JYJ in Newark: Fanaccount, Fancams, and Pictures! ^^
So my weekend in Newark was kind of crazy xD I've probably forgotten a whole bunch of it already >_>
WARNING: This fanaccount is really really really long, rambly and probably not at all relevant.
I'm going to separate this into sections because I know some people are just interested in the concert part (just go to Sunday and scroll down if this is you) and some people want to read everything so...here goes.
FRIDAY
I basically stayed up all night packing Thursday/Friday because I had to leave my dorm >< and packing everything you own is a pretty time-consuming thing. My bus to NYC left at 9:05am and I left my room (without vacuuming, all the vacuums were MIA) at 8:50 OTL. If the bus hadn't been running late I would've missed it, especially since rolling around two suitcases and carrying a backpack that felt like it weighed 50 pounds (it was huge, ask anyone who saw me with it) on a campus that's made of hills is a huge pain in the ass.
Anyways, I ended up zoning out (not really sleeping, for some reason I got kind of bus sick orz) for most of the six hour bus ride to the city from Ithaca.
My first time in Penn Station in NYC for the showcase in November was pretty bad. The signs were confusing, I got lost and then even more lost on top of that. Honestly, I don't know how I managed to find my way to the venue by myself xD
This time was worse ;; I swear to whoever that I almost got raped, twice. Before anyone says anything, "stranger danger" and all that blah blah blah I know, but the guy just starts talking to me, asking me where I'm going, and I'm not used to all this city shit OTL and especially since I'm super lost...I almost followed him out the door before I decided that this was too far and tried to back out. This seriously badass policewoman (negl she scared the shit out me) with the thickest New York something accent I've ever heard in my life basically gets into this huge fight with this dude by the door and tells me to gtfo so I do. Scarred for life idek.
I'm wandering around some more trying to find the place where they sell tickets and I can't when some other dude comes up to me and asks me where I'm going too and I just got the fuck out of there.
It legitimately took me about 30 minutes of wandering two or three floors to find the ticket counters, where I bought the a ticket for the 3:45 NJ Transit bus to the Newark airport, where Akai (aka Miranda, #mirandowae, inrukisarms, @Duckbutt_Micky) was waiting for me after her plane from Florida had come in a couple of hours before. She actually called me when I was in line and told me that people were trying to bum money off her at the airport XDDD
It took me another hour or so to get from Penn Station to the airport. My suitcases kept falling over and hitting people on the bus OTL and I actually broke the handle on the bigger one trying to get it from one bus to another.
Basically, transportation in NYC/NJ sucks.
It was better in the airport, where I found Akai before catching the hotel shuttle to the Ramada. I checked us in and we basically sat around doing nothing (watching the Food Network and eating...Akai's Chinese food literally took an hour to deliver) for the rest of the night until we went to pick up Haley (haleycp, @cherrichik) at around 10-ish.
We ended up getting there a little early. Good thing too since it turns out the air train that takes you from terminal to terminal in the airport undergoes maintenance or something after a certain time of night and we had to take a bus part of the way in order to get to the proper terminal. After, we wandered around wasting time and trying not to pass out from lack of sleep for a while. When Haley finally arrived we took the air train from the terminal to P4, where the hotel shuttles went...and ended up taking way longer than necessary because the air train went back and forth instead of around in a circle, like someone (*pokes Akai*) said. (Queen of fail moment)
We got back to the hotel (we were also starting to get an idea of how fucking slow the shuttle drivers to our particular hotel were), where Haley finished off some of Akai's leftovers. We got our Chunana shirts! :D Then we went to sleep, Haley and I on one bed and Akai on the other xD
SATURDAY
We woke up around nine-ten because we had to meet Liz (tacoss, @TVfXQMYC at noon (I think?). We managed to not get lost even though we were taking the about four different modes of transportation to get there. Since we didn't realize that the path train went to Penn Station, we took it to the World Trade Center. Even though we were late, Liz was running even later (apparently there were train/subway problems?) and we ended up hanging around a September 11th memorial for a couple of hours. When Liz finally showed up, we took the subway to K-town. There was this Face Shop on the street with a shitload of Korean stuffs. There was one wall shelf full of K-pop albums and one wall full of K-dramas. There were posters and phone charms for all sorts of groups and an entire section of the shop was was selling Face Shop merchandise. They had posters of Hyunjoong and a life-sized cutout too. Haley took pictures of everythingggggg.
After hanging around for a while just staring at everything and their price tags (so expensive ;A;), Liz decided to take us to another Asian store somewhere in the vicinity. I swear we would've gotten so lost without Liz there though, since I completely didn't know where we were after the first few turns or so. The second Asian store was Japanese and huge compared to the first store. We went up to the second floor where the DBSK stuff was and perused a bit. We met a couple of other Cassies there. We discussed concert/airport/hotel stuff with them...until Haley found some K-pop magazine. The two of us basically major fangirl spazzed in the middle of the store with each other over about 10 different groups while the others kept talking XD.
After we left that store we went back to the first one where Haley bought her friend back home Jay Park's album and the Mirotic album. She got a free DBSK poster with the purchase, but it turned out to be a Homin poster and not a pre-lawsuit poster T___T
We went back to the hotel without going to the salon that we had planned to go to with Liz (the reason for the trip in the first place) since we'd run out of time (we wanted to get dinner at a reasonable time at the restaurant on the first floor of the hotel). By the time we got back, our other two roommates, Olivia (hitsuki37, @AmorSperare) and Madi ( @BambiMadi) had already arrived by bus and Marcus ( @klenkton) had also checked into his room in the same hotel.
The restaurant was a bit of a rip off but we really weren't going to go wander sketch-ass Newark for food so we ate there with the most spaztastic Hispanic waitress ever. When we finished we went back to our room to wait for Eelan (jaejoongiekim, @jaejoongiekim) to come at 8-8:30 to go stalk JYJ at the airport with us.
Akai, Haley and I changed into our chunana shirts before taking the shuttle to the airport, terminal A. Their plane from Vancouver was supposed to get in at 10:13PM. We got there about an hour early just so we'd have enough time. We stopped by a gelato place in the food court (that strawberry was fucking great, and I had another kind that had some weird Italian name I couldn't pronounce) before going to the Air Canada gates. There were already some people there, including Linh (rinmi, @RinmiJjang), Joyce ( @yooCHUNSA) and Chrissy ( @ooOHero33).
The flight was delayed about half an hour (there had been storms in the area for a while). We stood/sat around the United/Air Canada gates for the rest of the time, getting weird stares by people coming in from other flights and the janitors doing their nighttime rounds. One guy even raised his hand like a celebrity when he walked out of the gates, and everyone in the front cheered xD the people in the back who couldn't see what was going on through the crowd thought that JYJ had arrived and started freaking out. It was still a while of standing around before anything else happened. A few of us had a little karaoke party near the gate with JYJ/DBSK music from my phone.
When JYJ finally arrived, a girl with a good view into the gates yelled "THEY'RE HERE" a few times. I thought it was a false alarm until Yoochun walked around the corner, looking not exactly happy in a green neck pillow, sunglasses and a baseball cap. Jaejoong was after him, wearing a beanie and a facemask with his sunglasses. As soon as I saw them I kind of went into autopilot or something. I remember trying to take pictures and being so mad at my camera's slow shutter speed. They went down a escalator to the floor with the baggage claim and nearly every fangirl in the airport tried to squeeze down the escalator after them and their managers (and probably dancers too). I didn't even think about it before joining the mob and breaking into a run as I hit solid floor again. I felt someone grab onto my purse (I learned later that it was Akai) as I ran but she let go as soon as I decided to vault over a metal gate thing near the automatic doors as they went outside. It was only at this point that I noticed Junsu behind Jaejoong in his red/black plaid (/fail OTL). I managed to get a pretty good vantage point next to the car (some big black SUV deal) as they got in and waved at us before they took off. (the pictures I took are all at the end of this post)
It seemed like this whole thing took only a few seconds when it reality it took a couple of minutes. People had been telling us to try to keep calm but as soon as they appeared no one seemed to remember anymore and I admit that I kind of let go as soon as I followed them outside ><. It was an exhilarating feeling to be the ones taking the airport pictures this time instead of just looking at them online like usual o.o
We got lost trying to find the bus to get back to P4 and the hotel shuttles .____. even though Akai and I had gone the same way with Haley just the night before (lack of sleep, remember?). We wandered around from floor to floor in terminal C before we finally asked the right people and figured out that the air train was actually running...>_>
When we finally reached P4, the Ramada shuttle was literally just leaving. Considering how fail the driver seems to be at coming every twenty minutes like the hotel said he should, we decided that we'd just take the Sheraton shuttle and walk to the Ramada from there (it's literally a three minute walk, even if you don't jump the fence), especially since the people at the Ramada front desk had told us that using the Sheraton shuttle might be a better idea than their own, since it's so unreliable.
So, we had all piled onto the shuttle with a whole bunch of other people. There were a few people who were left standing, but according to them, they didn't really want to sit down (one man said he had back problems and wouldn't be able to get up if he sat down), so we really didn't feel bad about using the shuttle even when the driver asked to make sure we were all going to the Sheraton, no the Ramada. When we finally reached our destination, we hopped off the bus and slowly began to make our way back to our own hotel. It was probably not the greatest idea to start going back before the driver had left--we probably should have just hung around for a while and waited for him to leave. As is was though, the madman started chasing after us, screaming at the top of his lungs, telling us to go to hell and all this other stuff I don't really remember. Some lady who had probably just gotten out of the shuttle with us even told him to chill out but the guy didn't listen. After we started running (and Marcus yelled shit back at him), he got back into the shuttle and started chasing us down, prompting us to run even faster. He actually nearly ran Akai over if what she told us afterward is true. After we all managed to get back to the hotel lobby, we just started laughing over how ridiculous it all was.
Back in our room, I was figuring out how to watermark my pictures that I had managed to take when Shane Yoon ( @shaneyoon) came online and started talking to Kat (kam2452, @6002theChunana). Before anyone knew it, he was basically having conversations with half of my t-list. We introduced him to so many new terms (Chunana and Jaeled, anyone?) and the fantastic5, as well as give him a couple of options for nickname (Shanana, Shamango). Every time he would tweet us or someone we knew we would have a collective fangirl freakout in our room (Marcus got kind of pissed lol) xDDD I kind of forgot to freak out about the airport stalkage in my freaking over Shane talking to all of us like he was part of t-list LOL
I stayed up until about 4 getting all the airport stuff posted (only pictures, Haley took the HD fancam from the upper floor) while everyone else went to sleep. Then I went to sleep too.
SUNDAY
We'd planned to wake up at nine and head out to the city again by ten, but of course that didn't work, which isn't that surprising considering there were five girls in one room and most of us didn't really even wake up until 9:30. I think Marcus got kind of pissed at us for taking so long xD but we finally got our asses out of the hotel at around 11, making our way back to K-town as a group of six by about 12:30. There was some kind of outdoor festival happening that day. They were making/selling food and all sorts of other stuff. There was a performance while we were there with some cute little Korean girl in a hanbok with a drum. It smelled so good, and we were debating on whether we should stay and eat the food from the stalls or go to one of the many restaurants in K-town, though we eventually decided on a restaurant.
The food was amazing. I'd had a little bit of experience with Korean food before, and a lot of experience with Asian food in general, so I ended up telling people what a lot of the random stuff was xDDD. I remember that the waitress tried to speak to me in Korean and I had to tell her that I didn't speak Korean OTL and that she couldn't split the check .___.;; so Akai paid for the whole thing and had the rest of us pay her back.
After we finished eating we went back to that same Korean store that we went to the day before. Olivia ended up buying a 12 cut THSK poster set and I saw a two disk DBSK album that I kind of wanted to buy but I figured I'd buy it the next day. We left K-town around 2:30 in oder to get back to Newark and Military Park in time to pick up ONETVXQ shirts/lightsticks as well as the white ocean lightsticks to distribute for In Heaven. Eelan was driving down from the city to meet us there and we decided to walk from the Newark Penn Station to the park because the bus we wanted to take apparenetly didn't actually stop there. We saw Jackie ( @siriusmoonpuppy, @IntlCassieProj) and Zef (rawrboysmode, @rawrboysmode) at the park, helping out with the shirts/lightsticks. Everyone besides Haley had ordered the shirt/lightstick, so since there were people at the park selling shirts, she went and bought one too.
After that we wandered around the area for a while trying to figure out where Eelan had parked her car. It turned out to be a small sedan...and we had seven people. Haley called shotgun and it would've been rather awkward for one of us to sit on Marcus's lap or vice versa...so in the end Marcus ended up in the middle of the backseat with Akai on his left and Olivia on his right, with me on Akai's lap and Madi on Olivia's. Awkward situation is awkward because I'm not exactly short and Madi and I had to bend over in half so that random passersby (and more importantly cops) wouldn't see seven people packed into one car...Basically, the phrase "keep your head down" means more than one thing to me now.
We went back to the hotel first, awkwardly climbing out of the car on the street outside because paying for parking when we were just going back in to change/get our tickets would be a waste of money. We went back to Military Park and parked in the underground parking garage there. Walking from there to the Prudential Center isn't that far.
Along the way we picked up Cathy ( @devjacaiora) and her friend, who had flown in from Florida like Akai, and as a huge group we went to find Meghan ( @Meg_Jaejoong and her friend Patty ( @sakurastarflow) at the entrance to the venue. There was a guy selling overpriced cute JYJ cell phone charms and lightsticks and such at the door, so I bought a "J" charm for my phone (even though I broke the place where you put the charm ages ago). We went inside into this lobby where the ticket windows were. There were a lot of people there already, so we found a empty patch of floor to stand/sit on.
Things that happened while we waited for the concert: Haley got a lot of comments about the huge Canadian flag she brought to the concert. I got super pissed at the AmorYoojae people giving people pamphlets and selling banners at the door. We got freaked out every time something happened at the big double doors. We stood/sat in line for an hour even though we had no idea what the line was for. They were giving out free lightsticks so I snagged one to bring home for Courtney (insanelolipanda, @insanelolipanda), Olivia's idea. We realized that the concert was at eight so they would be letting people in at seven, which was an hour later than we had thought.
Once they had let us into the venue, we got kind of lost finding our way to section A, We went around the place and past the correct entrance before some staff member told us where we were supposed to go. We found our seats without much effort (they were the foldy kind xD) and sat down, where we sat and talked to people around us, took pictures and passed out the white lightsticks for the remaining time before the concert.
So basically, I don't even really remember the entire concert. Two hours went by like two minutes--people don't lie when they say time flies when you're having fun T___T. I remember that halfway through the first song, I looked to my left and realized that everyone was just gone. You can imagine my panic...before I realized it was because they had all ditched their seats to rush the stage xD so I grabbed Haley and we rushed up there too. I remember that I took fancams of everything (moving from row 23 to up until the epicness that was the drum line before Mission...then I ran out of space on my memory card >:| at which time I deleted the half-finished video and switched to taking pictures until I couldn't take any more. Then I started deleting the fuzzier pictures to make room for better ones... (again, everything at the end of the post lol)
...Yeah. Someone remind me to get a bigger SD card the next time I go to a concert >_>
They performed all of the expected songs. At some point in time I'd pushed myself up to the front of the crowd and was literally within touching distance of the extension part of the stage *O* They walked out onto the extension way more than I had expected, so I got quite a few close up photos of them (*insert keyboard smash here*). Every time they walked past me I died a little on the inside. The screaming...yeah, you guys can imagine. Basically, I fangirled my little fangirl heart out. I used both lightsticks (mine and the one I got for Courtney lol) during the concert, one in each hand, though I got hypocritically super pissed at people in front of me waving their lightsticks around XD (in my defense, most of those were really big ones with the huge designs...and mine were just the plain Onetvxq ones). There was a shitton of Soulmates action (*flail*) and I nearly passed out during the part between performances (after Chajatta) when they spoke English (well, it really just Yoochun, and I didn't really almost pass out, but you know). Jaesu were content just drinking water even though Yoochun tried to get them to talk (I could've sworn I got a picture of Jae drinking but I have no idea where it went >:|). I also accidentally cracked my white lightstick one song early .___.;; They went off the stage and came back on multiple times, so I didn't know which encore was coming up next (I fail with the new songs, okay? They seriously need to release studio versions, like...now.).
So basically, if you don't want to bother reading my ramblings you can just know that JYJ live is about the best thing I've ever seen in my entire life and this concert was better than the showcase was in November because the Korean songs are just like kaljdfgnalkjfng /dead. And because I had lots of awesome friends to go with me \o/ I love you guys~
After the concert, we were all riding on a JYJ high (except for the fact that I found out my new Jaejoong phone charm was already broken...>_>) when we went to go back to Eelan's car and...
The parking garage was closed.
Seriously, what the hell? Haley had asked the garage attendants about their hours and they had said that they were going to be open late because of the concert, but not one of the three of four doors was open. I tried calling the number on the sign outside one of the doors but it just kept ringing. After trekking about Military Park for a good twenty minutes or something we just went into a nearby Best Western and asked the nice lady at the desk if there was any way to get the car back...but there wasn't (apparently this kind of thing happened quite frequently).
We ended up taking the Best Western airport shuttle and then the Ramada shuttle back to our hotel (with Eelan). We more or less all decided to stay up all night...but only Haley and Eelan succeeded, mostly because Haley had to leave for the airport at some ungodly hour in the morning and Eelan was going with her to the airport in order to go get her car back when the garage reopened at six in the morning. Before she left, she managed to take some not-so-flattering pictures of all of us passed out (I feel asleep on the desk in front of my computer OTL and even throwing shit at me didn't wake me up) and post them on twitter >_>. When I randomly woke up, Haley was saying something about brownies I think, so I asked her something about what she said, and she about died. Literally rolling on the floor laughing. Akai took a picture of this xD as revenge for when Haley posted a picture of her sleeping on the first night.
It was sad to see Haley and Eelan go ;~; I was so tired that I would've probably gone to sleep on the shuttle if I had accompanied them with Akai to the airport, so I just hugged and said goodbye to them at the hotel >< before going to sleep on the bed instead of the desk >_>
MONDAY
I vaguely remembering waking up when Olivia and Madi realized they were late and had to catch the bus to go back to Maryland before passing right back out. When I woke up for real, Akai and I realized that check out was at 10am and there was no way we were going to make that deadline. We did managed to get ourselves all packed up and ready to go by 11am though, which would have to do. We hitched a ride to NYC with Marcus, who was planning to go to Times Square and take a "douche picture," as he put it. The toll to get from New Jersey to NYC by car was $8 .____. and we wandered around Manhattan for a while trying to find Times Square with his GPS, but we failed, somehow ending up in Chinatown outside of our "bus station," which was really just a sketch-ass store that was really just a waiting area in the middle of Cantonese Chinatown.
Since we had decided to go back to K-town instead of wait around in sketch Chinatown for seven hours, I left my huge suitcase in the "station," praying that it wouldn't get stolen. We took the subway from Grand Street Station in Chinatown to Penn Station...but ended up getting off one street away from where we wanted to be, as we found out later. The NYPD, not to mention the general population, is apparently clueless when it comes to finding out where the hell Korea Way is, though it didn't help that Akai thought one of the street names was "Broad Street" when it was really "Broadway"...>_> Basically, it took us maybe an hour of getting lost and going in completely wrong directions (don't forget we both had suitcases on us and I had my fifty bajillion pound backpack too) before we found K-town again.
We went back to the store that sold all the k-pop merchandise...and I found out that the CD+DVD set that I had wanted to buy was gone D< /rage. I figured that if we'd spent so much time and effort on getting to K-town I might as well get something...So I bought a TVXQ "O"-正.反.合. album with DVD while Akai bought a 12-cut JYJ poster set. Then we headed out (it turns out that getting to and from Chinatown to this subway station, 34th street, is actually easier than the other stop, 35th street...OTL) and made out way back to the sketch-ass "bus station," where I jacked one of their electrical outlets so Akai and I could watch one of the DVDs in my AADBSK3 set (which I had brought back from school with me) on my laptop.
Let me tell you that being in a room basically full of Cantonese people who smell like fish is really awkward when you can't speak the language. There were a few other people...for example, this white (and redneck-looking, ngl) couple and this black woman who wouldn't stop complaining.
Basically we spent two or three hours in there, trying not to laugh our asses off in the middle of a bunch of middle-aged Cantonese people. When it was finally 7PM, there was a huge crush of people with shitloads of boxes and packages of various humongous sizes all trying to get on the bus all at once. I had to pay an extra $10 for my huge suitcase because it was oversized, then we finally on the bus. Our assigned seats were wayyyyy in the back...right next to the restroom OTL.
It's a good thing I have a tendency to sleep on moving vehicles, because that's exactly what I did for about 15 of the next 17 hours or so. For some of the time I was awake (Akai didn't really sleep >_<), we watched more of AADBSK3 until my computer died. The trip was only supposed to take 16 hours (ETA 11AM)...but somewhere in Georgia, I think, we got pulled over by the cops.
As far as I could tell, we'd gotten pulled over because there had been reports of the bus swerving around on the interstate. They didn't detain us for that reason though...for some reason, they were much more concerned about the fact that our bus only had one driver for a trip all the way down from NYC (the other bus driver had gotten off somewhere in North Carolina to rest up).
None of this is really for sure though, since I ended up sort of translating (with my ridiculously fail Mandarin) between the Cantonese guy in the seat in front of me and the white couple, who was sitting across the aisle. Apparently, they had to go talk to the cops because the driver's English was more or less non-existent or something...yeah, it was a fail. Idk what happened, really, but they eventually let us go. To make things worse and more confusing, in the middle of Akai using my phone to call her grandma (since hers was already dead) and tell her what was going on, my phone died too...
Finally, we got to Jacksonville more than an hour later than expected. We hadn't even realized that there were multiple stops, because the bus stopped in some weird strip mall in the middle of nowhere before stopping at the correct strip mall in the middle of nowhere. Akai's grandma was waiting there with her van, and after I programmed my house's address into the GPS, I was finally home after an hour or two. She took the gas money out of the amount she owed me for the concert ticket, my mom made a trip outside to give them some cake she had baked that morning (o.O) and they were off~
And so ended my epic, random, roller-coaster trip to the JYJ concert in New Jersey on May 22nd, 2011. All I have now are memories, a few souvenirs, and all these photos and videos O.o
Pictures of the concert, with watermarks
Fancams with watermarks
All my pictures are on my facebook account without watermarks ^^ If I know you and you want access, tell me who you are in a friend request and I'll accept :3
WARNING: This fanaccount is really really really long, rambly and probably not at all relevant.
I'm going to separate this into sections because I know some people are just interested in the concert part (just go to Sunday and scroll down if this is you) and some people want to read everything so...here goes.
FRIDAY
I basically stayed up all night packing Thursday/Friday because I had to leave my dorm >< and packing everything you own is a pretty time-consuming thing. My bus to NYC left at 9:05am and I left my room (without vacuuming, all the vacuums were MIA) at 8:50 OTL. If the bus hadn't been running late I would've missed it, especially since rolling around two suitcases and carrying a backpack that felt like it weighed 50 pounds (it was huge, ask anyone who saw me with it) on a campus that's made of hills is a huge pain in the ass.
Anyways, I ended up zoning out (not really sleeping, for some reason I got kind of bus sick orz) for most of the six hour bus ride to the city from Ithaca.
My first time in Penn Station in NYC for the showcase in November was pretty bad. The signs were confusing, I got lost and then even more lost on top of that. Honestly, I don't know how I managed to find my way to the venue by myself xD
This time was worse ;; I swear to whoever that I almost got raped, twice. Before anyone says anything, "stranger danger" and all that blah blah blah I know, but the guy just starts talking to me, asking me where I'm going, and I'm not used to all this city shit OTL and especially since I'm super lost...I almost followed him out the door before I decided that this was too far and tried to back out. This seriously badass policewoman (negl she scared the shit out me) with the thickest New York something accent I've ever heard in my life basically gets into this huge fight with this dude by the door and tells me to gtfo so I do. Scarred for life idek.
I'm wandering around some more trying to find the place where they sell tickets and I can't when some other dude comes up to me and asks me where I'm going too and I just got the fuck out of there.
It legitimately took me about 30 minutes of wandering two or three floors to find the ticket counters, where I bought the a ticket for the 3:45 NJ Transit bus to the Newark airport, where Akai (aka Miranda, #mirandowae, inrukisarms, @Duckbutt_Micky) was waiting for me after her plane from Florida had come in a couple of hours before. She actually called me when I was in line and told me that people were trying to bum money off her at the airport XDDD
It took me another hour or so to get from Penn Station to the airport. My suitcases kept falling over and hitting people on the bus OTL and I actually broke the handle on the bigger one trying to get it from one bus to another.
Basically, transportation in NYC/NJ sucks.
It was better in the airport, where I found Akai before catching the hotel shuttle to the Ramada. I checked us in and we basically sat around doing nothing (watching the Food Network and eating...Akai's Chinese food literally took an hour to deliver) for the rest of the night until we went to pick up Haley (haleycp, @cherrichik) at around 10-ish.
We ended up getting there a little early. Good thing too since it turns out the air train that takes you from terminal to terminal in the airport undergoes maintenance or something after a certain time of night and we had to take a bus part of the way in order to get to the proper terminal. After, we wandered around wasting time and trying not to pass out from lack of sleep for a while. When Haley finally arrived we took the air train from the terminal to P4, where the hotel shuttles went...and ended up taking way longer than necessary because the air train went back and forth instead of around in a circle, like someone (*pokes Akai*) said. (Queen of fail moment)
We got back to the hotel (we were also starting to get an idea of how fucking slow the shuttle drivers to our particular hotel were), where Haley finished off some of Akai's leftovers. We got our Chunana shirts! :D Then we went to sleep, Haley and I on one bed and Akai on the other xD
SATURDAY
We woke up around nine-ten because we had to meet Liz (tacoss, @TVfXQMYC at noon (I think?). We managed to not get lost even though we were taking the about four different modes of transportation to get there. Since we didn't realize that the path train went to Penn Station, we took it to the World Trade Center. Even though we were late, Liz was running even later (apparently there were train/subway problems?) and we ended up hanging around a September 11th memorial for a couple of hours. When Liz finally showed up, we took the subway to K-town. There was this Face Shop on the street with a shitload of Korean stuffs. There was one wall shelf full of K-pop albums and one wall full of K-dramas. There were posters and phone charms for all sorts of groups and an entire section of the shop was was selling Face Shop merchandise. They had posters of Hyunjoong and a life-sized cutout too. Haley took pictures of everythingggggg.
After hanging around for a while just staring at everything and their price tags (so expensive ;A;), Liz decided to take us to another Asian store somewhere in the vicinity. I swear we would've gotten so lost without Liz there though, since I completely didn't know where we were after the first few turns or so. The second Asian store was Japanese and huge compared to the first store. We went up to the second floor where the DBSK stuff was and perused a bit. We met a couple of other Cassies there. We discussed concert/airport/hotel stuff with them...until Haley found some K-pop magazine. The two of us basically major fangirl spazzed in the middle of the store with each other over about 10 different groups while the others kept talking XD.
After we left that store we went back to the first one where Haley bought her friend back home Jay Park's album and the Mirotic album. She got a free DBSK poster with the purchase, but it turned out to be a Homin poster and not a pre-lawsuit poster T___T
We went back to the hotel without going to the salon that we had planned to go to with Liz (the reason for the trip in the first place) since we'd run out of time (we wanted to get dinner at a reasonable time at the restaurant on the first floor of the hotel). By the time we got back, our other two roommates, Olivia (hitsuki37, @AmorSperare) and Madi ( @BambiMadi) had already arrived by bus and Marcus ( @klenkton) had also checked into his room in the same hotel.
The restaurant was a bit of a rip off but we really weren't going to go wander sketch-ass Newark for food so we ate there with the most spaztastic Hispanic waitress ever. When we finished we went back to our room to wait for Eelan (jaejoongiekim, @jaejoongiekim) to come at 8-8:30 to go stalk JYJ at the airport with us.
Akai, Haley and I changed into our chunana shirts before taking the shuttle to the airport, terminal A. Their plane from Vancouver was supposed to get in at 10:13PM. We got there about an hour early just so we'd have enough time. We stopped by a gelato place in the food court (that strawberry was fucking great, and I had another kind that had some weird Italian name I couldn't pronounce) before going to the Air Canada gates. There were already some people there, including Linh (rinmi, @RinmiJjang), Joyce ( @yooCHUNSA) and Chrissy ( @ooOHero33).
The flight was delayed about half an hour (there had been storms in the area for a while). We stood/sat around the United/Air Canada gates for the rest of the time, getting weird stares by people coming in from other flights and the janitors doing their nighttime rounds. One guy even raised his hand like a celebrity when he walked out of the gates, and everyone in the front cheered xD the people in the back who couldn't see what was going on through the crowd thought that JYJ had arrived and started freaking out. It was still a while of standing around before anything else happened. A few of us had a little karaoke party near the gate with JYJ/DBSK music from my phone.
When JYJ finally arrived, a girl with a good view into the gates yelled "THEY'RE HERE" a few times. I thought it was a false alarm until Yoochun walked around the corner, looking not exactly happy in a green neck pillow, sunglasses and a baseball cap. Jaejoong was after him, wearing a beanie and a facemask with his sunglasses. As soon as I saw them I kind of went into autopilot or something. I remember trying to take pictures and being so mad at my camera's slow shutter speed. They went down a escalator to the floor with the baggage claim and nearly every fangirl in the airport tried to squeeze down the escalator after them and their managers (and probably dancers too). I didn't even think about it before joining the mob and breaking into a run as I hit solid floor again. I felt someone grab onto my purse (I learned later that it was Akai) as I ran but she let go as soon as I decided to vault over a metal gate thing near the automatic doors as they went outside. It was only at this point that I noticed Junsu behind Jaejoong in his red/black plaid (/fail OTL). I managed to get a pretty good vantage point next to the car (some big black SUV deal) as they got in and waved at us before they took off. (the pictures I took are all at the end of this post)
It seemed like this whole thing took only a few seconds when it reality it took a couple of minutes. People had been telling us to try to keep calm but as soon as they appeared no one seemed to remember anymore and I admit that I kind of let go as soon as I followed them outside ><. It was an exhilarating feeling to be the ones taking the airport pictures this time instead of just looking at them online like usual o.o
We got lost trying to find the bus to get back to P4 and the hotel shuttles .____. even though Akai and I had gone the same way with Haley just the night before (lack of sleep, remember?). We wandered around from floor to floor in terminal C before we finally asked the right people and figured out that the air train was actually running...>_>
When we finally reached P4, the Ramada shuttle was literally just leaving. Considering how fail the driver seems to be at coming every twenty minutes like the hotel said he should, we decided that we'd just take the Sheraton shuttle and walk to the Ramada from there (it's literally a three minute walk, even if you don't jump the fence), especially since the people at the Ramada front desk had told us that using the Sheraton shuttle might be a better idea than their own, since it's so unreliable.
So, we had all piled onto the shuttle with a whole bunch of other people. There were a few people who were left standing, but according to them, they didn't really want to sit down (one man said he had back problems and wouldn't be able to get up if he sat down), so we really didn't feel bad about using the shuttle even when the driver asked to make sure we were all going to the Sheraton, no the Ramada. When we finally reached our destination, we hopped off the bus and slowly began to make our way back to our own hotel. It was probably not the greatest idea to start going back before the driver had left--we probably should have just hung around for a while and waited for him to leave. As is was though, the madman started chasing after us, screaming at the top of his lungs, telling us to go to hell and all this other stuff I don't really remember. Some lady who had probably just gotten out of the shuttle with us even told him to chill out but the guy didn't listen. After we started running (and Marcus yelled shit back at him), he got back into the shuttle and started chasing us down, prompting us to run even faster. He actually nearly ran Akai over if what she told us afterward is true. After we all managed to get back to the hotel lobby, we just started laughing over how ridiculous it all was.
Back in our room, I was figuring out how to watermark my pictures that I had managed to take when Shane Yoon ( @shaneyoon) came online and started talking to Kat (kam2452, @6002theChunana). Before anyone knew it, he was basically having conversations with half of my t-list. We introduced him to so many new terms (Chunana and Jaeled, anyone?) and the fantastic5, as well as give him a couple of options for nickname (Shanana, Shamango). Every time he would tweet us or someone we knew we would have a collective fangirl freakout in our room (Marcus got kind of pissed lol) xDDD I kind of forgot to freak out about the airport stalkage in my freaking over Shane talking to all of us like he was part of t-list LOL
I stayed up until about 4 getting all the airport stuff posted (only pictures, Haley took the HD fancam from the upper floor) while everyone else went to sleep. Then I went to sleep too.
SUNDAY
We'd planned to wake up at nine and head out to the city again by ten, but of course that didn't work, which isn't that surprising considering there were five girls in one room and most of us didn't really even wake up until 9:30. I think Marcus got kind of pissed at us for taking so long xD but we finally got our asses out of the hotel at around 11, making our way back to K-town as a group of six by about 12:30. There was some kind of outdoor festival happening that day. They were making/selling food and all sorts of other stuff. There was a performance while we were there with some cute little Korean girl in a hanbok with a drum. It smelled so good, and we were debating on whether we should stay and eat the food from the stalls or go to one of the many restaurants in K-town, though we eventually decided on a restaurant.
The food was amazing. I'd had a little bit of experience with Korean food before, and a lot of experience with Asian food in general, so I ended up telling people what a lot of the random stuff was xDDD. I remember that the waitress tried to speak to me in Korean and I had to tell her that I didn't speak Korean OTL and that she couldn't split the check .___.;; so Akai paid for the whole thing and had the rest of us pay her back.
After we finished eating we went back to that same Korean store that we went to the day before. Olivia ended up buying a 12 cut THSK poster set and I saw a two disk DBSK album that I kind of wanted to buy but I figured I'd buy it the next day. We left K-town around 2:30 in oder to get back to Newark and Military Park in time to pick up ONETVXQ shirts/lightsticks as well as the white ocean lightsticks to distribute for In Heaven. Eelan was driving down from the city to meet us there and we decided to walk from the Newark Penn Station to the park because the bus we wanted to take apparenetly didn't actually stop there. We saw Jackie ( @siriusmoonpuppy, @IntlCassieProj) and Zef (rawrboysmode, @rawrboysmode) at the park, helping out with the shirts/lightsticks. Everyone besides Haley had ordered the shirt/lightstick, so since there were people at the park selling shirts, she went and bought one too.
After that we wandered around the area for a while trying to figure out where Eelan had parked her car. It turned out to be a small sedan...and we had seven people. Haley called shotgun and it would've been rather awkward for one of us to sit on Marcus's lap or vice versa...so in the end Marcus ended up in the middle of the backseat with Akai on his left and Olivia on his right, with me on Akai's lap and Madi on Olivia's. Awkward situation is awkward because I'm not exactly short and Madi and I had to bend over in half so that random passersby (and more importantly cops) wouldn't see seven people packed into one car...Basically, the phrase "keep your head down" means more than one thing to me now.
We went back to the hotel first, awkwardly climbing out of the car on the street outside because paying for parking when we were just going back in to change/get our tickets would be a waste of money. We went back to Military Park and parked in the underground parking garage there. Walking from there to the Prudential Center isn't that far.
Along the way we picked up Cathy ( @devjacaiora) and her friend, who had flown in from Florida like Akai, and as a huge group we went to find Meghan ( @Meg_Jaejoong and her friend Patty ( @sakurastarflow) at the entrance to the venue. There was a guy selling overpriced cute JYJ cell phone charms and lightsticks and such at the door, so I bought a "J" charm for my phone (even though I broke the place where you put the charm ages ago). We went inside into this lobby where the ticket windows were. There were a lot of people there already, so we found a empty patch of floor to stand/sit on.
Things that happened while we waited for the concert: Haley got a lot of comments about the huge Canadian flag she brought to the concert. I got super pissed at the AmorYoojae people giving people pamphlets and selling banners at the door. We got freaked out every time something happened at the big double doors. We stood/sat in line for an hour even though we had no idea what the line was for. They were giving out free lightsticks so I snagged one to bring home for Courtney (insanelolipanda, @insanelolipanda), Olivia's idea. We realized that the concert was at eight so they would be letting people in at seven, which was an hour later than we had thought.
Once they had let us into the venue, we got kind of lost finding our way to section A, We went around the place and past the correct entrance before some staff member told us where we were supposed to go. We found our seats without much effort (they were the foldy kind xD) and sat down, where we sat and talked to people around us, took pictures and passed out the white lightsticks for the remaining time before the concert.
So basically, I don't even really remember the entire concert. Two hours went by like two minutes--people don't lie when they say time flies when you're having fun T___T. I remember that halfway through the first song, I looked to my left and realized that everyone was just gone. You can imagine my panic...before I realized it was because they had all ditched their seats to rush the stage xD so I grabbed Haley and we rushed up there too. I remember that I took fancams of everything (moving from row 23 to up until the epicness that was the drum line before Mission...then I ran out of space on my memory card >:| at which time I deleted the half-finished video and switched to taking pictures until I couldn't take any more. Then I started deleting the fuzzier pictures to make room for better ones... (again, everything at the end of the post lol)
...Yeah. Someone remind me to get a bigger SD card the next time I go to a concert >_>
They performed all of the expected songs. At some point in time I'd pushed myself up to the front of the crowd and was literally within touching distance of the extension part of the stage *O* They walked out onto the extension way more than I had expected, so I got quite a few close up photos of them (*insert keyboard smash here*). Every time they walked past me I died a little on the inside. The screaming...yeah, you guys can imagine. Basically, I fangirled my little fangirl heart out. I used both lightsticks (mine and the one I got for Courtney lol) during the concert, one in each hand, though I got hypocritically super pissed at people in front of me waving their lightsticks around XD (in my defense, most of those were really big ones with the huge designs...and mine were just the plain Onetvxq ones). There was a shitton of Soulmates action (*flail*) and I nearly passed out during the part between performances (after Chajatta) when they spoke English (well, it really just Yoochun, and I didn't really almost pass out, but you know). Jaesu were content just drinking water even though Yoochun tried to get them to talk (I could've sworn I got a picture of Jae drinking but I have no idea where it went >:|). I also accidentally cracked my white lightstick one song early .___.;; They went off the stage and came back on multiple times, so I didn't know which encore was coming up next (I fail with the new songs, okay? They seriously need to release studio versions, like...now.).
So basically, if you don't want to bother reading my ramblings you can just know that JYJ live is about the best thing I've ever seen in my entire life and this concert was better than the showcase was in November because the Korean songs are just like kaljdfgnalkjfng /dead. And because I had lots of awesome friends to go with me \o/ I love you guys~
After the concert, we were all riding on a JYJ high (except for the fact that I found out my new Jaejoong phone charm was already broken...>_>) when we went to go back to Eelan's car and...
The parking garage was closed.
Seriously, what the hell? Haley had asked the garage attendants about their hours and they had said that they were going to be open late because of the concert, but not one of the three of four doors was open. I tried calling the number on the sign outside one of the doors but it just kept ringing. After trekking about Military Park for a good twenty minutes or something we just went into a nearby Best Western and asked the nice lady at the desk if there was any way to get the car back...but there wasn't (apparently this kind of thing happened quite frequently).
We ended up taking the Best Western airport shuttle and then the Ramada shuttle back to our hotel (with Eelan). We more or less all decided to stay up all night...but only Haley and Eelan succeeded, mostly because Haley had to leave for the airport at some ungodly hour in the morning and Eelan was going with her to the airport in order to go get her car back when the garage reopened at six in the morning. Before she left, she managed to take some not-so-flattering pictures of all of us passed out (I feel asleep on the desk in front of my computer OTL and even throwing shit at me didn't wake me up) and post them on twitter >_>. When I randomly woke up, Haley was saying something about brownies I think, so I asked her something about what she said, and she about died. Literally rolling on the floor laughing. Akai took a picture of this xD as revenge for when Haley posted a picture of her sleeping on the first night.
It was sad to see Haley and Eelan go ;~; I was so tired that I would've probably gone to sleep on the shuttle if I had accompanied them with Akai to the airport, so I just hugged and said goodbye to them at the hotel >< before going to sleep on the bed instead of the desk >_>
MONDAY
I vaguely remembering waking up when Olivia and Madi realized they were late and had to catch the bus to go back to Maryland before passing right back out. When I woke up for real, Akai and I realized that check out was at 10am and there was no way we were going to make that deadline. We did managed to get ourselves all packed up and ready to go by 11am though, which would have to do. We hitched a ride to NYC with Marcus, who was planning to go to Times Square and take a "douche picture," as he put it. The toll to get from New Jersey to NYC by car was $8 .____. and we wandered around Manhattan for a while trying to find Times Square with his GPS, but we failed, somehow ending up in Chinatown outside of our "bus station," which was really just a sketch-ass store that was really just a waiting area in the middle of Cantonese Chinatown.
Since we had decided to go back to K-town instead of wait around in sketch Chinatown for seven hours, I left my huge suitcase in the "station," praying that it wouldn't get stolen. We took the subway from Grand Street Station in Chinatown to Penn Station...but ended up getting off one street away from where we wanted to be, as we found out later. The NYPD, not to mention the general population, is apparently clueless when it comes to finding out where the hell Korea Way is, though it didn't help that Akai thought one of the street names was "Broad Street" when it was really "Broadway"...>_> Basically, it took us maybe an hour of getting lost and going in completely wrong directions (don't forget we both had suitcases on us and I had my fifty bajillion pound backpack too) before we found K-town again.
We went back to the store that sold all the k-pop merchandise...and I found out that the CD+DVD set that I had wanted to buy was gone D< /rage. I figured that if we'd spent so much time and effort on getting to K-town I might as well get something...So I bought a TVXQ "O"-正.反.合. album with DVD while Akai bought a 12-cut JYJ poster set. Then we headed out (it turns out that getting to and from Chinatown to this subway station, 34th street, is actually easier than the other stop, 35th street...OTL) and made out way back to the sketch-ass "bus station," where I jacked one of their electrical outlets so Akai and I could watch one of the DVDs in my AADBSK3 set (which I had brought back from school with me) on my laptop.
Let me tell you that being in a room basically full of Cantonese people who smell like fish is really awkward when you can't speak the language. There were a few other people...for example, this white (and redneck-looking, ngl) couple and this black woman who wouldn't stop complaining.
Basically we spent two or three hours in there, trying not to laugh our asses off in the middle of a bunch of middle-aged Cantonese people. When it was finally 7PM, there was a huge crush of people with shitloads of boxes and packages of various humongous sizes all trying to get on the bus all at once. I had to pay an extra $10 for my huge suitcase because it was oversized, then we finally on the bus. Our assigned seats were wayyyyy in the back...right next to the restroom OTL.
It's a good thing I have a tendency to sleep on moving vehicles, because that's exactly what I did for about 15 of the next 17 hours or so. For some of the time I was awake (Akai didn't really sleep >_<), we watched more of AADBSK3 until my computer died. The trip was only supposed to take 16 hours (ETA 11AM)...but somewhere in Georgia, I think, we got pulled over by the cops.
As far as I could tell, we'd gotten pulled over because there had been reports of the bus swerving around on the interstate. They didn't detain us for that reason though...for some reason, they were much more concerned about the fact that our bus only had one driver for a trip all the way down from NYC (the other bus driver had gotten off somewhere in North Carolina to rest up).
None of this is really for sure though, since I ended up sort of translating (with my ridiculously fail Mandarin) between the Cantonese guy in the seat in front of me and the white couple, who was sitting across the aisle. Apparently, they had to go talk to the cops because the driver's English was more or less non-existent or something...yeah, it was a fail. Idk what happened, really, but they eventually let us go. To make things worse and more confusing, in the middle of Akai using my phone to call her grandma (since hers was already dead) and tell her what was going on, my phone died too...
Finally, we got to Jacksonville more than an hour later than expected. We hadn't even realized that there were multiple stops, because the bus stopped in some weird strip mall in the middle of nowhere before stopping at the correct strip mall in the middle of nowhere. Akai's grandma was waiting there with her van, and after I programmed my house's address into the GPS, I was finally home after an hour or two. She took the gas money out of the amount she owed me for the concert ticket, my mom made a trip outside to give them some cake she had baked that morning (o.O) and they were off~
And so ended my epic, random, roller-coaster trip to the JYJ concert in New Jersey on May 22nd, 2011. All I have now are memories, a few souvenirs, and all these photos and videos O.o
Pictures of the concert, with watermarks
Fancams with watermarks
All my pictures are on my facebook account without watermarks ^^ If I know you and you want access, tell me who you are in a friend request and I'll accept :3