of us were still standing there and daigong, myself and a bunch of other people got into a circle and just started jumping around and screaming for a few seconds They came and went in less than 5 minutes, but what an unforgettable 5 minutes they were. I’m pretty sad that we left the banner at the airport when we chased after Momusu, but it served it’s purpose well since I’m certain they saw it. Hopefully it went to a good home…who am I kidding it got chucked in the bin…or maybe taken home by that pervert trolley dude, we’ll never know. I’ll never forget you banner!!!! In the picture below, if you can’t tell, the order from left to right is: Mitsui Aika (the one in the spotted skirt who has been 90% cut off), Junjun (the one in white with the sexy sexy lovely lovely legs), Kusumi Koharu (the one in the long dress with pink sunglasses), Takahashi Ai (the one with black hair and sunglasses, looks like a 12 year old), Michishige Sayumi (the one with the pink bag pulling her face mask down), Kamei Eri (the one who looks completely stoned), Niigaki Risa (the one with a hat and a Minnie mouse bag), Tanaka Reina (the one in black waving and wearing sunglasses), Linlin (the one with the pimp hat and face mask).

Once we had come back down to Earth somewhat, it was time to go back to the LACC. I forgot what time it was, but I know we still had several hours until the badge pick up started. All of us took a shuttle back to downtown LA, it took longer than usual because we were with some other people being dropped off in weird places, but that was OK because we had time to look at the videos and pictures we all took. We were buzzing! WE JUST SAW MORNING MUSUME!!!! Getting back to the LACC was an odd feeling for me, mainly because of what happened, but also because the queue was no longer there We found out it was moved to some other place, and that other place now had hundreds of people lining up there! A load of other people were now waiting inside this massive hall, so we knew Kurisu and the others were somewhere there because they weren’t outside. Unfortunately because Super Thonkz came late, he had to line up at the back which was pretty lame. We took his ID and details and tried to get into the hall so we could pick up his badge for him, but there were AX staff members at the doors making sure people like us couldn’t sneak in. Fortunately they were just volunteers and didn’t really have a clue what was going on, the guy was calling backup to sort us out and everything, really confusing stuff, but after a bit of talking zorrander, chibilolli, Yo Jimbo, Vanishing-Point and myself were allowed into the hall. Super Thonkz and the Mexicans stayed in the line outside but we told them they could leave since we’d be getting their badges for them.

Once we found Kurisu and the gang, we waited until we were allowed to pick up our badges. The people waiting were now split into 3 or 4 lines, and we were now in the middle of the first line (apparently when the queue moved people ran to the hall so Tora and them lot were now in the middle), but the good news was that it was confirmed that the seats WOULD be assigned that day, but instead of individual seats, we’d be assigned rows. It was supposed to start at 3pm, but I think it was delayed by about an hour or maybe 30 mins. Didn’t bother me too much because it was easy to pass the time by just talking to people, I remember Tora taking the piss out of the way English people say “batteries” I could have brought up all the weird and wonderful ways in which Americans butcher the ENGLISH language but seeing as I was in America it probably wouldn’t have been a good idea. Then another problem came up, what were we supposed to do once we picked up our badges? The plan was to run to the Ticket booth on the other side of the building, but now that we were in the middle of the line with people from all 4 lines getting their badges simultaneously, it was looking like we’d get to the Ticket booth far too late to get the good seats (especially if people were already waiting at the ticket booth) We tried to contact Super Thonkz but his phone had run out of battery at the airport, so it wasn’t looking good…until Super Thonkz used someone elses phone to contact us saying they were already waiting at the Ticket Booth, and that we just needed to go straight there once we got our badges Super Thonkz saved the day yet again lol. Having sorted that out, all we had to do was pick up our badges, which was surprisingly very easy and we had our badges in a matter of minutes (all you had to do was scan a barcode that came with your details, then pick up your badge. Simple).

With all of our badges and ticket vouchers (these allowed you to pick up the actual concert ticket at the ticket booth) safely around our necks, we made our way to the Ticket booth where we found the rest of our group waiting. They weren’t at the front of the queue but there were only about 20 people in front of them so that was good. I remember when Amakza first met Kurisu here, they had a little argument about Amakza’s shirt which had the kanji ‘ai’ written 3 times (愛 愛 愛) with the words “I”, “love”, “Ai” written underneath each one. Personally I think that shirt was a work of genius, but Kurisu wasn’t impressed because it only makes sense if you say it out loud I guess. Still funny As with the badge pick up, the Ticket booth was delayed by an hour so we had to wait until 5pm for it to open. 10 people suddenly showing up and moving close to the front of the line looked very suspicious, and as expected someone with a rod up their ass complained to the staff members, forcing half of our group to move to the back of the line. Wasn’t a big problem because all we had to do was get the people near the front to pick up the tickets for the ones at the back (the whole badge/ticket pick up process was a bit weird because they let you pick up badges/tickets for other people as long as you have their ID and details. In theory one person can pick up the badges/tickets for 100+ people). Not the most honourable/fair method to use but it’s not against the rules so it was all good…until another problem came up. Vanishing-Point and Philip noticed that they hadn’t been given their ticket vouchers, and it didn’t even say they had tickets on their badge details I felt really guilty because I was the one who sorted out their details, and without the voucher they couldn’t get their concert tickets. It was terrible timing because there were now only 15 minutes left until the Ticket booth opened. Kurisu tried looking online to confirm they actually HAD tickets to begin with, but the Anime-Expo website was being a bitch, so with so little time left we went to speak to the guy in charge called Bryan (the same guy who apparently said there wouldn’t be assigned seats. To be fair that was sort of correct, because it was assigned rows not seats). I’ll spare you the details because it just involved us walking back and forth from the Ticket booth and badge pick up hall for 15 minutes. Bryan sorted things out once he saw that Vanishing-Point and Philip were staying in my hotel room and were therefore eligible for free concert tickets. We managed to make it back just in time for the Ticket booth opening where we managed to get seats in Row E3 for the concert. As planned, a few of us picked up all 12 tickets for those who were waiting further back in the line. Unfortunately there were no more front or second row seats because most of those rows were taken up by VIP’s or the people in front of us in the line. It was a choice of either row E3 or D4, and I figured either one would get a good view so might as well go for the one closest to the stage since being pushed back one row can make quite the difference (especially for someone small like me). I’m certain we made the right decision. Here’s a picture of the concert hall layout and seating arrangements so you can get an idea of what it was like (pictures were taken by zeroyon from Hello!Online):

Everything had finally been sorted for that day, and I had made some extremely nice friends who ended up being the people I’d spend the most time with during the whole expo. Since we took up 95% of the row, I’ll refer to us as Row E3 (FTW!!!!), which consisted of: Vanishing-Point, Philip, Thonkz, Tora, Ricardo, Kurisu, zorrander, Yo Jimbo, chibilolli, Amakza, Edgar and myself.

The expo side of things may have finished, but the hectic day still wasn’t over, so all of us went to Little Tokyo to get some dinner (Philip, Ricardo and Tora didn’t come, and Kurisu and the Mexicans drove there). On the way there we bumped into some people from the JPHIP crew. We talked to them a bit and for some reason they took out a snazzy JPHIP microphone and started asking us questions like some sort of news interview. Anyway it took a while to get to Little Tokyo because of the traffic again, and we had now met up with Yo Jimbo’s room mate Peter who joined us for dinner at some very cool Japanese restaurant that Kurisu recommended, it was more of a bar than a restaurant but still really nice…and also came with a nice waitress.

^This is what I ordered, the Zencu deluxe! The picture may not show it too well, but it was indeed a beast of a meal and I only managed to eat about 3/4 of it One of the best Japanese meals I’ve ever had though, largely due to the excellent company. When we got out it was already late and dark, but that didn’t stop us from looking for the local Kinokuniya book shop in the hopes that there’d be some H!P photobooks to get signed. We found it in the end, but it was closed and it didn’t look like they sold PB’s anyway.

Just like the night before, we all walked back to our hotels to get ready for the day after (which required some careful planning). All in all it was an excellent day, with most of it being down to luck. However the best was yet to come!

[Coming up next: Anime-Expo DAY 1]








PS: AIBUTT!!!!!!

[H!P] Morning Musume in LA: First day

Several hours after getting to the airport, I was finally on the plane and on my way to the US. I was still a bit car sick from the journey to the airport (no idea why, must have been the all nighter), but even without that, the flight was still the worst flight I’ve ever been on. I don’t really care much about quality when something is cheap (you get what you pay for), but on an 8 hour flight, anyone would get a little grumpy when their TV monitor doesn’t bloody work! Bad food I can forgive, stewardesses that look like they’re suffering from hemorrhoids, I can forgive that too, and cramped conditions are to be expected in economy class, but to force me to sit there for 8 hours with a broken TV monitor? That’s pushing it Stupid US airways. The guy next to me was accusing them of being racist, because we were the only non-caucasian people in that row and only our monitors didn’t work The good thing was that I got a few hours sleep because of the boredom, but I would have liked to watch Valkyrie instead The first leg of the flight was to ‘Charlotte’, I had no idea where that was at first but it’s in North Carolina. Speaking to the guy next to me was quite cool, it was the first time I’ve spoken to a guy with a North Carolina accent (the one where they say ya’ll a lot). The connecting flight to LAX was a lot more bearable, as it was only about 4 hours long, unfortunately (fortunately?) NO ONE had monitors this time. It was a good thing I bought those playing cards back at the airport because I ended up playing cards with the guy next to me for about 2 hours. I taught him how to play the British version of crazy eights called Black Jack (not the casino game ‘Blackjack’) which was fun, but not very good with only two people. I asked the girl next to me if she wanted to play but she was too shy (I couldn’t believe she was able to stay awake for those 4 hours doing nothing, not even going to the toilet. Amazing).

Arriving at LAX was a simple process, and the only problem I had was finding my luggage…probably because I was looking for a black suitcase when it’s actually navy blue The plan was to then meet up with my three room mates for that night, none of whom I’ve seen in person, and I didn’t even know what two of them looked like Luckily I met up with Paul (the creator of Hello!Blog) when I was waiting for my luggage. He gave me a call and ended up being only a few metres away lol (wasn’t hard to spot in his bright blue Okai Chisato t-shirt). He’s also from England and lives very close to me compared to all the other UK H!P fans. Next I had to find my two other room mates who came from Sweden (Vanishing-Point on Hello!Online and his friend Philip who wasn’t actually a Morning Musume fan…yet). Again that was easy (because Vanishing-Point was holding up a Sugaya Risako shirt haha), and within 15 minutes we were all together. Speaking to the three of them was a lot less awkward than I imagined. I had spoken to Vanishing-Point a lot online, but it felt like I had no idea who he was, I think it’s his Swedish accent that threw me off a bit lol. With Paul I had only spoken to him in 2 short emails, but it was as if I’d known him before for some reason. Anyway the three of them were very cool guys, so off we went to our hotel, the Holiday Inn LAX. By that time it was already about 7 or 8 in the evening, but the sun was still out for another hour or two so I was able to admire the palm trees and tall buildings of LA. Surprisingly the temperature was a lot cooler than I expected, I think it was about 25-30 degrees celcius that day, which was actually cooler than England when I left (London was 33 degrees celcius). I wasn’t complaining because I prefer cooler weather as long as it’s sunny.

After checking into the hotel, we spent about an hour unpacking/marvelling at everything in the room etc. The shower was broken so we had to call up the guy to fix it…not the best way to start the holiday. Vanishing-Point started getting out his H!P merchandise and stuff, and for some reason made a little H!P shrine on the table *cough*. He also brought his only AKB48 single: Oogoe diamond. He has one more AKB48 single than me >_< We were all very exhausted from our travels, and needed a bit of an energy boost. What better way of giving yourself some much needed energy (in the form of fat, grease, and more fat) than to go to the nearest McD's, which was conveniently located right in front of the hotel Is it some sorta tradition that whatever foreign country you go to, you have to go to a McDonalds there? Usually I'd order a McChicken sandwich meal with a pure orange juice, but they didn't have it. That surprised me because I thought the American McD's would just be a better version of the UK ones. I opted for a 'Southern style chicken sandwich'…and it was terrible.



^It’s simple all right, simply shit. TWO PICKLES?! I must have hit the jackpot because they ended up giving me THREE mighty midget sized pickles But then one of them fell on the floor when I opened that bad boy up I could make a better burger with my foot. To be fair though the fries were very nice, a lot nicer than the floppy ones we get in the UK. Paul and Philip got 2 large meals and got free Coca-cola glasses, which they left behind in the end…not on purpose, because who WOULDN’T want a free Coca-cola glass. Vanishing-Point ordered about 20 hamburgers, he was happy

When we got back to the hotel, it was time to get down to business. The plan for the morning after was to head back to the airport to greet Morning Musume when they arrived. We didn’t know for certain if they’d arrive, but it was a safe guess based on their previous arrivals in other countries. It’s not like we had anything better to do anyway. To prepare for their arrival, I had brought a fat load of paints, pens, pencils, and a 20 metre roll of poster paper. The idea was to make them a banner welcoming them to LA, because I wasn’t counting on others to make one, and we didn’t want to be greatly outdone by the Korean fans who made really professional looking banners for H!P groups. Our banner wasn’t going to look professional in one night, but a hand made one sounds better anyway *cough*


^This is the banner about an hour after we started. Philip is the one on the bed, I’m the one in the pajammy jams covering my face with the Aichan uchiwa (that uchiwa would become legendary by the end of the trip) and Vanishing-Point is the one armed with some green paint. Paul was the one taking the pictures.



^Almost done, but there was still room for more. The handprint idea was partly taken from the latest Berryz Koubou Alo-hello DVD where they made their own banner. I just thought it would be fun to make a bit of a mess. I still have the paint stains on my pajama’s >_< I have no idea why Vanishing-Point put those little streaks of glitter in the bottom right corner



^Come morning, this is what we ended up with, the finished article. I don’t think you can see it but we added multicoloured rays of light coming out from the rainbow/sun (yes that’s supposed to be a sun), using the nine colours assigned to each member. Given the amount of time we had, I was very pleased with how it came out, it was a great team effort. Sure Philip just sat on his ass all night lol, but he was the one who came up with the ‘rising sun’ idea and several other ideas, so we all chipped in one way or another. It was fun to do as well, I was still jetlagged so wasn’t bothered about staying up late (although we still got several hours sleep, Paul probably spent a few of those on the floor after slipping off from his chair or something lol) and I enjoyed watching the Buono Hybrid Punch concert and Momusu’s Resonant Live concert while doing it. A memorable first night in LA.


It was then time to head back to the airport where I was also planning to meet our final room mate for the rest of the trip (Paul wasn’t staying with us for the rest of the week). After grabbing a shuttle back to the airport with the help of this nice stewardess lady, we still had about an hour or two before Momusu’s expected arrival time, so we bought some breakfast and waited out the rest of the time. I got some breakfast burrito thing, the first time I’ve ever had a burrito. It was edible, but not the nicest thing in the world, somehow scrambled egg, potatoes and all the other stuff that was in there didn’t go together too well. There must have been about a bajillion calories in it, and I couldn’t even finish half of it. While we were getting breakfast, we also ran into a few members of another H!P forum, JPHIP, who were playing cards in the food place. I recognised one of the members from pictures that were posted during Hangry&Angry’s trip to Seattle a few months earlier, I don’t post on JPHIP but I do lurk a bit, they seem like cool guys. Anyway it turns out they were there for the same reason, but as it got closer to the arrival time, it was looking more and more likely that we were gonna be the only ones there (except for this Japanese wota photographer guy). So about 9 people waiting for them in total…that’s pretty pathetic, that’s like one person for each member It wasn’t all doom and gloom, as we did meet Thonkz, our new room mate.



^This is us waiting. Thonkz is the guy in black next to Philip. Vanishing-Point and Philip were the banner holder guys, it was kinda funny because as it got closer and closer to the arrival time, we noticed our spot wasn’t very good, so we told them to wait directly over the other side by the toilets where no one was waiting. Seeing those two waiting outside the toilets looking quite suspicious with a massive banner in their hands was hilarious, Paul and I had a bit of a laugh about that Eventually they were told to leave that area so they waited further down the walkway, in a good position that would definitely be seen if the girls came. While waiting, I talked to the JPHIP guys very briefly, they also brought something to hang so that the girls could see, it was a scroll with some Japanese writing on it about Reina. I had no idea what it said but I just nodded and acted like I did lol. Eventually the arrival time came and went, and we were now waiting about an hour after their flight apparently landed. We were all getting worried but I asked a staff member if they’d walk by that way and it was certain that if they arrived, they would walk past us, and there was only one JAL flight from Japan that day (Momusu always fly with JAL). The JPHIP guys called it a day and decided to leave, but I refused to give up hope, that Japanese wota photographer guy was still there waiting, and he looked like he knew what he was doing. However half an hour later even he decided to leave, I tried speaking to him and he ended up being an American who knew about as much info as we did Epic fail on my part. That was it, we waited about 3 hours for nothing. I was really upset as that was the only day we could afford to wait for them, because the next day we had to line up early to get concert tickets I have to say, the feeling of eagerly waiting for something that never came is horrible. The excitement levels went from ‘batshit crazy awesome’ to ‘dogshit funky smelling bad’. Disappointed, we all walked off to grab another shuttle to downtown LA.


Once we got to our hotel (the Wilshire Grand Hotel) in downtown LA, we parted ways with Paul, but not for long since we decided to head over to Little Tokyo later that evening for dinner, and his hotel was only like 2 minutes away. Our hotel room was surprisingly nice and a lot bigger than the standard rooms (we got a deluxe sized room for only about $20 more per person, totally worth it in my opinion). After settling in to our new home for the next few days, we met up with Paul and his new room mate Jyoru so we could head over to Little Tokyo together. The traffic was terrible and we were on a bus for about 30 minutes when we could have walked it in 20. Still, taking an LA bus was new for me, and it did give us some time to get to know one another. When we arrived in Little Tokyo, we wandered around waiting for some other people we were supposed to meet. It took a bit longer than expected because none of us knew our way around LA obviously, but eventually we met up with everyone and went to eat at a very cosy Japanese restaurant. There were now nine of us: InsaneLampshade and Matt_D (two fans from England who like me, got into AKB48 before H!P, which is pretty rare), Mozenator from New York, Jyoru, Paul, Thonkz, Vanishing-Point, Philip, and myself. It was awesome sitting down with a bunch of fans who knew what they were talking about, since I’ve only ever met a handful of H!P fans before. It’s one of the only times I’ve felt out of place for NOT wearing a H!P shirt. We talked about a whole bunch of stuff…most of which I can’t remember, but for some reason I DO remember talking about the size of Edison Chen’s penis I’m pretty sure it was Jyoru or Matt_D that brought that topic up It’s because although the food was very nice (I had tonkatsu curry I think) the most delicious looking thing by far had to be the cute Japanese waitress that was serving us, not the old wrinkly one that needed ironing, but the young one that looked like Gillian Chung from the HK group Twins (Gillian was involved in a scandal with Edison Chen). Charlene is my favourite twin but Gillian is still gorgeous…and I’ve seen her naked *hi-five*. The point is, this waitress was not only very cute, but very kind and sweet too. It was funny watching a bunch of wota being mesmerized by this Japanese woman who WASN’T an idol. Mozenator, Paul, Jyoru and Matt_D in particular were trying hard to get some attention, and to hilarious effect. Matt_D even drew a picture on a napkin hoping that it’d be put on the wall with a load of other drawings that customers have done, most likely because they were enchanted by the hot waitress too. We were like a bunch of school boys, and even started bickering over ice cream (because Jyoru and Matt_D got ice cream from her and we didn’t But then Mozenator got some ice cream too so he was happy). All in all it was a fun and delicious dinner, and we also got the hot waitress to take a picture for us…unfortunately none of us thought to ask if we could get a picture with her.



^On the left side from top to bottom is: Philip, Vanishing-Point, Mozenator, Paul, and Matt_D. On the right side is: InsaneLampshade, Thonkz, me (CDevil), and Jyoru. I love the laid back cool pose Paul went for, or maybe he was just trying to get away from Matt_D’s hand, no idea where that’s been. I on the other hand am so confident in my coolness, I could afford to make a stupid face…OK maybe not, I just hate taking pictures.

Once we left the restaurant, we went to loiter around Little Tokyo in front of a ‘no loitering’ sign, we’re so gangsta. The idea was to look for a bar to drink in, but instead we just stood there for about half an hour before deciding to just walk back to our hotels lol. We did pass some of the time by watching one pigeon repeatedly molesting another one on the roof That was funny. It was getting dark and scary so we made the 30 minute trek back to our hotels. Tomorrow was gonna be a busy busy day and I was exhausted from all the standing and walking we did, so when we got back at around 9 or 10pm I went on the internet for a bit and went to bed. The next day was a highly significant one indeed.

[Coming up next: Anime-Expo DAY 0]

[H!P] Morning Musume in LA: Prelude

[This is the first of my non-AKB48 related posts. Hopefully it will be the first of many posts covering all sorts of stuff that I find interesting. A little warning though, I predict a lot of these will be very long. Anyway ENJOY!]



As some of you might know, I’m a big fan of Morning Musume and the Hello! Project. I’ve liked them since 2007 (I discovered them only a few weeks after AKB48), but over the last year my interest has escalated immensely and you could even say that I like them just as much as AKB48 now (I definitely listen to their music more these days, but that might change if AKB48 actually bothered to release proper albums). Anyway in February it was announced that Morning Musume would be holding their first ever concert in mainland USA at the largest anime convention in the nation, Anime-Expo (which was to be held on July 2-5 2009). When I first heard the news, I was excited, but then I was also incredibly angry and jealous, “why do the Americans always get everything?” and “no one gives a shit about Europe!!” etc etc Pretty childish behaviour for a twenty year old, but I know now that I wasn’t the only one. It didn’t take long for that anger to pass, and I was over it within a few days. However a few weeks later my mum came up to me randomly and asked if I’d like to go to California for 2 weeks for a small family get-together in May. I didn’t think much of it at first but then it all came back to me, if I could somehow change the date and location for this vacation, I’d be able to see Morning Musume in LA, something that I never even considered a possibility before then. After a bit of persuading it was all set, I was going to California in June/July, bringing me many times closer to the Anime-Expo


Fast forward 2 months to the end of April, I just got out of the shower, I was brushing my teeth, and my mum walks in and says “yeah, we’re not going to California” and walks out. WTF!!! It was too sudden for me to gather my thoughts properly and I almost fainted from the shock. By that time I had already made all the arrangements for LA, I hadn’t paid for the tickets or hotel, but that was the only thing that needed to be done. I was so annoyed, I remember a few weeks after she first told me, I clearly asked her “what are the chances of us actually going to California?” and she said 80% FFS!! Now the chances were 5%. Luckily all that planning gave me even more determination, and although it wasn’t a very smart move, I ended up using the rest of my student loan money (money used to survive during university) to pay for the hotel, plane and expo tickets a few days later. I’m sure the fact that I’ve spent almost all of my loan money will come back to bite me in the ass, but I’m glad I did. Money is there to be spent right? Might as well spend it on things that make you happy rather than saving it and paying interest on something I didn’t even use. That’s what I keep telling myself whenever I look at my bank statement

Being told we weren’t going to California was bad, but the biggest piss-take of them all was yet to come. 3 days after I purchased my relatively cheap plane tickets (£300 was a good deal I think, I was proud of that), it was announced that AKB48’s Team A were going to Paris to perform at the Japan Expo ON EXACTLY THE SAME DATES AS THE ANIME-EXPO!!!! WTF!!!! That sucked balls on so many levels, as Paris is only about an hour train ride away, and would have been so much cheaper than flying halfway around the world. Going to Paris would have certainly re-lit my AKB48 fire, I’m not ashamed to admit that my interest has dropped since I went to Japan. I’ll always support them but sometimes you can’t help losing at least some interest. As usual, I tried to be as optimistic as possible and looked for the pro’s of going to LA and the con’s of going to Paris. My plane ticket was non-refundable so I WAS going to LA whether I liked it or not (unless I wanted to pay a large cancellation fee of course):

LA PRO’S
-I’ve been to LA and Paris before and LA is a lot more appealing to me.
-The chances of Morning Musume doing something they rarely do in Japan (e.g. autograph session, handshaking event) were quite high. However since AKB48 do a lot for fans back in Japan (they are the ‘idols you can meet’ after all), the chances of European fans getting something more were lower.
-I’ve seen and met AKB48 several times before, but I’ve only seen Morning Musume in concert once. It’s always nice to experience something completely new, and this would be the first (and possibly last) time they’ll be performing in the west.
-It’s MORNING MUSUME! Arguably the most famous/successful girl group in Japan today. They’ve always seemed far out of reach for someone like me, and even Japanese fans don’t get many opportunities to meet the members.
-My favourite Musume is currently the oldest one, so this could be the last time I get to meet her before she graduates.

PARIS CON’S
-Kasai wasn’t gonna be there. This was the major problem with Paris as far as I was concerned. There were Paris pro’s and LA con’s as well, but I’d rather not remember them, they might make me depressed.

It’s easy for me to say I made the right decision now that I’ve been there, done it, and had an incredible experience, but even at the time when I had the option to cancel the flight and go to Paris, deep down I knew going to LA was the right thing to do. Buying the plane tickets before the AKB48 thing was announced might have actually been a blessing in disguise, because as it turned out, Kasai WAS going to be in Paris (largely thanks to the shitty organisation skills of the AKB management team, you guys suck ass). If I was a fan of a Team A member who now wasn’t going to Paris because of that massive cock up, I’d be extremely pissed off. They very clearly said that only Team A would be going to Paris, and even had the Team A front girls promoting the event in a video (the front girls who didn’t actually go to the expo. False advertising at it’s best). Well in this case when you have losers you also get winners. I know some people were very happy to see that their favourites were going now. I was just thankful that my preparations for LA were so far gone that I couldn’t possibly cancel. I don’t know what I would have done if I had to choose between Morning Musume and AKB48 + Kasai.

Now that I was 100% certain I was going to LA, I had to make sure I was prepared to make this an unforgettable trip. I wanted to make it clear that I was going JUST to see Morning Musume (I like anime too but if I wanted to focus on that I’d go to the London-Expo), so I made sure to buy some Morning Musume shirts/hoodies and goodies to wear. I also bought a Stage48 shirt to show my support for AKB48, I did really wish I could’ve gone to both LA and Paris

^This was the S48 shirt. Both the quality and design of the shirt is incredible, so thanks a lot to Kyobu and Kaito for designing it



^This was the Morning Musume shirt that the kind folks over at JPM designed. I don’t post a lot on the JPM forums nowadays, but it was the very first Jpop forum I joined and it’s where I discovered so many of my favourite artists (including AKB48), so it was an honour to wear their shirt and represent them. They also had the best design out of the 3 main H!P forums. The quality of the print was decent but the size of the shirt was a bit too big. There was no small so I had to get a medium, and an American medium is actually a large for me. The 2 badges are of Aichan (Takahashi Ai) and Reina (Tanaka Reina), I was able to buy those from Ebay right before I left. Aichan’s my favourite member so I stuck her badge on my hat and I put the Reina badge on my bag <3 For some reason I also got a third badge (a Suzuki Airi one) when I ordered those two, possibly a mistake or the seller was just generous. I’m not a massive Airi fan so I gave that to one of the friends I met in LA.




^This was a hoody designed by myself and JPM. I took their first design and used it to make my own hoody. On the back I put a giant 愛 (it means ‘love’ but it’s also the kanji used to spell Aichan’s first name). You can’t see it in those pictures but I also put a small ‘JPM’ on the left sleeve, to show my respect to the ones who inspired it. I like how the hoody looks but it had several minor problems. First of all the printing for the front was terrible, I should have returned it but I wasn’t sure if I had time so I just used felt tip pens to colour in the white spots It’s not so noticeable from a certain distance. The second problem is that it was a bit tight, so I had to roll up the sleeves and not wear anything underneath. It was hot anyway so that didn’t bother me too much. The final problem was that the cool 45 degree zip on the front didn’t bloody work!


One thing I had to do before I left was make a gift for Aichan Unfortunately due to my severe case of laziness, I only bothered to start making it the day before I left The gift I decided to make was a book with all of Morning Musume’s single lyrics translated into English (because Aichan loves English). My flight was early so the plan was to leave the house by 5.30am, but I stayed up all night making and printing all the lyrics so we actually left around 6.30am. Not too bad, I still got to the airport and had time to buy some playing cards and eat breakfast. Soon it was time to head off to Los Angeles, the city of angels.


[Coming up next: First day in LA]