Sunday

I was still not feeling well when I got home last night, so I held off on the concert report until now.

First of all, I got up very early to shave and straighten my hair, and I also found out I was sick.  I seemed to have something wrong with my stomach, but there was no way I was going to miss seeing After School for that.  Later that morning I had to buy another ticket for an event next month.  I GOT IT.



It's for Yousei Teikoku, which is my favorite band ever.  There will be other performers, too, but all I see on the guest list is Yousei Teikoku.  It's going to be great.  After eating breakfast and getting dressed, I finally left for Suidobashi.

Here's the Tokyo Dome, Japan'es largest and most well-known arena.  This is not where they had the concert, which was actually at a smaller venue nearby.

After School!

There was a special promotion going on where buying two copies of their new CD would get you a poster signed by a random member of the group.  Someone we met got E-Young's.  I had to take a picture.

And then they took a picture of me holding it.

Here's the crowd of people that were waiting.  This is by no means everyone, but it gives a bit of an idea as to how many people ended up going.

The leader of the group, Kahi, recently announced she is leaving to pursue solo work.  This was to be her last concert as a member of After School, so there was this tremendous banner on which I made sure she knew Americans came all this way to see her off.

More of the crowd.

Here we are waiting in line to actually get in.  The way they did this was incredibly stupid, though -- they went one by one for all 3,000 people.  It took FOREVER, and by the time they got to us, our seats weren't so good anymore.

They weren't bad, but they could've been better.  We were actually much closer than this picture makes it seem; the stage starts where the heads end.

The concert itself was great.  E-Young looked at me many, many times, but I don't think she's sure what to do about having her own fanbase.  She's noticeably shy, just like at the fashion show where I saw them a few weeks ago.  We also got Nana to do rock fingers, and I got Raina to do it by accident (she looked at me doing it just before part of the dance that required pointing, and instead of pointing she imitated me without thinking).  The songs I was most looking forward to seeing were actually cut for this concert, but the reason was pretty good.  Kahi needed space to do her farewell songs, which ended up being two from her solo album.  She then pointed out her parents in the audience, and there was much thanking, crying, and bowing.  Overall, a wonderful experience for me and a good ending note for Kahi's tenure as a member of After School.

This was a display the concert hall had near the drink kiosk.  It's just a bunch of signed CDs, but I took a picture because they had everyone from Maximum the Hormone to Onmyouza and Kalafina.
It is also worth noting that a few minutes before this, I met Kahi's mother face-to-face and told her how much American support her daughter has.  Kahi's mom looks exactly like her plus fifty or so years, and it's very jarring.  For some reason she said thank you to me in Japanese, but whatever.  I met Kahi's mom and made her smile.  That works.

This is a deodorant ad they did (that's what's with the arm positioning).  Kahi is in the center, and E-Young is one the far right.  Wesley's favorite, Nana, is on our left next to Kahi.

Here are the flower stands people bought for Kahi and the other members.  These things are made of real flowers, and you can smell them from across the room.  It's great.

After the concert we went to meet some people we knew outside.

This is one of them in the foreground (we met him when we went to see Girl's Day in Odaiba), but I actually took this picture to capture the guy just above his head.  It's an actual sumo wrestler, and I know this because they always have to wear a traditional outfit and haircut when they go out.  He wasn't at the concert, but I caught him walking by us just in time for this shot.

Here's the skyline...sort of.  Not much of a view from the ground.

I was dying thanks to a combination of being too warm, too sick, and too hungry to function properly, so at Ikebukuro Station on the way home, Wesley and I got some of these owl-shaped bread things.  You would think they're dessert, but this one was actually filled with mushroom soup.  I also had a vegetable one that was actually better.

This is an ad for our school that is in every train car on the Tobu-Tojo line right now.  On the far left is Noemi, and the other white person in the picture is Sam (both fellow international students).  On the far right is my friend Sasara, who is most definitely in the ad because she is super pretty.

Here are my concert things!  See the poster?  The woman that got it sold it to me afterwards for much less than it'd have taken to get it normally!  Now I finally have E-Young's signature! You'll also notice that below the fan I made are two cards.  Both feature E-Young, and both can only be obtained by buying an album.  However, someone we met just happened to be carrying around duplicates of several members' cards with him, so he just gave me these for free.  Above the cards is a hair tie with the group logo attached to it.
That white sheet of paper with Korean on it was given out by someone before the concert who told everyone to hold it up during Kahi's last song.  It says something like "We will always be with you!"
I also bought the towel at the top.

So that was After School.  Next concert is Mika Agematsu on July first!