Sendai- Kimeru Concert and Tokyo Cosplay (again)
This last weekend, September 3rd through September 5th, I visited the city of Sendai in Miyagi prefecture with Rachel via Night Bus in order to see a live concert of the performer Kimeru. When we returned on Sunday morning, we made our way to a cosplay event in Tokyo to debut our new Magdala na Maria costumes before returning to Gunma.
Friday:
Rachel and I met up in Takasaki after a frenzied attempt at finishing our costumes for Sunday. I’ve still actually got just a tiny bit left to finish on my dress, but I wore it anyway. Not terribly noticeable, but stuff I want to fix before wearing it again. In any case, I was sewing right up until I had to rush out of my apartment and bike down to the train station to get to Takasaki. XD; And I did end up forgetting one part of my costume, the stuffed bear that my character carries around, but the rest of it looked fine, so I guess it didn’t matter.
Anyway! Once we got to Tokyo, Rachel and I tried to go see a movie that was finishing up it’s run in the theatre, Ai no Kotodama 2, but it would have made us miss our night bus, so we decided to skip it in favour of food and Book Off. Funny thing happened when we went to check out the theatre it was playing at, though. There was a foreigner working at the counter! It’s sorta a theatre for the more obscure movies or documentaries or just generally not blockbuster titles, so I guess if a random foreigner was going to be working at any theatre in Japan, it’d be that one. But, Rachel and I were a bit surprised and didn’t really want to assume that any foreigner we find can speak English, so we asked him first in Japanese whether he spoke English, to which he answered yes. XD;
Back in Shinjuku, we found our Night Bus, though we got a bit confused and nearly missed when they called for our particular ride. Night Buses are a cheap alternative to Shinkansens or planes for getting to the further prefectures in Japan. Basically, you get on the bus around 11:00pm or 12:00am, they turn off all the lights so everyone can sleep, and then you wake up at your destination early in the morning so that you have the full day ahead of you to hang out wherever you wanted to go. Round trip to Sendai from Shinjuku, Tokyo and back the next night was less than $100 (as compared to the $140 it would cost to go one-way on the Shinkansen). The buses are outfitted with foot-rests and reclining seats and blankets for everyone to use to help let people get some sleep. The way there I didn’t sleep quite as well as I’d hoped, probably because it was a fairly new experience and we had to sorta adjust to which positions were best for sleeping in that sort of bus. Rachel and I just ended up lying on top of each other because we’re buds and that gave us a bit more leeway and space. I don’t really want to know how uncomfortable it’d be if you were traveling alone and didn’t know the guy next to you, but were still trying to get some good sleep for the day ahead of you.
Saturday:
Saturday we arrived at Sendai train station in Sendai city at about 6:25am with some 6 hours of broken sleep under our belts, but good attitudes about checking out what the city had to offer. First thing we did was to clean up a bit in the station bathrooms and stow our luggage (because it sucks to drag suitcases around all day when you’re exploring). Then we made sure we wouldn’t get lost on our way to the concert venue by looking for it first, since we’d never been and it would be bad to wait until it was time to line up before attempting to find the place. On the way back, we explored a couple covered shopping streets, though it was early so basically nothing was open, in our search for breakfast at the lovely donut chain, Mister Donuts.
Sendai Station!
Once it got a bit later in the morning and buses were starting to run and people were awake and moving about the city, Rachel and I did our big tourist-y visit to the Oosaki Hachiman-gu shrine. It’s a well-known site in the city, with its main worship relics first housed there by the war lord Date Masamune. Masamune is hot shit in Sendai. XD He’s the city’s main claim to fame as a famous war lord that ruled over much of Northern Japan (Sendai as the governmental center) way back when and, as such, has statues and pictures and mentions of his name everywhere.
Small shrine at the entrance
Hand-washing fountain. (Cue Japan nostalgia, since these are at most shrines. Definitely reminded me of the Asakusa area and Kyoto, actually.)
Shrine-y buildings
Rachel and I paid 100yen to read our fortunes. There are little fortune vending machines that you get slips of paper from, telling you a general fortune, some little quips about different parts of your life for the next while, and phrases you should think about. I got a sorta middle-bad fortune that warned me that I would get uber sick if I traveled around in the near future... Oops. XD It also said that that person I’m waiting for to show up in my life? Yeah, they ain’t comin’. XDDD; Thank you, shrine fortune. Rachel’s said that she’d be fine as long as she watched out for traffic accidents. In any case, what you’re supposed to do with your fortunes, should they be not exactly what you want, is tie them to little wood-rope structures near where you get the fortune.
Rachel and me with our fortunes tied behind us.
Staircase back to the main street
Having seen the whole shrine, Rachel and I took the bus back to wander around in the shopping areas in downtown Sendai. We visited the Loft department store (which I’d actually never been in, but have seen several times around Tokyo) to look for awesome stickers to give as prizes to our Jr. High kids. We ended up detouring to the bookstore part of the mall and bought too many magazines (most about Kamen Rider) before getting some lunch on the upper floors. I had a dish that was basically salmon/avocado sushi but not in sushi form. XD; It was a salmon covered ball of rice and a glob of avocado on a bed of salad with soy sauce and wasabi to dip your chopstick-fulls in. Really tasty, but funny because it wasn’t what I was expecting. Then to kill some time before the concert at 5:00pm and get us in the mood for music, we stopped by our favourite karaoke chain (conveniently located right across from the station) Big Echo! 8D; (I think I should count and see if there are any posts I make that don’t mention Big Echo... Kinda like how I always mention Ikebukuro... XD;) We sang a bunch of songs by Kimeru to get us in the mood for the concert, as well as some old standbys. Awesomely enough, there was a new song in there that just got added this month that I’d been dying to sing in karaoke, Illusion from Tenimyu. 8D <3 It was a great run, though our music controler completely ran out of batteries near the end so we couldn’t add more songs. We were almost out of time anyway, so it didn’t matter.
Kimeru’s concert was in a small venue called Macana just off of the main stretch of the covered shopping center. We got there kinda early, since we weren’t sure if they were letting people in first-come, first-serve or not. Turns out we had a number on our tickets, anyway, so it didn’t matter. XP We were some of the last people to be let in, unsurprising because we bought our tickets relatively late after they’d gone on sale, but the venue was small enough that we just ended up in the middle of the area anyway. To one side there was merchandise, of which we bought a pamphlet, t-shirt, and two copies of Kimeru’s newest album (and consequently the reason for him being on a live tour) between the two of us. Originally, Rachel and I were going to go in on the CD together, but once we realised that if you bought the CD there, you got a hand-shake-meet-and-greet after the concert... I went back and bought one of my own, too. XD;;;
The concert itself was one of the most energetic concerts I’ve ever been to! Kimeru was intense and focused and when he wanted you to pump your fists or jump in time with his music, you were so totally there with him that you were willing to do whatever he wanted you to. XD Almost every song had the audience dancing (but by Japanese live standards, that just means waving your hands and saying ‘hey!’ in rhythm with the songs). It was an intense workout and my arms and legs are still tired from it even now, three days later. Totally worth it, though! He sang some older songs that I was familiar with (Be Shiny, Monopolize, Pink, Junk Beat, and Honoo to name a few) and a few newer songs that I recognised from his second newest CD that Rachel just bought (Elephant and that water drop song) and a bunch from his new album, Anatomize. There wasn’t a bad song in the bunch and most of them were definitely up-beat enough to dance along with. Kimeru seemed really personable, especially considering he was up on stage, but he interacted with the audience a lot: teaching us all a dance for one of his songs, asking us questions, requesting that we all participate in his more interactive fanclub events, and having very emotional talks about how he really hoped that even a fraction of his feelings were conveyed through his songs, he’d be extremely happy. ;_; <3
The concert went on for 3 hours, including an encore that I swear was as long as the live itself. XD; At the end, we all lined up outside and filed through for the handshake we got with Kimeru. My handshake was just a tiny tiny bit disappointing (still so totally worth getting the CD for, though, especially since the songs are awesome) because I went after Rachel in line. Apparently, Kimeru didn’t really feel the need to find out about the two of us individually and asked Rachel most of the questions and just shook my hand and told me he appreciated me coming and hopes that I come to other concerts and events if I can. He asked Rachel where we were from and that he saw her (and I assume me, as well) dancin’ it up in the middle of the room and was really surprised that it was our first concert of his since we were so energetic. Still very “OMG HE NOTICED US!!” with just a little bit of “Damn, I wish he’d asked me questions, too! XD”
And thus ended our first Kimeru live. We wandered back for some dinner before staking out the place we were supposed to be picked up for our Night Bus back to Tokyo. The bus company hadn’t given us much info about the way back. All we had was a location to be picked up and the name of the company. Not even the time of departure or some sort of confirmation code or what-have-you. ^^;;; It was a liiiiittle worrisome, so we made sure to get there early to waylay any people we could find that looked knowledgeable. Luckily, around 11:15pm, we found a couple people from our bus company that checked us in and eventually got us to the right bus. Not exactly an experience I’d like to repeat, but now that we’ve figured out how the Night Buses work, I’m sure it would go more smoothly next time. That being said, Rachel and I slept like babies on the way back because we were so tired from the day and the not-quite-as-good sleep on the night bus to Sendai.
Sunday:
We arrived back in Shinjuku at not quite 7:00am and, having 4 hours to kill before the cosplay event and having been sweating all day and night in Sendai and at the concert, Rachel and I made a trip to Asakusa to make use of the early-opening public baths. It was a really old bath house, though nicely kept. A bit plain, since I guess I was expecting more areas to make use of or something, but man... nothing can help improve your spirits and get you ready to tackle another long day of travel and cosplay like a good long bath in the morning. Japan’s really big on naked bonding time, but I’m glad that not many people were there early in the morning because I’m not particularly. XD; However, since having tried it once before, I did a lot better this time. Plus, it was just Rachel so it felt less awkward. XD;;;
Having freshened up from the long couple days we’d been out and about, we found another Mister Donuts breakfast and made our way toward the Tokyo Teleport area (fairly close to Tokyo Big Sight where Comiket was) for the Layers Magazine Cosplay event. This particular cosplay event was pretty cool because if you were foreign and brought your passport, you got 500yen knocked off the entrance fee (which was 1500yen). Rachel and I were... yeah, I’m pretty sure we were the only foreigners there, or at least the only ones I saw. XD; Anyway, we changed into our newly made outfits from the original Japanese musical, Magdala na Maria, and took some solo shots of ourselves.
Rachel as Maria Magalena
Me as Cecille
Both
We then had the coolest bit of luck ever! We found the Magdala na Maria cosplay group that we fangirled with a Comiket! Rachel and I were heading toward some escalators when Rachel suddenly noticed the Grace cosplayer (in white) and we ran out to try to find them! XDD They were surprised and excited to see us and much photo-taking ensued.
Everyone
Emily and Shirley
Maria and Grace x2
Double-Cecille!
And everyone as themselves!
We got their cosplay business cards and fully intend to stalk them later. Everyone kept saying that since we found each other 3 times, it must be fate. xD Not to jump the gun, but it really feels like Rachel and I kinda made some Japanese cosplay friends! 8D <3 We all hung out and talked for probably a hour, interspersed with picture-taking. ^^ I really hope we meet them again.
After the cosplaying was done, Rachel and I went to.... you guessed it, Ikebukuro! XD;; We met up with Court and a new face, though I’ve completely forgotten her actual name. 8DD;;;;; Oh man, fail... Anyway, she seems awesome! We all fangirled *pnish* and Kimeru for a while before Rachel and I had to make our way back to the train to get back to our beloved Gunma-ken~
Long weekend, but it was awesome!
~ <3
Friday:
Rachel and I met up in Takasaki after a frenzied attempt at finishing our costumes for Sunday. I’ve still actually got just a tiny bit left to finish on my dress, but I wore it anyway. Not terribly noticeable, but stuff I want to fix before wearing it again. In any case, I was sewing right up until I had to rush out of my apartment and bike down to the train station to get to Takasaki. XD; And I did end up forgetting one part of my costume, the stuffed bear that my character carries around, but the rest of it looked fine, so I guess it didn’t matter.
Anyway! Once we got to Tokyo, Rachel and I tried to go see a movie that was finishing up it’s run in the theatre, Ai no Kotodama 2, but it would have made us miss our night bus, so we decided to skip it in favour of food and Book Off. Funny thing happened when we went to check out the theatre it was playing at, though. There was a foreigner working at the counter! It’s sorta a theatre for the more obscure movies or documentaries or just generally not blockbuster titles, so I guess if a random foreigner was going to be working at any theatre in Japan, it’d be that one. But, Rachel and I were a bit surprised and didn’t really want to assume that any foreigner we find can speak English, so we asked him first in Japanese whether he spoke English, to which he answered yes. XD;
Back in Shinjuku, we found our Night Bus, though we got a bit confused and nearly missed when they called for our particular ride. Night Buses are a cheap alternative to Shinkansens or planes for getting to the further prefectures in Japan. Basically, you get on the bus around 11:00pm or 12:00am, they turn off all the lights so everyone can sleep, and then you wake up at your destination early in the morning so that you have the full day ahead of you to hang out wherever you wanted to go. Round trip to Sendai from Shinjuku, Tokyo and back the next night was less than $100 (as compared to the $140 it would cost to go one-way on the Shinkansen). The buses are outfitted with foot-rests and reclining seats and blankets for everyone to use to help let people get some sleep. The way there I didn’t sleep quite as well as I’d hoped, probably because it was a fairly new experience and we had to sorta adjust to which positions were best for sleeping in that sort of bus. Rachel and I just ended up lying on top of each other because we’re buds and that gave us a bit more leeway and space. I don’t really want to know how uncomfortable it’d be if you were traveling alone and didn’t know the guy next to you, but were still trying to get some good sleep for the day ahead of you.
Saturday:
Saturday we arrived at Sendai train station in Sendai city at about 6:25am with some 6 hours of broken sleep under our belts, but good attitudes about checking out what the city had to offer. First thing we did was to clean up a bit in the station bathrooms and stow our luggage (because it sucks to drag suitcases around all day when you’re exploring). Then we made sure we wouldn’t get lost on our way to the concert venue by looking for it first, since we’d never been and it would be bad to wait until it was time to line up before attempting to find the place. On the way back, we explored a couple covered shopping streets, though it was early so basically nothing was open, in our search for breakfast at the lovely donut chain, Mister Donuts.
Sendai Station!
Once it got a bit later in the morning and buses were starting to run and people were awake and moving about the city, Rachel and I did our big tourist-y visit to the Oosaki Hachiman-gu shrine. It’s a well-known site in the city, with its main worship relics first housed there by the war lord Date Masamune. Masamune is hot shit in Sendai. XD He’s the city’s main claim to fame as a famous war lord that ruled over much of Northern Japan (Sendai as the governmental center) way back when and, as such, has statues and pictures and mentions of his name everywhere.
Small shrine at the entrance
Hand-washing fountain. (Cue Japan nostalgia, since these are at most shrines. Definitely reminded me of the Asakusa area and Kyoto, actually.)
Shrine-y buildings
Rachel and I paid 100yen to read our fortunes. There are little fortune vending machines that you get slips of paper from, telling you a general fortune, some little quips about different parts of your life for the next while, and phrases you should think about. I got a sorta middle-bad fortune that warned me that I would get uber sick if I traveled around in the near future... Oops. XD It also said that that person I’m waiting for to show up in my life? Yeah, they ain’t comin’. XDDD; Thank you, shrine fortune. Rachel’s said that she’d be fine as long as she watched out for traffic accidents. In any case, what you’re supposed to do with your fortunes, should they be not exactly what you want, is tie them to little wood-rope structures near where you get the fortune.
Rachel and me with our fortunes tied behind us.
Staircase back to the main street
Having seen the whole shrine, Rachel and I took the bus back to wander around in the shopping areas in downtown Sendai. We visited the Loft department store (which I’d actually never been in, but have seen several times around Tokyo) to look for awesome stickers to give as prizes to our Jr. High kids. We ended up detouring to the bookstore part of the mall and bought too many magazines (most about Kamen Rider) before getting some lunch on the upper floors. I had a dish that was basically salmon/avocado sushi but not in sushi form. XD; It was a salmon covered ball of rice and a glob of avocado on a bed of salad with soy sauce and wasabi to dip your chopstick-fulls in. Really tasty, but funny because it wasn’t what I was expecting. Then to kill some time before the concert at 5:00pm and get us in the mood for music, we stopped by our favourite karaoke chain (conveniently located right across from the station) Big Echo! 8D; (I think I should count and see if there are any posts I make that don’t mention Big Echo... Kinda like how I always mention Ikebukuro... XD;) We sang a bunch of songs by Kimeru to get us in the mood for the concert, as well as some old standbys. Awesomely enough, there was a new song in there that just got added this month that I’d been dying to sing in karaoke, Illusion from Tenimyu. 8D <3 It was a great run, though our music controler completely ran out of batteries near the end so we couldn’t add more songs. We were almost out of time anyway, so it didn’t matter.
Kimeru’s concert was in a small venue called Macana just off of the main stretch of the covered shopping center. We got there kinda early, since we weren’t sure if they were letting people in first-come, first-serve or not. Turns out we had a number on our tickets, anyway, so it didn’t matter. XP We were some of the last people to be let in, unsurprising because we bought our tickets relatively late after they’d gone on sale, but the venue was small enough that we just ended up in the middle of the area anyway. To one side there was merchandise, of which we bought a pamphlet, t-shirt, and two copies of Kimeru’s newest album (and consequently the reason for him being on a live tour) between the two of us. Originally, Rachel and I were going to go in on the CD together, but once we realised that if you bought the CD there, you got a hand-shake-meet-and-greet after the concert... I went back and bought one of my own, too. XD;;;
The concert itself was one of the most energetic concerts I’ve ever been to! Kimeru was intense and focused and when he wanted you to pump your fists or jump in time with his music, you were so totally there with him that you were willing to do whatever he wanted you to. XD Almost every song had the audience dancing (but by Japanese live standards, that just means waving your hands and saying ‘hey!’ in rhythm with the songs). It was an intense workout and my arms and legs are still tired from it even now, three days later. Totally worth it, though! He sang some older songs that I was familiar with (Be Shiny, Monopolize, Pink, Junk Beat, and Honoo to name a few) and a few newer songs that I recognised from his second newest CD that Rachel just bought (Elephant and that water drop song) and a bunch from his new album, Anatomize. There wasn’t a bad song in the bunch and most of them were definitely up-beat enough to dance along with. Kimeru seemed really personable, especially considering he was up on stage, but he interacted with the audience a lot: teaching us all a dance for one of his songs, asking us questions, requesting that we all participate in his more interactive fanclub events, and having very emotional talks about how he really hoped that even a fraction of his feelings were conveyed through his songs, he’d be extremely happy. ;_; <3
The concert went on for 3 hours, including an encore that I swear was as long as the live itself. XD; At the end, we all lined up outside and filed through for the handshake we got with Kimeru. My handshake was just a tiny tiny bit disappointing (still so totally worth getting the CD for, though, especially since the songs are awesome) because I went after Rachel in line. Apparently, Kimeru didn’t really feel the need to find out about the two of us individually and asked Rachel most of the questions and just shook my hand and told me he appreciated me coming and hopes that I come to other concerts and events if I can. He asked Rachel where we were from and that he saw her (and I assume me, as well) dancin’ it up in the middle of the room and was really surprised that it was our first concert of his since we were so energetic. Still very “OMG HE NOTICED US!!” with just a little bit of “Damn, I wish he’d asked me questions, too! XD”
And thus ended our first Kimeru live. We wandered back for some dinner before staking out the place we were supposed to be picked up for our Night Bus back to Tokyo. The bus company hadn’t given us much info about the way back. All we had was a location to be picked up and the name of the company. Not even the time of departure or some sort of confirmation code or what-have-you. ^^;;; It was a liiiiittle worrisome, so we made sure to get there early to waylay any people we could find that looked knowledgeable. Luckily, around 11:15pm, we found a couple people from our bus company that checked us in and eventually got us to the right bus. Not exactly an experience I’d like to repeat, but now that we’ve figured out how the Night Buses work, I’m sure it would go more smoothly next time. That being said, Rachel and I slept like babies on the way back because we were so tired from the day and the not-quite-as-good sleep on the night bus to Sendai.
Sunday:
We arrived back in Shinjuku at not quite 7:00am and, having 4 hours to kill before the cosplay event and having been sweating all day and night in Sendai and at the concert, Rachel and I made a trip to Asakusa to make use of the early-opening public baths. It was a really old bath house, though nicely kept. A bit plain, since I guess I was expecting more areas to make use of or something, but man... nothing can help improve your spirits and get you ready to tackle another long day of travel and cosplay like a good long bath in the morning. Japan’s really big on naked bonding time, but I’m glad that not many people were there early in the morning because I’m not particularly. XD; However, since having tried it once before, I did a lot better this time. Plus, it was just Rachel so it felt less awkward. XD;;;
Having freshened up from the long couple days we’d been out and about, we found another Mister Donuts breakfast and made our way toward the Tokyo Teleport area (fairly close to Tokyo Big Sight where Comiket was) for the Layers Magazine Cosplay event. This particular cosplay event was pretty cool because if you were foreign and brought your passport, you got 500yen knocked off the entrance fee (which was 1500yen). Rachel and I were... yeah, I’m pretty sure we were the only foreigners there, or at least the only ones I saw. XD; Anyway, we changed into our newly made outfits from the original Japanese musical, Magdala na Maria, and took some solo shots of ourselves.
Rachel as Maria Magalena
Me as Cecille
Both
We then had the coolest bit of luck ever! We found the Magdala na Maria cosplay group that we fangirled with a Comiket! Rachel and I were heading toward some escalators when Rachel suddenly noticed the Grace cosplayer (in white) and we ran out to try to find them! XDD They were surprised and excited to see us and much photo-taking ensued.
Everyone
Emily and Shirley
Maria and Grace x2
Double-Cecille!
And everyone as themselves!
We got their cosplay business cards and fully intend to stalk them later. Everyone kept saying that since we found each other 3 times, it must be fate. xD Not to jump the gun, but it really feels like Rachel and I kinda made some Japanese cosplay friends! 8D <3 We all hung out and talked for probably a hour, interspersed with picture-taking. ^^ I really hope we meet them again.
After the cosplaying was done, Rachel and I went to.... you guessed it, Ikebukuro! XD;; We met up with Court and a new face, though I’ve completely forgotten her actual name. 8DD;;;;; Oh man, fail... Anyway, she seems awesome! We all fangirled *pnish* and Kimeru for a while before Rachel and I had to make our way back to the train to get back to our beloved Gunma-ken~
Long weekend, but it was awesome!
~ <3