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Misc YUI Info/Downloads/Rants:

Hisashi Kondo aka Shigezou san posted a picture of YUI band doing rehearsals of again and Sea in the studio in his latest diary post.

Actually, Hisashi san is a radio host of this show called Satayan, he has to travel to Hokkaido back and forth every week.

On April 12 episode, he actually called dear YUI twice (around 1~2 pm), without informing her beforehand. He seems to know YUI super well, dare to call her around such time. And dear YUI seems to be fine with it, replying in a polite tone, as usual.

Credits to someone in 2ch.

Rants:

That reminds me of when my dorm mates knocked on my door when I was sleeping, to give me some cakes to eat because it was someone's birthday on that day. When I answered the door, they felt very guilty (especially the birthday girl), I wasn't angry at all, if that was the case I won't be answering the door at all. I was in fact quite happy because they still thought of me.

A lot of times, being scolded is way better than being ignored. I didn't accept the cake though, dieting you know.

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When I'm depressed/down/sad/nothing to do, I'll sleep/scratch or pick my face/waste my time doing random surfing, watching shows/eat a bunch of junk food.

Thanks to those scratching, my face is just like the moon's surface, even 10 layers of powder cannot cover them. Now that I'm on diet, I can only nib on 86% dark chocolate or almond. Those are the only 'edible junk food' available in my room now.

I feel that I've been such an @ss lately, ignoring messages/calls, forgetting birthdays, I still haven't send out a bunch of thank you cards, especially to my Japanese boss who treated my lunch in Japan 3 months ago. I didn't send a message or something to my sensei who is leaving my university at all, I didn't call to say thank you to my other sensei and my host family, I didn't send any wishes on mother's day, I didn't......

I will only start contacting people when I'm visiting their place, asking certain favor, wanting something from them, when I'm lonely......

I promised a lot of things but I failed to accomplish them, for this blog it will be ROCKIN' ON JAPAN interview, YL Collabo 3 (still no news from mods), I wanted to launch a YUI fansite but I'm too lazy to figure out how to set up a website, coding, and stuff. I wanted to learn Korean, I wanted to finish my homework earlier, I wanted to...

Yes I'm such a self-centred person. My trip to Akita (秋田) confirmed that. Somehow.

On Friday night I took 11:30 pm night bus from Tokyo station, and reached Akita station on 9:00 am next morning. The last time when I came to Akita was on last year, I only spent a couple of minutes here because of the luggage incident.


The cheapest way to Akita is by night bus. I bought the ticket from discounted ticket shop so each way costs 5900 yen, 600 yen cheaper than buying directly from the bus company.

Base Ball Bear live starts at 6 pm, I had 8 hours to wander around. My first mission, find food. I brought 3 hard boiled eggs, 22 kernels of almonds, and 1 piece of dark chocolate just in case I couldn't find anything to eat.

There are two big supermarkets near Akita station, but I was surprised that no Yoshinoya/Matsuya/Sukiya, there goes my cheap meat sources. For breakfast I had a green salad from Sunkus (the only salad without corn inside and cheap) with 2 hard boiled eggs, plus some almonds.


I had my breakfast nearby this pond.

Then I decided to checkout the venue of the live, Club SWINDLE, which is located 15 mins away from Akita station. I had a hard time looking for it because it is just a small live house located below a hotel. Not your typical Zepp or BLITZ. I couldn't find the exact entrance of the live house so I went inside the hotel and took the elevator to B1 floor.


Snucked a picture of this place.

Afraid that someone might chase me out, I quickly left the place. It is a really small live house. I went to Senshu Park after that, the only touristy place I visited.



They were having some sort of event in the park, I got pretty tired after all the climbing uphill, sat on a bench and started to read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Then this lady approached me and asked me to write some appreciation words on a card, to celebrate something. I was kinda puzzled by it but still, I wrote down that I'm glad that I came here, thank you, and my name on the card.

When she asked about my name, I told her that I'm from Malaysia and stuff like that, she took out a book and asked me to close my eyes and flip a page and point my finger on anywhere of the book. It was a book contains a lot of phrases, the one I pointed on sounded something like this: Take off your hat and share with others.

Something like that. She explained that we shouldn't keep everything on ourselves, only through sharing with others, we will gain happiness. People happy, we happy. I began to wonder, maybe I'm getting more and more self-centred these days, I'm a Leo after all. The lady gave me a little book (which I haven't read) and I thanked her before she left.

I tried to walk around the park but it wasn't fun walking alone, plus it was kinda hilly, I didn't feel like wasting my energy climbing here and there, and went to search for food.

After carefully examined every cooked food in two of the supermarkets, nearby restaurants, convenient stores, they were either too expensive or too difficult to figure out the nutrition content because they were not labelled properly. I gave up and ate my remaining hard boiled egg, almonds and that one and only piece of dark chocolate. After 2 weeks of no sweets, it tasted great.


'Camped' here for 2 hours, reading Silent Spring and sleep. You won't find such large space with free chairs and tables in Tokyo.

When I got hungry again, it was around 2:30 pm, another 3 hours to go. I went to Seibu department store's basement floor and bought this drumstick for 210 yen.


3 types of plastic bags + 1 styrofoam plate were used just to wrap this piece of meat nicely.

Now I know where to find food while on low carb diet, depachika =D Normally I don't buy food here because the food is more expensive than bento shops or conbini. Only in depachika they have cooked meat sold separately from rice/pastas, and less preservatives.

There were chairs around so I sat at a corner and ate it with my steel fork. People were eating bread, bento, ice cream, I was the only person poking around my food with fork, as silly it may sounds. Who cares, I got more satiated by eating this instead of bread, dorayaki, or onigiri for the same price.

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Then I continued my reading + sleeping process in the depachika. I didn't really care if people snapped a picture of me taking a nap in department store haha. It was 4:30 pm. I didn't care that my phone wasn't receiving any signals (being at the basement) even though I was supposed to meet another Steve from Canada, aka the legendary doubledown11 from Shangri-la Chatmonchy forum.

Steve was the person who introduced me the awesomeness of live houses, even though I got him a #1 ticket for FREENOTE concert, he didn't really enjoyed the live, after spending so much $$$ by paying me to see FREENOTE live for free, plus the transaction + shipping fee, and not to mention another extra ticket. My ticket number was #306, I knew that he has two ~#100 tickets, and he is a very generous person. Before I came to Akita, I was thinking of giving him something for treating me a free live, besides some corny Malaysian key chains, I couldn't think of anything. In the end I gave up the thought of giving him stuff, instead, I thought of treating him a cup of coffee or something if we do meet up.

I'm not really THAT stingy, you know. And secretly, I was hoping that he would give me that #100+ ticket, after showing my 'sincerity' haha.

But then, I didn't receive any calls from him. So I guess he chose to ignore me because I love YUI more, listen to mainstream Jpop, not an active Shangri-la member and sucked away his hard earned $$$. Before going to the live house, I bought another piece of drumstick, told the aunty not to wrap any plastics, and she remembered that I bought the same thing 2 hours ago. Opps.

Then, off to Club SWINDLE~

The moment I reached there, I spotted Steve's back immediately, since he is so tall. It was around 5:20 pm. The live house opens around 5:30 pm. I went to say hi to him, he seems to be in a hurry. Since he had no reason to give me the ticket for free, and I was still in a blur mode after all the napping at the basement, I told him that I couldn't afford to buy off the ticket. And then we went apart. I went to line up at the ~#300 area, wondering why I didn't persuade him to give me the #100+ ticket, in such situation, he could either give me the ticket or throw it away.

I should have been more 'pushy', yet I didn't want to owe him anything more. But then, I was more looking forward to have a small chat with him, since he knows so much on music and live houses in Japan, even though he is not staying in Japan. Guess that I should work harder on approaching 'famous people'.

After reading Steve's live report in Shangri-la forum, I knew that he was going to give me the ticket after all haha. Too bad I was hiding at the back and he couldn't pass me the ticket. Too late >.<

The venue is really small, at first I thought that I might not able to see anything but when Chatmonchy appeared, the crowd started to move forward and I squeezed all the way to the bassist side, in front of the speaker, 4th row I think. Akko was just in front of me. But I couldn't see anything below her shoulder, nor Ecchan's guitars.

This was the first time I saw Chatmonchy, up close. There were couple of times I met eyes with Akko XD Secretly I wished that I was at Ecchan's side though.

Set List (thanks to doubledown11 aka Steve):

01 Hira Hira Hira Himitsu no Tobira
02 Shangri-La (Fun Fun Fun)
03 Kaze Fukeba Koi
04 Somaruyo
05 Sekai ga Owaru
06 Last Love Letter
07 Tobiuo no Butterfly
08 Koi no Kemuri
09 Renai Spirits

I was wearing a jacket with pockets filled with camera, two mp3 players, pedometer, hand phone, it was very difficult for me to jump around with pockets full of stuff =.= My attempt to record this failed during Shangri-La because my mp3 dropped. I didn't continue to record after that.

Live house >>>> Halls. I rather watch DVD then going to big venues, unless I have an expensive binocular. It was great to see that fans were interacting with the artist, when Kumikon and Akko were telling us what they ate, things like Kiritanpo, hata-hata which are famous Akita delicacies, one fan interrupted and asked what Ecchan ate. She replied bananas, of all things. Brought from Aomori.

Then Chatmonchy was saying that even though not many people know about this, they are really close with Base Ball Bear, some people replied: We know we know, Nyaku Nyaku Nannyo right? (I know about it too). We don't get to see fans interrupting MCs in big venues, we have to shout to get noticed.

Maybe because of the night bus, after Chatmonchy, I started to get tired. No more energy to jump. The one thing I don't really like about lives with guests is it takes a lot of time to set up the instruments, I had to stand there do nothing for 30 mins, luckily the background 80s JRock music prevented me from getting crazy.

Shiori san was even more beautiful in real life =O Luckily I was standing at her side *Happy* Been a fan of hers especially after watching Linda Linda Linda, who cares if she can only play so-so bass. I could see Koide's face most of the time, and had to jump to have a peak on Hori-kun and Shohei.

Set List (Thanks to in 小石川殿さん in mixi, he included all the MC too):

01. Dramatic
02. YUME is VISION
03. Gokusaishiki Imagination
04. Heaven's Door Girls (one of my fave in the album)
05. Dakishimetai
06. Labyrinth He No Timing
07. Kamigami LOOKS YOU
08. SAYONARA-NOSTALGIA
09. Yuugata Generation
10. Umi ni naritai
11. LOVE MATHEMATICS
12. CRAZY FOR YOU no Kisetsu
13. ELECTRIC SUMMER

Encore: BBB x Chatmonchy - SUPERCAR's Lucky

I didn't know about SUPERCAR at all before that, but I saw that bassist girl before in MUSIC JAPAN. I was looking at Kumikon and Shiori all the time.

Encore 2: Base Ball Bear - Matsuri no Ato

After watching the PV of Matsuri no Ato, I became a BBB fan. I was kinda happy that Chatmonchy mentioned this song during their MC =D I quickly dashed out from the live house after the song finished because I put my bag in a locker which operates until 9 pm. It was 8:45 pm. It takes 15 mins to go back to the station.



I managed to retrieve my bag back safely. I had another 40 mins before my night bus departs, so I went to Lotteria and ordered a piece of fried chicken for 150 yen, the flour coating definitely made this piece of chicken goes over 10g of net carbs.

That sums up my day in Akita. I don't think I'll come here again any time soon.


Expenses:

Live ticket: 3815 yen
Bus ticket two way from Tokyo: 11800 yen
Salad + dressing: 220 yen
Lunch and Dinner: 570 yen
Locker: 200 yen (cheaper than Tokyo by 100 yen)
Total: 16,605 yen


If you think that I'm lucky, Steve got autographs from BBB and Chatmonchy members.

PS: Three download links are hidden in this post.