119. news fan event in osaka 08.27.12 (afternoon)
Yes, I realize this is a few days late, and I am sorry, but this is also the first chance I've had to relax without any committments or looming deadlines in nearly a year, and I'm just coming off a summer of language study, followed by a giant trip across NE Asia, so you'll forgive me for taking a little time to live life to the laximum while I still can
Probably none of you give a shit about my arduous journey out to Osaka from Shiga Prefecture, but I had a bit of an arduous journey getting out to Osaka from Shiga. I got on the 11 o'clock train and managed to make it to Osaka by 1, giving me plenty of time to potentially get lost while still getting there with enough time to line up and get in. I may have been suffering a series of heart attacks when I got to Zepp Namba Osaka (where the event was happening). See, to get in to the event, you needed to have them scan a QR code that was only accessible via jweb beginning at 12 midnight the day of. OK, I thought to myself, I'll be good: I have my code, I have my ID (they wanted you to bring a photo ID, as well); I'm beamin. They also sent you a serial number, and it took me way too long to realize that the "30" at the beginning of the serial number was just there in case the other four numbers got lonely. Like, you know how easily excitable I get about things I really, really like? I throw that same passion into worrying, so, yeah, I may have had an hour-long panic attack that I had come all this way and wasn't going to get in and was prepared to throw a fit (with real tears if necessary). I was having said panic attack over numbers because they had you line up according to your serial number and yeah, kind of hard to line up if you don't know where you're supposed to be. So I just decided to line up near the end and hope for the best and when we got closer to the front, I had my epiphany about the "30" and got in with absolutely zero problems.
I got in a little later than everyone else with numbers close to mine (only a couple hundred later) which resulted me being up on the second floor of the little venue (which holds, at maximum, 2500 people). This did, however, give me a pretty good view of the stage and of everyone, and the venue was small enough that they didn't look like ants (like they would have if I had decided to buy tickets to the previous day's concert in Kobe). The event started almost right after I got sat down with the standard video of the band and the individual members; you know how Johnnys events go.
The members came out one by one: first Shige, then Massu, Tego, and Kei. Everyone but Kei put their arms over each others' shoulders and walked by while Kei followed and like, pointed at them with a doofy look on his face. It's hard to explain, but it was adorable. They came out and thanked everyone for coming and for buying the box set. And for whatever reason, anytime they said box, they started air drumming. Like, jammin the fuck out air drumming, beginning with Kei and quickly becoming a meme because they're a bunch of weirdoes. After the second or third time, they joked that they should stop and stop pretending to/making fun of X JAPAN (whom they were quick to note that they loved) when they noticed that Massu's t-shirt had a big giant X on the front (Shige was like, "dudes, dudes -- there's an 'X' on the back, too. Look!").
And then they decided, for whatever reason, to make jokes about Massu and "Superman," (the song and the comic book hero) but this inspired Massu to pretend to be Spiderman, complete with web-shooting pose and sound effects. After a few moments of silence, Tego turns to Kei and goes "WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!" and I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my seat (did I mention we had seats on the second floor? It was awesome after standing around in the heat) while Massu put on an invisibility cloak. Shige was all "OMG WHERE'S MASSU? WHERE DID HE GO" and everyone walked around stage looking for him, like, "I can't see him WHERE DID HE GO WHERE'S MASSU, GUYS."
Which made for a good seque into the games.
So I knew the basic format of things but not exactly how things were going to go. The first game was a quiz game where they had to race from the other side of the stage to push the button. They had a robotic, disembodied voice directing everything: explaining the rules, asking the questions, giving everyone shit, etc. Like, The Voice had them press the button to show what would happen, and The Voice was all "nice push!" and so of course, Massu pressed it like, 5 times in a row. The rules were pretty simple, really: get to the button, push it fastest, get the most amount of answers right and you shall win the day! or at least the game.
They all went to sit down on the seats and squished in so that there was no room for Kei to sit down, so he had to sit down on all of them, and they grabbed him through his legs from behind and held him up by the thighs and by his shoes and picked him up, to which he was like "COME ON GUYS THERE ARE KIDS HERE AND THEY'RE WATCHING! LOOK, SEE! KIDS! WATCHING!" and then was all "and why'd you have to grab me through my legs like that? The eff, guys."
Horseplay and tomfoolery accomplished, it was time for the game to start. Question 1: What four songs on the "NEWS BEST" LE contained a katakana "n"?
Shige was first up and got "NEWS Nippon" and "Endless Summer."
Everyone else was very confused and kind of sat there while the voice chided them for not knowing. Massu thought he might have had it, and got up, still unsure of himself a little, and went to the button, pressed it, and went "Taiyou no Nami-AAAAGH"
Tego was next in line to fail at this, answering "Chankapana!" to which the rest of NEWS and the audience were all"that wasn't released yet!"
Kei answered "Fighting Man," which would have been correct if it had actually been spelled out in katakana. Close, but no cigar, honey child. The disembodied voice, very sympathetic to their predicament, went, "there are still two left!" and a moderately annoyed Kei went, "WE KNOW THAT!"
Pretty sure it was Shige who got "Bambina," and Massu, after much silence (and probably more than a bit of help from the audience), got "Sayaendou." When The Voice showed them the answers on the screen, Massu was like "WAIT, 'HADASHI NO CINDERELLA BOY' WAS A SINGLE? OMG IT WAS!" and everyone laughed at him and they all agreed it was a great question.
The next question was one of those "play the intro (read: first two seconds) of a song and see who gets it the fastest." The first one was "Yawarakana mama de," which Massu got right away and proceeded to sing for us as he grooved back across the stage.
The next intro played for all of half a second (everyone, including NEWS, was really confused at first) and then just kind of started guessing? Tego guessed "Boom! Boom! POWER" (wrong) and Massu (I think?) guessed "Dancin in the Secret," started singing it, and then they all did an impromptu performance of the chorus for everyone ♥
The last question was: "Who in NEWS is the best at janken?" Shige put his hand up right away, followed by Tego, then Massu, and lastly by a very unsure Kei. He was like "yeah I don't even know but what if I say I am good at janken and you guys are like 'ok go ahead!'; what do I do then?" (you know, when it's something they may or may not want to do and everyone goes "yeah ok I want to do this thing it will be fun" but the majority gangs up on one person and is like "you do it, dude, and may god be with you"). Luckily for them it was just a simple giveaway and nothing mega or potentially dangerous.
Before they get down to business, they ask the audience what people say in Osaka-ben when they play janken and the audience tells them it's "ee jan hoi!" (I'm pretty sure?) and of course Shige won and was not a very gracious winner about it all "I-told-you-so" about it. The rest of the members want a do-over, and I'm pretty sure it was Kei who was like "that was just a rehearsal!" so they agree that if the rest of the members win, then Shige has to do something embarrassing or something. Which leads Massu to make fun of "The Vampire Speaketh," doing his best (read: a pretty damn good) impression of Shige in the song. It was pretty favies.
The three of them regroup, and everyone throws paper (which was a little unexpected). What was also unexpected was Massu holding his hand next to his face, and Kei being like, "dude that looks like a fan."
So they decide the order for the giveaway -- there was a giveaway, by the way -- and the order was Kei, Tego, Massu, then Shige.
Kei had 4 (or 5?) "Chankapana!" stickers to give away. Tego had a promo poster for "Chankapana!" Massu had a photo of the group taken when they were on Music Station, and it's the only one in existence -- and, if that weren't enough, Massu would sign it for you. Shige's was also going to be signed, only his was a big-ass "Chankapana!" promo poster which had already been signed by the other members. But he was going to write your name and shit on it. Pretty sweet.
Kei took his sweet-ass time picking out the numbers for the stickers (only one of which was remotely close to mine :( boo, you whore). Tego got confused halfway through and had to have The Voice recite the numbers back to him, all the while looking terribly embarrassed and adorable. Massu and Shige's number-pulling went relatively well. They kind of started making fun of the audience for getting all stoked when the numbers were close to theirs. One girl gasped really loudly when Shige (or Tego?) was reading his numbers, and he read the last two and was like "see, you were wrong!" Every time Kei saw a girl with an uchiwa of him, he was like "ooh, it's Nama Koyama! Lemme see!" One girl (I think the one who won one of the stickers or the regular poster?) got told she had a nice perm. One girl they called "ponytail." When Massu was signing the picture for Yuka, he kept asking her how to spell her name ("Yu like the character you use in 'diamond'?"). The girl who won the signed poster was named Amy (I think?) and everyone had a time pronouncing her name (and Shige had fun writing it).
Following the giveaway (which, you've probably guessed, I did not win), it was time for them to take the fanclub photo. Kei is a very talented newscaster and also very articulate and that is why he totally beefed and accidentally said "fanclub opening (as in "opening" (and also "opening of a country to foreign trade"))" instead of "fanclub gathering" and trust that he definitely got made fun of for it, all "OI! NEWSCASTER!" But he pulled himself together and talked about the fanclub, the reogranization, and how pretty much everyone there was probably in the fanclub but so are they. Kei is 1, Shige is 2, Tego is 3, Massu is 4, so it goes KoyaShige, TegoMassu. Come on, y'all: collective "aww."
So it's time to take the fanclub photo and they all crouch down and decide everyone should do the "Chankapana" pose. A lot of people in the audience are surprised at the photographer took multiple pictures at once, and they explain that you don't really know how it'll turn out so that's why they take a lot at once.
After the fanclub photo, it's time for question-and-answer time. I did not have a good question, so I just sat up in the back and listened dutifully.
The first question came from a girl on the first floor who had gone to the Kobe concert (NEWS of course thanked her) and said how they were talking about the concept last night and asked who came up with the "Chankapana" concept. Everyone was quick to note that it was Massu, who wanted to do something cool that was also very much them and something almost representative of the 4 of them. It was a very long and very eloquent answer and I regret that I do not remember it all and for that I apologize.
The second question came from a girl, also on the first floor near the back, who wanted to know what their favourite phrases in Osaka-ben were. They asked her who her favourite was, and she said Tego, who was then instructed to say "meccha sukiyanen!" For all of NEWS, they were to say "zutto soba ni o (something something I don't know I barely know Kansai-ben ok shut up I lived in Tokyo)" Another girl up on the second floor in the very first row kept yelling things in Osaka-ben, mostly about phrases to say, but also other, very loud, almost incoherent things (I really could not make out what she was saying 70% of the time and I'm fluent in Japanese). NEWS was like "holy crap you talk a lot!"
The third question was from two girls up top behind me with uchiwa that spelled out Keiichiro in hiragana and amidst giggling and in a very high, small voice, one of the girls asked what the uchiwa that left the biggest impression on them was. Massu talked about how of course he (and they) notice uchiwa, and appreciate them and all that, but most of all, he likes to look people in the eye during concerts, so while he does notice uchiwa, he really just wants to try to connect with the fans by looking at them. Kei's was one that just said "ramen" and left him basically like "ok what the eff."
NEWS wanted the last question to be from someone itty bitty so they found a little girl who was up top (who had been sitting in front of me but who moved closer to the front to ask a question or something). The little girl's name was Maya and her mom was speaking for her cos she was only 5. NEWS asked her if she had anything she wanted to ask them, and she was like "I LOVE YOU, MASSU!" and whlie they tried to talk to her, she would just yell how much she loved Massu or sing bits of "Chakanpana" and was basicals a cute little kid and at one point fought with her mom who was trying to get her to ask an actual question. It was really cute. Massu called her "Mayakapana."
And then it was time to further pull at our hearstrings by singing "Full Swing." I think it was right around this time that the girls sitting on either side of me started weeping (silently, but weeping nonetheless) (I was moved but I am not someone who cries easily in public. Instead I just yelled that I love Kei and let that be the end of it) . Their messages to everyone after the song were so wonderful. Shige kept getting interrupted while trying to tell us all that they were going to keep going and we would all keep going together by little kids yelling "SHIGE!" to which he had to respond with "I'm Shige!" but he's so cute when he's embarrassed. He managed to get through his message and said he hoped we'd all come along with NEWS.
Massu's basically boiled down to "let's keep going together" and he used the verb for "going out with" and joked that we're like a couple.
Tego talked about how they've made us all wait and and all this stuff, but from now on, they'll go full swing and hopes we'll walk along together with NEWS.
During Kei's message, he kept telling the girls on the first floor not to cry. HIs message was essentially the same as the others'. I know, this is a terrible fan report because I can't remember every little thing they said. I did think to write it down on my ipod as they were talking but I wanted to actually pay attention to the event because when the fuck else am I gonna get to come to one so there you go you can hate me now.
At the end of Kei's message, he talked about how they wanted to thank us fans properly, and so with that, they were going to do a handshake event (I was like "ARE YOU FOR REAL" (in Japanese ok) and the girls next to me started wailing audibly. I felt for them, though). So because we were up on the top floor, they herded us all out and down to the table at the front where the boys were going to be standing. It took about 15 minutes to get through the line (all while everyone was there checking their makeup and shit (which I also did. Judge not lest ye be judged).
The whole handshake part was over in all of about a minute. They really were just kind of herding us down the line. At the beginning, one of the moms there with her kid kept having to be told by the emcee on stage to please keep moving, think about how others need to get through and want to shake hands and all that, and for everyone to please not hold up the line and keep moving. So yes, very quick.
Shige was first, and was all "OHH!" when I walked up. He said hello, I told him I came all the way from the US for this (not entirely a lie) (and this was also of course in Japanese), and he said thank you back to me in English and held my hand for what seemed longer than the rest of them did.. Massu did the same (although with less surprise). Kei was the cutest. He was like "OOH! HELLO!" and I completely forgot everything i had wanted to say to him (like "hello I love you" or "we should be friends" (in English, Japanese, or Korean)), so I just said "hi" back and that I had come from the US and he said "thank you for coming!" in a slightly lower than normal voice (his English is the cutest I can't even) and said "thank you! thank you for coming!" I turned back and said that I love him but I do not think he heard me :( Last was Tego, who looked like "!!!" when I walked up and did not know what to say for the first few seconds while he reached for my hand. I had no idea what to say, so when he got all smiley and ":DD" and said hello, I said hi back and he said thank you and I said thank you and then I was herded away by staff and that was the end of it.
And then I had to go to a Starbucks and sit and collect myself because AAAAAAA I JUST MET MY SECOND JOHNNYS GROUP. LIKE, MET ALL OF THEM AT THE SAME TIME. AND TALKED TO THEM KIND OF. Also I needed to go sit down so I could stop shaking.
For any of you who may have been at the event, too and are wondering who I was: I was the white girl. No, not the elusive foreign girlfriend who may or may not exist. Just a white girl who happens to love Johnny's more than she probably should. Thank you for your time. And now you know the rest of the story.
Probably none of you give a shit about my arduous journey out to Osaka from Shiga Prefecture, but I had a bit of an arduous journey getting out to Osaka from Shiga. I got on the 11 o'clock train and managed to make it to Osaka by 1, giving me plenty of time to potentially get lost while still getting there with enough time to line up and get in. I may have been suffering a series of heart attacks when I got to Zepp Namba Osaka (where the event was happening). See, to get in to the event, you needed to have them scan a QR code that was only accessible via jweb beginning at 12 midnight the day of. OK, I thought to myself, I'll be good: I have my code, I have my ID (they wanted you to bring a photo ID, as well); I'm beamin. They also sent you a serial number, and it took me way too long to realize that the "30" at the beginning of the serial number was just there in case the other four numbers got lonely. Like, you know how easily excitable I get about things I really, really like? I throw that same passion into worrying, so, yeah, I may have had an hour-long panic attack that I had come all this way and wasn't going to get in and was prepared to throw a fit (with real tears if necessary). I was having said panic attack over numbers because they had you line up according to your serial number and yeah, kind of hard to line up if you don't know where you're supposed to be. So I just decided to line up near the end and hope for the best and when we got closer to the front, I had my epiphany about the "30" and got in with absolutely zero problems.
I got in a little later than everyone else with numbers close to mine (only a couple hundred later) which resulted me being up on the second floor of the little venue (which holds, at maximum, 2500 people). This did, however, give me a pretty good view of the stage and of everyone, and the venue was small enough that they didn't look like ants (like they would have if I had decided to buy tickets to the previous day's concert in Kobe). The event started almost right after I got sat down with the standard video of the band and the individual members; you know how Johnnys events go.
The members came out one by one: first Shige, then Massu, Tego, and Kei. Everyone but Kei put their arms over each others' shoulders and walked by while Kei followed and like, pointed at them with a doofy look on his face. It's hard to explain, but it was adorable. They came out and thanked everyone for coming and for buying the box set. And for whatever reason, anytime they said box, they started air drumming. Like, jammin the fuck out air drumming, beginning with Kei and quickly becoming a meme because they're a bunch of weirdoes. After the second or third time, they joked that they should stop and stop pretending to/making fun of X JAPAN (whom they were quick to note that they loved) when they noticed that Massu's t-shirt had a big giant X on the front (Shige was like, "dudes, dudes -- there's an 'X' on the back, too. Look!").
And then they decided, for whatever reason, to make jokes about Massu and "Superman," (the song and the comic book hero) but this inspired Massu to pretend to be Spiderman, complete with web-shooting pose and sound effects. After a few moments of silence, Tego turns to Kei and goes "WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!" and I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my seat (did I mention we had seats on the second floor? It was awesome after standing around in the heat) while Massu put on an invisibility cloak. Shige was all "OMG WHERE'S MASSU? WHERE DID HE GO" and everyone walked around stage looking for him, like, "I can't see him WHERE DID HE GO WHERE'S MASSU, GUYS."
Which made for a good seque into the games.
So I knew the basic format of things but not exactly how things were going to go. The first game was a quiz game where they had to race from the other side of the stage to push the button. They had a robotic, disembodied voice directing everything: explaining the rules, asking the questions, giving everyone shit, etc. Like, The Voice had them press the button to show what would happen, and The Voice was all "nice push!" and so of course, Massu pressed it like, 5 times in a row. The rules were pretty simple, really: get to the button, push it fastest, get the most amount of answers right and you shall win the day! or at least the game.
They all went to sit down on the seats and squished in so that there was no room for Kei to sit down, so he had to sit down on all of them, and they grabbed him through his legs from behind and held him up by the thighs and by his shoes and picked him up, to which he was like "COME ON GUYS THERE ARE KIDS HERE AND THEY'RE WATCHING! LOOK, SEE! KIDS! WATCHING!" and then was all "and why'd you have to grab me through my legs like that? The eff, guys."
Horseplay and tomfoolery accomplished, it was time for the game to start. Question 1: What four songs on the "NEWS BEST" LE contained a katakana "n"?
Shige was first up and got "NEWS Nippon" and "Endless Summer."
Everyone else was very confused and kind of sat there while the voice chided them for not knowing. Massu thought he might have had it, and got up, still unsure of himself a little, and went to the button, pressed it, and went "Taiyou no Nami-AAAAGH"
Tego was next in line to fail at this, answering "Chankapana!" to which the rest of NEWS and the audience were all"that wasn't released yet!"
Kei answered "Fighting Man," which would have been correct if it had actually been spelled out in katakana. Close, but no cigar, honey child. The disembodied voice, very sympathetic to their predicament, went, "there are still two left!" and a moderately annoyed Kei went, "WE KNOW THAT!"
Pretty sure it was Shige who got "Bambina," and Massu, after much silence (and probably more than a bit of help from the audience), got "Sayaendou." When The Voice showed them the answers on the screen, Massu was like "WAIT, 'HADASHI NO CINDERELLA BOY' WAS A SINGLE? OMG IT WAS!" and everyone laughed at him and they all agreed it was a great question.
The next question was one of those "play the intro (read: first two seconds) of a song and see who gets it the fastest." The first one was "Yawarakana mama de," which Massu got right away and proceeded to sing for us as he grooved back across the stage.
The next intro played for all of half a second (everyone, including NEWS, was really confused at first) and then just kind of started guessing? Tego guessed "Boom! Boom! POWER" (wrong) and Massu (I think?) guessed "Dancin in the Secret," started singing it, and then they all did an impromptu performance of the chorus for everyone ♥
The last question was: "Who in NEWS is the best at janken?" Shige put his hand up right away, followed by Tego, then Massu, and lastly by a very unsure Kei. He was like "yeah I don't even know but what if I say I am good at janken and you guys are like 'ok go ahead!'; what do I do then?" (you know, when it's something they may or may not want to do and everyone goes "yeah ok I want to do this thing it will be fun" but the majority gangs up on one person and is like "you do it, dude, and may god be with you"). Luckily for them it was just a simple giveaway and nothing mega or potentially dangerous.
Before they get down to business, they ask the audience what people say in Osaka-ben when they play janken and the audience tells them it's "ee jan hoi!" (I'm pretty sure?) and of course Shige won and was not a very gracious winner about it all "I-told-you-so" about it. The rest of the members want a do-over, and I'm pretty sure it was Kei who was like "that was just a rehearsal!" so they agree that if the rest of the members win, then Shige has to do something embarrassing or something. Which leads Massu to make fun of "The Vampire Speaketh," doing his best (read: a pretty damn good) impression of Shige in the song. It was pretty favies.
The three of them regroup, and everyone throws paper (which was a little unexpected). What was also unexpected was Massu holding his hand next to his face, and Kei being like, "dude that looks like a fan."
So they decide the order for the giveaway -- there was a giveaway, by the way -- and the order was Kei, Tego, Massu, then Shige.
Kei had 4 (or 5?) "Chankapana!" stickers to give away. Tego had a promo poster for "Chankapana!" Massu had a photo of the group taken when they were on Music Station, and it's the only one in existence -- and, if that weren't enough, Massu would sign it for you. Shige's was also going to be signed, only his was a big-ass "Chankapana!" promo poster which had already been signed by the other members. But he was going to write your name and shit on it. Pretty sweet.
Kei took his sweet-ass time picking out the numbers for the stickers (only one of which was remotely close to mine :( boo, you whore). Tego got confused halfway through and had to have The Voice recite the numbers back to him, all the while looking terribly embarrassed and adorable. Massu and Shige's number-pulling went relatively well. They kind of started making fun of the audience for getting all stoked when the numbers were close to theirs. One girl gasped really loudly when Shige (or Tego?) was reading his numbers, and he read the last two and was like "see, you were wrong!" Every time Kei saw a girl with an uchiwa of him, he was like "ooh, it's Nama Koyama! Lemme see!" One girl (I think the one who won one of the stickers or the regular poster?) got told she had a nice perm. One girl they called "ponytail." When Massu was signing the picture for Yuka, he kept asking her how to spell her name ("Yu like the character you use in 'diamond'?"). The girl who won the signed poster was named Amy (I think?) and everyone had a time pronouncing her name (and Shige had fun writing it).
Following the giveaway (which, you've probably guessed, I did not win), it was time for them to take the fanclub photo. Kei is a very talented newscaster and also very articulate and that is why he totally beefed and accidentally said "fanclub opening (as in "opening" (and also "opening of a country to foreign trade"))" instead of "fanclub gathering" and trust that he definitely got made fun of for it, all "OI! NEWSCASTER!" But he pulled himself together and talked about the fanclub, the reogranization, and how pretty much everyone there was probably in the fanclub but so are they. Kei is 1, Shige is 2, Tego is 3, Massu is 4, so it goes KoyaShige, TegoMassu. Come on, y'all: collective "aww."
So it's time to take the fanclub photo and they all crouch down and decide everyone should do the "Chankapana" pose. A lot of people in the audience are surprised at the photographer took multiple pictures at once, and they explain that you don't really know how it'll turn out so that's why they take a lot at once.
After the fanclub photo, it's time for question-and-answer time. I did not have a good question, so I just sat up in the back and listened dutifully.
The first question came from a girl on the first floor who had gone to the Kobe concert (NEWS of course thanked her) and said how they were talking about the concept last night and asked who came up with the "Chankapana" concept. Everyone was quick to note that it was Massu, who wanted to do something cool that was also very much them and something almost representative of the 4 of them. It was a very long and very eloquent answer and I regret that I do not remember it all and for that I apologize.
The second question came from a girl, also on the first floor near the back, who wanted to know what their favourite phrases in Osaka-ben were. They asked her who her favourite was, and she said Tego, who was then instructed to say "meccha sukiyanen!" For all of NEWS, they were to say "zutto soba ni o (something something I don't know I barely know Kansai-ben ok shut up I lived in Tokyo)" Another girl up on the second floor in the very first row kept yelling things in Osaka-ben, mostly about phrases to say, but also other, very loud, almost incoherent things (I really could not make out what she was saying 70% of the time and I'm fluent in Japanese). NEWS was like "holy crap you talk a lot!"
The third question was from two girls up top behind me with uchiwa that spelled out Keiichiro in hiragana and amidst giggling and in a very high, small voice, one of the girls asked what the uchiwa that left the biggest impression on them was. Massu talked about how of course he (and they) notice uchiwa, and appreciate them and all that, but most of all, he likes to look people in the eye during concerts, so while he does notice uchiwa, he really just wants to try to connect with the fans by looking at them. Kei's was one that just said "ramen" and left him basically like "ok what the eff."
NEWS wanted the last question to be from someone itty bitty so they found a little girl who was up top (who had been sitting in front of me but who moved closer to the front to ask a question or something). The little girl's name was Maya and her mom was speaking for her cos she was only 5. NEWS asked her if she had anything she wanted to ask them, and she was like "I LOVE YOU, MASSU!" and whlie they tried to talk to her, she would just yell how much she loved Massu or sing bits of "Chakanpana" and was basicals a cute little kid and at one point fought with her mom who was trying to get her to ask an actual question. It was really cute. Massu called her "Mayakapana."
And then it was time to further pull at our hearstrings by singing "Full Swing." I think it was right around this time that the girls sitting on either side of me started weeping (silently, but weeping nonetheless) (I was moved but I am not someone who cries easily in public. Instead I just yelled that I love Kei and let that be the end of it) . Their messages to everyone after the song were so wonderful. Shige kept getting interrupted while trying to tell us all that they were going to keep going and we would all keep going together by little kids yelling "SHIGE!" to which he had to respond with "I'm Shige!" but he's so cute when he's embarrassed. He managed to get through his message and said he hoped we'd all come along with NEWS.
Massu's basically boiled down to "let's keep going together" and he used the verb for "going out with" and joked that we're like a couple.
Tego talked about how they've made us all wait and and all this stuff, but from now on, they'll go full swing and hopes we'll walk along together with NEWS.
During Kei's message, he kept telling the girls on the first floor not to cry. HIs message was essentially the same as the others'. I know, this is a terrible fan report because I can't remember every little thing they said. I did think to write it down on my ipod as they were talking but I wanted to actually pay attention to the event because when the fuck else am I gonna get to come to one so there you go you can hate me now.
At the end of Kei's message, he talked about how they wanted to thank us fans properly, and so with that, they were going to do a handshake event (I was like "ARE YOU FOR REAL" (in Japanese ok) and the girls next to me started wailing audibly. I felt for them, though). So because we were up on the top floor, they herded us all out and down to the table at the front where the boys were going to be standing. It took about 15 minutes to get through the line (all while everyone was there checking their makeup and shit (which I also did. Judge not lest ye be judged).
The whole handshake part was over in all of about a minute. They really were just kind of herding us down the line. At the beginning, one of the moms there with her kid kept having to be told by the emcee on stage to please keep moving, think about how others need to get through and want to shake hands and all that, and for everyone to please not hold up the line and keep moving. So yes, very quick.
Shige was first, and was all "OHH!" when I walked up. He said hello, I told him I came all the way from the US for this (not entirely a lie) (and this was also of course in Japanese), and he said thank you back to me in English and held my hand for what seemed longer than the rest of them did.. Massu did the same (although with less surprise). Kei was the cutest. He was like "OOH! HELLO!" and I completely forgot everything i had wanted to say to him (like "hello I love you" or "we should be friends" (in English, Japanese, or Korean)), so I just said "hi" back and that I had come from the US and he said "thank you for coming!" in a slightly lower than normal voice (his English is the cutest I can't even) and said "thank you! thank you for coming!" I turned back and said that I love him but I do not think he heard me :( Last was Tego, who looked like "!!!" when I walked up and did not know what to say for the first few seconds while he reached for my hand. I had no idea what to say, so when he got all smiley and ":DD" and said hello, I said hi back and he said thank you and I said thank you and then I was herded away by staff and that was the end of it.
And then I had to go to a Starbucks and sit and collect myself because AAAAAAA I JUST MET MY SECOND JOHNNYS GROUP. LIKE, MET ALL OF THEM AT THE SAME TIME. AND TALKED TO THEM KIND OF. Also I needed to go sit down so I could stop shaking.
For any of you who may have been at the event, too and are wondering who I was: I was the white girl. No, not the elusive foreign girlfriend who may or may not exist. Just a white girl who happens to love Johnny's more than she probably should. Thank you for your time. And now you know the rest of the story.