L.A. Story, Part 2: "Day -1, Day 0, and the Wonderful Registration Process"

So I had finally met Tom in person (as opposed to on MSN, where his picture looks *nothing* like him -- turns out it's Nakki, now ya tell me...). So we spent maybe two minutes talking about our respective journeys to California; and, no time wasted, he told me that plans were already underway to hit the Little Tokyo district. I had to check my schedule to see if I had any conflicts... nope, my whole week was free, so I said, 'let's go,' and so we did.

We found a couple of fellow wota just two short downtown blocks away. We hopped on a bus, and we all sat in the back like the weirdos that we are. There was *one* lady on the bus when we got on; a few stops later it was standing-room-only, including a female police officer (you certainly won't catch any cops riding the bus around here). Most people rode for only a couple of blocks -- after all, it only costs a quarter -- and by the time we reached Little Tokyo we were pretty much the only ones on the bus again. Me, Tom, and four others got out when we saw Japanese writing on storefronts, and we were quite hungry. But we hadn't yet met up with the rest of the group. After everyone showed up we could have filled a clown car.

First we had to find Matt_D and Lampshade, and as we were trying to figure out the most obvious landmark in the area ("we're by the RED thing!") I had decided that we were on First Street. Looking at a street sign would have changed my mind, but First was a pretty good choice, if you ask me. Actually, we were on Second, so *our* group walked up and down Second while Matt and Lamp patrolled along First, and we weren't where we said we'd be, but we *were* by the red thing.

Finally the matter got sorted out, I admitted that I was wrong, and we got the privilege of meeting two more wota (the Berryz Kobo shirt which Matt was wearing was a dead giveaway). But we still couldn't eat, there were *more* people to find. Then Moze arrived, and I don't think there was any confusion for that rendezvous (correct me if I'm wrong), so we finally got a chance to sit down somewhere and get some chow.

We ultimately decided that the Suehiro Cafe looked like a good place, and we were greeted with 'irrashaimase!' when we entered. We put about five tables together so we all had a setting, and we gathered round to tell H!P war stories. This was the first time in my life I'd been able to mention an H!P girl -- for instance, Matsuura Aya -- without prefacing the story with "she's a Japanese idol singer..." so we all got along quite well.

Now, appropriately enough, the restaurant serves Sapporo, so those of us who could ordered ourselves a bottle. But as much as I like H!P and a lot of other Japanese things (Aiko is a good example); okay, I'll drink Sapporo, but the English guys really think the world of it. I just don't see it. Sorry, but I won't bring myself to believe that the Japanese have a superior product in this case. In this writer's opinion, anything German or perhaps a good Czechoslovakian lager will always win if Sapporo is the competitor.

So, they tell me that Dave Foley (of Kids in the Hall and NewsRadio fame) was in the Suehiro Cafe while we dined. I didn't think I saw anyone remarkable, but I'm glad I hadn't recognized him. I might have got all starstruck and harrassed the guy instead of letting him eat a meal in peace like a normal human being.

Anyway, the waitress was practically an idol herself, being fluent in Japanese and also being very pretty. We had her take a couple of pictures of the group just before we left, and Tom has posted one, which I've stolen to present below (I'm the cute one). The other is out there somewhere. The camera is turned the wrong way -- the photgrapher is picturesque.

We stood around in Little Tokyo for a while; Matt_D rightfully accused me of turning this site into an Urbangarde fansite, and I was sort of defensive until he agreed that their record was "awesome". I described it to the group as "Perfume-meets-Cannibal Corpse"; and it was some time later (probably even after I got back to Iowa) that I realized it was Matt's own influence that had led me to purchase the Urbangarde record in the first place, and I quote: "So it's now my goal to see these guys live..." Sorry I hadn't made the connection and thought you were a hater for a minute. I just thought you'd be taller, is all... (love this post, btw...)

Then we decided to head back downtown, went to the revolving restaurant atop the Westin, and we all had too much to drink (or so it felt, revolving room and all). On the way back to the hotel I snapped a shot of the LA Times building (it just seemed like an interesting subject).

The next morning Tom and I took our sweet, hungover time and headed down to the Convention Center for the first of many visits. Pre-registration started at 3PM, and it was only around 9:30 by the time we arrived. Some of the guys had said the night before that 5AM(!) was a good time to show up, but gimme a break, I was on vacation... Here is a shot of the pandemonium which wasn't happening on Day 0, a couple of blocks away from the point of registration...

We found our way to the *actual* registration point and just sort of butted in line where Moze had been standing for a while, and if you think that's sort of rude, we only cut in front of a few people, all said, and the number of people that ended up cutting in front of us was horrific. Luckily, most of the registrants were there for socializing instead of Morning Musume tickets, so we graciously let them in line ahead of us. One guy knew everybody (more on him later).

Time-passers in line included waiting for Tom and Moze to bring me a sammich for lunch, staring at a very pretty Asian girl (who seemingly had no friends, and I don't believe it for a second), and watching the guy in front of me (the "kid who knows everybody") explain his rather mundane artwork in fits of swear words and hyperbole.

When we got there, lines A & B had mostly filled up, a few people were at the front of line C, and as the day went on, lines D - F filled completely and they eventually had to queue the remaining arrivals outside. Those of us who had been crazy enough to wait around for hours got to stay out of the sun, and if we left the building, they marked our hands with a very-hard-to-reproduce Sharpie 'X' that meant we were grandfathered-in for waiting inside.

If you didn't have an 'X' on your hand, all you had to do was complain loudly that you'd been waiting inside earlier in the day, and they'd let you in. I saw it happen a few times.

As registration time got closer, an Asian family (I assume they were Japanese, at least the little girl was speaking Japanese -- 'sugoi' is a Japanese word, right?) was watching a recent Morning Musume concert on a portable DVD player. When Moze and I began singing along, they were gracious enough to let us sit in their circle and we mimed a number of wota moves along to the show with the family. We all sang together in Japanese; I never thought I'd be hanging out with a Japanese family watching an H!P DVD in high spirits like we all were that day, but it happened, and it was very cool.

Sometime during the day we had gotten word from others about Morning Musume's arrival at LAX, and there was video of the American fans screaming and waving at them up on youTube before we even got registered. Some people had already seen the footage and described it as 'epic', and although I hadn't seen the video until just a couple of days ago, they were right. We all had a slight fit of jealousy for being stuck in the registration line whilst some of our friends had the good fortune of seeing the group in person.

That feeling wore off eventually, and general excitement for the days to come returned when the registration finally began. So when the line started to move and the kid in front of us, who knew everybody *and* had a cartload of luggage, moved, he didn't take the luggage with him. Instead, he took more than a few moments to regroup, grabbed each piece of luggage, and eventually brought it forward. The line moved again, he advanced, but again left the luggage. Moze and I decided that we were going to keep the line moving and that it was more than appropriate to step over his luggage.

But sure enough, the Japanese family behind us dutifully took it upon themselves to help the stubborn kid with his luggage; those damned Japanese and their stupid helpfulness! Moze admitted that he felt bad about stepping over it at this point and decided to help move the cartload forward. He asked the kid, 'what all did you bring?' and without missing a beat, the kid said, 'well, these are my skates, and this is my artwork, and these are my clothes, and this is my...' And he was clearly unaware that Moze was razzing him a bit for, well, moving to the Anime Expo.

I myself have no patience for this kind of thing. When a line that's been waiting six-plus hours starts to move, have a bit of consideration for your fellow queuers and get your ass a-going. He was lucky that I didn't pick all his stuff up and throw it to the far corners of the hall; although if I'd done so, I'd have expected a full-scale retaliation from an army of nerds.

Regardless, the line was finally moving, and although there was a station for each line, A - F, the organizers decided to let lines A & B begin registration whilst making the other lines wait until A & B had gone. The only problem was that line C had a number of people who were there well before we arrived, and they shouted at the crowd controllers about this for a time, to no avail. So a number of people who should have rightfully registered before us got shafted out of a position in the concert ticket line, which queued up immediately following the badge signup. It was a mess.

Despite a small computer glitch, we got signed in without too much trouble (I watched the video on how to register before I left for my trip, so it was easy). After that, it was another hour's wait until the concert tickets would be distributed. We headed straight to that line, and were about 30 or 40 people behind the leader, with Matt_D and Lampshade somehow within the top ten.

We were all a bit restless from the long day, plus it was fairly obvious that the people in the ticket line were there to score tickets to the Morning Musume concert, so we had something to talk about with everyone -- who we are, where we're from, where we'd first heard of Morning Musume and AX, etc. And it was in this line that we met Mage (his real name, not a handle, if you can believe it), from New Orleans, who had plenty of insight into Jpop, language, and music in general.

We finally got our concert tickets after the entire line had been moved from one side of the patio to the other, for two reasons: 1.) where we were queued was a fire hazard, and 2.) the AX staff had not thought to supervise the self-created queue -- good call, guys! -- because they were all apparently too busy arguing with the registrants in line C ("I don't care if you got here earlier than them, I'm only following orders!")

Moze and I had a celebratory dinner at the downtown Los Angeles IHOP (motto: We'll give you the keycode to restroom if you buy something!") and the restaurant quickly became a favorite for Mr. Moze, some several other times he went there during the week. I myself only enjoyed it that one time, but it was good, and in traditional IHOP style, very inexpensive.

L.A. Story, Part 1: "Getting There"

I still have trouble believing that I was there. Not just the historic Morning Musume concert, but Los Angeles in general. It was even bigger than I expected it to be, and I expected it to be HUGE. One thing's for sure, H!P picked a helluva place to send a notorious homebody like myself on a weeklong soul-searching excursion.

I was kinda disappointed that I wasn't able to attend Sakura-Con and meet Hangry&Angry in Seattle. I had a lot going on back then and also figured that Seattle was quite a ways away. But in my several years of watching Morning Musume in videos and TV appearances (especially Utaban), I made a vow that if they ever came to the U.S., wherever it was, I would go.

So in a conversation with Tom on MSN right before Good Friday service I said, not thinking too seriously about it, "I'm going to look into the LA gig, what's it called?" Next morning I had bought a plane ticket, registered for Anime Expo, and put in for a hotel reservation. Once I saw plane tickets for $300 it took about 20 minutes and I was officially bound for the Expo.

I made a list the weekend prior, of all the things I wanted to get done before I left for the Expo. Some of them were necessities for the trip, others were intended to ease my return, like cleaning my house so I didn't return to a complete junkpit. And some of my chores bordered on the macabre, just in case I didn't make it back. A few things in my house still have the labels I put on them: "Please return this to (name here), it's not mine, I borrowed it." The weekend came and went, and finally the big day had arrived.

I live about two minutes from the airport in Des Moines. Dad picked me up and took me there so I wouldn't have to pay for a week of parking, practically in my own neighborhood. He didn't even park, just pulled up to the entryway to let me out. No long goodbyes, no words of wisdom, just a quick "see ya in a week" exchange and I was off to wait for the plane to board. Not that we're a sentimental bunch, but I thought he might want to see me off in a more conventional way. It's not like he had anything else to do that day, but in retrospect it was nice to be on my own for the start of this landmark journey. I reflected on my life so far and felt my stomach do flips as I listened to Hiro songs in the terminal. It was *much* better than the music being piped-in.

I didn't make it through the Xray process very quickly because I went a little over-the-top on my present for Tom. I thought it would be appropriate to bring him something unmistakeably Iowa, since he probably won't be coming here anytime soon. A quick brainstorm with a friend led us to this, literally a piece of Iowa...


It's a geode, if you haven't already guessed, a little bigger than a softball, and cracked in half to display the pretty crystals inside. I took half of it with me to give to Tom, and you should have seen the looks on the NSA people's faces when they saw that through the Xray machine. They didn't say anything to me, I thought they might go all "Code Red" and shut the airport down until they realized that it wasn't a threat. I waited patiently (while they called for a supervisor) to explain to them that it would in fact make a really crappy bomb, then told them, "I know what you're questioning, and you're welcome to search the bag."

They never did open the box, just wiped it with an Oxy pad and told me I was free to go. But they weren't real nice about it.

I warned Tom about this as I gave it to him on my last day in L.A., but apparently he slipped it back to England unnoticed. Good for him, fight the power!

My good friend/next-door-neighbor/coworker/frequent dining companion (all the same person) was generous enough to give Tom a signed copy of one of her books, "Grasp the Stars" (hint: you can buy it on Amazon):

Luckily for him, Tom actually reads sci-fi, so I think he liked it. Jennifer knows I'm not a sci-fi reader, but gave me the copy that you're looking at above. I might read it someday...

So, two hours after boarding the plane, I'm in Dallas. No need to tell me we're over Texas, looking at all the brown grass and muddy ponds from overhead. It made me trip out a bit because it takes 11 hours to get there in a car, and I know that for a fact. My brother spent four years at UNT in Denton, so I made the trip probably a dozen times by car, and had already flown to and from DFW twice. So it was a strangely familiar place despite being so far away. I hit the airport McDonalds for some en-route comfort food, and an hour later, we were in the air again and headed to LA.

There's something about flying that makes me feel like we're all just pieces of dust floating around at random. You probably aren't the type that does this, but whenever I'm on a plane I make up stories about all the random people who I'm travelling with; you know, imagining the human-interest newswires about us some ten years from now, on the anniversary of the gruesome crash we'd all be in... 'Timmy had just reconciled with his father and hadn't seen him for twenty years... and he never got the chance.'

Well, I'm not that worried about plane crashes but there have been few happier moments in my life than when they tell me I can get off the plane. Otherwise I'm just stuck in there, breathing the same air as everyone, at the mercy of the crew. After a couple of hours of staring down into the nothingness that is West Texas/New Mexico/Arizona, the pilot comes on and announces, "we are beginning our descent into Los Angeles International..." and I'm freaking out by that point, for several reasons.

1.) The reality of Anime Expo is about to come. 2.) Midwesterner about to arrive in Los Angeles for the first time (sure, you can have my wallet!) 3.) No more air travel for a week, and the pilot was nice enough not to crash the plane!

Suffice to say we landed at LAX after I saw from overhead several of the famous 52-lane freeways I'd seen on TV so often. There's 'urban sprawl' and then there's the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Jeepers, it's huge.

As I boarded the shuttle to the hotel, an Asian-American guy a little older than me spied my MiniMoni t-shirt and says, "I know what you're here for..." and proceeds to talk my ear off about fansubs and how he's moving to LA from New York, and we wished each other well when we parted ways at the Sheraton. As we were driving in I looked out the window and could say nothing but "damn!" to myself as the shuttle driver drove like a madman past the Convention Center, the Staples Center, the Denny's Restaurant, Library Tower, all of which I had only seen in pictures. If I was still questioning whether these places really existed, here was proof-positive.

I figured that the driver knew how to get to the Westin Bonaventure, but knowing my luck I'd get the guy who says, "biggest hotel in town, you say? I've been driving shuttles for 20 years and I've *never* heard of it..." But he gets to the curb, and one of the uniformed bellhops opens the van door and says, "Welcome to the Westin Bonaventure!" I'm thinking 'holy crap, how did I get here?' Nothing at all had gone wrong!

I decided to get checked in and contact Tom from the room, although on my way to the elevator I thought I recognized him from afar in the huge lobby. Since we'd never met in person before, I didn't feel like going up to a random person and asking, "Tom?" as they gave me a blank stare in return. Turns out it *was* him, but how was I to know for sure until he came up to the room?

Before he arrived I took a moment to get a shot of the view from our hotel room. The second picture is a view of the crosswalk, right before AX pandemonium took over the town...



Next: Part 2: "Day -1, Day 0, and the Wonderful Registration Process. Til then...

A Message to Paul Thomas (of 'hello!blog')

Paul, you don't know me, but we're about to become fast friends in the online sense. Observe, if you will, a favorite subject of mine wearing an appropriate piece of clothing:

Paul, I can see into the future. In it you own a jacket just like this. And it wasn't very difficult for you to obtain. That's right, if you still WANT this, I'm sending it your way, no charge.

That's right, the 2003 Hello!Project Sports Festival (in Osaka Dome/Tokyo Dome) tracksuit has been here in the Midwestern US, safe and sound since August, when Ohta sent it to me.

Many apologies that it's taken so long for me to speak up about it, but I am giving you this gift in celebration of Ms. Aiko Kayo's 23rd birthday (starting 9:00AM Dec 10th, US Central / 3:00PM Dec 10th GMT). No bullshit, it'll be yours to keep.

So I'll put myself in your shoes, and I have a feeling you're asking, 'why'? Allow me to explain:

1.) it's advertisement. If you or any of your readers have any interest in Ms. Aiko Kayo, they might discover this site as a result of this stunt. I'd like some readership.

2.) you said (in no uncertain terms) that you wanted it, but it seemed like you would have a difficult time rationalizing the cost. Well, I had the money, and I bought it specifically to give to you. Money is not the most important thing in the world, and making people happy may not be the most important, either, but I'd rather make people happy than have money.

3.) I wanted it, too. I'm also an H!P fanatic, and like you, I understand the significance of this item. To see it close-up, as well as owning it for some time has been pretty f**kin' cool. This is from the year that Yasuda graduated, and the NON-STOP concert is tops in my book.

4.) thank you, sir, for the hello!blog. I found your site from Wikipedia footnotes when I was looking for (non-existent) news about Kago during her suspension. Fittingly, I also discovered Aiko via Wikipedia, and both she and your blog are precious finds in an otherwise sullen world. Many thanks for making W's 'Arreviderci' available, too... after hearing that, I bought all their recordings.

5.) it's my way of making amends with the Aiko/H!P past. She tried out, she was in the top 9 of 24,000+, and she didn't get the invite. But I doubt to this day that she would have a bad word to say about Tsunku or H!P. I'll do a post about it sometime soon. I discovered H!P because of Aiko's unsuccessful endeavor, wondering who they were, why she tried out, and what was so appealing.

6.) when it comes to this suit, you and I will have a story to tell.

Okay, so it's free, but on a couple of conditions you're likely to agree with:

1.) Please write a post on h!b when you receive this, mentioning my site AND the beautiful Ms. Aiko Kayo, maybe including a picture of you wearing the jacket...

2.) enjoy it. If you don't want it, I'll be proud to keep it, but more than likely will not wear it except in the most rare of occasions.

3.) remember my name (jyoru) and show some respect. From one H!P fan to another, from one Kusumi fan to another, this is to show that there are no political boundaries and no geographical boundaries so great that we cannot bond together as fans.

Paul, you do not want to know what kind of year I've had to get to this point. When I listen to Morning Musume, I just want to break down and bawl my eyes out; I haven't yet, but I may do so sometime soon. It'd be funny if it happened during something so inappropriate as "Boogie Train '03", but when it happens I'll let you know.

The final, most important piece, is that I do not know your address.  Please contact me at jyoru1211@gmail.com, if even to turn down this offer, and we can trade information.  Please note that I have never been outside the continental US, and if I ever travel I will be going to Japan, rather than merry old England.  But if I ever travel to your neighborhood (or you to mine), I'll owe you a beer or six-thousand.

Last, but not least... proof that I have it.  The second time I ever put the jacket on, tags intact:

Check out my homemade Minimoni t-shirt!