[Fan Report] Arashi no Waku Waku Gakkou 2014 in OSAKA
I really feel like this is my lucky year: I was able to see the boys again just after 6 months! (the last time was at LOVE tour in Fukuoka). For the first show on Saturday, I went with two of my friends. One of them who lives in Osaka won 3 ballot tickets. We sat on the 4th row of the second floor, which was not bad at all considering that I thought I'd only be able to see the monitor. You actually get a pretty good view of the entire dome minus their faces. xP
At 5:00PM, the monitors darken and we hear each of them shouting "Ya Ho~~~~!" (Order: Jun, Nino, Aiba, Sho, Ohno). Then a VTR plays of Arashi in their normal activities getting summoned by Waku Waku Gakkou to Kyocera Dome. First is Sho. He is in the green room for his variety show when the corner of the script book becomes a flip book for the WWG logo. He turns into a "sensei" with the white lab coat, then again into a camper in a red and grey track suit. Then is Nino. The make up artist is putting make up on him when he realizes there's a yellow WWG logo on the make up puff. Third is Jun. He is in a recording studio recording some unknown song (super autotuned so probably just a fake song). He returns to the green room and sees a plate of fruits, but when he turns around the large watermelon there is a WWG logo carved into the watermelon. Aiba is at a park eating a popsicle stick when he realizes that there are writings on the stick. I think it says "aru yo". He takes a few large bites of the ice cream and at the end of the stick he sees the WWG logo. Last is Leader. He is filming Shinigami-kun and takes out his name card for the scene. The director calls "cut". Leader checks the card and sees a blue WWG logo on the card. They all get transported to Kyocera Dome and appear in a painted school bus.
They stop at a "bus stop" in the dome and get off the bus. Aiba, Nino and Sho jogs up to the main stage from one side (luckily our side XD) while Leader and Jun goes up from another. They greet the fans then talk about this year's WWG theme: friendship (the plaque on the top of the dome says 日々是友情). Then leader decides to do a group cheer (円陣), but not only Arashi has to do it, but the fans do too. He told us all to stand up and join shoulders with the fans beside us (肩を組む）. Whenever he says something we have to shout "OH!" and at the end when he shouts "Waku Waku" we have to shout back "Gasshuku!" (合宿). It was such a cute and nice way to start the show.
Then they quickly get into the first corner: Nino's corner. Nino 's corner is interestingly about herding sheep. In the dome, there are 4 pens with 10 sheep in each pen. Each Arashi member has to herd the sheep into one big pen. Ohno and Aiba comes to our side while Sho and Jun goes to the pens on the other side. They are unexpectedly quite good at it and finishes within the time limit of 3 minutes. Nino gives them 40/40 (since there are 40 sheep). The importance/message of this corner is that in a group of friends, there will always be something that you can learn from someone.
The second corner is Sho's. Sho's corner is about how to make friends. He starts by "greetings", or aisatsu in Japanese. He greets the other Arashi members, then greets the audience. Afterwards, he shows a VTR of the greetings of different countries (France, Mongolia, New Zealand, Kenya). Afterwards, he asks two Arashi members to do the greetings. He picks Nino and Jun. He spins a spinning wheel and they had to do the Mongolia greeting (?) I think. Aiba being the meanie that he is, starts doing the "Kenya" call while Sho spins the wheel. The Kenya greeting consists of both parties spitting at each other's hands as they shake hands. Of course, Matsumiya kills all the fans with their greeting and some ovaries are lost. Sho then asks the fans to try talking to each other. He then shows a VTR of him trying to befriend a stranger as he goes fishing in Saitama (yes, you read right, FISHING XD). He wears a ridiculous disguise with glasses and a wig, and calls that persona Shotaro. XDDD At the beginning, he tries to sit next to an oji-san but quickly gets rejected as the oji-san was using a long fishing rod and does not want him to mess up his set up. He then targets an oji-san in a white shirt. At the beginning the oji-san keeps ignoring him, but he then starts asking "closed questions" (yes/no questions), and the oji-san starts replying. He tries to find a common topic with the oji-san, but the oji-san doesn't have any other hobbies and doesn't drink alcohol either. The only topic they have in common is the fact that they're both from Tokyo. Shotaro then quickly asks oji-san if they can head back together, and the oji-san says he doesn't mind. Afterwards, Shotaro reveals his real identity and the purpose of his disguise (not shown in the VTR). The Oji-san later picks out a very light fishing rod for Sho, which is perfect for beginners.
The third corner is Aiba's. And of course, it involves food again XD. He tells us to take out our bentos and start eating. While he found the recipe of the bentos that the other Arashi members' mothers made for them when they were young, and decides to recreate one. On 6/7 he decides to recreate Jun's bento. I forget what the actual dish is but its kind of like minced beef with rice. Jun helps him recreate it while obviously Nino nitpicks at everything Aiba does. In the end when Aiba splits the dish among 5 people, he only leaves a little bit of meat for Nino XD (the Aimiya love). Later, a cameraman goes into the audience to show images of the audiences' bentos. Some people made really beautiful ones, and Arashi interviews/talks to some of the fans. It was so cute.
After the meal, leader tells Arashi (and us fans) to take a nap. 5 futons appear in a star shape in the middle of the stage and Arashi each slips into a futon. Leader tells us to sleep while sitting, but we keep kyaa-ing whenever the cameraman zooms into their faces. So in the end, they have to tell the cameraman to stop zooming into their faces so that we'd actually "sleep". The dome falls silent for 1-2 minutes, then we hear the alarm ring. The alarm tone was just a normal tone, but slowly turns into a cute instrumental version of GUTS. Then the actual opening of the song comes on and the audience dies. Arashi steps out of their futons and starts dancing/singing GUTS.
The song is a little "intermission", as Leader puts it. He tells us to do the enjin group cheer again, and proceeds to Jun's corner. Jun's corner starts off with an Arashi Friendship Confirmation Game. The subject of the game is Aiba Masaki this time. On the far side of a bridge are four items. There is one item among the four that Aiba wants right now. If the other members can guess which one it is, then he can get the present and the bridge won't break as he runs across it. However, if they guess the wrong item, then Aiba will fall as he runs towards the correct item. The only bridge that is stable is the one that connects to the item the Arashi members pick.
Jun puts on headphones for Aiba so that he won't hear their discussion as they pick the item. He plays FUNKY for Aiba and says he probably doesn't remember how to dance to it anymore. Aiba being the cute adorable tennen being that he is, tries to recall the dance in the most lovely way ever. He dances on the side as the members guess. Most of our attention was on him though. He later kinda gives up and just sits on the stairs XD. The items were 1) a figure set 2) a hot pot set for one person 3) a segway 4) I forgot what it was. Both Arashi and I guessed 3), but it ended up being 2).
Then Jun reads out some of the troubles/problems that fans sent in and asks Arashi to solve them. I don't remember the exact questions, so I'll update them here when I recall them/find them.
Last is Ohno. His section is about bonds I think. He says he wants to deepen the bonds between Arashi members and between Arashi and fans. So he is going to make us sing a campfire song together. A huge "campfire" comes up from the middle of the stage. For the song, when Leader does this certain hand movement (kind of like pointing towards us) we have to say "FAIYURRRRR" (fire in a very heavy American accent). It was so funny and cute XD. After the song, Sho rings a bell to signal the end of WWG.
A guitar comes out and Nino sets up to play. They sing an acoustic version of the first verse and chorus of Furusato with Nino playing the guitar, before switching to the full speed normal song as they all get up to move to different corners of the stage. Then, Aiba and Ohno walk down the stairs to one side while Sho, Jun, and Nino walk down the other side. They wave to fans for a while before each group gets on a moving cart to continue singing/waving to the fans. They give the mic to the fans and ask us to sing the bridge part of the song. It was a heavenly moment since Sho, Jun, and Nino's cart was right in front of ours. ♡＿♡ After the song, they go around the dome once again before getting on the bus. The bus did a full loop around the dome (and even slowed down in front of the lower seats as it passed by them) before leaving the dome.
The special announcement they made during WWG is that on July 20 (Friendship Day), the Friendship bus (the bus that they came in/left the dome in) will be going around Japan (probably Tokyo).
After they leave the dome, a video of them painting the friendship bus appears on the VTR with furusato as BGM. <3
Most of the shows were the same with the exception of some bits.
6/8 Morning Show
- In Nino's section, Aiba and Jun got paired up, while Sho and Leader got paired up (and got called Oji-san team of course) XD
- The sheep weren't cooperating as they woudn't go into the pen, so they couldn't finish on time.
- For Sho's member greeting section, Nino and Sho end up doing the French greeting (the kiss on each side of the cheek without actually kissing greeting). A little part of me died again as I watched this.
- Aiba made Nino's bento. It was curry rice.
- For the Arashi Friendship Confirmation Game, they had to guess what Sho wanted. It was between a bicycle, a water server, a grand piano, and something else I forgot again ORZ
- they all knew Sho wanted a water server since he asked the members about it a few weeks ago, but since they wanted Sho to fall they purposely didn't pick the water server and picked the bike instead.
- In the end, Sho fell and had to do a second guess (the guys are such bullies XDD)
- One of the troubles was about how to resolve a conflict between two friends. Aiba and Sho pretended to be in conflict while Leader came in between them and kind of said a magic spell to make them stop XD
6/8 Afternoon Show
- In Nino's section, the pairings were the same as the first show: Aiba and Ohno on one side while Sho and Jun went to another.
- the sheep weren't cooperating again and kept eating at the WWG logo made out of flowers.
- I was in heaven since they all ended up coming to my side with all the sheep (and got stuck there for quite a while)
- For Sho's section, Aiba and Jun had to do the New Zealand greeting where they had to touch noses. Aiba and Jun not only touched noses but even kind of rubbed noses alsdjfklsdfsla (death of all fans in the hall)
- For Aiba's section, he and Ohno recreated Ohno's mom's bento. It was Tamago-yaki. Sho, being the caring mama (and good hubby for those Sakuraiba shippers) that he is, brings up the fact that Aiba learnt how to make tamagoyaki on Aiba Manabu before, which is why he made them so successfully.
- For Jun's section, Nino was the subject of the Arashi Friendship Confirmation Game. As Jun looked through songs on the iPod, he found Himitsu. He said, "Nino there's himitsu in this!" and played it for him. Then, as they were discussing the items, we suddenly hear a faint voice singing himitsu in the background: it was Nino bb XDDDD All the fans' attention went to him as usual. He kept singing to himitsu as they guessed. in the end when the guys were done, Jun went to inform Nino and said, "this is not a karaoke box, you know!" keeekeee
- All of Nino's items were collector's items with autographs on them. Arashi picked a baseball bat signed by Nino's beloved Hara kantoku. As Nino ran across the bridge, he thought he was going to fall and was prepared to do so, but ended up running across just fine. He made the funniest expression and did the funniest actions as he ran across XD
- (edited] One of the "problems" that they had to solve was about how to change the nickname that a girl called his boyfriend. The girl still used "-san" to address his bf after dating for a month but now wants to change it to something more intimate. Jun says that he started calling Ohno "Riida" pretty soon after they debuted. Ohno asked what he really wanted to call him, and Jun said probably "Satoshi-kun". #deathbymemberai
- Then Sakurai Sho, as usual, brings up him and Aiba. He says that he used to call Aiba "Aiba-kun" but now calls him "Aiba-chan", and that if he were to come up with a new name for Aiba it would probably be something on the lines of "Masaki", "Masa-kun", or "Ma-kun" (JUST FYI This is the name that Aiba wants his gf to call him in the future, or so he said in a magazine interview before XDDDD)
I'm sorry this is so rushed. I've been very busy the past few days. I'll go back and revise the post when I have time with more accurate information and details when I get the chance to! In the meant time... enjoy!
At 5:00PM, the monitors darken and we hear each of them shouting "Ya Ho~~~~!" (Order: Jun, Nino, Aiba, Sho, Ohno). Then a VTR plays of Arashi in their normal activities getting summoned by Waku Waku Gakkou to Kyocera Dome. First is Sho. He is in the green room for his variety show when the corner of the script book becomes a flip book for the WWG logo. He turns into a "sensei" with the white lab coat, then again into a camper in a red and grey track suit. Then is Nino. The make up artist is putting make up on him when he realizes there's a yellow WWG logo on the make up puff. Third is Jun. He is in a recording studio recording some unknown song (super autotuned so probably just a fake song). He returns to the green room and sees a plate of fruits, but when he turns around the large watermelon there is a WWG logo carved into the watermelon. Aiba is at a park eating a popsicle stick when he realizes that there are writings on the stick. I think it says "aru yo". He takes a few large bites of the ice cream and at the end of the stick he sees the WWG logo. Last is Leader. He is filming Shinigami-kun and takes out his name card for the scene. The director calls "cut". Leader checks the card and sees a blue WWG logo on the card. They all get transported to Kyocera Dome and appear in a painted school bus.
They stop at a "bus stop" in the dome and get off the bus. Aiba, Nino and Sho jogs up to the main stage from one side (luckily our side XD) while Leader and Jun goes up from another. They greet the fans then talk about this year's WWG theme: friendship (the plaque on the top of the dome says 日々是友情). Then leader decides to do a group cheer (円陣), but not only Arashi has to do it, but the fans do too. He told us all to stand up and join shoulders with the fans beside us (肩を組む）. Whenever he says something we have to shout "OH!" and at the end when he shouts "Waku Waku" we have to shout back "Gasshuku!" (合宿). It was such a cute and nice way to start the show.
Then they quickly get into the first corner: Nino's corner. Nino 's corner is interestingly about herding sheep. In the dome, there are 4 pens with 10 sheep in each pen. Each Arashi member has to herd the sheep into one big pen. Ohno and Aiba comes to our side while Sho and Jun goes to the pens on the other side. They are unexpectedly quite good at it and finishes within the time limit of 3 minutes. Nino gives them 40/40 (since there are 40 sheep). The importance/message of this corner is that in a group of friends, there will always be something that you can learn from someone.
The second corner is Sho's. Sho's corner is about how to make friends. He starts by "greetings", or aisatsu in Japanese. He greets the other Arashi members, then greets the audience. Afterwards, he shows a VTR of the greetings of different countries (France, Mongolia, New Zealand, Kenya). Afterwards, he asks two Arashi members to do the greetings. He picks Nino and Jun. He spins a spinning wheel and they had to do the Mongolia greeting (?) I think. Aiba being the meanie that he is, starts doing the "Kenya" call while Sho spins the wheel. The Kenya greeting consists of both parties spitting at each other's hands as they shake hands. Of course, Matsumiya kills all the fans with their greeting and some ovaries are lost. Sho then asks the fans to try talking to each other. He then shows a VTR of him trying to befriend a stranger as he goes fishing in Saitama (yes, you read right, FISHING XD). He wears a ridiculous disguise with glasses and a wig, and calls that persona Shotaro. XDDD At the beginning, he tries to sit next to an oji-san but quickly gets rejected as the oji-san was using a long fishing rod and does not want him to mess up his set up. He then targets an oji-san in a white shirt. At the beginning the oji-san keeps ignoring him, but he then starts asking "closed questions" (yes/no questions), and the oji-san starts replying. He tries to find a common topic with the oji-san, but the oji-san doesn't have any other hobbies and doesn't drink alcohol either. The only topic they have in common is the fact that they're both from Tokyo. Shotaro then quickly asks oji-san if they can head back together, and the oji-san says he doesn't mind. Afterwards, Shotaro reveals his real identity and the purpose of his disguise (not shown in the VTR). The Oji-san later picks out a very light fishing rod for Sho, which is perfect for beginners.
The third corner is Aiba's. And of course, it involves food again XD. He tells us to take out our bentos and start eating. While he found the recipe of the bentos that the other Arashi members' mothers made for them when they were young, and decides to recreate one. On 6/7 he decides to recreate Jun's bento. I forget what the actual dish is but its kind of like minced beef with rice. Jun helps him recreate it while obviously Nino nitpicks at everything Aiba does. In the end when Aiba splits the dish among 5 people, he only leaves a little bit of meat for Nino XD (the Aimiya love). Later, a cameraman goes into the audience to show images of the audiences' bentos. Some people made really beautiful ones, and Arashi interviews/talks to some of the fans. It was so cute.
After the meal, leader tells Arashi (and us fans) to take a nap. 5 futons appear in a star shape in the middle of the stage and Arashi each slips into a futon. Leader tells us to sleep while sitting, but we keep kyaa-ing whenever the cameraman zooms into their faces. So in the end, they have to tell the cameraman to stop zooming into their faces so that we'd actually "sleep". The dome falls silent for 1-2 minutes, then we hear the alarm ring. The alarm tone was just a normal tone, but slowly turns into a cute instrumental version of GUTS. Then the actual opening of the song comes on and the audience dies. Arashi steps out of their futons and starts dancing/singing GUTS.
The song is a little "intermission", as Leader puts it. He tells us to do the enjin group cheer again, and proceeds to Jun's corner. Jun's corner starts off with an Arashi Friendship Confirmation Game. The subject of the game is Aiba Masaki this time. On the far side of a bridge are four items. There is one item among the four that Aiba wants right now. If the other members can guess which one it is, then he can get the present and the bridge won't break as he runs across it. However, if they guess the wrong item, then Aiba will fall as he runs towards the correct item. The only bridge that is stable is the one that connects to the item the Arashi members pick.
Jun puts on headphones for Aiba so that he won't hear their discussion as they pick the item. He plays FUNKY for Aiba and says he probably doesn't remember how to dance to it anymore. Aiba being the cute adorable tennen being that he is, tries to recall the dance in the most lovely way ever. He dances on the side as the members guess. Most of our attention was on him though. He later kinda gives up and just sits on the stairs XD. The items were 1) a figure set 2) a hot pot set for one person 3) a segway 4) I forgot what it was. Both Arashi and I guessed 3), but it ended up being 2).
Then Jun reads out some of the troubles/problems that fans sent in and asks Arashi to solve them. I don't remember the exact questions, so I'll update them here when I recall them/find them.
Last is Ohno. His section is about bonds I think. He says he wants to deepen the bonds between Arashi members and between Arashi and fans. So he is going to make us sing a campfire song together. A huge "campfire" comes up from the middle of the stage. For the song, when Leader does this certain hand movement (kind of like pointing towards us) we have to say "FAIYURRRRR" (fire in a very heavy American accent). It was so funny and cute XD. After the song, Sho rings a bell to signal the end of WWG.
A guitar comes out and Nino sets up to play. They sing an acoustic version of the first verse and chorus of Furusato with Nino playing the guitar, before switching to the full speed normal song as they all get up to move to different corners of the stage. Then, Aiba and Ohno walk down the stairs to one side while Sho, Jun, and Nino walk down the other side. They wave to fans for a while before each group gets on a moving cart to continue singing/waving to the fans. They give the mic to the fans and ask us to sing the bridge part of the song. It was a heavenly moment since Sho, Jun, and Nino's cart was right in front of ours. ♡＿♡ After the song, they go around the dome once again before getting on the bus. The bus did a full loop around the dome (and even slowed down in front of the lower seats as it passed by them) before leaving the dome.
The special announcement they made during WWG is that on July 20 (Friendship Day), the Friendship bus (the bus that they came in/left the dome in) will be going around Japan (probably Tokyo).
After they leave the dome, a video of them painting the friendship bus appears on the VTR with furusato as BGM. <3
Most of the shows were the same with the exception of some bits.
6/8 Morning Show
- In Nino's section, Aiba and Jun got paired up, while Sho and Leader got paired up (and got called Oji-san team of course) XD
- The sheep weren't cooperating as they woudn't go into the pen, so they couldn't finish on time.
- For Sho's member greeting section, Nino and Sho end up doing the French greeting (the kiss on each side of the cheek without actually kissing greeting). A little part of me died again as I watched this.
- Aiba made Nino's bento. It was curry rice.
- For the Arashi Friendship Confirmation Game, they had to guess what Sho wanted. It was between a bicycle, a water server, a grand piano, and something else I forgot again ORZ
- they all knew Sho wanted a water server since he asked the members about it a few weeks ago, but since they wanted Sho to fall they purposely didn't pick the water server and picked the bike instead.
- In the end, Sho fell and had to do a second guess (the guys are such bullies XDD)
- One of the troubles was about how to resolve a conflict between two friends. Aiba and Sho pretended to be in conflict while Leader came in between them and kind of said a magic spell to make them stop XD
6/8 Afternoon Show
- In Nino's section, the pairings were the same as the first show: Aiba and Ohno on one side while Sho and Jun went to another.
- the sheep weren't cooperating again and kept eating at the WWG logo made out of flowers.
- I was in heaven since they all ended up coming to my side with all the sheep (and got stuck there for quite a while)
- For Sho's section, Aiba and Jun had to do the New Zealand greeting where they had to touch noses. Aiba and Jun not only touched noses but even kind of rubbed noses alsdjfklsdfsla (death of all fans in the hall)
- For Aiba's section, he and Ohno recreated Ohno's mom's bento. It was Tamago-yaki. Sho, being the caring mama (and good hubby for those Sakuraiba shippers) that he is, brings up the fact that Aiba learnt how to make tamagoyaki on Aiba Manabu before, which is why he made them so successfully.
- For Jun's section, Nino was the subject of the Arashi Friendship Confirmation Game. As Jun looked through songs on the iPod, he found Himitsu. He said, "Nino there's himitsu in this!" and played it for him. Then, as they were discussing the items, we suddenly hear a faint voice singing himitsu in the background: it was Nino bb XDDDD All the fans' attention went to him as usual. He kept singing to himitsu as they guessed. in the end when the guys were done, Jun went to inform Nino and said, "this is not a karaoke box, you know!" keeekeee
- All of Nino's items were collector's items with autographs on them. Arashi picked a baseball bat signed by Nino's beloved Hara kantoku. As Nino ran across the bridge, he thought he was going to fall and was prepared to do so, but ended up running across just fine. He made the funniest expression and did the funniest actions as he ran across XD
- (edited] One of the "problems" that they had to solve was about how to change the nickname that a girl called his boyfriend. The girl still used "-san" to address his bf after dating for a month but now wants to change it to something more intimate. Jun says that he started calling Ohno "Riida" pretty soon after they debuted. Ohno asked what he really wanted to call him, and Jun said probably "Satoshi-kun". #deathbymemberai
- Then Sakurai Sho, as usual, brings up him and Aiba. He says that he used to call Aiba "Aiba-kun" but now calls him "Aiba-chan", and that if he were to come up with a new name for Aiba it would probably be something on the lines of "Masaki", "Masa-kun", or "Ma-kun" (JUST FYI This is the name that Aiba wants his gf to call him in the future, or so he said in a magazine interview before XDDDD)
I'm sorry this is so rushed. I've been very busy the past few days. I'll go back and revise the post when I have time with more accurate information and details when I get the chance to! In the meant time... enjoy!