FREESTYLE Exhibition: 2/23/08.
Ohhhh my god.
Short version of this story goes: for those of you who have been to Harajuku, I will just say, the line was four people wide, and stretched from the second entrance of Omotesando Hills to TEN FEET AWAY FROM THE TURNOFF TO JOHNNY'S SHOP.
I got on mixi Friday night to dig for information, and discovered that it was basically best to get there at four AM and estimated that any time past six might result in no ticket at all. My train line doesn't start until past five AM, so the soonest I could get into Harajuku was 6:17. This meant there was only one option, really.
Go to Harajuku and spend the night there.
Harajuku station, how I love thee.
So at eight-thirty, despite not having planned for this at all, aeslis and I packed our respective Arashi Time tote bags with blankets and trekked off to Harajuku Friday night. She got there first, as I was stuck in Nerima having a fit because someone decided it would be an awesome night to jump in front of a train on my line (going to school on the Chuo-sen has made me totally cold to this, huh). But I did make it in time, and got to Harajuku around eleven or so.
More Harajuku station.
We initially sought refuge in a karaoke box across from the Gap. We sang Arashi songs for about two hours, and ordered the karaoke place's party plate of appetizers. I hadn't eaten since breakfast and hadn't had dinner the night before, so I ate like the biggest serving of yakisoba everrrr. Eventually, though, we crashed and curled up on the booths to catch two hours of sleep.
My alarm didn't go off since I forgot to swap it from weekdays to weekends, but aeslis woke up right on time all on her own, and we dragged ourselves out of the box to pay. The night shift dudes were way too perky when they wished us a good morning. It was luckily not entirely freezing outside, but it was still pretty chilly. We headed to Lawsons to buy food and drink, and then went off in search of the line.
We went to Omotesando Hills, and there was a staff member there alone. At three-thirty AM. I asked him where to queue for Ohno-kun's show, and he looked like, "I'm so not getting paid enough to deal with girls this fucking crazy," and told us the queue would be starting towards the station. "Oh, are we queueing in the same area as the shop?" I asked. He said, "Somewhere around there, yes."
So we set off for the shop area. And sitting in the square were six other girls, so we were the seventh and eighth people there that morning. We sat down, but after about ten minutes, another staff member appeared. He told us that we were basically blocking foot traffic (yes, at three-forty-five in the morning, as if there was anyone out there but us, and even if there had been, there are usually a zillion more girls in that very spot everyday queueing for the shop!) and we were not allowed to be there. He told us the queue wouldn't start until the first train of the morning, and we were to return in front of the station at 4:40 but not before.
So that left us with nothing to do for nearly an hour. So we thought we'd go to Yoyogi Park. Turns out Yoyogi Park closes! Who knew? Now we do! So we set out my blanket behind the giant plaque in front of the park so the staff couldn't find us and accuse us of loitering again. Behind it was a handwritten sign that said, "Koko de [blank space] suru na." But it wasn't like the blank space had been painted over, there'd been nothing there on the sign in the first place. We decided a ghost had done it. And then sat on the blanket reading the magazines I brought.
The fans in front of the station ignoring the staff's calls not to loiter.
Around 4:20, we got up and headed for the station. Now there were probably about twenty-five people there (eventually growing to about fifty or sixty by the time the train came in), not in a queue. The staff was also there and continued to tell us not to loiter, but nobody was really doing anything except scooting down a few steps down away from staff when they told us to leave altogether. They didn't tell us anything about the queue, which was really unfair. We were there almost-first that morning, and the other people there had clearly come a long way: several people had suitcases, the girls in front of us spoke Chinese, the girls in back of us spoke Osaka-ben. But the staff still refused to organize us in any way until the train came in.
Please tell me whose foot traffic we were blocking at 4:20AM. Especially considering Harajuku is kind of used to blocked foot traffic at regular hours of the day.
Which it did.
And then they started directing people across the pedestrian bridge, and there was like...an actual mob.
We were just being rushed along this insane wave of people pouring out of the station, all of them running like crazy, and then dashed for it up the pedestrian bridge. It was like being in a mannin-densha rush but in open air and with a lot more people. So much for being the eighth people there that morning, there were maybe 150~250 people in front of us as we settled into our line in front of Omotesando Hills. Not that we had it rough, given the crazy lengths the line eventually reached in the end.
The line in front of us towards Omotesando Hills
By sometime past five AM, the staff had sorted us out into our queues of four-people-wide. After that they were very organized, but anyway Johnny's fans are good at nothing if not queueing. It's like the single required skill to be a fan.
Tickets were meant to be distributed at eight AM. However, around five-forty-five, the line had already probably reached the point of full capacity for the day and was still growing. So the staff told us they would be distributing tickets early.
A girl in back of me was freaking out about not getting tickets (at first we couldn't really see ahead as to how many people were in front of us), but I piped up that with what I'd read on mixi, we should be fine. I said, "People got tickets on Friday morning even coming until seven, I heard, though I don't think it will happen that way today." She laughed and agreed, "Of course, because it's Saturday!" And then eventually I struck up a conversation with a mom in back of us, who was there with her daughter on their second try: they'd tried for the opening day and failed, but her daughter's favorite was Ohno-kun so they absolutely had to make it and came back. I told her that my mom would never do this with me in a million years, and she laughed and said she liked Arashi too. I asked who her favorite was, she said Matsujun and asked who mine was. I said I couldn't really choose one, but because I'd become a fan through Hanadan, I had Matsujun written on my fanclub application when I had to choose. "Ah, you were baited?" she laughed. "Me too!"
Hello, sun!
It somehow seemed to get colder as time went on, rather it seemed colder even once the sun came up. I was keitai-mailing lazulisong most of the time, as she sent fic to help pass the time and forget the cold. People started peeking out of the line and going, "Sugoi!!" and snapping pictures of the lengths it was achieving. And when the subway began running, people would just suddenly pour out of the Omotesando exit and there would be this mad, crazy rush of girls with Arashi concert tote bags in hand, running for their lives to reach the end of the line blocks and blocks and blocks away. When it neared seven AM and the sun was coming up, we were kind of laughing at them a little, because there was no really way in hell they were getting tickets no matter how fast they ran. It was totally hopeless. Better luck Sunday, guys. :/
Success!!
But finally around seven AM, the line started to move and ticket distribution started. Tickets were given with an entrance time and a number, we got into the third ticket group at 11:20. We walked off and then were faced with our first really good look at the line stretching way off into the horizon in the early morning light. We took photos. Everyone was taking photos. I can't even offer a guess on how many people were there, but there were thousands. You can't tell at all from these photos with my crappy camera phone either, but I'm not kidding when I say it was from Omotesando Hills all the way to the shop area. INSANE.
Crazy line.
Craaaaazy line.
After that we headed back to Takeshita-doori in the early morning light, to crash for a few hours at an internet cafe. I took a picture of Takeshita-doori totally empty. It's a sight I don't think I'll see again. *laugh*
Takeshita-doori should never be that deserted.
We went to our cubicle, checked LJ, and then curled up on the matted floor to catch a few hours of sleep. I kept waking up and checking my phone just about every twenty minutes, freaking out that we'd oversleep. Which we didn't. We got up, then headed downstairs to McDonalds for breakfast, and then made the trek yet again down Omotesando.
We headed down to the gallery space, but they told us we had to re-queue again according to our numbers where we'd gotten the tickets, so we ran back upstairs and outside to get back in line. It was also really really well-organized.
And then they led us inside! (So, photos stop here. There was more staff than you could imagine, ninjaing photos was pretty impossible.)
The outside area had a huge message from Ohno printed outside, and as you stepped in they had lined up all the flowers sent to him as gifts. There were flowers from News Zero, TV stations, all the boyband magazines, and the rest of Arashi. J-Storm's was the biggest, way taller than me! It was hard to see the arrangement Nino sent, it was blocked behind the other three. Matsujun sent a kinda boring-in-comparison set of yellow flowers, Sho's was a really elegant set that I feel like was mostly white but lovely, and I think Aiba's had pink mixed in...? I thought Sho's, News Zero's, and Wink Up's were the nicest (J-Storm was most impressive but really to the point of overkill).
Then you lined up and all of Ohno's 100 figures were placed in individual glass lit cases about a meter high. They had stuck them down to the cases with adhesive, but under the lights the adhesive had melted and everyone kept exclaiming at how the figures had fallen over. The Ohmiya SK figures weren't side by side, seemed a little cruel to break them up!
Looking at them was cool though eventually a bit repetitive after the halfway point... I actually was more impressed with the presentation of the figures than the figures themselves after seeing so many. I thought the photos Ohno took of the figures for the walls were incredibly clever conceptually. They were all the same photos as in FREESTYLE, but for the exhibition they were blown up huge (one was wall-sized).
After you looked at the figures and the wall of the blown-up photos, it wound around into a room of his paintings and ink work. As already said, there was stuff from before the debut there...some of it looked a bit manhandled though. There were stains on some of the drawings, and one looked totally wrinkled like it had been crumpled up and smoothed down. Others had pencil marks in places they didn't really seem like they should be. You could totally tell an art show was like the last thing on his mind when making these and taking care of them. ;P To be honest, there were a few older works where I thought they looked too rough to even be in any kind of show, even one like this. Even the sculpture on the cover of FREESTYLE, there's like this small chunk taken out of it on the side where the paint had chipped off that really kind of made my whole inner OCD-ness go crazy. Also, I really wish there had been wall commentary placards included in the show for the works. I know there are comments in FREESTYLE, but not all of the works in the show were in the book so it seemed kind of a shame not to have any comments on them at all.
There were a lot more works in the show than in the book, actually. Actually was kind of sad as one of my favorites wasn't in the book - this incredibly simple, clever ink drawing of a fish being caught on a fishing pole, but drawn so that it looked vaguely in the shape of the "tsuri" kanji. So clever! The pen and ink drawing he showed as the work he was most proud of on the news was amazing to see up close. I hadn't been able to tell that it was spread seemingly-haphazardly over different sheets of paper when they showed it on TV. The detail was so miniscule, even the closeup in FREESTYLE doesn't do it justice. I think this was probably the work where I thought it made going to the exhibition totally worth it, because you just can't grasp it unless you're right there with your nose in front of it.
After that you edged out of that room and into another called "Satoshi no Omoide." I thought this was again incredibly clever: he had brought his notebook doodles and art projects from kindergarten and elementary school, and had them spread out across the wall. Incredibly cute stuff and it was cool to see how he'd drawn as a kid. He had a bunch of comic strips that looked very Dragonball-like. They also had the overall outfit he wore in the photos pinned up on the wall, and a case filled with all his art supplies.
Opposite that was the photoshoot done for FREESTYLE, but like a zillion times more photos than in the book. It was literally a whole wall just of that shoot. So, so cute. The whole thing was arranged very nicely, with the stray photoshoot of him in the suit against the white background showing up as a stark contrast against the other zany colorful photos on the red background. The whole shoot was hilarious and I wish they'd release the whole thing! The poses! The ridiculous costumes! Amazing!!
In that room, they also had glass cases that were filled with figurines that had gotten messed-up in the process, so you got to see all the rejects and ways the process could go wrong.
Moving down, they had the sketches for the CG images he did for J-web. And then the CG color versions were showing the whole time, fading in and out of three separate TV screens on the wall. Also on those walls were a ton of candid photographs of him working on art, most notably the huge selection of candids spread across the wall to show his progress making the sculpture on the cover of the book.
Then the next room had the entries for the J-web collaboration contest wallpapering the walls, and the figures made with the winners. Some really, really clever ideas in the entries there, many of them drawing from Arashi songs as a theme, and I swear like one in ten was fishing-related. The first prize was a chicken, the other entries were way impressive, though!
You could also move back into the main room with the figures but from the other side, and there they had a robot-like sculpture alone in the room against the giant figurine photos. They also had a moving spotlight in the ceiling that was reflecting photos of the figurines across the floor. And the wall on that side had a huge wall-sized graffiti tag-style painting of Ohno's name.
There was actually a girl in front of us who was being wheeled through the exhibition on a hospital bed on respirators. I was really amazed by that, how far people would go to get there.
Oh, and they played nothing but the "Step and Go" single the entire time. I know everyone loves "Fuyu wo Dakishimete" but after the third listen when I bought the single I was already over it, and I was just like, "Please, please, no more!" after hearing it like one hundred times today.
Then, goods. I can sum this up with SADFACE. People said earlier there were no limits on anything, except the keitai strap. On the signs, there were no notices about limits on anything, except the keitai strap. But by the time we got to goods, they were already sold out of the red shirt and the best things were one-to-a-person. I'm glad people didn't ask me to buy a lot for them or they would have been disappointed.
For people wondering, I guess it could change if they restock, but when I went the keitai strap, the postcard sets, and the prints were definitely one-to-a-person. Since the t-shirts were starting to sell out, maybe those too, but I only tried to buy one so I don't know. Posters, Freestyle, and shopping bags weren't limited, though.
My roundup:
+ Freestyle, with the accompanying message card
+ two of both posters
+ three shopping bags (not very sturdy, wanted one to use, one to keep, one for lazulisong)
+ one of every postcard set (I wanted at least two of every one and probably would have tried for three on some of them, I was really sad about that. Noes! Now I need to figure out which ones I can part with...)
+ print of the giant ink drawing, and another of the Ohmiya SK figures in Tokyo Dome
+ white t-shirt with the giant ink drawing on the back
+ keitai strap
lazulisong, the bag is kind of huge though and since it's just like a normal big shopping bag I can't really fold it nicely. So I'm not sure how I'll get it to you. I'll look for a box giant enough but it may take a while. :/
I'm really really sleepy now. Yeah. I'm going to go sleep for like a month now.
Short version of this story goes: for those of you who have been to Harajuku, I will just say, the line was four people wide, and stretched from the second entrance of Omotesando Hills to TEN FEET AWAY FROM THE TURNOFF TO JOHNNY'S SHOP.
I got on mixi Friday night to dig for information, and discovered that it was basically best to get there at four AM and estimated that any time past six might result in no ticket at all. My train line doesn't start until past five AM, so the soonest I could get into Harajuku was 6:17. This meant there was only one option, really.
Go to Harajuku and spend the night there.
Harajuku station, how I love thee.
So at eight-thirty, despite not having planned for this at all, aeslis and I packed our respective Arashi Time tote bags with blankets and trekked off to Harajuku Friday night. She got there first, as I was stuck in Nerima having a fit because someone decided it would be an awesome night to jump in front of a train on my line (going to school on the Chuo-sen has made me totally cold to this, huh). But I did make it in time, and got to Harajuku around eleven or so.
More Harajuku station.
We initially sought refuge in a karaoke box across from the Gap. We sang Arashi songs for about two hours, and ordered the karaoke place's party plate of appetizers. I hadn't eaten since breakfast and hadn't had dinner the night before, so I ate like the biggest serving of yakisoba everrrr. Eventually, though, we crashed and curled up on the booths to catch two hours of sleep.
My alarm didn't go off since I forgot to swap it from weekdays to weekends, but aeslis woke up right on time all on her own, and we dragged ourselves out of the box to pay. The night shift dudes were way too perky when they wished us a good morning. It was luckily not entirely freezing outside, but it was still pretty chilly. We headed to Lawsons to buy food and drink, and then went off in search of the line.
We went to Omotesando Hills, and there was a staff member there alone. At three-thirty AM. I asked him where to queue for Ohno-kun's show, and he looked like, "I'm so not getting paid enough to deal with girls this fucking crazy," and told us the queue would be starting towards the station. "Oh, are we queueing in the same area as the shop?" I asked. He said, "Somewhere around there, yes."
So we set off for the shop area. And sitting in the square were six other girls, so we were the seventh and eighth people there that morning. We sat down, but after about ten minutes, another staff member appeared. He told us that we were basically blocking foot traffic (yes, at three-forty-five in the morning, as if there was anyone out there but us, and even if there had been, there are usually a zillion more girls in that very spot everyday queueing for the shop!) and we were not allowed to be there. He told us the queue wouldn't start until the first train of the morning, and we were to return in front of the station at 4:40 but not before.
So that left us with nothing to do for nearly an hour. So we thought we'd go to Yoyogi Park. Turns out Yoyogi Park closes! Who knew? Now we do! So we set out my blanket behind the giant plaque in front of the park so the staff couldn't find us and accuse us of loitering again. Behind it was a handwritten sign that said, "Koko de [blank space] suru na." But it wasn't like the blank space had been painted over, there'd been nothing there on the sign in the first place. We decided a ghost had done it. And then sat on the blanket reading the magazines I brought.
The fans in front of the station ignoring the staff's calls not to loiter.
Around 4:20, we got up and headed for the station. Now there were probably about twenty-five people there (eventually growing to about fifty or sixty by the time the train came in), not in a queue. The staff was also there and continued to tell us not to loiter, but nobody was really doing anything except scooting down a few steps down away from staff when they told us to leave altogether. They didn't tell us anything about the queue, which was really unfair. We were there almost-first that morning, and the other people there had clearly come a long way: several people had suitcases, the girls in front of us spoke Chinese, the girls in back of us spoke Osaka-ben. But the staff still refused to organize us in any way until the train came in.
Please tell me whose foot traffic we were blocking at 4:20AM. Especially considering Harajuku is kind of used to blocked foot traffic at regular hours of the day.
Which it did.
And then they started directing people across the pedestrian bridge, and there was like...an actual mob.
We were just being rushed along this insane wave of people pouring out of the station, all of them running like crazy, and then dashed for it up the pedestrian bridge. It was like being in a mannin-densha rush but in open air and with a lot more people. So much for being the eighth people there that morning, there were maybe 150~250 people in front of us as we settled into our line in front of Omotesando Hills. Not that we had it rough, given the crazy lengths the line eventually reached in the end.
The line in front of us towards Omotesando Hills
By sometime past five AM, the staff had sorted us out into our queues of four-people-wide. After that they were very organized, but anyway Johnny's fans are good at nothing if not queueing. It's like the single required skill to be a fan.
Tickets were meant to be distributed at eight AM. However, around five-forty-five, the line had already probably reached the point of full capacity for the day and was still growing. So the staff told us they would be distributing tickets early.
A girl in back of me was freaking out about not getting tickets (at first we couldn't really see ahead as to how many people were in front of us), but I piped up that with what I'd read on mixi, we should be fine. I said, "People got tickets on Friday morning even coming until seven, I heard, though I don't think it will happen that way today." She laughed and agreed, "Of course, because it's Saturday!" And then eventually I struck up a conversation with a mom in back of us, who was there with her daughter on their second try: they'd tried for the opening day and failed, but her daughter's favorite was Ohno-kun so they absolutely had to make it and came back. I told her that my mom would never do this with me in a million years, and she laughed and said she liked Arashi too. I asked who her favorite was, she said Matsujun and asked who mine was. I said I couldn't really choose one, but because I'd become a fan through Hanadan, I had Matsujun written on my fanclub application when I had to choose. "Ah, you were baited?" she laughed. "Me too!"
Hello, sun!
It somehow seemed to get colder as time went on, rather it seemed colder even once the sun came up. I was keitai-mailing lazulisong most of the time, as she sent fic to help pass the time and forget the cold. People started peeking out of the line and going, "Sugoi!!" and snapping pictures of the lengths it was achieving. And when the subway began running, people would just suddenly pour out of the Omotesando exit and there would be this mad, crazy rush of girls with Arashi concert tote bags in hand, running for their lives to reach the end of the line blocks and blocks and blocks away. When it neared seven AM and the sun was coming up, we were kind of laughing at them a little, because there was no really way in hell they were getting tickets no matter how fast they ran. It was totally hopeless. Better luck Sunday, guys. :/
Success!!
But finally around seven AM, the line started to move and ticket distribution started. Tickets were given with an entrance time and a number, we got into the third ticket group at 11:20. We walked off and then were faced with our first really good look at the line stretching way off into the horizon in the early morning light. We took photos. Everyone was taking photos. I can't even offer a guess on how many people were there, but there were thousands. You can't tell at all from these photos with my crappy camera phone either, but I'm not kidding when I say it was from Omotesando Hills all the way to the shop area. INSANE.
Crazy line.
Craaaaazy line.
After that we headed back to Takeshita-doori in the early morning light, to crash for a few hours at an internet cafe. I took a picture of Takeshita-doori totally empty. It's a sight I don't think I'll see again. *laugh*
Takeshita-doori should never be that deserted.
We went to our cubicle, checked LJ, and then curled up on the matted floor to catch a few hours of sleep. I kept waking up and checking my phone just about every twenty minutes, freaking out that we'd oversleep. Which we didn't. We got up, then headed downstairs to McDonalds for breakfast, and then made the trek yet again down Omotesando.
We headed down to the gallery space, but they told us we had to re-queue again according to our numbers where we'd gotten the tickets, so we ran back upstairs and outside to get back in line. It was also really really well-organized.
And then they led us inside! (So, photos stop here. There was more staff than you could imagine, ninjaing photos was pretty impossible.)
The outside area had a huge message from Ohno printed outside, and as you stepped in they had lined up all the flowers sent to him as gifts. There were flowers from News Zero, TV stations, all the boyband magazines, and the rest of Arashi. J-Storm's was the biggest, way taller than me! It was hard to see the arrangement Nino sent, it was blocked behind the other three. Matsujun sent a kinda boring-in-comparison set of yellow flowers, Sho's was a really elegant set that I feel like was mostly white but lovely, and I think Aiba's had pink mixed in...? I thought Sho's, News Zero's, and Wink Up's were the nicest (J-Storm was most impressive but really to the point of overkill).
Then you lined up and all of Ohno's 100 figures were placed in individual glass lit cases about a meter high. They had stuck them down to the cases with adhesive, but under the lights the adhesive had melted and everyone kept exclaiming at how the figures had fallen over. The Ohmiya SK figures weren't side by side, seemed a little cruel to break them up!
Looking at them was cool though eventually a bit repetitive after the halfway point... I actually was more impressed with the presentation of the figures than the figures themselves after seeing so many. I thought the photos Ohno took of the figures for the walls were incredibly clever conceptually. They were all the same photos as in FREESTYLE, but for the exhibition they were blown up huge (one was wall-sized).
After you looked at the figures and the wall of the blown-up photos, it wound around into a room of his paintings and ink work. As already said, there was stuff from before the debut there...some of it looked a bit manhandled though. There were stains on some of the drawings, and one looked totally wrinkled like it had been crumpled up and smoothed down. Others had pencil marks in places they didn't really seem like they should be. You could totally tell an art show was like the last thing on his mind when making these and taking care of them. ;P To be honest, there were a few older works where I thought they looked too rough to even be in any kind of show, even one like this. Even the sculpture on the cover of FREESTYLE, there's like this small chunk taken out of it on the side where the paint had chipped off that really kind of made my whole inner OCD-ness go crazy. Also, I really wish there had been wall commentary placards included in the show for the works. I know there are comments in FREESTYLE, but not all of the works in the show were in the book so it seemed kind of a shame not to have any comments on them at all.
There were a lot more works in the show than in the book, actually. Actually was kind of sad as one of my favorites wasn't in the book - this incredibly simple, clever ink drawing of a fish being caught on a fishing pole, but drawn so that it looked vaguely in the shape of the "tsuri" kanji. So clever! The pen and ink drawing he showed as the work he was most proud of on the news was amazing to see up close. I hadn't been able to tell that it was spread seemingly-haphazardly over different sheets of paper when they showed it on TV. The detail was so miniscule, even the closeup in FREESTYLE doesn't do it justice. I think this was probably the work where I thought it made going to the exhibition totally worth it, because you just can't grasp it unless you're right there with your nose in front of it.
After that you edged out of that room and into another called "Satoshi no Omoide." I thought this was again incredibly clever: he had brought his notebook doodles and art projects from kindergarten and elementary school, and had them spread out across the wall. Incredibly cute stuff and it was cool to see how he'd drawn as a kid. He had a bunch of comic strips that looked very Dragonball-like. They also had the overall outfit he wore in the photos pinned up on the wall, and a case filled with all his art supplies.
Opposite that was the photoshoot done for FREESTYLE, but like a zillion times more photos than in the book. It was literally a whole wall just of that shoot. So, so cute. The whole thing was arranged very nicely, with the stray photoshoot of him in the suit against the white background showing up as a stark contrast against the other zany colorful photos on the red background. The whole shoot was hilarious and I wish they'd release the whole thing! The poses! The ridiculous costumes! Amazing!!
In that room, they also had glass cases that were filled with figurines that had gotten messed-up in the process, so you got to see all the rejects and ways the process could go wrong.
Moving down, they had the sketches for the CG images he did for J-web. And then the CG color versions were showing the whole time, fading in and out of three separate TV screens on the wall. Also on those walls were a ton of candid photographs of him working on art, most notably the huge selection of candids spread across the wall to show his progress making the sculpture on the cover of the book.
Then the next room had the entries for the J-web collaboration contest wallpapering the walls, and the figures made with the winners. Some really, really clever ideas in the entries there, many of them drawing from Arashi songs as a theme, and I swear like one in ten was fishing-related. The first prize was a chicken, the other entries were way impressive, though!
You could also move back into the main room with the figures but from the other side, and there they had a robot-like sculpture alone in the room against the giant figurine photos. They also had a moving spotlight in the ceiling that was reflecting photos of the figurines across the floor. And the wall on that side had a huge wall-sized graffiti tag-style painting of Ohno's name.
There was actually a girl in front of us who was being wheeled through the exhibition on a hospital bed on respirators. I was really amazed by that, how far people would go to get there.
Oh, and they played nothing but the "Step and Go" single the entire time. I know everyone loves "Fuyu wo Dakishimete" but after the third listen when I bought the single I was already over it, and I was just like, "Please, please, no more!" after hearing it like one hundred times today.
Then, goods. I can sum this up with SADFACE. People said earlier there were no limits on anything, except the keitai strap. On the signs, there were no notices about limits on anything, except the keitai strap. But by the time we got to goods, they were already sold out of the red shirt and the best things were one-to-a-person. I'm glad people didn't ask me to buy a lot for them or they would have been disappointed.
For people wondering, I guess it could change if they restock, but when I went the keitai strap, the postcard sets, and the prints were definitely one-to-a-person. Since the t-shirts were starting to sell out, maybe those too, but I only tried to buy one so I don't know. Posters, Freestyle, and shopping bags weren't limited, though.
My roundup:
+ Freestyle, with the accompanying message card
+ two of both posters
+ three shopping bags (not very sturdy, wanted one to use, one to keep, one for lazulisong)
+ one of every postcard set (I wanted at least two of every one and probably would have tried for three on some of them, I was really sad about that. Noes! Now I need to figure out which ones I can part with...)
+ print of the giant ink drawing, and another of the Ohmiya SK figures in Tokyo Dome
+ white t-shirt with the giant ink drawing on the back
+ keitai strap
lazulisong, the bag is kind of huge though and since it's just like a normal big shopping bag I can't really fold it nicely. So I'm not sure how I'll get it to you. I'll look for a box giant enough but it may take a while. :/
I'm really really sleepy now. Yeah. I'm going to go sleep for like a month now.