[19-20.08.2009]
Day 0 was a bitch. No seriously…a bitch! I got up at 8:30am to make my final preparations for the trip, and at 11:20am I was sat on the coach on my way to London. YAY! 5 hours and 40 minutes later I arrived at Heathrow Airport, quickly made my way to Terminal 3, checked in and went to find zorrander ^^ Unfortunately zorrander and I were not sat together on the plane so the flight was uber boring. I watched Drangonball Evolution (Kame~Hame~Ha!), Star Trek and a Quiz Hexagon. Had a nap and ate dodgy airline food. That’s it…
Once we got to Narita and made our way through customs it was then time for me to put my well thought out plan in to action. We had to get from Narita Airport to Akabanebashi Station (for the Ai-chan handshake event which started at 5:30pm) in the quickest time possible. After collecting our rail passes we got the Narita Express to Tokyo, then took the train to Hamamatsucho, then the subway to Akabanebashi. After walking out the wrong exit (I had to fail at some point) at 5:40pm (I beat the clock though), we saw the queue of Wota’s outside the UFA building and made our way there grinning from ear to ear. Sadly though, the amount of people wanting to shake Ai-chan’s hand exceeded the number of tickets available and gordo didn’t manage to win any in the lottery. We did mange to get a sneaky glimpse of Ai-chan through the door of the the building though, and you could quite clearly hear her talking to the fans. To start off with I wasn’t too upset about not getting in to this event as it was always tentative, but watching a number of Wota looping the line to shake her hand a least three times was a serious kick in the balls. I ended up feeling really disheartened and this was not a good start to the holiday.
On a plus side (I think) we did see Yossi turn up for work and she waved at us all. We also stuck around for Ai-chan to leave and we waved goodbye to her. There were only six of us that waited around for this so I hope she noticed me ^^
view from our hotel room
After getting a bit lost in Ikebukuro we eventually got to our hotel at 8:15pm then left again at 9:00pm to meet gordo for some dinner. Went to some random restaurant and I ate yakitori, some fishy Tokyo style okinomiyaki (didn’t realise it was fish) and fries, mixed down with some Kirin. Afterwards we went straight back to the hotel and passed out.
End of day 00
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Wow I never realized you could hang around the offices. Usually people aren’t allowed to stay around the buildings in the business areas.
Sounds like a nice opening experience.
How long are you running around Japan?
Wow. I applaud you. I definitely just slept the moment I got to the house I was staying at. Haha. And I slept for about 15 hours. XD;; I would not have been able to do that. Granted, you probably had less to travel than me as well… (on the way there was over 24 hours of combined travel)
@Tsukiki – We’re here until the 30th, which is 10 days overall. Our flight was 12 hours, plus I spent just under 5 hours on a coach to get to the airport. Then it was another 1.5 hours to get from Narita to Akebanebashi. If you add in the waiting time at Heathrow, I spent 21.5 hours travelling.
Alita – The staff tried to move us on a couple of times, but only because they knew we were waiting around for Ai-chan lol. We’re here until the 30th, which is 10 days altogether. Best trip I’ve had to Japan d(^_^)b
I thought the UFA office/building were supposed to be kept secret and guarded by security?
a couple years ago, I read that UFA didn’t made their office public and had the guards denied that UFA office is located in the building?…
Did something change?
anyway, too bad you can’t attend Ai-chan handshake event, but at least you got to see her somewhat and even saw Yossy.
I don’t know why they’d do that. After seeing Yossie casually walking in to the building it doesn’t seem like they want to be all ninja about everything. Obviously the place doesn’t have UFA or Hello! Project plastered over the front in big neon letters, but I thought the building has always been known to be the headquarters…
Was a pity about Ai-chan, but I get to shake all of Morning Musume’s hands three times on Saturday. I think that makes up for it ^_^
Well enjoy your trip. Too bad you’re leaving Sunday or I could show you random places in Shibuya. Well rather hang out at coffee shops as that’s what I love doing. I need to hit up Nakano Broadway again for cheap clothes. Yes Trio 2 is there but really used idol goods (the pictures you have to be careful of, though I didn’t look closely there at many places the pictures are fakes and aren’t official merch.)
My day off is Tuesday so I should go hang around and try to watch for Yossi but I’d probably never find the building.
I’m sad because I don’t have the days off to go to the handshakes for this single release and all the other free (well buy one cd) ones were on days I didn’t have off/time to go to the area. I have a stupid training course on the 6th or I’d have bought ten copies and jetted back to Nagoya to meet up with my friend and go. I’ve been to the past 2. Won into Pepper Keibu with 3 cds but then stupidly didn’t realize the little paper slip was so necessary to get in and turns out the one I needed not only had I left in Nagoya when I came to Tokyo I’d thrown that bag away. Ah well, hopefully next single release is both on a Sunday and in Tokyo.
Oh man, why didn’t you tell me earlier that you are in Japan. I’m always up for meeting other H!P fans! Random places in Shibuya would’ve been a great way to pass time, and we could’ve stalked the Disney Store in the hope of seeing Risa lol ^^; I didn’t buy any photos in Nakano, just the Ribbon no Kishi visual book. How can you tell if a photo is fake though? I wouldn’t have thought there was a market in that kinda thing.
Yeah, I didn’t think the slips would be necessary either, although I think they do it to stop people faking the e-mails. So did you get in to the release event without the slip?