The last day.

Got up, had breakfast. As we were leaving Sunday night we had to check out that day, so we dumped our bags and stuff in @CDevil’s room (who for some reason was camping out *again* despite today’s signing session being a lottery… I don’t think they ever actually slept in their rooms at all the entire weekend).

Got to the expo, lined up and was pretty much let straight in, and we all rushed off to the lottery thing. Sadly the staff had finally caught onto people lining up multiple times to pull out tickets, lol (took them long enough ), so no ticket for me. Ran off to join the An Nakahara signing thing instead (just had to buy a KiraRevo DVD to get a ticket for that… a DVD with French dubbing might I add).

Got to the signing area and the line mostly consisted of people far far shorter than me, lol, oh well, I wanted my stuff signed! There was also one of the staff going through the line asking people questions in French with a microphone, sods law that she’d come and talk to me. >_< After a confusing few seconds explaining I was English, she switched her questioning to English mode, lol. She asked me why I was there and why I liked Kirarin Revolution, then translated it into French… not entirely sure what she said but it resulted in some clapping from the French people in the line, lol.

Eventually made it to the front, translator started talking to me in French, I ended up replying in Japanese that I had no idea what she was saying, and just ended up talking to An Nakahara directly, lol. She seemed very nice, we had a brief conversation about Koharu saying that she thought Koharu was “like a doll” amongst other things. ^_^

After that dashed off to find the Q&A thing with Morning Musume. Sadly everything in French mostly, but I think they were talking about their thoughts on new members at one point, and Linlin responded with something like “We’ve got people from Japan and China, I think we should have more members from different countries!”. I think also they were asked whether they’d come back and they said they wanted to (by all accounts from certain sources, they enjoyed this expo more than Anime Expo in LA… not surprising, AX has a history of annoying their guests).

Met up with everyone else again next, and grabbed some food, then made our way to the airport to wave Morning Musume off. There were only a handful of us there (about 10-20), after waiting for about an hour there they were, walked right in front of us as we said goodbye.

And the day was coming to a close, we all went back to the hotel to pick up our stuff. Though before leaving we did have some fun with the room we were using as storage, stuffed all of the bedsheets, duvet, pillows, towels and such into the gap in-between the two windows, lol:

Left hotel for the last time and went back to the airport, eventually found the entirely unlabelled piece of road that the coach was supposedly supposed to stop at. Coach came, totally packed, everyone ended up sat on their own. So all slept all the way back (minus the stupid long boring border controls at 3am that we didn’t go through on the way over). Arrived back in London and straight into work for me, good stuff!

And so another fantastic trip concludes, yet again another foreign convention puts everything in the UK to shame (the London Expo could easily organize big anime type guests, but do they ever… no). Special thanks to Morningtime, Hexi, and ptom whom I spent most of the weekend with, totally wouldn’t have been as fun without you guys. Also thanks to everyone else we hung out with while over there (everyone  should have been mentioned at some point in my previous posts, feel free to complain if I missed you out >_<).

RAIN RAIN RAIN!!!!

Woke up, had more of that fantastic breakfast (managed to find a slice of cheese so it wasn’t just buttered toast, lol), then left. It was absolutely tipping it down, thunder, lightning, everything. Dash to the bus stop with many many other people huddled in there like penguins, all very damp.

Got to the expo, after being herded through lines outside and inside, then outside again (all the while still raining) we eventually got inside. Off to watch the Morning Musume signing session and meet up with @CDevil @Catchfivebats, @Carlos et all. Now they had been queuing since the day before in the hopes of getting into this “first come first served” signing session, but unfortunately for them this signing session was limited to French people only, and no i’m not joking either. There are “premium tickets” that foreign people aren’t allowed to buy that let you into the convention early, and so everyone with these premium French person only tickets got into the convention and filled up the signing session way before any of the people that lined up overnight even got let in. It takes the piss really when you’ve got people spending money flying all the way from America or even Mexico, lining up overnight, and they still don’t get an autograph because the organizers have something against foreigners (guess they’d get on well with Dawa then ), kinda ironic really, considering they’re running a convention that celebrates a foreign culture.

Anyway, we watched the signing thing, waved, took some pictures as they left.

After that we wandered off around the convention, went to the Kirarin Revolution cosplay and karaoke thing only to find it had been delayed by an hour or so, so walked around some more. Found the Hello Project booth, got to look at the costumes on display up close (the guy behind the desk said they were both Junjun’s and showed us her nametag on the back of the neck!):

(gotta say the green dress was looking a bit frayed on the edges, lol, and according to @RadioHexi they weren’t very well made)

After that, walked off, found the Kyoto Animation stand (incidentally I don’t remember a KyoAni stand at AX last year… do they only go to France?) and took pictures of the Haruhi movie cels and pencil drawings they had on display. And god knows (lol Haruhi) how I missed that before, the aforementioned mecca of Kirarin Revolution, like an entire massive stand of goods, manga, dvd’s, and various other merchandise, lol.

After some wandering around, some getting lost, and some more wandering around, we eventually made it back to the place where the Kirarin Revolution thing was going on. It basically consisted of a couple of 5 year olds dressed up in KiraRevo cosplay, and a bunch of 18+ year olds also dressed up in cosplay being given points by the manga author, lol. A couple of them sung stuff without any backing music (so not quite karaoke), but what really surprised me is that of those that sung it seemed the young 5 year olds were singing the Japanese versions of the songs, whereas the older people were all singing the French versions. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around?! The event did drag on a bit, but it was nice to see more KiraRevo love nontheless, and the guy that came on at the end and done a perfect rendition of Balalaika complete with dance moves (without backing song, or lyrics in front of him I might add!) was a genius!

(it’s such a classic song, I didn’t feel a mere link to it was enough )

Can’t remember what we done after that so i’ll just assume we went back to the hotel, lol. This time we *did* manage to order pizza (with the help of the hotel receptionist using my mobile phone… because they were too stingy to let us use the hotel phone). Grabbed a few bottles of beer from the hotel next door and everyone (namely: me, @MorningtimeBlog, @RadioHexi, @Paul Elliot, @ptom98, @Jltos) returned back to @ptom98′s room to eat and watch the nine smile concert (aka Koharu’s graduation concert). Much discussion was had in-between people falling asleep, everything from bingo wings to a certain monkey and frog.

And eventually the night came to a close, final day tomorrow!

Friday, woke up relatively early, wanted to get in the queue for the concert early to get to the front. Off to try the hotel “breakfast”; it basically consisted of some slices of bread, and a toaster, no plates or anything, or if you were adventurous you could have attempted to have some chocolate cereal from a coffee mug. >_<

Off to the expo and experiencing yet more fantastic French driving skills, this time from a suicidal bus driver, he told everyone to get on without paying, and then proceeded to speed right to the convention, not stopping/slowing down for anything or anyone (even if they were already on the zebra crossing).

Arrived at the expo, walked around to the back where the concert line was and joined it immediately. GOD IT WAS HOT!!! People saying stuff like 32°C… at 9am?! Dumped our bags to reserve our spot pretty much at the front of the line, then retreated to some nearby shade.

At around midday they let everyone into the main queuing area where those with the special “pack” tickets were split off into a separate line (of which there were like 5 of us at most). There was supposed to be a lottery draw thing for the signing that day, but the staff basically told us we couldn’t leave the line now (and by all accounts the line for the lottery draw was way way too long anyway), so we were sat there until 18.30. Got to listen to all the other concerts going on, some good (the MOSAIC.WAV sounding band whoever they were), and some not so good (when an entire song’s lyrics are “FUUUUCK, FUUUUUCK, FUUUUUCK, FUUUUUCK” then I have to say they’re not very talented). Closer to the time we were let in Morning Musume started their sound checks, we watched at least two songs through the window before one of the staff noticed and closed the curtains, lol.

Eventually let in, and after a short dash to the front there we were, front row get! All standing, no seats too! The rather smug looking press all walked into the press section in front of us which was slightly irritating… until one of the up front staff came in and pushed them all to beyond the sides of the stage and told them not to come back (haha, owned!).

Concert was pretty good, decent balance of new songs and old songs. They really needed to make more use of those bunny outfits though, lol. Front row really is good, all of them on stage can see you all of the time! ^_^ For some reason though throughout the concert various TV cameras kept shoving the camera literally right in mine and @ptom98′s face, lol (see here and here aww, someone removed the youtube video of the news report).

One thing I did notice during the concert though was that Sayu either had a bruise or massive love bite on her chest… been up to some funny business eh Sayu?

Midway through the concert the “special guest” Nakazawa Yuko came on, she spoke a bit, a translator spoke a bit in French, some long videos were played, it was all kinda boring, until the crowd all started singing one of the songs and she started crying on stage, aww.

MM back on, more songs, then it was over, and unlike AX we actually got an encore here (albeit only 1 song)! I’d say this concert was better than AX’s.

After the concert went to pick up our “pack” goodies, gotta say i’m impressed. T-shirt, poster, badges, limited edition CD’s with box and *ALL* of their singles, very very worth the 100 euros for the ticket (especially considering it got us to the front row, lol).

(the booklet has lyrics for all of their songs in romaji, along with some sort of interview (I think) in French with all members past/present)

Pretty much straight back to the hotel after being attacked by mosquitoes outside. Showered and attempted to purchase pizza from a take-away place, but completely failed, lol. Ended up in a restaurant with everyone with some of the rudest staff i’ve ever met, slamming glasses down on the table, throwing forks around (and that’s not even mentioning that almost all of their food was out of stock… and super overpriced… 15 euro for a burger and chips).

Grabbed a beer or two in the aforementioned bean bag hotel bar. This French barman was actually quite friendly, he said “i’m going to be closing up shortly, so just buy as many bottles as you need to get you through the night”, lol!

And so day 2 concludes…

And so starts my hopefully not too long (depending on how you define “long”) report of the event!

Left work on day -1 and headed straight into London to meet up with @ptom98, @RadioHexi, and @MorningTime (yeah, I know I don’t need the @’s outside of twitter, but hey ho, i’m gonna roll with it!), before getting a coach. After waiting for a while in the bar at Victoria station, ptom and Hexi eventually turned up, followed by a round of strangely coloured highly sweet alcoholic pitchers. Morningtime’s train was delayed so we headed off to the coach station, and eventually he joined us. ^_^

After we all got on the coach we cracked open the rest of the booze and enjoyed our little party bus (still disappointed we didn’t go by ferry though). Eventually got to our stop in Paris several hours later (now Thursday… “day 1″), and somehow had to find our way to the hotel. The airport staff were highly friendly (not) in pointing us to where our free shuttle was supposed to be, so after asking several people and failing we eventually had a confusing conversation with some taxi drivers who agreed to overcharge us by a significant amount (40 euros) to drive us to the hotel that was 10 minutes journey away.

Arrived at hotel, the plan was to check in, dump our bags and head straight off into Paris where the first Morning Musume signing session of the weekend was. Sadly the highly friendly (not… this is going to be a running theme btw) hotel staff said no we couldn’t check in until later, and no we couldn’t leave our bags anywhere. Thanks. -_- But luckily the rooms to the hotel all had keycodes instead of keys, and @CDevil4 saved the day and let us dump our bags in his room!

Off to get a taxi to the signing session now, the again highly helpful hotel staff told us that they couldn’t get us a taxi and to go back to the airport and get one. Eventually we did get a taxi from the hotel, and made our way through some heavy duty rush hour Paris traffic. I’ve gotta say the French seem to have no concept of road safety, and the roundabout around the Arc de Triomphe felt more like the streets of Bangladesh with motorbikes almost driving over the top of car bumpers, and accidents at every turn. But anyway we eventually arrived there at 9am… somewhat later and somewhat more hungover than everyone else that had been queuing since midnight, lol.

(a very appropriate car sign for French traffic, no idea what it’s actually supposed to mean)

Got in the line, ptom and Hexi went off to get food, by the time they got back the security staff had closed the line and refused to let them back in despite protests from us, and some helpful French people that were next to us. Uh-oh! I eventually negotiated swapping me out of the line and Hexi into the line (since I’d already got autographs at AX last year, and Koha wasn’t there). To be honest we were all too far back in the line anyway to get the signing tickets, they only had 150 available and we were already 200+ people back.

Anyway, me and ptom walked off, and through the power of magic (if anyone asks, yes it was indeed magic, absolutely definitely 100% magic, nothing shifty at all ) us two got to watch the signing from close up, and MorningTime and Hexi got to get stuff signed, result! One amusing thing from watching the signing was seeing Mittsi pull funny faces at us, it started out with me and ptom just waving at her in-between her signing people’s stuff, and she’d wave back, then after about the 5th time she just started pulling faces at us every time we waved.

After that we all made our way to the convention centre by train (by *very* hot, and shoddy train… again wouldn’t have been out of place in Bangladesh). When we got there I was expecting a long queue to get in, but it was just a long walk around barriers, the queue was pretty much non-existent.

For me it was straight off to watch the Kirarin Revolution question and answer session with An Nakahara, sadly it was of course translated between French/Japanese, but I think I managed to understand enough Japanese to figure out most of what she was saying (got zero of the French, lol). At one point she was very praising about Koharu when asked about her role in the anime. And there was also an amusing point where the audience was asked whether they preferred Seiji or Hiroto (and of course it was like 85% for Hiroto, me included), she smiled. ^_^ It just felt good to be in an area surrounded by so many KiraRevo fans, i’m pretty sure you could barely cobble together 10-20 of us in the whole of England/America, let alone hold an entire event for it here!

After that I lined up for the raffle for that afternoon’s Morning Musume signing, and I ended up pulling a winning ticket! HAPPY☆彡

Grabbed some food, met up with everyone else, and through some equally shifty methods more magic, ptom also won a raffle ticket for the signing! Everyone happy!

My plan of action for this signing was to see if any of them from that breakfast remembered me. First one up, Ai-chan, she looked at me, said bonjour, I was about to say I was from England, but then she instantly said “Ah! The English Koharu fan from Anime Expo?”… followed up with “I remember” in English. Ahh so happy to be remembered, lol! Gaki, Eri, Reina next, didn’t say too much to them, just thankyou for the autographs (they all said bonjour, lol). Got to Sayu and told her she was cute (again? I forget…), she squirmed in her chair acting embarrassed and said thank you in an incredibly cute way, lol, almost like being told she’s cute powers her up or something, she loves it, lol. Next was Mittsi, told her I was English and went to AX, and she responded with “I remember you”, and same with JunJun next (though I had to mention AX, English, and Breakfast before she said she remembered), and Linlin also said she remembered pretty quickly. All in all I was very pleased with that! ^_^ I shall just imagine one of them sent a message to Koharu telling her her mad English fan was in France, lol. Ahh~~

(ピカピカなポスター！)

And that’s pretty much it for the first day, we went back to the hotel, got our stuff, checked into our rooms, showered (oh lets not get started on the showers shall we… doors that don’t close, leak water everywhere, doors that have windows for easy viewing, and some sort of strange hole in the middle?!), got food, met up with @PaulElliot (I forget your twitter name >_<) and then ended up in next door’s hotel bar drinking what they had left of their beer (tap ran out after 1 pint, bottles almost out). This hotel incedentally was supposedly the hotel that Morning Musume were staying at, we didn’t see them at all though, but potentially did see some of the other Japan Expo guests walking around (or at least people that looked like other guests, lol).

Oh, and that bar had the best seats ever for a bar… giant bean bags! I think all pubs should replace their seats with giant bean bags!

…after that we all went off to sleep, Day 1 over!

Just a brief post before I do a full write up, but the weekend was fun! Got An Nakahara’s autograph (she’s really nice), saw Morning Musume, where they remembered me from last year’s AX (sadly the “special guest” was not Koharu after all, but instead Nakazawa Yuko), and pleanty of other fun fun!

(click for fullsize)

So much other Kirarin Revolution stuff. The French clearly have taste, lol! Why can’t it have an official English release??? (though the “L” is somewhat irritating, lol)

I wish there were conventions like this in the UK, the London Expo gets enough visitors, why is it still so rubbish??

Oh, the rest of the photos are in the gallery too! (http://www.pori.co.uk/?p=2419)