Jincon New York 3010
I am here to report that I have seen the famous Akanishi hips in person, and they are just as slutty as promised.
[I wrote that last night, because it seemed really important to get that down in writing right away. Now commences the narrative as I sit on the BoltBus back to Boston.]
I took an early bus to New York, where mousapelli and I spent like 15 minutes running around Herald Square trying to find each other. In the course of which my newly-purchased texting pack saved my ass because I could not hear a damn thing, let me tell you. First thing I do when I get home is pay my credit card bill, and then the next thing I’m going to do is change my phone plan so I have fewer minutes but unlimited texting.
[Oooh. I have no idea what bridge we’re on, but it’s a really pretty river down there.]
Mousi finally found me and we headed up to the Kinokuniya at Bryant Park. It was much less embarrassing than last time I was in there with a magazine-buying JE fan, because Rachel was terrifyingly hyper about a whole lot of dubious magazines. Mousi just took a look, picked one out, and came downstairs with me so I could squee over Kuma no Pu-san books. (Thank you, Gokusen! It cracks me up that not only does most of my Japanese come from dramas, but I can usually pinpoint the specific drama that I know any given word from.)
We also got lunch at the Kino cafe. I had a sweet cheese bread thing and most of a seaweed and soy onigiri. Turns out you should really read the instructions for opening the onigiri before you try it. XD
Autumn in New York is considerably more bearable than summer. I would not consider it pleasant, but it is certainly an improvement. There are still street fairs and pashmina vendors and random parkside farmer’s markets, but less sweltering. Though sometimes the wind bites cold. F***ing wind tunnels.
Next we found the new Bookoff location, where I cooed over the Orthros no Inu DVD set (it’s so shiny! and full of giant woobies!) and Mousi pointed out hilarious concert DVDs and wondered who, exactly, was in the 2008 Endless Shock (aside from Koichi, who was the only person pictured on the case).
I counted myself fortunate not to emerge with yet another uchiwa to explain to my mother. (Not that I explained the first one. While she was visiting, I just buried Ryo-circa-2006 under a pile of scrap paper and--oh hey, that’s where my Victorian final paper got to--hoped she wouldn’t dig around and inquire who, exactly, this surly young man was.)
Sated, we headed uptown to the Pod Hotel, which was adorable and futuristic and had striped elevators and bunk beds. I immediately called dibs on the top bunk, for which both Mousi and Rachel have since laughed at me. I was also enthralled by the bathroom notification system--there’s a little light for each bathroom above the room door, so you can tell which ones are occupied and unoccupied BEFORE you leave the comfort of your own room. It’s genius. ♥ I took a nap, and Mousi posted about our meetup fail. (WELL I KNOW WHAT A SMURF LOOKS LIKE *NOW*, DON’T I.) We got gussied up (as much as we felt like bothering with, anyway) and headed out. We got bagels at the place around the corner and ate them on the way to Broadway, and if it wasn’t the best damn bagel I’ve ever had, I couldn’t tell through all the cream cheese. ♥ NOM NOM. ♥
We found the end of the line (it was kind of around the block, but we weren’t the last people in it by any means). Mousi got out her DS and started doing kanji practice, while I watched and cackled every time she made the little grading dude headdesk. We kept getting asked what we were in line for, and by the end Mousi totally had a spiel. I started keeping score.
People knowing what the line was for: 1
Asking people in line who were not us: 2
Asking us: 5
I maintain it was because we were white, and so were most of the people asking, whereas most of the line was Asian.
It was cold. I cheered up when Mousi made the little DS dude go “Subarashi!” though. It was cute. (Another drama word. Took me a minute to remember where I knew it from. Some phrases, like “homo janai,” are pretty memorable, but subarashi [also Hanakimi]--slightly less obvious. Although in this case only slightly. Nakatsu has a sexuality crisis? Subarashi! Dorm 1 has to move in with Dorm 2? Subarashi! The entire school has declared war on the panty thief and built a cracked-out liar detection machine? SUBARASHI!)
About an hour after we showed up, the line started moving, and we scrambled into the theatre via srs business bouncers and a down escalator. There was a coat check (thank goodness) and we decided to hit the goods tables afterward because it was insane. We found a spot about halfway back towards the stage-left wall, which turned out to be a good spot because we got plenty of face time from there. The warmup dudes introduced Joey T (Mousi had to explain to me who he was) and did some stuff, but kept it pretty brief.
THEN JIN SHOWED UP. In a giant white hoodie. And sunglasses. (Those disappeared eventually.) He was clearly supposed to be a musical mannequin, and did a thing with a drum set and a lot of very controlled mechanical movement that obviously took a lot of skill. (The drum set was wheeled out after and never seen again.) I liked it better when he turned into a human being, though, communicating with the audience and really looking at us and singing to us, not just performing. It was a little surreal, actually seeing him. I’ve seen plenty of photos and videos online, but it kind of hit me for a moment about halfway through when he came back out in jeans and a white v-neck (James would approve!). He’s a real person. Living, breathing, warm; nervous and happy and real.
When he pushed his hair back from his face for the first time, the entire crowd screamed. XD
Jin was super cute with his backdancers--they messed around a lot, and one of them got both his collarbones from behind and Jin just collapsed, it was hilarious. Joey T dumped a water bottle over his head at one point while he was singing, and he was clearly having fun.
He also molested the mic stand during Body Talk, but only a little bit.
I was enjoying the artistry and all, but the first time I actually felt like Jin was pouring himself into the song was Paparats. (For those of you just tuning in now, it is an angry, angry song about the paparazzi. And how they are rats. And not the cute and fuzzy kind who want their bellies rubbed.) It was just him and his real voice and the music and a lot of emotion and I was suddenly completely on board. Jin’s good enough that when he uses autotune, it’s for effect. And he does some interesting things with it. But damn, he can sing.
Towards the end there was the requisite random Johnnys randomness, with masks and red capes and yeah, I don’t know. All he needed was some wires and maybe fireworks, and no JE fan would have batted an eyelash. XD Oh Jin.
Having said that, I really enjoyed the concert and was actually quite impressed with Jin’s artistry. (Possibly this is because I had watched Bandage the night before, in which Jin essentially plays himself, only with early-’90s technology, and was inclined to look at all the crazy fancy stuff symbolically - a progression from robot to human, programmed tool to self-actualization; the visuals of the world a grid that became a cage that morphed to something else; bits of Matrix-Code visuals with (I think) the character for his name resolving out of them. Look, I'm a narratologist, I'm trained to look for emotional journeys and how they're constructed.)
Like Mousi said, it seemed like there wouldn’t be an encore. But the audience blatantly refused to leave, so he finally came back out and kind of went, “Well, I don’t have any more songs, but... there’s my new single in Japan? I could do that? It’s in Japanese, I don’t know, is that okay?” and the audience SCREAMED. He bent down and got a lyric sheet from somebody and was kind of shy and embarrassed and it was adorable. And then he started singing, just him and the music, and his voice was kind of shot to hell at the beginning and then he really got into it and his voice went all glorious and full of some crying too, and he was beautiful.
I may or may not have had hearts and stars in my eyes at that point.
The fancams from up front seem to have caught a lot of people singing along (badly), but towards the back where we were, all we could hear was Jin.
Afterward, Mousi got some con goods, and then we went to karaoke. I was proud of myself for actually finding the place. NAVIGATION WIN! We started with Aki no Sora, which actually went pretty well, did some more NEWS and Tegomass, KAT-TUN, T&T, HSJ, Arashi, etc. Loveless, of course, for New York, and Mousi rocked some TOKIO while I sipped my Boston cooler. We actually got some harmony going on the Tegomass, so I feel pretty good about it as a whole.
In the lobby, as we were paying on the way out:
MOUSI: What’s this song that’s playing? It’s awfully familiar.
FIONA: *shrug*
MOUSI: IS THIS HIKARU GENJI OMG
KARAOKE LADY:...yes XD
WE: *leave*
KARAOKE LADY: omg why do I even know that.
KARAOKE LADY: wait, why do THEY even know that?!
Then we stumbled back to the hotel (it took all of like five minutes) and crashed.
Next morning: more bagels, SoHo, Uniqlo, the Scholastic store (♥), turquoise leather boots of vain longing, monster chocolate cupakes at Dean & Deluca, back to Penn Station (subway win on my part) and to our respective return trips. And now I’m going to take a nap because Ovid’s battery is running low and I’m sleepy.
[Home again.]
At the end of it all, I have to report that I did not feel like somebody in a Rachel Cohn/David Levithan novel.
But only because I’d left my Chuck Taylors at home.
[I wrote that last night, because it seemed really important to get that down in writing right away. Now commences the narrative as I sit on the BoltBus back to Boston.]
I took an early bus to New York, where mousapelli and I spent like 15 minutes running around Herald Square trying to find each other. In the course of which my newly-purchased texting pack saved my ass because I could not hear a damn thing, let me tell you. First thing I do when I get home is pay my credit card bill, and then the next thing I’m going to do is change my phone plan so I have fewer minutes but unlimited texting.
[Oooh. I have no idea what bridge we’re on, but it’s a really pretty river down there.]
Mousi finally found me and we headed up to the Kinokuniya at Bryant Park. It was much less embarrassing than last time I was in there with a magazine-buying JE fan, because Rachel was terrifyingly hyper about a whole lot of dubious magazines. Mousi just took a look, picked one out, and came downstairs with me so I could squee over Kuma no Pu-san books. (Thank you, Gokusen! It cracks me up that not only does most of my Japanese come from dramas, but I can usually pinpoint the specific drama that I know any given word from.)
We also got lunch at the Kino cafe. I had a sweet cheese bread thing and most of a seaweed and soy onigiri. Turns out you should really read the instructions for opening the onigiri before you try it. XD
Autumn in New York is considerably more bearable than summer. I would not consider it pleasant, but it is certainly an improvement. There are still street fairs and pashmina vendors and random parkside farmer’s markets, but less sweltering. Though sometimes the wind bites cold. F***ing wind tunnels.
Next we found the new Bookoff location, where I cooed over the Orthros no Inu DVD set (it’s so shiny! and full of giant woobies!) and Mousi pointed out hilarious concert DVDs and wondered who, exactly, was in the 2008 Endless Shock (aside from Koichi, who was the only person pictured on the case).
I counted myself fortunate not to emerge with yet another uchiwa to explain to my mother. (Not that I explained the first one. While she was visiting, I just buried Ryo-circa-2006 under a pile of scrap paper and--oh hey, that’s where my Victorian final paper got to--hoped she wouldn’t dig around and inquire who, exactly, this surly young man was.)
Sated, we headed uptown to the Pod Hotel, which was adorable and futuristic and had striped elevators and bunk beds. I immediately called dibs on the top bunk, for which both Mousi and Rachel have since laughed at me. I was also enthralled by the bathroom notification system--there’s a little light for each bathroom above the room door, so you can tell which ones are occupied and unoccupied BEFORE you leave the comfort of your own room. It’s genius. ♥ I took a nap, and Mousi posted about our meetup fail. (WELL I KNOW WHAT A SMURF LOOKS LIKE *NOW*, DON’T I.) We got gussied up (as much as we felt like bothering with, anyway) and headed out. We got bagels at the place around the corner and ate them on the way to Broadway, and if it wasn’t the best damn bagel I’ve ever had, I couldn’t tell through all the cream cheese. ♥ NOM NOM. ♥
We found the end of the line (it was kind of around the block, but we weren’t the last people in it by any means). Mousi got out her DS and started doing kanji practice, while I watched and cackled every time she made the little grading dude headdesk. We kept getting asked what we were in line for, and by the end Mousi totally had a spiel. I started keeping score.
People knowing what the line was for: 1
Asking people in line who were not us: 2
Asking us: 5
I maintain it was because we were white, and so were most of the people asking, whereas most of the line was Asian.
It was cold. I cheered up when Mousi made the little DS dude go “Subarashi!” though. It was cute. (Another drama word. Took me a minute to remember where I knew it from. Some phrases, like “homo janai,” are pretty memorable, but subarashi [also Hanakimi]--slightly less obvious. Although in this case only slightly. Nakatsu has a sexuality crisis? Subarashi! Dorm 1 has to move in with Dorm 2? Subarashi! The entire school has declared war on the panty thief and built a cracked-out liar detection machine? SUBARASHI!)
About an hour after we showed up, the line started moving, and we scrambled into the theatre via srs business bouncers and a down escalator. There was a coat check (thank goodness) and we decided to hit the goods tables afterward because it was insane. We found a spot about halfway back towards the stage-left wall, which turned out to be a good spot because we got plenty of face time from there. The warmup dudes introduced Joey T (Mousi had to explain to me who he was) and did some stuff, but kept it pretty brief.
THEN JIN SHOWED UP. In a giant white hoodie. And sunglasses. (Those disappeared eventually.) He was clearly supposed to be a musical mannequin, and did a thing with a drum set and a lot of very controlled mechanical movement that obviously took a lot of skill. (The drum set was wheeled out after and never seen again.) I liked it better when he turned into a human being, though, communicating with the audience and really looking at us and singing to us, not just performing. It was a little surreal, actually seeing him. I’ve seen plenty of photos and videos online, but it kind of hit me for a moment about halfway through when he came back out in jeans and a white v-neck (James would approve!). He’s a real person. Living, breathing, warm; nervous and happy and real.
When he pushed his hair back from his face for the first time, the entire crowd screamed. XD
Jin was super cute with his backdancers--they messed around a lot, and one of them got both his collarbones from behind and Jin just collapsed, it was hilarious. Joey T dumped a water bottle over his head at one point while he was singing, and he was clearly having fun.
He also molested the mic stand during Body Talk, but only a little bit.
I was enjoying the artistry and all, but the first time I actually felt like Jin was pouring himself into the song was Paparats. (For those of you just tuning in now, it is an angry, angry song about the paparazzi. And how they are rats. And not the cute and fuzzy kind who want their bellies rubbed.) It was just him and his real voice and the music and a lot of emotion and I was suddenly completely on board. Jin’s good enough that when he uses autotune, it’s for effect. And he does some interesting things with it. But damn, he can sing.
Towards the end there was the requisite random Johnnys randomness, with masks and red capes and yeah, I don’t know. All he needed was some wires and maybe fireworks, and no JE fan would have batted an eyelash. XD Oh Jin.
Having said that, I really enjoyed the concert and was actually quite impressed with Jin’s artistry. (Possibly this is because I had watched Bandage the night before, in which Jin essentially plays himself, only with early-’90s technology, and was inclined to look at all the crazy fancy stuff symbolically - a progression from robot to human, programmed tool to self-actualization; the visuals of the world a grid that became a cage that morphed to something else; bits of Matrix-Code visuals with (I think) the character for his name resolving out of them. Look, I'm a narratologist, I'm trained to look for emotional journeys and how they're constructed.)
Like Mousi said, it seemed like there wouldn’t be an encore. But the audience blatantly refused to leave, so he finally came back out and kind of went, “Well, I don’t have any more songs, but... there’s my new single in Japan? I could do that? It’s in Japanese, I don’t know, is that okay?” and the audience SCREAMED. He bent down and got a lyric sheet from somebody and was kind of shy and embarrassed and it was adorable. And then he started singing, just him and the music, and his voice was kind of shot to hell at the beginning and then he really got into it and his voice went all glorious and full of some crying too, and he was beautiful.
I may or may not have had hearts and stars in my eyes at that point.
The fancams from up front seem to have caught a lot of people singing along (badly), but towards the back where we were, all we could hear was Jin.
Afterward, Mousi got some con goods, and then we went to karaoke. I was proud of myself for actually finding the place. NAVIGATION WIN! We started with Aki no Sora, which actually went pretty well, did some more NEWS and Tegomass, KAT-TUN, T&T, HSJ, Arashi, etc. Loveless, of course, for New York, and Mousi rocked some TOKIO while I sipped my Boston cooler. We actually got some harmony going on the Tegomass, so I feel pretty good about it as a whole.
In the lobby, as we were paying on the way out:
MOUSI: What’s this song that’s playing? It’s awfully familiar.
FIONA: *shrug*
MOUSI: IS THIS HIKARU GENJI OMG
KARAOKE LADY:...yes XD
WE: *leave*
KARAOKE LADY: omg why do I even know that.
KARAOKE LADY: wait, why do THEY even know that?!
Then we stumbled back to the hotel (it took all of like five minutes) and crashed.
Next morning: more bagels, SoHo, Uniqlo, the Scholastic store (♥), turquoise leather boots of vain longing, monster chocolate cupakes at Dean & Deluca, back to Penn Station (subway win on my part) and to our respective return trips. And now I’m going to take a nap because Ovid’s battery is running low and I’m sleepy.
[Home again.]
At the end of it all, I have to report that I did not feel like somebody in a Rachel Cohn/David Levithan novel.
But only because I’d left my Chuck Taylors at home.