Busy day, busy day.

Got up and went to the opening ceremony, we got pretty decent seats near the front. After some boring introductions by some boring people Morning Musume eventually got up on stage… yay, Koharu saw the star tambourine and waved at me.

They didn’t actually say no recording or photo’s at this event, so there were tons of things taken here, much to the annoyment of Up Front i guess as everything after this had nazi security.

When it was over we rushed off to pick up our meet the guests reception tickets (aka Breakfast with Morning Musume tickets) that we’d cunningly kept quiet from every single other person.

Then walked out to the exhibit hall queue to get in there and get the guarantee’d autograph tickets with Morning Musume, luckily we saw some of the guys from the Halko Momoi forum and joined them in the line (very lucky indeed as the autograph tickets sold out shortly after we’d got ours).

Then rushed off to the Morning Musume panel (transcript here), sat relatively near the front so we could get the priority autograph tickets for the other sessions. Ended up sitting behind what was possibly the youngest Morning Musume fan in the world… two fans had a 2 year old daughter, when the mother held her up she shouted “Reina!!”, awww, lol.

The questions were mostly relatively unexciting. Koharu got up and did the voice of Kirari at one point though. It was kinda a shame the translator mistranslated questions, and sometimes didn’t bother translating some parts at all.

I felt really bad for LinLin though as she looked the most happy to be there of them all, speaking in relatively good english to everyone, and generally being very friendly… but no-one asked her any questions.

Then the panel was over and the front few rows were given the priority autograph tickets, and thus begins the complete mess of the first autograph event…

Basically the guy at the panel told everyone it would be at the back of the exhibit hall, which was incorrect. This resulted in hundreds of crazy people running throughout the convention centre and exhibit hall to find it, eventually we got a phonecall from the HelloBlog guy to tell us it was upstairs in the meeting rooms. Again cue mad rush of hundreds of people trying to get upstairs, there were sections blocked off so it was crazy with everyone trying to find their way to the top floor. Eventually got there, wasn’t anywhere near the front, and they finished the autograph session after only 130 people (i was number 233 or something).

Oh well, now that we knew where it was there was still the one the next day, and the guarantee’d one to attend (not to mention the meet the guests reception/breakfast).

Went out and found an expensive irish pub to eat at, i ordered the beef carvery. Now clearly Americans have a different idea of a “carvery” to us here in England, as all of the carved meat arrived in a burger bun with salad on top, and a pot of gravy for me to pour over it. o.O Can’t complain though, it was still very nice.

Then met up with some other people again and went to a posh sushi restaurant where i had sea urchin… it wasn’t the greatest tasting animal i’ve ever eaten, and i could still taste it hours later.

Went to the westin hotel to check out the AX nighttime parties. They were terrible. You get ID’d on the door even though there’s no booze inside, the only music they’re playing is Hip Hop, and it’s almost pitch black, full of people going mad with glowsticks like a rave from the early 90′s. Terrible terrible party. This is one thing where UK conventions are the best in the world!

Luckily we found a nice cheap pub in the hotel called “The Brewery”… yes, they were selling homebrew, pretty good stuff. Stayed there until closing at 2am, at which point we randomly ended up talking to some people about a “pantsless” party, which took us a while to work out meant “trouserless” and not no underwear. >_>

Oh, on the subject of Americans and English accents and the difference in speech, the funniest story was told by Paul from HelloBlog. During the confusion of the earlier autograph sessions he kept trying to find out from staff where it was, and supposedly got this response from one of them…

Excuse me, where’s Hall K?

What’s that, you want a whore?

No, H-A-L-L K.

I’m sorry, what, you want a whore??

No!!!!!

After that we went back to our hotel to await tomorrow’s day of epicness!