I Can’t Beat Airman

So, Kaoru and Nola and I agreed to meet up last Friday so that we could watch a DVD at my place…
However, Kaoru arrived a little earlier than I was expecting; leading me to leave the guesthouse in a rush and a hurry. I had the bright idea of trying to take a shortcut to the station which ended up getting me lost.

Like, nearly in Higashi-Koganei (the next train station) lost.

I ended up taking an hour to reach a station that it normally takes me ten minutes to get to.
I apologised fivemillion times to Kaoru, who’d had to wait there all this time – and she responded, instead of beating me up and leaving me in the gutter (which she had every right to do), by…
giving me a phone she’d bought for me.

Kaoru is an angel.

I, however, am the worst person in the world. I FELT LIKE SUCH A JERK.
My phone-mail, by the way, is uknouk@softbank.ne.jp.

So yeah, we met up with Nola (who also showed up very late, making me feel a little better) and went home to watch DVDs and then watch Yosuke’s online webcast. He talked about a bullfight he watched, where the losing bull 失禁した as it died.
I didn’t know what that was, so I looked it up; apparently it is ‘to wet one’s pant; have a little accident’.
We all found this hilarious so told Yosuke about it.

Then there was the time we went to karaoke! Now, we’d already been to karaoke once before, but I didn’t know any o the songs that were there. I was all ‘OH NO! I CAN’T SING ANY OF THESE’.

This time we went with Chihoko,  Shin, Naomi (a girl from ICU’s JLP programme), Wynne and Kazuhisa (who we met back in Leeds).
We hadn’t eaten so we all got food to share in the booth. Rob recommended edamame, which are prepared peas/beans(?) served in their pods. You pop the pod open to get to the two peas inside, which are tasty and more-ish as anything.

So…yeah! At first I was all worried that I’d just end up sitting idly by due to my lack of any karaoke song knowledge, but this karaoke place not only had songs I knew, it had Yosuke songs. (Which I didn’t sing; I want to sing them when I’m with Nola and Kaoru)
But yeah. Kazu jokingly suggested I find ‘Airman ga Taosenai’, which is a song I posted on facebook about loving; it’s basically about not being able to beat a boss in a Megaman game.

I found this really funny as Kazu had said when we met up at the station that Akihabara was the ‘shame of Japan’ because it was full of NEET and otaku.
Of course they wouldn’t have such a nerdy song available for selection in a karaoke machine!
How funny Kazuhisa’s jokes are!

…
….

…..
Oh.

There was also a fair amount of VOCALOID (I sang World Is Mine), DOPING PANDA (Beat Addiction – with Wynne. Miles seemed to be amused by the chorus which consists of ‘BEAT-ADDIC-DIC-DIC-DIC-DICTION’) and Linda Linda, which was actually my default choice since the beginning of the night. I presumed any karaoke place ever had to have that song.

Then, on the 21st, I came straight from ICU (we had classes on a Silver Week holiday) to Hamamatsucho station where I was due to meet Gin and go to the Pokemon Center. I also met Sarah!
They were both lovely girls.
I was rapidly enlisted into an evil plot to beat the evil Pokemon Center cashiers and help Gin obtain about five tonnes of plush dolls.
It was my first time ever going to the Pokemon Center; basically, this place is heaven for anyone who is remotely interested in Pokemon. You can buy the games here, though that seems a moot point; for reasonable prices you can buy plush of a whole range of the little guys, notebooks, shirts, bags, DS cases, charms, jewellery. There are several unlived Pokemon lives in the stuff they sell in this place.
To top it all off, they play the music from the Pokemon game over speakers.
But anyway, the evil plot was a success!
I even got paid, in the form of a severly discounted phone charm. Which was sweet, as I really didn’t mind helping out.

So after that we all caught the train and Gin and I set off to meet her boyfriend Pyon at a McDonalds in Akasaka. Pyon is a musician who I am a very very very big fan of! So I was excited.
I stuttered my way through my remedial level Japanese and felt really bad when I spoke English a bunch to Gin (Pyon doesn’t speak English), but he didn’t mind too much apparently. After that we tried to find the venue for the live we were going to see.

Pyon’s GPS failed us so we tried a taxi cab. Now, in the UK, when you get into a taxi you have a fairly sure guarantee that the driver knows where you’re going, right?
Not so with Japan! This guy stopped in the middle of the road to ask two teenage girls directions, and this was after he drove us around in a circle for ten minutes.
Oy. But we got there eventually.

If I thought Shibuya Songlines (the venue where I saw Yosuke Sakanoue) was small, Akasaka MOVE was miniscule. There were twenty people at a generous maximum sitting and standing around. Even with getting lost, we managed to get there in time to catch the girl in Hirokey’s support slot.
She had a lot of energy, and sang an ELLEGARDEN song (Kaze no Hi), some other song, and Go! by Flow.

Gin and Pyon are acquainted with the main act we were going to see, so Hirokey asked us guys up to the front. ‘To fangirl,’ Gin explained.

These guys put on an awesome show. Very high energy, lots of audience participation, amusing banter in between songs. It was actually Shingo’s birthday, which was pretty lovely.
It was very good kikitori practice; I had to listen to things quickly and figure them out in order to get what was expected of the audience. And when to laugh – that’s a pretty important part of any live, am I right?

I went to the live for the sake of one of my good friends in America, who is actually how I found Shingo’s solo music in the first place.  I was able to pick her up a lot of things and have a really good time while doing so, so I count that as a success.

Here’s hoping I have more days like that, and less nights like this one, where I am cowering on my bed in tears about the ugly beetle currently wandering around on my floor trying to avenge its fallen brother (I crushed one with a bag before). Yikes.

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