Lessons in the School of Rock

Tags

Bujingai, Bujingai: The Forsaken City, GACKT, Rock and Read, Translation, YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz

There’s an Oasis song that says “don’t put your life in the hands / of a rock and roll band.” Seems like sound advice, but I wonder if taking it means you’re still putting your life in a band’s hands.

In December of 2012, when I was struggling to decide whether to stay on JET or not, one of the things that crossed my mind was “if I leave, I might not be able to go to another GACKT concert.” Seriously. If, in that cold and lonely December, I had hit for premium tickets (first 5 rows) in the fan club lottery for the 2013 Best of the Best tour, there’s a chance that I would have found the strength to grit my teeth through everything that was annoying me. Instead, a couple days before leaving to spend winter break in the States, I called the fan club line and got a nice recorded message telling me in keigo that I had struck out. For the first time in my 3 years in the club. After being in the seventh row at the Osaka Gakuensai! I couldn’t believe it and called the automated line again, hoping I’d misunderstood. But I hadn’t. And I thought, “On top of everything that’s gone wrong this past year I can’t even see GACKT?!” Then I cried in my kotatsu.

I remembered Oasis’ song, and felt like no matter what I chose, I was putting my life in the hands of a rock band. If I stayed it would be to continue going to GACKT shows, even if I ended up all the way in the back of the hall. If I left it would be to listen to Oasis’ advice. Granted, I don’t think this is what Noel Gallagher had in mind when he penned the lyrics to “Don’t Look Back in Anger.”

My small collection of 2009-2013 Fool’s Mate, Arena 37℃, Out of Music, and the official fan club magazine, GACKT Globals. For the most part, I haven’t actually read these. Yet.

Okay, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration; GACKT was only a part of my decision making process, but he has played a huge role in my life for the past 12 years. I don’t think I would have studied Japanese as enthusiastically and naturally if I hadn’t fallen in love with his music, then with him overall. On top of being a singer-songwriter multi-instrumentalist, I think he’s pretty smart. When I saw this interview that came included in 2004’s PlayStation 2 game Bujingai: The Forsaken City (whose main character was modeled after and voiced by GACKT) I knew I wanted to listen to more of what this man had to say.

Right after this, he says something that the English subtitles leave out. If I heard him correctly, he says, “Hm, well, I’ve always thought of myself as being slow on the uptake.”

My body used to be really weak, and I was sick of using that as an excuse in my life, so I started practicing to conquer my own weaknesses. I guess a lot of mothers don’t want their kids fighting with each other, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. If you fight someone physically, your injuries will heal eventually. But a lot of kids don’t do that these days. They get into fights with their hearts, you know? They hurt each other emotionally, and those wounds are a lot harder to heal. That’s how bullying works, and I think the reason why suicide rates are going up is because people are hurting others, and people are letting people hurt them emotionally.

You can see this interview from the beginning here, but what I quoted comes at the beginning of part 2. Interestingly, the subtitles also leave out that GACKT says specifically that martial arts can be used to overcome Asians’ disadvantage of having small bodies relative to white people and black people. (Something I didn’t catch when I first saw this interview 10 years ago.)

Now, I don’t agree with GACKT on everything. I sort of put him on a pedestal so when he does or says annoying things, he really ticks me off and I have the sort of one-sided lovers’ spat that only a truly devoted fan can have. Punning on 男尊女卑 (“dansonjohi,” literally meaning something like “respect men, revile women”) to come up with 男尊女秘 (pronounced the same way, but meaning something like “respect men, keep [this show] a secret from women,” maybe) for a men’s-only concert? Really? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a men’s-only concert, but it seems like a strange name to pick for the show, especially when the overwhelming majority of your fanbase consists of women. But, for the most part, I’ve found a lot of what GACKT says to be very logical and useful.

As I complete my self-assigned homework of studying Japanese for 4 hours a day (2 hours with textbooks and 2 hours with anything else) I’m coming across a lot of GACKT’s words, wise and otherwise. Today I read the interview from Rock and Read #44 (November 2012). I plan on translating all of the interview for practice, but there was one part in particular that really stuck out to me, so I’d like to share it here, along with a related anecdote. [UPDATE: You can now read the whole interview translation here.]

At this point in the interview, GACKT has been talking about bullying. The interviewer, Ayano NISHIMURA, then asks what makes him feel alive and he answers seeing and feeling people’s happiness. The interview continues:

So, turning other people’s happiness into your own strength. Through your music, movies, and plays, you call for people to stop fighting with each other, and to hold friends dear. Why did that become a theme in your work?
Hm, probably because when I took a look back at myself, I realized that I hadn’t produced anything.

You hadn’t produced anything?
Through fighting. It resulted in nothing. The fights I myself started, the fights I was involved in, they accomplished nothing. I really think so. When I was a student, the discrimination against zainichi* children was awful. I was in that group, too. I’m not zainichi, but I got along really well with the zainichi children. So, I stood right between the Japanese and the zainichi. You could say I understood where both sides were coming from. Neither side was wrong in what they were saying; they’d get so heated that you couldn’t even tell who had started it, and I was caught between the two, being on good terms with both. So, sometimes there would be these really huge arguments, and I’d be the only one who didn’t get called out to join. Because I couldn’t join either side. They wouldn’t let me know what was going on because they knew that I’d end up mediating. I wondered, why does such a meaningless thing have to happen, why does it happen over and over again? It was a huge dilemma. I thought, if Japanese and Korean people sat down to talk to each other one-on-one, they’d both realize what a great person the other is. But they never understood each other. I thought, what’s up with that?

It’s about the pride between countries, right? Recently, I interviewed a certain zainichi actor. He’s 33 years old now. He said that from the time he was very little, he was always taught that he couldn’t lose to Japanese people. When he started to wonder why that was, he asked his parents, “Is it okay if I lose to Korean people?” They couldn’t answer him, so his viewpoint changed to “what a stupid way of thinking.” But I think it’s about how you take it. In that case, it could go either way. I think that to treasure one’s country and to want to protect its culture and way of thinking, are very precious things. But it’s sad when people hurt each other.

___________
Note
*”Zainichi” literally means “being in Japan” but it’s most often used to refer to people of Korean descent residing in Japan.

The story the interviewer shared about the Korean actor and what his parents told him reminded me of something that happened at one of YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz’s concerts. YFC was a band that GACKT formed, active 2010-2012. Its first live shows were men’s-only, with women gradually allowed to participate. But the rough nature of having started as a men’s-only show remained. GACKT would address the audience in really rough Japanese, included a call and response bit that consisted entirely of the word “F***,” and the audience was constantly instructed to “go wild.” I was more than happy to oblige, and I would scream out the band members’ names between songs louder and for longer than anyone else. But at the beginning of one concert, this happened, and I was so annoyed by it I felt compelled to write about it in my journal in the fan club community:

The English sounds really simple because I would write it translating from what I’d written in Japanese.

Well, I was gentle in the translation. The word the woman used, 「気持ち悪い」, doesn’t mean just “bad,” but literally, something that makes you feel bad, e.g. something disgusting. So there I was, enjoying the show and showing the band some love, feeling like I was one with all the fellow fans, when this woman goes and ruins the moment by turning it into a competition. Implying that somehow I shouldn’t be enjoying the show as much as a Japanese person. I, who had been walking the path of GACKT fandom for 9 years at that point, who was a card-carrying member of the official fan club, was screaming so loud it somehow challenged this woman’s Japanese-ness. What?

The comment seemed even sillier considering that in their 2011 incarnation YFC had two vocalists, GACKT and Jon Underdown, an American musician active in Japan. It reminded me of the first time I went to the Catholic church in my neighborhood, and a parishioner said, “Oh, a foreigner.” There was no ill-will in the observation, so paired with the location I was just thoroughly amused. Had I known more Japanese at the time, and had the guts to make saucy comments in church, I might have given voice to my internal reaction: “Who, me, or the man on the cross?”

Well, to take another lesson from Oasis, I’ll end on a positive note. Because I don’t want to always be looking back in anger. The reason I didn’t get in touch with friends in Detroit in my first few months back was that I didn’t want to talk about Japan, and I figured they would ask. I was too mad at it, but I knew that I needed time and space to let the good things about the country and my JET experience resurface in my mind.

This comment from another fan club member (one whom I knew in person from the same club-within-the-club) made me feel better that day.

“I was glad to meet you for the first time in a while! ♪ Nationality doesn’t matter!! That is to say, there’s no reason why it would. What’s important is KiAi ♡”

気愛 KiAi = 気合い Kiai + 愛 ai. Putting love into your fighting spirit. Or fighting on because you love something. I think writing the word this way isn’t common outside the GACKT community, but I really like it.

気愛!! ^o^

People who don’t follow GACKT often don’t know that underneath the stoicism and visual kei garb, there’s this guy who is just so gosh-darned adorkable you could die. ♡ Screencapped from the greatest concert DVD ever, Requiem et Reminiscence II Final.

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Osaka Concert Weekend: Before the Storm

Tags

Dotonburi, Imamiya Ebisu, kamameshi, Osaka, Tsutenkaku, 今宮戎神社

Before getting to the post about ARASHI’s show…

In the early afternoon, before the show, I went to look around the city with one of my friends. It would be the last chance for me to sightsee in Osaka this weekend.

We walked to the Shinsekai District to see the tower Tsuutenkaku.

There was a one hour wait to go up into the tower, so we gave up on that.

Then we came across Imamiya Ebisu Shrine (今宮戎神社).

A view from the rear of the main hall.

We noticed that there were only women at the shrine and figured that maybe this was a shrine for wishing for good marriage or childbirth. While I still don’t know why they were there, after looking around on the shrine website I wonder if they were women who were applying to be “fukumusume” (福娘), special shrine maidens for the Tooka Ebisu Festival in January. I came across this interesting blog post by an international student at Ritsumeikan University who actually got to be a fukumusume.

After that my friend and I hurried back to the Namba area to meet up with three other friends–one who had come in from Singapore, and another from California, to see the ARASHI show. Once everyone was gathered, we went for lunch at a kamameshi restaurant. In brief, “kamameshi” is a style of cooking that involves using a metal pot called a “kama.” Now, you can go to restaurants and have your own individual-serving pot.

“Tori San Shoku Kamameshi,” or “Tri-Colored Chicken Kamameshi.”

After lunch it was pretty much time to head over to the Kyocera Dome for the show. Since there was a Dolce & Gabana store nearby, I did suggest we go there just to see if GACKT was there shopping before his show. >o<; Not having found him, we headed for the Dome.

I don’t know if it’s fair to say that these sculptures on store signs are characteristic of Osaka. Maybe it’s just the Namba/Doutonburi area?

☆

次回！Okay, for real this time. We make storm!

Osaka Concert Weekend: Camui Gakuen Osaka Branch School

Tags

Camui Gakuen, Camui Gakuen de Dashinasai, GACKT, Gakuensai, Osaka

I’m writing this from my mother’s house in Detroit. Well, I started writing this post over a month ago, but mid-November through December was crazy busy. So as I lie here at six in the morning on Christmas Eve Eve waiting for my non-jet-lagged family to wake up so I can go eat breakfast, I figured I should get Lucky Hill up to date. ^o^;

Onward to Catch-Up Post One of Five!

The weekend of Nov. 17-18, I went up to Osaka with some friends for two concerts. We flew to Osaka and before we even got there, we ran into GACKT.

I picked up ANA’s magazine, flipped it open, and happened to land on this ad. ♡

On the way to the venue, Intex Osaka.

Saturday’s show was the first day of this year’s “Gakuensai,” the school festival of the Camui Gakuen. This time it was called “Camui Gakuen de Dashinasai,” which I think we can translate as “Let it all hang out at the Camui School Festival.” Or something like that.

At these shows GACKT plays the character of Student Council President, and we must thus address him as “Kaichou” (会長). “Students” must attend the shows wearing a school uniform or something that can pass for a uniform. There are many other “school rules,” and I was a bit surprised to find them posted in Japanese, English, Korean, and Chinese.

Click to read at full size! Ahaha…I just noticed that while the Korean and Chinese translations have the ♂ (symbol for Mars/men) the English translation leaves it out.

The 購買部, or “Cooperative Store” where you can buy goods. While the high schools I’ve worked at in Fukuoka have 売店, a little store that sells stationery, I’ve never seen a student-run store like the DECA stores in many American high schools.

The show opened one hour late. It started with the usual singing of the school song and explanation of the rules by the Kyoutou-sensei. There was a Mr. and Ms. Camui Gakuen who got school blazers with huge epaulets to wear. On top of the usual picking of “chairman” and “vice chairmen” to take photographs of the students, there was also an award ceremony for the students who had gotten the highest scores in the Camui Gakuen mobile phone game. If I had known that playing said game would earn one the chance to get called up to the stage and shake GACKT’s hand I would’ve played it! Then there was the introduction of “F9,” the upperclassmen, who this year consisted of:

(Left to right) Back row: Taya, Shinnosuke, Kazuya, Hayato and Baru of Duel Jewel (I don’t know which is which), and Wong. Front row: Takumi, YOU, Seito Kaichou, and Chachamaru. I’m still not sure if we’re supposed to count Kaichou as part of F9, but seeing as this is a “Hana Yori Dango” reference I assume that he is a part of it.

After this there was a play making fun of MOON SAGA Yoshitsune Hiden. It was called “Yoshitsune Kaden” (「義経家電」) meaning “Yoshitsune Home Appliances.” It opens with Benkei running on stage with a bag from Yodobashi Camera. Otherwise it had nothing to do with electronics. Chachamaru played Tomoe, Takumi played Yoshinaka, YOU played Hiyori, Kazuya played Kage, and one of the Duel Jewel guys played Yoshitsune. After Kazuya recreated Kage’s fight scene, Yoshitsune tried his hand at fighting the whatever-monster-shadow-thing that was, but had to do it with a hair dryer. >o<

Then there was intermission. At this time you could either line up to buy goods or food and hope that you got to meet the band members, who go out briefly to serve in the Cafeteria (ショック堂 not 食堂) and the Store, or line up to be photographed by the chairpersons, whose “collected smiles” end up in a yearbook of sorts sent to fanclub members later. My friends and I lined up to get goods and food, but I think none of us got to meet any member of F9.

After the intermission, the concert part finally started. Like a school festival where student rock bands perform covers, GACKT’s band covered such singers, bands, and groups as Mika Nakashima, GLAY, L’arc~en~Ciel, Shonan no Kaze, X Japan, and…we’ll come back to this later. XD He did sing one of his own songs, namely “Graffiti.”

My third favorite part of this show was Takumi’s “saxophone solo.” I don’t remember exactly what song this happened during (maybe the Checkers’ “Namida no Request”). Before the performance Seito Kaicho tells us that Takumi has been learning to play the saxophone just for this solo. There’s two or three parts in the song for the sax solo–but Takumi never quite plays! This was a reference to how Takumi didn’t go through with bungee jumping for the Nico Nico Douga YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz show. At the very end of the song, Takumi lets out one completely out of tune and improperly blown note.

My second favorite part of this show was when the band briefly covered L’arc~en~Ciel’s 「花葬」(“Kasou” which, written as 火葬 means “cremation” but here is written with the character for flower rather than fire). This is one of my absolute favorite L’arc songs. GACKT sang only the chorus, with Shinnosuke up on a ladder throwing flower petals at him, and other members sweeping the petals about on stage with huge brooms. But more amusingly, he impersonated HYDE’s wiggly dancing. About midway through GACKT stopped the dancing; one of my friends said that it was because he was on the verge of busting out laughing and so had to stop dancing.

My favorite part of this show was without a doubt the grand finale. It was…AKB48’s “Heavy Rotation”!

XDDD

Now, I don’t particularly like AKB48 or that song. But seeing GACKT having a blast dressed like a schoolgirl with little pink pom-poms in his hair, wearing the shortest skirt on stage, totally nailing every move in that dance, and smiling a smile that seemed to just be bursting out of him…♡♡♡! We were also very lucky in that we were seated not only in the 7th row, but also to the right of the stage, meaning that we had a nice view during a particular part of that dance. XDDD

After the show we went for one more round at the Cooperative Store, took more photos with the cardboard cutouts, and talked to some fans. I ran into some Fukuoka DEARS, as well as a fan I’d seen about the GACKT fan interwebs (who has a post with the show’s setlist–I hope you don’t mind me linking to you!).

Then my friends and I headed for Doutonbori (道頓堀), the famous street in Osaka that has the Glico billboard. (And I just now realized that I didn’t take a picture of it with my camera. >o<;;;; I’ll have to ask my friends to send me the pics they took.) We had takoyaki from a stall and then went to an okonomiyaki restaurant and reminisced about the show. Then we went to our hotels and called it a night.

☆

次回！：嵐、嵐、for dream.

MOON SAGA Week

Tags

GACKT, MOON SAGA, MOON SAGA Yoshitsune Hiden, MOON SAGA〜義経秘伝〜

This is over a week late, but I’ve been crazy busy. During all the mayhem, I was able to squeeze in one showing of MOON SAGA~Yoshitsune Hiden~ and one visit to the GACKT X KIMONO Project exhibit.

I went to the kimono exhibit on Tuesday the 14th with two friends. Admittedly, I only went to get the free “GACKT produced” tenugui advertised on the site. So I made a reservation and anxiously awaited the invitation as the day drew near.

If it weren’t for the Nemuri crest I’d think this envelope was from the Liar Game Office.

We get to the exhibition venue and not a soul was to be seen. This was Obon week, but it was still surprising considering the hustle & bustle just one block away. Our invitation was for 7PM, but we were a few minutes early. The friendly staff welcomed us, showed us around, and told us about the kimono. Two kimono that GACKT actually wore during Nemuri Kyoushirou were on display, and one staffer informed us that “at first, it smelled very strongly of Platinum Egoist.” >o<;

Perhaps the staff sensed that we weren’t gonna buy anything, as they just kept on emphasizing how expensive the kimono were. The older gentleman did say once or twice that the yukata were much more affordable, but still, no hard selling going on. Which is a shame for them as salespeople; despite my nearly complete lack of interest in wearing kimono or yukata it probably wouldn’t have taken much swaying for me to get the hot pink & black yukata with the Nemuri crest just for the hell of it. ^_^; It’s one of those “I’m in Japan, might as well” things.

The other piece that had me seriously considering parting with my hard-earned dough was the black and white kimono with the DEARS logo on it. I would never wear it, it was too beautiful for that! I think it may be the “secret model” the Kimono Project site was talking about; at least I haven’t seen it in any of the photos on the site of the various lines.

Shining just as brightly as the kimono were the huge posters of GACKT. When we jokingly asked how much for the posters, we were told, “we can’t sell them.” But when I squealed at one of them the older gentleman said, “100,000 yen.” I said, “I’ll pay! Give me time!!” XD

Anyway, despite our invitation saying that the showing was from 7 PM, at a little past seven the staff said to us, “We have the venue until seven, so…” With that they collected our invitations and the gentleman brought over the tenugui. Only what we saw in his hands wasn’t the tenugui my friends and I were expecting.

Perhaps the feeling that we were being given leftovers was what made getting this disappointing. Can’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but…not as advertised!

We left the exhibit feeling a bit confused, but oh well. Only two more days till seeing GACKT live again!

My ticket for MOON SAGA was for the final Fukuoka show on the 16th. The difficult thing about this was that I had a business trip to Nagasaki that same day. x_X

Well, saying “business trip,” the common translation for 出張, sure conjures up a different image than what it actually was, but that’s what it’s called when one goes somewhere other than their usual workplace on some work-related thing.

The thing that had been keeping me crazy busy was planning for the first ever overnight English camp put on by Fukuoka Prefecture, taking place in none other than the Dutch-themed park Huis Ten Bosch in Sasebou, Nagasaki Prefecture. It was decided that all ALTs involved in this camp should go to the park for a preview (good) on the 16th (yikes!).

It’s been a while since I’ve cut something that close!

We left the park an hour and a half behind schedule. Doors for the play opened at 5:45, but we were still on the bus some 17 kilometers from the city at that time. I was getting really anxious, and texted the friend who would also go to that performance to pick up one of each of the clear files for me just in case.  Once we finally got into the city I started checking subway times on my phone. The next 25 minutes of well-orchestrated timing and running, I must say, I’m rather proud of. >o<;

18:00 Check subway on phone, aim for the 18:07 subway
18:03 Our chartered bus pulls up to Hakata Station, our group leader just says “Go, go!” to me and I dash off forgetting to even say “otsukare” to the team.
18:07 Catch the subway
18:13 Arrive in Tenjin Station. I stay underground for a bit but since I’m not too familiar with the underground I go up once I see a sign for the Fukuoka Building. When I get on the top streets and cross Showa-doori, I notice another person running. I wonder, “Are they going to the play too?!” but then it hits me: the lights on these two blocks must turn green at the same time. So I dash off after this guy and just barely make it across the next light. I keep running!
18:23 Arrive at the Fukuoka Shimin Kaikan (normally a 15-20 minute walk from Tenjin Station, depending on pace)
18:25 Am seated in my 16th row seat sweating profusely but with time to spare before the curtains rise!

Unlike with the play Nemuri Kyoushirou, I didn’t want to read fan reports before seeing the show myself so that I could see how much I understood on my own. All I knew was that this was going to be some sort of magical fantasy version of the life of Minamoto no Yoshitsune, and that eventually there would be vampires, or the precursors to vampires (it is a part of GACKT’s whole MOON SAGA project after all).

The play initially did not disappoint. It was funny, GACKT was adorable, and there was pandering to the local audience by the truckload! One of my minor “complaints” about Nemuri last year (or whenever that was) was that GACKT did not participate in what little Fukuoka gags there were, but this time, the whole cast busted out niwaka masks while saying 「ごめーん！」during…I don’t even remember what scene it was. I was just geeked to see the masks. Later in the show, Benkei’s actor went down the left side of the audience handing out these autographed masks, saving the one signed by GACKT for a girl near the front.

About midway through, however, I started to wonder, “what is the point of this?” It probably didn’t help that I needed to use the bathroom and was waiting anxiously for an intermission that never came. Anyway, I had done very little reading up on the play, so other than the characters I didn’t know much what the story would be about. The sets were interesting, the costumes were cool for the most part (not impressed by the bootleg Jack Sparrow look on Yoshinaka ^_^;), the music was fitting, and the dancers did a great job. And Kage’s fight scene! WOW.

But still, as a story, I was left unsatisfied by ~Yoshitsune Hiden~. It felt anticlimactic. I know it’s part of a larger work, but the play should still be strong by itself, but that last fight scene left me thinking “…that’s it?” The use of wire work as cool and all, but…that’s it? I think I would feel like this play didn’t have a proper ending even if it weren’t for the Swarm of Green Ninjas scene from Nemuri Kyoushirou to compare it to.

The play ended, but then the cast did a slightly changed version of an earlier scene as an encore. (I assume it was an encore, as most of the audience seemed surprised by the cast reappearing on stage ready for that scene.) I can’t remember now if the credits rolled before or after this. In any case, as it was the last Fukuoka showing, I wanted to stick around and see if GACKT would peek out, but since I hadn’t bought any goods and didn’t want to end up in a long line (I had a seat close to an exit), nor did I want to make my friend wait, I busted out with the other patrons and went to get some goods.

I see Kage and think of Sephiroth, but my friend, a CLAMP fan, thought of one of their other characters.

It would be nice if shows were added at venues on Kyushu, then I’d like to see this play again and see if maybe the latter half doesn’t leave me so “meh” after having seen it once already. As it is, I was happy for the chance to see GACKT again for the first time in 10 months, and enjoyed the overall artistry of the play. Story-wise…I’m gonna have to wait and see what else the MOON SAGA has in store.

Nemuri Kyoushirou in Fukuoka and The Great Detour

Tags

GACKT, Nemuri Kyoshiro, Nemuri Kyoushirou

This post ended up being really long. I don’t want to break it up into several posts, so instead I’ll just clearly mark out three different sections.

THE PLAY

I went to the 4th Fukuoka performance of the play Nemuri Kyoushirou.  I got a seat on the right side of the 9th row.  I’m going to assume that many of the people who read this blog aren’t avid fans of GACKT nor old samurai movies that didn’t get major attention in the States, so I will briefly explain about Nemuri Kyoushirou in general before talking about the play.

The character of Nemuri Kyoushirou has been around for over 50 years.  He was introduced in period novels written by Renzaburo Shibata. Nemuri is a master swordsman conceived through the rape of his Japanese mother by a Portuguese man during a Black Mass. From what I’ve read, the original Nemuri is an antisocial drifter who kills people using his special technique, the “Engetsu Sappo,” which usually gets translated to English as “Full Moon Cut.”  I haven’t seen any of the original Nemuri Kyoushirou movies (some were released in the States as Sleepy Eyes of Death) but from what I gather, GACKT’s Nemuri is a much nicer person.

I didn’t catch the names of all the characters, and I don’t know the readings of their names as displayed on the cast page of the GACKT × Nemuri Project Website, so I will give this incomplete dramatis personae, listing the cast as was present at the Fukuoka show:

Nemuri Kyoushirou (played by GACKT): The main character, orphaned as a young boy.

Opium Dealer (played by Watabiki Katsuhiko): A man who has grown wealthy smuggling and dealing opium.  He (apparently) thinks Nemuri would get in the way of his business and wants him dead.

Opium Dealer’s Crony (played by Tsutsumi Daijiro): exactly what he sounds like.

Kazuma (played by Yamamoto Shouma): A young samurai whose father was killed one year ago.  He is told Nemuri was the killer.

Ayano (played by Tatsumi Natsuko):  Kazuma’s younger sister.

Long-faced Swordsman (played by Shimada Kyusaku): He instigates Kazuma’s drive for revenge.

Wise Old Dude (played by Tanaka Ken): exactly what he sounds like.

Mihoyo (played by Anzu Sayuri): Nemuri’s Love Interest, who bears a resemblance to his dead mother.

Older Lady (played by Arimori Narimi): A friend of Nemuri’s. This is one of those no-nonsense yet comical characters.

Kinpachi (played by Kodo Taya): A young man who looks up to Nemuri. A comic relief type character.

Tachikawa (played by Furumoto Shinnosuke): An older rakugo teller, friend of Nemuri.  Also provides much of the comic relief.

Now, I didn’t know most of this when I went to see the play.  I’d been too busy to know anything other than a little bit about the character of Nemuri himself.  But, I was able to understand the story, if not the characters’ names and all of their motivations.  However, it’s pretty easy to tell things like who’s the villain, who’s the real villain, who are the good guys, etc, in works of fiction, so my lack of fluency in Japanese didn’t get terribly in the way of my enjoyment of the play.

Alright, now, just in case, I should say: SPOILER WARNING!

There was an audible intake of breath when the curtain rose, revealing Nemuri standing majestically on the bare stage with a spotlight on him while tripped out music played.  He unsheathes his sword and begins to shadow fence gracefully.  There’s a screen at the back of the stage; the lights on it follow the movement of Nemuri’s sword.  The effect, while common in video games, seemed cheesy in a stage play, but oh well.  The final big slash of this sequence brings the play’s title up on screen, then the curtain drops.  I start to feel like I’m watching a play and a movie at the same time.

When the curtain rises once more, we see Opium Dealer and his Crony plotting to take care of Nemuri.  At this point, I had thought they were daimyou.  It was obvious from the set that they were wealthy, their cackles let us know that they were Bad Guys, but I didin’t know that they were actually in the drug trade, so I had absolutely no idea why they wanted Nemuri dead.  The stage goes dark while Opium Dealer laughs.

The stage remains dark, but then a light comes on: it looks like someone holding a flashlight under their face.  He yells something out that made me and half the room jump.  He then apologizes for surprising us, the lights come up, and we see he is a rakugo teller, performing on the street.  His little sign tells us his name: Tachikawa.  He leads the audience in a special clap/chant of the Hakata region, which makes the audience happy.  I’d seen this clapping thing at an enkai before, but didn’t know it was special to Hakata.

Now, I don’t remember the order of the scenes very well, but we are soon introduced to Kazuma and his younger sister Ayano.  He seems to ask Opium Dealer for permission to take out Nemuri as revenge for his father’s killing, and Opium Dealer agrees.  When Kazuma confronts Nemuri, Nemuri tells him that he has no recollection of killing his father. Kazuma attacks anyway, but is easily repelled.  After that, Long-faced Swordsman spars with Kazuma, and tells him he is too gentle to carry out the “katakiuchi,” which I rightly guessed meant “revenge.”  So, they all come up with a new plan: have Ayano gain employ in the house of Wise Old Dude, where Mihoyo is also staying, in order to get close to Mihoyo and use her as bait to lure Nemuri into another fight.

So, Ayano goes to work in Wise Old Dude’s house.  One night, while making preparations for moon viewing, Ayano gets a thorn in her finger while trying to pick a rose.  Nemuri pulls the thorn out with his teeth and wraps Ayano’s hand with a bit of cloth torn from his handkerchief.  Ayano is moved by his kindness, and tells him that she’s heard he’s killed many people, but that she can’t believe someone so kind could be a murderer.  He tells her not to get the wrong idea.

Then, Ayano leaves and Mihoyo comes with some sake.  She pours Nemuri a cup, he takes a sip, then tries to hand it to her.  Since she hesitated to take it back, I assumed that there was still sake in it and he wanted her to drink it.  I took this to be a gesture of affection; indeed, she drank from the cup without having to refill it, so I guess her hesitation indicated surprise at the gesture. Then, as Nemuri and Mihoyo are about to kiss (and everyone in the audience is swooning), Wise Old Dude walks in.

FAIL

XDDD

*Ahem* Anyway, he informs Nemuri that he suspects Opium Dealer has something to do with Kazuma.  Nemuri deduces that Ayano is Kazuma’s sister and that it’s no coincidence that she’s there.  However, no one yet seems terribly fazed by this.

Ayano tells Kazuma of Nemuri’s kindness, and her doubts that he is the one who killed their father.  Long-faced Swordsman, who was listening nearby, enters the room to say that Nemuri was certainly the killer.

I think it was here that there was a scene with just Nemuri on stage looking emo dramatic.  He slowly walks across the stage, teary-eyed and intense, while a video showing the Black Mass plays on the screen behind him.  A voiceover tells us his father’s name: “Ferunando!!!” I mean, Fernando.  I really didn’t see the point of showing this, but it was a bit hard for me to hold in my laughter at hearing GACKT say a name in katakana Spanish as if it were the dirtiest thing in the world.  Near the end of this short scene, GACKT is shown on screen (that is to say, there’s a camera capturing him live), staring intensely into space.  I thought it was a cool effect.  It’s something you see in concerts, but I’d never thought something like that would be done in a play.  (Then again, I’ve been to very few plays in my life.)

Then there was a plot point I really didn’t understand.  Opium Dealer gives his Crony something very small but very important.  Crony wraps it up in his furoshiki and says he will be careful.  Now, Kinpachi and Older Lady had been snooping around (because they’ve got Nemuri’s back like that). They find out about this item and steal it.  Crony goes to Long-faced Swordsman and says Opium Dealer will kill him if he finds out the Item has gone missing.  Long-faced Swordsman says he will take care of it.  It seems he knew that it was Nemuri’s friends who were behind the theft, as he kidnaps Older Lady.  Nemuri shows up, gives back the item, and saves her.

I believe it was around this time that there was intermission.  I went out to the goods tables, picked up some items to give to friends, as well as some presents for myself.  Of course I got the clear files! ^o^

I should mention that the obi GACKT wore in the first half of the play was way, waaaaay shinier, way more glitterific than the one used for the promo photos. XDD

After break time, the play picks back up with another rakugo performance by Tachikawa.  He reenacts a fight, loses, and pretends to bleed mentaikou (spicy fish eggs for which Fukuoka is known). Then, he goes out into the audience, greeting those seated in the Premium Seats, and stopping at one girl in the front row.  He asks her name and if she’d go on a date to Canal City with him.  She says yes.  He’s surprised, but says that unfortunately, there’s no time.  I don’t remember how, but he segued this into singing the refrain of GACKT’s song “kimi no tame ni dekiru koto”! The audience starts clapping in time, but this goes on for just a few seconds before Tachikawa says goodbye and runs off backstage.  The curtain rises to reveal Wise Old Dude, Kinpachi, and Older Lady.  Still in the comedy mode, they (for some reason I didn’t catch) bust out some Niwaka masks (little red masks that come on boxes of a particular brand of senbei from the Hakata region).

Then it’s back to the story.  Ayano begs Kazuma not to go through with his revenge, but as he won’t stop, she asks him to at least not harm Mihoyo when they kidnap her.  So, Ayano gets Mihoyo to leave Wise Old Dude’s house with her.  When everyone realizes Mihoyo and Ayano are no longer in the house, they go out to look for them. Meanwhile, Ayano confesses everything to Mihoyo, who reveals she already knew because Nemuri had figured it out.  She then states that she’s not worried because she knows Nemuri will come rescue her.  (At this point I gag and roll my eyes. ^_^;)  Ayano, moved by Mihoyo’s magnanimity and her faith in Nemuri, feels awful about everything.  Then Opium Dealer’s men come and take Mihoyo away in a raggedy palanquin.

Several things happen leading up to Kazuma finding out who really killed his father.  Long-faced Swordsman betrays the Crony and kills him.  When Kazuma finds the dead Crony and sees the wound on his body, he recognizes it (?) as the same one on his father’s corpse.  It seemed to me that he had some way of knowing that Nemuri hadn’t been to the one to kill the Crony, because when he reaches the clearing where Long-faced Swordsman, the female hostages, and the Dealer’s men are, he asks Long-face how he can be sure that Nemuri killed his father.  The jig is up, and Long-face fights Kazuma, injuring him severely before Nemuri shows up, pushing Opium Dealer along at sword point. Dealer’s men threaten to kill the women, to which Nemuri responds, “I don’t care if you kill those women, but I’ll kill him.”  The Opium Dealer is groveling, scared out his mind (which the audience found exceedingly funny), and orders his men to release the women.  When they do, Nemuri lets him go.  Nemuri orders Kazuma to run away with Mihoyo and Ayano.  They do so.  Then, a bunch of ninja attack Nemuri.

When I say “a bunch of ninja,” I mean a whole lotta ninja.  I think this fight scene lasted at least 5 minutes.  Think Zack fighting off the Shinra troops near the end of Crisis Core, just that Nemuri wins (and lets his kimono open a lot in the process).  Then its time for the showdown between Nemuri and Long-faced Swordsman.

At this point, the previously humble sparkles that followed Nemuri’s slashes Leveled Up into a Red Sparkle Beam.  Long-face’s slashes were accompanied on screen by a Blue Sparkle Beam.  Think of the light saber fights in Star Wars, or the magic beam fights in Harry Potter.  I could’ve done without this effect, but it was easy not to look directly at it since my eyes were glued to GACKT.  XDDD  Nemuri’s winning the fight, and it’s time for the death blow, the Engetsu Sappo.  This move consists of Nemuri slowly making a circular motion about himself with his sword, before there’s a flash of darkness and the sound effect representing someone getting sliced up pretty painfully.  When the lights come back, Nemuri and Long-face are standing opposite where they had been.  Long-face topples over, then takes 5 minutes to die, laughing the whole time.  After the fact, I understood that as a swordsman, his motivation was to witness the Engetsu Sappo.

At the play’s conclusion, Kazuma begs Nemuri for forgiveness.  He asks why Nemuri didn’t tell him straight out that he hadn’t killed his father.  He asks if all this time, Nemuri had been watching over him, guiding him to find the truth “by his own heart.”  Nemuri (who had said precisely this earlier, that he wanted Kazuma to find the truth out “by this own heart,”) in typical Bad Boy With A Heart of Gold fashion, denies doing something so nice, and says that someone like him would never care so much.  He coolly walks off stage, and Kazuma is left in awe.

At the very end, Nemuri comes back out on the bare stage.  There’s a voiceover where he’s talking about himself, and then the camera shot comes back behind him.  He suddenly looks dead into the camera.  This was extremely intense, since the shot was a live close-up.  I felt like he could see through everyone in the audience! The lights go out, the curtain drops, the end credits are projected onto it.  Finally, the play’s logo comes back up.  The house lights come on, and an announcer states that it’s the end of the performance.  The people in the Premium Seats get up to leave, and I’m confused.  No curtain call?

So it was.  As I was walking towards the train station I overheard a woman say, “I felt like I was watching a movie.  They could’ve at least come out to greet the audience at the end.” I must say, I agree.  GACKT’s concerts, the ones I’ve been to anyway, end with a 10-15 minute “talk down,” so to speak, to put an end to the show.  So for a play to end with rolling credits on the screen and no curtain call was pretty weird.

Overall, I enjoyed the play.  I understood most of it, and it’s always a pleasure to watch GACKT doing anything.  ^o^;  But, the story itself was simplistic and predictable (I knew Long-faced Swordsman was the real villain by his second scene).   The sets were well done, the music was good, and I liked the use of live shots in the play.  The only thing I would definitely take out, or at least tone down, is the Sparkle Beams.  Sparkle Beams do not belong in the theater! >o<

Now, for the adventure that helped put holes in my memory of the play.

THE GREAT DETOUR

I was unlucky getting back home from the play!  There was an accident that shut down the Nishitetsu trains and it took me two hours to get home (normaly it takes 20 minutes).  The accident happened just one minute after the train I was on had left from Nishitetsu Tenjin Station.  (Nishitetsu is the private rail company; its Oomuta Line runs nearly parallel to Japan Railways’ Kagoshima Line).  At the second stop, we sit on the track for a while, then an announcement comes that said something about a Limited Express train.  I was on the Express, and while it’s common to let the Local trains sit in the station so that the Limited ones can pass, I’d never seen an Express do that.  Two minutes later there’s another announcement and we have to get off the train.  It switches its sign to “out of service” and I’m confused as hell.  Oh well, whatever, I’ll just get on the Local that’s sitting across the platform, I think.  I stand in that train for some 3 minutes before an announcement kicks everybody off of that train as well.  ^_^;

After 30 minutes and two packed trains from Tenjin letting off all their passengers and switching to “out of service,” I get worried and since I don’t understand train terminology for things that don’t happen every day, I couldn’t really understand the announcements.  The station master was busy trying to refund fares and answer questions.  So, I asked another passenger waiting on the platform what was going on.  She said she hadn’t been listening, and asks these older dudes, who explain there was an accident somewhere between where we were and Kasugabaru Station.  They ask me how far I’m going, and as it turns out the woman is going to the same station as I, she proposes we share a cab down to Kasugabaru Station, as the trains going down should be moving from there.

So we get a cab, and the woman tells the driver to take us to “Kasugabaru.” I thought that was strange given that that’s the name of both the city and the station, but thought maybe it was just one of those things that gets understood from context.  The driver asks, “There was a train accident wasn’t there, so the trains aren’t moving?” The woman doesn’t answer.  He asks again.  Silence.  So I said, “Yes, I think so, but…” thinking the woman just didn’t want to chit chat with the driver.  But then, after 15 minutes of silence, the woman asks the driver if he knew anything about the train accident! Then he asks her where exactly he should be taking us.  The woman answers “Kasugabaru,” the driver is confused, so then I’m confused.  He asks her three more times, slightly rephrasing his question, and all the woman says is “Uhhhh…”

I was like @_@?  Is she actually not Japanese and doesn’t understand?  Or is she deaf?  The driver seemed worried, so I piped up, saying, “I thought we were going to Kasugabaru Station because maybe the trains are moving from there.”  The woman says “Oh yes!” and the driver is relieved.

@_@??

Unfortunately, the trains weren’t moving from there either.   So the woman says to me, “we’re going to have to go to JR.” So, we walk for about 10 minutes to get to JR Kasuga Station.

Once there, the woman spoke to me freely, and I noticed that she talked a bit strangely.  I’m used to how Koreans and Chinese speak Japanese, and this was different.  So, I wonder if maybe she just has a slight speech impediment and so avoids talking to Japanese people, but felt comfortable with a foreigner.

In the end, everything worked out.  I parted ways with my unexpected traveling companion once we reached our station. I got home at 11PM.

TO ADD ICING TO THE CAKE OF SUCKINESS

Friday morning, I told my supervisor about the whole adventure, and she told me she’d seen on the news that a car had been in the railroad crossing in the path of the Limited Express, but she didn’t know whether it was that the car had stalled, or the person had stopped on purpose.  If it was on purpose, the guy accomplished his goal.  Perhaps jacking up the trains was a final “F.U.!” to the world.  ^_^;

Also that morning, the teacher who thinks it’s infinitely hilarious that I’m a GACKT fan engaged me in this conversation:

Teacher: So how was the play?

Me: Oh, it was good! I could understand the main points of the story and enjoyed seeing GACKT.

Teacher: I was talking about you to 3-1 yesterday.

Me: Oh?

Teacher: I told them you were a miihaa.

Me: *Thinking of the Spanish word* Mija?

Teacher: Miihaa.  Do you know this word?

Me: No.

Teacher: *Laughing* Look it up in the dictionary.  *Laughing*

Me: Okay. … “Lowbrow”!?!

Teacher: ミーハー! *Runs off laughing*

Me: @_@????

So, my Mac’s dictionary tells me it means “lowbrow.”  Rikaichan says “poser,” as does Jim Breen’s.  Eijirou says “groupie, fangirl/boy.”  The Japanese Wikipedia says “someone who follows trends and is easily influenced.”  These are all different in significant ways, and I’m not sure which to believe.  I wasn’t amused about the teacher having this conversation with students I don’t teach.  Even if the connotation of “miihaa” is not so disparaging as “poser” or “groupie,” it feels like I’m being made fun of, and for what?  What do the students learn from that?  That it’s funny when foreigners are big fans of Japanese artists? It just left me confused.

A Mock School Concert

Tags

Camui Gakuen, Camui Gakuen de Fukinasai, GACKT, Gakuensai, Kobe

I’d been debating whether I should post about this concert over on this blog, and two weeks later decided to go ahead say how it went considering I’d mentioned it briefly before going.

So, Saturday November 6th two friends and I got to get up at some unholy time in the AM (7 or so) to catch a shinkansen to Kobe for the GACKT concert I’d won tickets to.  It’s a relatively short ride at just under 3 hours.

Now, this concert, besides having had ticket sales limited to fanclub members, was special in that you had to go dressed in something that resembled a school uniform (or an actual uniform, of course, if you had one and wanted to wear it).  But the mock school thing didn’t end there!  People who’d won tickets were called “gakuensei” (but in one of the many puns, this was written 楽園性 which says “rakuensei” but the “sei” is written…oh, let’s just say it’s written with a different kanji than usual! ^_^;) and had to take a 3 x 4 cm ID style photo so that a “student ID” could be made for them!  The ID had slots for “credits,” and one credit could be earned by going to a concert.  Only someone who went to every single one of these Gakuensai concerts could accumulate enough credits to “pass” to the next grade. We were informed at the concert that everyone had “failed” the grade last year. ^o^;  People who were going as guests of someone who’d won tickets didn’t get a Student ID, but they still had to wear mock uniforms and were called 他校性 (takousei) meaning “student of another school.”

So, we’d arrived in Kobe around 11:15, but after queuing to reserve our seats for the shinkansen back home that same night, and taking a few photos with the cardboard cutouts of “Student Council President” (meaning, GACKT himself) and crew at the concert venue, it was time to line up for 入楽手続き (continuing with the pun, this is read as “nyuugaku tetsuzuki”) meaning “Admissions.”  After that, we all tried the YOU Curry at the ショック堂 (get it?), bought some goods, and by then, the doors opened so we lined up to go in.

Now, this whole concert lasted a good 4 hours, though there was about a 30 minute break between the first half which was more like a “culture festival” and then the concert proper.  The event started up with, appropriately enough, a 始業式 (shigyoushiki), meaning Opening Ceremony.  First, the “kyoutou-sensei” of the Camui Gakuen (that’s the name of the mock school BTW) literally hopped and skipped up on stage and gave a speech that included instruction on “proper speech.”  Basically, we had to use old Japanese as responses.  Instead of various greetings such as “konnichi wa,” we had to say “gokigen yo” (ご機嫌よ); instead of “hai!” we had to say “kashikomari!”; and instead of “sumimasen,” “goburee” (ごぶれぇ).

Then the bald-save-for-a-single-braid-with-a-big-red-bow “kouchou-sensei” came up on stage and gave a speech.  I don’t remember much of it now.

Then, the man himself, seito kaichou (Student Council President), sloooooowly sauntered up on stage to give a speech.  ^o^;  Four audience members were picked to be fukuiinchou (副委員長 meaning “vice-chairman,” in this case, of the Student Council).  Along with the name of the concert (“Fukinasai” written as フキナ祭), “fukuiinchou” was another word that for reasons I don’t really understand, was always pronounced as if with a stutter. That is to say, GACKT always stressed the two i’s as being separate sounds.

Hm, well, the rest might not be of much interest to those who read this blog out of interest in someday doing JET, since the mock school stuff pretty much ends here.  After this point, one could say the part before the concert proper was like a bunkasai.  There was a skit that was sorta making fun of the play Nemuri Kyoushirou, then a dance-off, and then…I think that was it before the break.  After that was the concert itself, which was all covers.  Despite only being familiar with 3 of the songs, I really enjoyed the concert. I hope I get to go to another Gakuensai someday! My plaid skirt will be waiting. ^O^♡

I couldn’t take photos inside the venue of course, but here’s an article on a Japanese page about the show with some high resolution photos! 「GACKTが本気で遊びの楽園祭（学園祭）を開催！」: http://www.news2u.net/releases/78122?ref=rss

Okay, you’ve read this far eh?  You deserve some amusing photo to look at.

In real life, I don’t think I even knew who my student council president was.

That photo was taken before I bought the official school tie. ^o^;;;

Speaking of that tie, last Wednesday was the first day of Mid-Year Seminar, a meeting of ALTs and JTEs.  Since we have to dress super-formally, I put on my formal blazer (not the one in the photo), and when I looked in the mirror, the outfit felt empty.  It needed something. And the red & pinkish gold tie of the Camui Gakuen matched my light pink shirt too perfectly not to wear it!  So, I had a few Japanese people (mostly men) staring at me with WTF?! looks on their faces, which I found thoroughly amusing.  The best one had to be this one guy on the train platform.  I was going home, and as the train pulled in to some station or other, I see this grown man wearing bright yellow leggings and a bright yellow skirt.  And when I say bright, I mean BRIGHT.  The train pulls in, I see him…and he glares at me like few have glared at me before!  I don’t know if it was because I was dressed “like a man,” or because I was looking at him in his “girls'” outfit.

You’d think two people cross-dressing on a crowded train would’ve had more empathy between them.

XDDD Okay, there’s enough in this post to give you, O Reader, your Daily Recommended Dose of Wonk.  Don’t you just feel the life energy pulsing through you with unprecedented zest?!

I’m Wearing Plaid!

Haroo!

This isn’t for Halloween.  This is my 制服 (uniform) for GACKT’s mock school concert.

The online store I ordered from did not let me down. Well, I did measure myself about 10 billion times and check each garment’s size 10 trillion times before ordering.  My co-ALT lent me one of his ties.  Now I’m ready to go to Kobe in my fake uniform and be a “student” in GACKT’s school!

For the record, the uniform of the school I work at looks nothing like what I’m wearing.  That would make me feel kinda weird. Well, weirder than this whole thing already kinda does, but oh well. It’s a funny kind of weird. ^_^;

Two Nights with YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz

Tags

GACKT, YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz, YFC

It’s to be expected that a post about a rock show would have obscenities and explicit content, but in the interest of keeping this blog relatively clean, I’ve edited the post I wrote for my personal blog to post it here as well.  After all, it’s thanks to being on JET that I can finally see GACKT live.  So, here we go!

Thursday and Friday I went to see GACKT and his band, YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz, at Zepp Fukuoka.  Both shows were great, but Friday’s was noticeably better.  There’s too many sights, sounds, and feelings to try to do a chronological telling, so I’ll write in vignettes.

Thursday Night (July 1st)

As expected, there weren’t as many people on Thursday.  Judging by the signs with the ticket numbers, there were only some 1600 people in the standing room plus how many ever there were up on the second floor seats.  My friend and I had tickets numbered in the 1330s, but when we went in many people weren’t trying to get up as far forward as they could, so we ended up pretty close to the stage; I estimate some 25 feet (8 meters) away.  We were close enough to be able to see GACKT’s face clearly and could see the sweat flying from his hair when he would head bang.

Around 6:45 someone (it wasn’t GACKT) came on the mic from backstage to lead the crowd in “kiai practice.” Kiai are cheers or fighting yells.  There was lots of OSU! and ANIKI! and slurred, rolled-R manly Japanese.  Don’t know if I understood it correctly, but after the first “ANIKI!” it sounded like the guy said, “What the hell was that?!  It’s not “anikki” it’s “aniki”!  Can’t you even pronounce right bakayaro?!”

The concert proper started on time.  GACKT walked in carrying his sword and started “ZAN.”  I couldn’t hear his voice very well and he seemed tired.  He was staggering, but I couldn’t tell if he was stagger-dancing or just plain fatigued-staggering.  (After seeing him Friday, I think it was from fatigue.)  It wasn’t until the fourth or firth song, “LU:NA” that I could clearly hear his voice.

His little strip-teasing during “Dybbuk” and finally the ripping off of his shirt during the bridge of “LU:NA” were wonderful. ^_^

I think it was after this that GACKT led the crowd in random shouting, first calling on the men, then the women, then finally just yelling “YFC! YFC! YFC!” over guitar feedback.

Then there was…GACKT shimmying during “EVER.”  Oh. My. Savior.  It was so cute, so adorable, yet utterly ridiculous.  I was simultaneously thinking of the Chiquita Banana lady and Belscard, the antagonist GACKT voices in the MMORPG Dragon Nest for which “EVER” is the theme.

There were several times during “Flower” and “Uncontrol” that GACKT put the mic down, I assume so that the audience would sing, but unfortunately, it was only during the first verse of “Flower” that the crowd actually did, or at least, that’s all I heard.  I felt bad for GACKT.

In general, I would say that the crowd wasn’t very frenetic.  It was strange to see the older people (40s, maybe even 50s) just standing, watching without swaying or otherwise giving any sign that they were listening to music and enjoying it.  Especially given that the “Rules for Private School Students,” which are the “rules” for participating in the live that among other things dictate that “students” (the audience) show their enthusiasm by yelling “osu” and “aniki”, etc, say that “the front is dangerous, if you can’t handle it, fall back!” and “only you can protect your body!” (translating loosely).  I was expecting to see a mosh pit, but alas, there was no moshing.  The fist/hand pumping was as violent as it got.  The girl in front of me nearly hit me and my friend in the face a couple of times, and I stepped on someone’s toes when I jumped up and down without thinking.

Thankfully, the weather was relatively cool, so it wasn’t hot in the hall. I could feel the air conditioning above my head, and even surrounded by all those people, it wasn’t unbearable.  I was dressed lightly, but I don’t know how the girl in the maid outfit could stand it.  Most people were dressed normally though, a plain shirt and capris, skirt, or shorts.

After the second to last song, when GACKT and the band went offstage, people started clapping and chanting “YFC.”  It seemed rather staid to me.  I thought, “Is this supposed to be the audience calling the band out for an encore?” As I had observed during my school’s bunkasai, I have the impression that Japanese think encores are mandatory, so they don’t shout with all their might to make the band come out.  Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s the idea I have.  I wanted them to yell louder!  In my mind I was screaming, “Come on Fukuoka!  Don’t embarrass yourself! It’s bad enough only the Friday show sold out, so at least SCREAM!!!” ^o^;

My friend  told me that the Japanese people around us had a look on their faces like “OMG are these people really screaming?”  I did notice that the people in our section, with the exception of the boy to our right, really weren’t saying anything (even if their fist pumping was violent).  The people closer to the front were better though.

During the last song, “Uncontrol -Kyouki Ranbu edition-” the crowd once again left GACKT hanging when he wanted them to sing.  Maybe a few people way up front sang for him, but I couldn’t hear them.

At the end there was another screaming session of “YFC!” and what sounded like it was supposed to be a big cat’s “raow.”  During the call outs for men and women, GACKT said 「やっぱり九州の男は強い！」(“As expected, Kyuushuu men are strong!”).  I didn’t understand what he said about Kyuushuu women, but my friend and I woo’ed fiercely even though we’re not Kyuushuu women.  LOL  Then he asked the men if they would join him for another men’s-only live at the Budoukan, and asked the women if they would join him at Tokyo Dome.

Once the band went off and the lights came back up, GACKT came on the mic from backstage and did a cutesified yet rough「忘れ物のないように」(“Careful not to forget any of your things” and said a bunch of other stuff I didn’t understand, and finally, said “Buy all the goods you fools!  If there’s anything left, we’ll have to commit seppuku!”

Thus commanded by GACKT, my friend and I went to get some goods.  I got a face towel, a Gakucchi, and the YFC Box. Very few people were buying goods, and even before the concert, there were sometimes only one or two people at the goods tables.  I felt a bit bad for GACKT some more.  ^_^;

My hauls!

The assembled box with photocards inside.

When we sat down to put our hauls into our bags, a Japanese fan approached us in English to try to sell some tickets for Friday’s show, but unfortunately all the people we called were either unavailable or couldn’t spare the money for not even the discounted tickets.  Oh well, we tried.

We saw YFC!

Friday Night (July 2nd)

Friday I had arranged to meet some friends at the hall.  I was waiting for them outside when it started to rain, so I texted them to let them know I would go on ahead.  This time, my tickets were for the second floor, as standing room sold out either before tickets went on sale to the general public, or in the 10 minutes before I got to the Loppi to buy my tickets the day they went on sale.

Once again, no one was at the goods tables.  But I hoped that with more people, the crowd would show more enthusiasm.  They did!  Whenever something was thrown out into the crowd, there was a visible fight for it.  People were louder with their kiai, and always sang when GACKT gave the chance (but he only gave two chances this time).  There was a cute moment when GACKT did a very calm, not terribly forceful fist-bump with someone in the front row who had their fist up.  ^o^; (I also found GACKT’s half-done head of cornrows amusing in a similar manner.)

This time GACKT was ON from the very beginning.  I could hear him clearly and he didn’t look tired at all, there was no staggering of any kind.  I didn’t know whether to be relieved (i.e. “Yay!  GACKT got some sleep and possibly ate something!”) or even more worried (i.e. “No! GACKT drank 10 espressos and took a fistful of diazepam!”).

Since we were in the seated area this time, I had much more freedom to move.  I head banged and jumped around relatively freely, though I did apologize to the girl behind me the one time my hand smacked hers.  The older lady next to me would yell out “GAKUTOO!” and something else I didn’t understand every now and then, but my friend and I were still the loudest in the section.  Or more accurately, I was the loudest in the section.  ^o^  I had been worried that I wouldn’t be able to yell since I’d woken up with a sore throat from the previous show, but, やっぱり、being that much further back motivated me to reach new decibel levels.  Both friends I went to the concerts with later said (in what I think might have been as much complaint as it was compliment) that I had “some lungs on [me]” and “really showed how excited” I was.” ^O^

Now, Thursday night I’d had the urge to yell “KFC!” instead of “YFC!” but didn’t, but this time my friend said to me, “I really wanna yell ‘KFC’.”  We tried to do it together, but it proved too funny and only got two out before it turned into “k–LOLOL kK F ahahaahahaa!”  I also let lose and yelled 「福岡もっと叫びましょう！！！」(“Fukuoka let’s scream more!!!”) because it was really starting to bug me that the audience wasn’t trying very hard to get the band to come back out after the second to last song.  I also did a yell that’s sort of like a Hispanic equivalent of a kiai; you hold a rolling-R at high pitch and let it turn into a laugh.

Everything else was pretty much the same.  At the end GACKT said something about how he was also a man of Kyuushuu (Okinawa is sometimes considered a part of Kyuushuu) and that Kyuushuu was the best.  The message from backstage was similar, though I didn’t hear the threat of seppuku if the goods didn’t sell out.

This time we actually had to wait in line to buy goods after the show, but no more than 10 minutes.  I had meant to buy another face towel, since my bracelet caught on the one I had and pulled some threads out, but I forgot.  I did pick up 5 bags of YELLOW FRIED CHIPz.

My friends and I then went to Hard Rock Café (it’s right next to Zepp) to have dinner, but were so busy talking about the show that we didn’t even open the menu till the waitress came over to ask what we would like to drink.  Whoops.

After that we hopped on the subway, then went our separate ways.

It was a great two nights!

This afternoon, I woke up with everything sore.  My neck from head banging, abs from clenching to scream louder, arms from pumping, legs from jumping, and throat from screaming.  But I could be in more pain, so by GACKT’s apparent logic, I wasn’t serious enough!

This was my lunch today:

YELLOW FRIED CHIPz: Part of a balanced diet.

^o^

Now it’s time to start saving up for Premium or SS seat tickets for when the Nemuri Kyoushirou play comes to Fukuoka in December. ^o^