You & Jin in LA - The Long-Awaited (?) Post
Alright, I've kind of been putting it off, but here goes. Let's do this chronologically~
Yuri and I got up early and drove to LA, and it was around 12:30 or so by the time we got there. It was too early to check into our hotel though, so we just parked at the hotel, took the subway for a couple of stops, and then walked the rest of the way to Little Tokyo. Oh gosh, we kind of had too much fun there. We went to Kinokuniya first because that's just how these things are done, and I actually ended up asking about the idol mags because I only saw a couple of oldish ones along with all the knockoff photo books and stuff, and the girl told me that they were all gone because of all the girls that came for the concert. Crazy. So no mags for Amber, lol. I did end up getting a super cute Kutsushita Nyanko notepad though! And I kind of wanted to get something for Ryan and Mike, so we got them these, I think they're phone straps? They're bananas, maybe a couple of inches long, and they're squishy, and one's made to look like it's dipped in chocolate and the other one's strawberry, with sprinkles. They are hilarious in a kind of horrible way but it was just too funny to pass up. We were dying in the store, it was ridiculous.
Anyway, after that we got a smoothie with boba in it, which was good. And then we were trying to find sun screen (because I am so white that my arms got burned just from the drive >_>) but we could only find like $12 Japanese imported sunscreen in little tiny bottles, so...no. But we did take a picture with the Jin poster that was by the door of the little grocery store place, lol. Anyway, we wandered around to a different part of Little Tokyo kind of trying to find a place to eat shabu shabu, but they were all closed between lunch and dinner, but we found a bakery so we decided to eat bread for lunch. So we kind of wandered around a little more, then decided to head back.
On the walk back to the subway station though, we started taking pictures, because we were walking by some really cool buildings and stuff. And well, we took some really random pictures too. XD Once we got back to our hotel we were in a picture-taking mood apparently, and our hotel was probably really nice like...50 years ago, so we were enjoying criticizing the little ghetto things about it, haha. Like the fact that the door had no number on it, or that there was a towel left dropped in the bathtub, or the hecka oldschool blow dryer. I was laughing so hard. We are way too easily amused. XD I don't know if these are public or not, but our pictures are here on Facebook. If they're not public and you guys want to see them, let me know and I'll upload them on Photobucket. Anyway, it was starting to get close-ish to the time the concert was going to start, so we got ready to go get in line.
We totally didn't end up being in line for long though. Our hotel was like a five-minute walk away from the venue, but we ended up having to walk back to our hotel for Yuri to drop off her camera, since she wanted to make sure she didn't get in trouble or anything. So we got in line but it wasn't nearly as long as I had expected, and it wasn't too long before they let us in. It was around then that I think I saw chelshock and I definitely saw hamstaball because I had been texting her trying to find her, haha. But we only saw each other in passing so we decided to meet up after the concert.
So we got inside and I guess I hadn't quite realized that, hello, it's a club. Like, Club Nokia, hello? So it was smaller than I had imagined it would be. Me and Yuri had the $35 standing room only tickets, so we walked straight in and basically stood behind the floor seating, and omg we were so close. I couldn't believe it. We were maaaaybe a few hundred feet away from the stage. At this point it still didn't really sink in that I was going to see Jin in person. And then the concert finally started, but I was surprised that there were still kind of a lot of empty seats, and the standing room only was not full at all. I guess I had expected it to be packed, but it totally wasn't. And then when it started these random MC guys came out and talked about random crap and I was like "...I don't know who you are and I don't care about you, bring out Jin." But no, at first they brought out Joey T. That was kind of cool because I was one of probably like five people, it seemed like, in that room who wateched Shonen Club long enough ago to know who he is. He was a junior who was never in a group but he danced in front like all the time on the show, but he left a few years back, I think. Anyway, I was like, oh, I know this kid! And I knew he would be an amazing dancer even before he performed for us. So I was like, okay, NOW it's time for Jin. But noooo, the MC guys had to talk randomly some more, and then there were a couple of other opening acts, and they weren't bad or anything but they kind of had nothing to do with anything and I was like OMG I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THIS WHERE IS JIN. So finally, at 6:30, Jin finally came out and the concert started for reals.
My first reaction when he came out was KYAAAAAAA. My second reaction was "omg, he's wearing the ponytail and aviators nooooo" because Yuri and I had just talked about that, lol. But still, I was excited to see him, although the costumes at the beginning- not his, but the other dancers'- were really weird. I was like, well, I guess this technically is a Johnny's concert after all...lol. I got excited when he performed Wonder because I actually knew it, and before that it totally hadn't occurred to me that, hello, he could obviously perform his own solo songs. Which then made me wonder if he was going to do Lovejuice, which he did like right after I thought about that, so that was pretty awesome. I don't remember when it was, but at some point he changed his costume and he ditched the ponytail and sunglasses in favor of a fedora and I was so happy. He looked even hotter in the outfit he changed into later. And man, can he dance, and sing, and lots of the other dancers were really cool too. Freaking lucky girls who got to be all up on him, oh gosh. Although there was this one random guy who sang and rapped a few times and I was kinda like, who the heck are you? But anyway, back to the songs, there were only a couple I knew because of course some he wrote for his concerts in Japan (like Paparats, that song was pretty awesome XD) but I remember hearing that he wrote some one new ones for his American concerts too. So even though I obviously had never heard most of the songs, I was actually really impressed with how much I liked them. Like, if he releases a cd in America, I will buy it and actually listen to it. The concert lasted until about 8:30, and there wasn't really an encore, but Jin did come back out on stage to tell us what you've all probably heard by now (although I haven't checked my flist at all, so I'm assuming here), that he's going to be doing a US tour in September and October. I hope that means he's releasing an album, although I'm not sure what that'll mean for Kat-tun. Guess we'll see.
Now, for some thoughts about the concert:
-Jin is every bit as attractive in real life as he is on tv. I was close enough to him that I could see him pretty clearly without having to look at the screens, and yeah. So hot, omg. For so much of the concert I somehow couldn't really believe that he was right there in front of me. Every once in a while though, he'd do something or whatever and I'd be like "omg, that's Akanishi Jin. He's right there." And I would have a flaily fangirl moment, lol.
-His English is really good. Like, you can tell that sometimes he seems kind of unsure of himself, and obviously he has an accent and his vocabulary is kind of limited, but really, he speaks English. Anyone who makes fun of it and calls it "Engrish" when referring to Jin is being a hater. A point of note: he never spoke (or sang) in Japanese during the concert.
-My opinion of Jin has totally changed. I was surprised by how...cute he was. I don't mean the way he looks; I mean his mannerisms. He seemed like he was really real with us, not trying to put on some kind of cool persona (which is kind of the perception I had of him before). Like at the beginning when he was saying the date and he started to say "June nine-" and everyone started laughing, and he was like, "I mean June twentieth," and started to say how he made the mistake again, and not to laugh, it wasn't funny, but he himself actually laughed into the mic...super cute. He did some other stuff during the concert like that too, like just when he would talk a little between songs and stuff like that. I think my previous opinion of him was totally off. Like Yuri was saying, even though he might come off as being cool and aloof on tv sometimes, I think it's not that, I think it's that he's shy, or just doesn't have anything to say. He seems like he's actually a really nice, cool guy. I think it would be fun to be friends with him.
-He seemed like he was really enjoying himself. That made it fun to watch him.
-He also seemed to be on really good terms with the other dancers and the people he was working with. That was pretty cool to see.
-I only saw one uchiwa and that was after the concert. I was so afraid that there were going to be tons of ridiculous fangirls, but even though there were lots of Japanese girls there, luckily there weren't really any annoying fangirls there. Except for this one group of girls, who were hecka dancing around during the concert, which wasn't a big deal, but after the concert they stood around outside together, singing lines from the songs hecka loud, and screaming whenever someone who was in the concert (a dancer or whatever) came down the escalator...really? I mean, they weren't horrible, but I thought they were being pretty stupid.
So after the concert Yuri and I met up with Tiff hamstaball, which was really exciting because even though we live in the same state and we've known each other for so many years, we've never met before! She was with a girl I guess she knew from school who was an exchange student, who was actually about to go back to Japan, so the girl's mom and brother were there too. So we kinda hung out and let Tiff say good-bye to her friend, and then the three of us headed to Little Tokyo for shabu shabu. Yuri and I probably would've taken public transportation again except that Tiff had driven to the venue, so she offered to drive us. And thank goodness for that, because Yuri and I had no concept of how many hobos come out as soon as it gets dark. o_0 It was kinda scary. Anyway, we made it, even though it took us a little bit to figure out the directions. And man, it was cold outside by this point. o_0 Seriously, California, it's summer. Come on now. But yeah, we found the restaurant, and the food was pretty good, although we were all totally making a mess, haha. Too many sauces~ It was also cool to be in a Japanese restaurant where the people that worked there actually spoke Japanese, because it's totally not like that in most of the restaurants around here. Then the restaurant was closing, so we finished eating, paid, and left. Tiff took us back to our hotel. The time we spent hanging out was way too short, but super fun! We will definitely have to hang out again sometime. :D
So there's not really much else to tell. Yuri and I crashed more or less right away, and then got up early Monday morning to drive home. I took a much-needed shower, chilled for a while, gave Ryan and Mike their bananas (oh the jokes... XDDD), then went to work. I was expecting to be super exhausted but I was actually pretty okay. And then we went to young adults, where the highlight of the night had to be learning to play mahjong. So fun! And then I came home and crashed, and I spent most of today being kinda lazy, running a few errands, and going to youth group, just kind of a normal Tuesday. Back to normal, I guess. Which normal is good too, but man, LA was a lot of fun. :D
Yuri and I got up early and drove to LA, and it was around 12:30 or so by the time we got there. It was too early to check into our hotel though, so we just parked at the hotel, took the subway for a couple of stops, and then walked the rest of the way to Little Tokyo. Oh gosh, we kind of had too much fun there. We went to Kinokuniya first because that's just how these things are done, and I actually ended up asking about the idol mags because I only saw a couple of oldish ones along with all the knockoff photo books and stuff, and the girl told me that they were all gone because of all the girls that came for the concert. Crazy. So no mags for Amber, lol. I did end up getting a super cute Kutsushita Nyanko notepad though! And I kind of wanted to get something for Ryan and Mike, so we got them these, I think they're phone straps? They're bananas, maybe a couple of inches long, and they're squishy, and one's made to look like it's dipped in chocolate and the other one's strawberry, with sprinkles. They are hilarious in a kind of horrible way but it was just too funny to pass up. We were dying in the store, it was ridiculous.
Anyway, after that we got a smoothie with boba in it, which was good. And then we were trying to find sun screen (because I am so white that my arms got burned just from the drive >_>) but we could only find like $12 Japanese imported sunscreen in little tiny bottles, so...no. But we did take a picture with the Jin poster that was by the door of the little grocery store place, lol. Anyway, we wandered around to a different part of Little Tokyo kind of trying to find a place to eat shabu shabu, but they were all closed between lunch and dinner, but we found a bakery so we decided to eat bread for lunch. So we kind of wandered around a little more, then decided to head back.
On the walk back to the subway station though, we started taking pictures, because we were walking by some really cool buildings and stuff. And well, we took some really random pictures too. XD Once we got back to our hotel we were in a picture-taking mood apparently, and our hotel was probably really nice like...50 years ago, so we were enjoying criticizing the little ghetto things about it, haha. Like the fact that the door had no number on it, or that there was a towel left dropped in the bathtub, or the hecka oldschool blow dryer. I was laughing so hard. We are way too easily amused. XD I don't know if these are public or not, but our pictures are here on Facebook. If they're not public and you guys want to see them, let me know and I'll upload them on Photobucket. Anyway, it was starting to get close-ish to the time the concert was going to start, so we got ready to go get in line.
We totally didn't end up being in line for long though. Our hotel was like a five-minute walk away from the venue, but we ended up having to walk back to our hotel for Yuri to drop off her camera, since she wanted to make sure she didn't get in trouble or anything. So we got in line but it wasn't nearly as long as I had expected, and it wasn't too long before they let us in. It was around then that I think I saw chelshock and I definitely saw hamstaball because I had been texting her trying to find her, haha. But we only saw each other in passing so we decided to meet up after the concert.
So we got inside and I guess I hadn't quite realized that, hello, it's a club. Like, Club Nokia, hello? So it was smaller than I had imagined it would be. Me and Yuri had the $35 standing room only tickets, so we walked straight in and basically stood behind the floor seating, and omg we were so close. I couldn't believe it. We were maaaaybe a few hundred feet away from the stage. At this point it still didn't really sink in that I was going to see Jin in person. And then the concert finally started, but I was surprised that there were still kind of a lot of empty seats, and the standing room only was not full at all. I guess I had expected it to be packed, but it totally wasn't. And then when it started these random MC guys came out and talked about random crap and I was like "...I don't know who you are and I don't care about you, bring out Jin." But no, at first they brought out Joey T. That was kind of cool because I was one of probably like five people, it seemed like, in that room who wateched Shonen Club long enough ago to know who he is. He was a junior who was never in a group but he danced in front like all the time on the show, but he left a few years back, I think. Anyway, I was like, oh, I know this kid! And I knew he would be an amazing dancer even before he performed for us. So I was like, okay, NOW it's time for Jin. But noooo, the MC guys had to talk randomly some more, and then there were a couple of other opening acts, and they weren't bad or anything but they kind of had nothing to do with anything and I was like OMG I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THIS WHERE IS JIN. So finally, at 6:30, Jin finally came out and the concert started for reals.
My first reaction when he came out was KYAAAAAAA. My second reaction was "omg, he's wearing the ponytail and aviators nooooo" because Yuri and I had just talked about that, lol. But still, I was excited to see him, although the costumes at the beginning- not his, but the other dancers'- were really weird. I was like, well, I guess this technically is a Johnny's concert after all...lol. I got excited when he performed Wonder because I actually knew it, and before that it totally hadn't occurred to me that, hello, he could obviously perform his own solo songs. Which then made me wonder if he was going to do Lovejuice, which he did like right after I thought about that, so that was pretty awesome. I don't remember when it was, but at some point he changed his costume and he ditched the ponytail and sunglasses in favor of a fedora and I was so happy. He looked even hotter in the outfit he changed into later. And man, can he dance, and sing, and lots of the other dancers were really cool too. Freaking lucky girls who got to be all up on him, oh gosh. Although there was this one random guy who sang and rapped a few times and I was kinda like, who the heck are you? But anyway, back to the songs, there were only a couple I knew because of course some he wrote for his concerts in Japan (like Paparats, that song was pretty awesome XD) but I remember hearing that he wrote some one new ones for his American concerts too. So even though I obviously had never heard most of the songs, I was actually really impressed with how much I liked them. Like, if he releases a cd in America, I will buy it and actually listen to it. The concert lasted until about 8:30, and there wasn't really an encore, but Jin did come back out on stage to tell us what you've all probably heard by now (although I haven't checked my flist at all, so I'm assuming here), that he's going to be doing a US tour in September and October. I hope that means he's releasing an album, although I'm not sure what that'll mean for Kat-tun. Guess we'll see.
Now, for some thoughts about the concert:
-Jin is every bit as attractive in real life as he is on tv. I was close enough to him that I could see him pretty clearly without having to look at the screens, and yeah. So hot, omg. For so much of the concert I somehow couldn't really believe that he was right there in front of me. Every once in a while though, he'd do something or whatever and I'd be like "omg, that's Akanishi Jin. He's right there." And I would have a flaily fangirl moment, lol.
-His English is really good. Like, you can tell that sometimes he seems kind of unsure of himself, and obviously he has an accent and his vocabulary is kind of limited, but really, he speaks English. Anyone who makes fun of it and calls it "Engrish" when referring to Jin is being a hater. A point of note: he never spoke (or sang) in Japanese during the concert.
-My opinion of Jin has totally changed. I was surprised by how...cute he was. I don't mean the way he looks; I mean his mannerisms. He seemed like he was really real with us, not trying to put on some kind of cool persona (which is kind of the perception I had of him before). Like at the beginning when he was saying the date and he started to say "June nine-" and everyone started laughing, and he was like, "I mean June twentieth," and started to say how he made the mistake again, and not to laugh, it wasn't funny, but he himself actually laughed into the mic...super cute. He did some other stuff during the concert like that too, like just when he would talk a little between songs and stuff like that. I think my previous opinion of him was totally off. Like Yuri was saying, even though he might come off as being cool and aloof on tv sometimes, I think it's not that, I think it's that he's shy, or just doesn't have anything to say. He seems like he's actually a really nice, cool guy. I think it would be fun to be friends with him.
-He seemed like he was really enjoying himself. That made it fun to watch him.
-He also seemed to be on really good terms with the other dancers and the people he was working with. That was pretty cool to see.
-I only saw one uchiwa and that was after the concert. I was so afraid that there were going to be tons of ridiculous fangirls, but even though there were lots of Japanese girls there, luckily there weren't really any annoying fangirls there. Except for this one group of girls, who were hecka dancing around during the concert, which wasn't a big deal, but after the concert they stood around outside together, singing lines from the songs hecka loud, and screaming whenever someone who was in the concert (a dancer or whatever) came down the escalator...really? I mean, they weren't horrible, but I thought they were being pretty stupid.
So after the concert Yuri and I met up with Tiff hamstaball, which was really exciting because even though we live in the same state and we've known each other for so many years, we've never met before! She was with a girl I guess she knew from school who was an exchange student, who was actually about to go back to Japan, so the girl's mom and brother were there too. So we kinda hung out and let Tiff say good-bye to her friend, and then the three of us headed to Little Tokyo for shabu shabu. Yuri and I probably would've taken public transportation again except that Tiff had driven to the venue, so she offered to drive us. And thank goodness for that, because Yuri and I had no concept of how many hobos come out as soon as it gets dark. o_0 It was kinda scary. Anyway, we made it, even though it took us a little bit to figure out the directions. And man, it was cold outside by this point. o_0 Seriously, California, it's summer. Come on now. But yeah, we found the restaurant, and the food was pretty good, although we were all totally making a mess, haha. Too many sauces~ It was also cool to be in a Japanese restaurant where the people that worked there actually spoke Japanese, because it's totally not like that in most of the restaurants around here. Then the restaurant was closing, so we finished eating, paid, and left. Tiff took us back to our hotel. The time we spent hanging out was way too short, but super fun! We will definitely have to hang out again sometime. :D
So there's not really much else to tell. Yuri and I crashed more or less right away, and then got up early Monday morning to drive home. I took a much-needed shower, chilled for a while, gave Ryan and Mike their bananas (oh the jokes... XDDD), then went to work. I was expecting to be super exhausted but I was actually pretty okay. And then we went to young adults, where the highlight of the night had to be learning to play mahjong. So fun! And then I came home and crashed, and I spent most of today being kinda lazy, running a few errands, and going to youth group, just kind of a normal Tuesday. Back to normal, I guess. Which normal is good too, but man, LA was a lot of fun. :D