Welcome to the Wonderful World of Fansubbing; Creating KIDS

ICU's pace of work gradually grounded to a complete halt, leaving in it's wake a lot of projects claimed with no immediate hope of ever being subbed, a group of staff members with suddenly no active group, and no motivation to work on the projects that they had already been tasked with, and many fans patiently waiting for those same quality fansubs that ICU was known for, unknowing about the tragedy that had befallen the group.

Some six months passed, with only minimal renewed activity from ICU every now and then. Hulk would return, tell us that ICU would return, maybe get out a single project (which had probably actually been finished weeks, if not months, prior) before going dark again.

And then Hyakupa, too, who had been releasing regularly for most of this period, started to dry up with releases, leaving only Hello!Fansubs as the last remaining of the larger active groups of the previous era, which was something of a trinity between H!F, Hyakupa and ICU, with several other smaller groups releasing around - many of whom had been majorly prolific groups themselves back in their day, such as HPS.

But then Firren and I were having a little conversation, talking about our respective fansub groups of ICU and Hyakupa, lamenting the fact that production had slowed, and that there were several projects which we really wanted to see subbed but both groups refused to touch for different reasons. He-Hulk had a very restrictive policy about projects to be subbed, in that ICU would focus mostly on projects he deemed to be "interesting". Something where you learned something about your Idol. And most projects with a script or any kind of acted performance he deemed to be intrinsically "boring", and usually didn't even bother watching such DVDs or movies. Hyakupa, on the other hand, wouldn't touch anything that they deemed to be too boring, which usually meant smaller projects or anything deemed "too old". 

Well, we joked about creating our own fansub group to sub those projects, talking mostly then about the Maasa and Nacky special edition PB makings. It wasn't the first time it had come up, either. We had entertained the thought several times, even from the days when I was still a H!F trainee before ICU. 

At this point, however, Maasa's movie had a blog which was being updated almost every weekday with pictures and small tit-bits of information relating to the production, or the promotion, of the movie. Whilst, at first, I had the help of Pukovnik Krv to translate these entries, he dropped out of the project and I was left translating these entries every day by myself, and I'm quite proud of the effort achieved. But this did have the effect where, because I was posting these translations in the Hello!Online Maasa thread every day, or whatever, people would overestimate my ability to actually understand Japanese. Translating those blogs had been heavily-reliant on various dictionaries*.

*Even, strangely enough, online translators like Google Translate. It's almost always a rubbish translation, but sometimes when the grammar would throw me and I couldn't work out how to construct the translated sentence, I'd look at Google or Babelfish and see the jumbled mess of words and suddenly inspiration would strike.

Anyway, Firren told me to take a look at Maasa and see if I could translate any. I did, and I couldn't. There was some there I could, and a lot there that I couldn't. But I did know someone who might be interested. A translator I had worked with in ICU, and the only member of ICU aside from He-Hulk I had ever actually spoken to, CynicaltheCat.

I created a carefully worded message to him, designed to pitch the idea of our sub-group to him and hopefully procure a translator through his recruitment. Turned out to be more effort than was actually needed, as he told me that he just read the lines "We're a fansub group which will focus primarily on Hello!Project Kids" and he knew that he wanted to join. Success! Suddenly our new fansub group had gone from being a little joke between Firren and I to a reality. We had everything we needed to start a fansub group. A timer, a translator, and an Encoder - any other roles could be filled in by the 3 people we already had.

So we gathered in a temporary IRC channel on the EFNet network, and got down to business. Main items on the agenda: decide on our first project; and decide on a name. And, like all great societies and groups, the more fun creative process of deciding on a name took priority. We threw around several ideas, several of them not actually serious. We thought of just using our initials ([CDF] - Cynical, Dran, Firren); we thought of calling ourselves [AKB], just for the irony; we thought of [HKF] (Hello! Kids Fansubs)...

But all of them just didn't work. They were either funny at first, but we knew that we'd regret the name after the first few releases, or they were just too dull. And then Firren said, "Why not just call ourselves KIDS?" and at last we had found our identity. The name was short, just rolls off the tongue, and most importantly, it was catchy.

So, now that we knew who we were, we had to know what we were doing. Firren and I already wanted to do the Maasa and Nacky DVDs, but we asked Cynical if he had any ideas, which there were a few. But we agreed that we'd get those out of the way quickly and get on to one of his choices later. He hadn't seen either of them, however, so he had to go download the files, watch them, and decide if he wanted to work on them, which we felt was fair, so we did just that. When he went off to bed, waiting for those files to download, Firren and I decided we should just assume that he would greenlight them and start work immediately, so when he did come back the following day and said, "Okay!", we wouldn't have to wait as long on the timing finished before he could start. So, partly out of anticipation of this, and partly because I was just bored and couldn't find anything better to do, I actually finished timing it that day, before we even had confirmation that he wanted to work on it.

And then disaster struck.

The following morning, I awoke to find a new Hello!Fansubs release on the H!O tracker. Morning Days Vol.1. It was a project that ICU had announced they would sub months ago. A project which CynicaltheCat himself had translated. This is a truly devastating thing to happen to you. Maybe it's not even that rational, but when you work hard on a project, which someone else goes and releases first, grabbing all the downloads and rendering your own work virtually meaningless, it's very easy to get angry. This kind of thing happens often in the world of anime fansubbing, or manga scanlating. But with Idol DVDs there isn't the same number of fansubbers out there, and so clashes become all the more frustrating since the fansubber's role in this community isn't to be the first to release and to beat the other groups, but to provide quality translations for people who can't speak the original language. So when someone undercuts you like that, you feel angry and frustrated because you know that any work you have done has been wasted, and could have been better spent translating something else.

Anyway, the timing of this couldn't have been more inappropriate. Only one day after we had created KIDS and recruited Cynical to our cause, and we're hit by another bad case of inter-subgroup politics. This one led to Cynical, later that day upon learning of this news, to leave KIDS and ICU indefinitely, and take a hiatus from fansubbing, instead focusing on his studies and on enjoy the simple life of a regular fan. Sounds eerily familiar. But the survival of our group had been thrown into a critical state, as quickly and as spontaneously as it had begun. 

And so, without a translator, things were looking dire. Luckily when we first recruited Cynical, he told us at that time that he also recommended a couple of other ICU translators, who I had no experience with, but had helped him a lot with his own translations. Those were Xie and Lone!Wolf. At the time I had no idea how to contact Xie, but I knew how to get in touch with L!W, so clinging to the cards we had been dealt, we tried to turn the situation around and I contacted him. He responded and, with a little more persuasion (but surprisingly again not as much as I expected) than Cynical required, he agreed to join KIDS. The only condition? We'd take on a small project that he had already been working on solo in return for his help. 

We decided quickly that we wanted to differentiate ourselves from our "parent" groups, if you will. Cynical before had suggested remaining a part of ICU (which was actually still in the plan anyway*) but forming something of a sub - or splinter-group. Branching out to sub what we want, but maintaining those ties to both ICU and Hyakupa, meaning we would still have access to the resources of those parent groups. But this went against much of the ideas Firren and I had about what we wanted KIDS to be. Independent from those two groups, and the policies we disagreed with, and to be recognised as a totally new and independent fansub group because of that.

*The original idea was to create this group, independent as above, but to also, individually, remain part of and work as members of our original groups too. KIDS was to be very much a secondary project to work on when we weren't busy with our primary group. But, while Firren has remained very true to his ties in Hyakupa, ICU's future isn't quite so clear. It continues to sit there like an old ship in dry dock waiting for it's captain. I've begun to think of KIDS as the primary group, and have no idea if ICU will ever return, or what shall happen when it does.

We took one look at the way ICU is structured, and knew that we didn't want to follow that, is that structure is the main reason why ICU is in the mess it is now. Everything there was very centralised and compartmentalised. Everything must pass through the central hub, which was Hulk. He told you what to do, he retrieved the completed work and passed it on to the next person, he finished and released the projects himself. Because of this there was very little communication within the group, and no-one had any idea what anyone else was doing. It was a simple case of "Okay. Here's my work. Let me do that. Done. What's next?"

And, while that certainly sounds like a very efficient system, it did come with one fatal flaw, which is that once you take out the central hub, all the dependent nodes stop working. The whole network comes crashing down, and you're left with a bunch of people who have no idea what's going on. So we opted to take a more confederate approach and have no central hub. What this really translates to is that, unlike H!F and ICU, which have very clear leaders, we decided to model our structure closer to Hyakupa, which has no leader. 

This also translates into the way we treat our staff list. H!F use a very standard method of crediting their staff. At the start of the video, usually during some sort of title sequence, a list of names will appear on the screen alongside the jobs that those people did in the subbing of this project (Translation, Timing, Encoding, et al), this list will also be duplicated in the torrent description, ensuring that it's easy to see. ICU do very much the same thing, but prefer not to draw attention to the credits, and so don't bother duplicating those credits in the description. Hyakupa on the other hand flamboyantly display their credits with long title sequences at the start of every vid, which rather than showing a list of people who worked on the video and what they did, opts instead to just list everyone in the group.

While we agree that the credits shouldn't draw the same amount of attention that Hyakupa does, ICU is at the end of the scale where you don't even notice the names of the people who worked on it unless you are actually looking. You don't know who worked on a project unless you actually download it, and if you don't download it, the only name you'll have seen is the name of the person who uploaded the file, leading to a distinctly unproportionate level of representation for the leader/uploader and for the rest of us. So, again, we shifted closer to the Hyakupa system and dropped all of the jobtitles, instead crediting everyone in the group (whether they actually worked on the project or not) in both the in-video credits (without the flamboyant Hyaku-style 30s intros) and on the torrent description. The idea is to make everyone in the group equal.

The final policy that we disagreed with and changed is that we don't translate and provide you with everything. I had spoken to people in the past, many of whom found this particular policy of ICU's to be severely off-putting. And before you say anything, that doesn't mean that we are giving you sub-par translations, not by any means. First of all, a lot of time working ICU's way is taken up by subbing onscreen text which doesn't need to be done. I'm referring of course, to captions. These are usually exact duplicates of whatever is being said, and is therefore already translated in the normal audio subs. And yet, by doing it again, you have to time it to the exact frame of entry and exit, the translator has to spend time translating the same line twice, and then it has to be typeset so that the subs blend in with  and match the original Japanese text (which in itself may involve even more timing). A lot of work for no real reason. 

Secondly, and by far the most controversial of the two, is the editor's notes. These notes are often pretty long, are very distracting, and ultimately take away from the viewer experience. The occasional note here and there explaining in brief certain  linguistic concepts that don't translate well (for example, Japanese food names, or puns that are lost in translation)  are perfectly normal and acceptable. But the issue is explaining references. It can be quite offensive to have a big sign pop up and assume that you don't know that "Momo" is the Japanese word for peach and that Momoko is therefore obsessed with peaches. Most fans know this, and don't like being treated like ignorant fools. On the other hand, if you didn't know it, then you probably would have been able to work it out yourself, if not straight away, then by watching vids and learning the same way people usually do. By telling a new fan everything, he is unlikely to actually remember any of it. But have him work it out for himself, and he'll remember it forever, in much the same way that if I were to draw some quantum theory mathematical functions on a blackboard, and told you to learn them, you wouldn't have a clue and would forget them as soon as you left the room. But by understanding those equations and what they mean, you will go away and you'll have learnt them, for use another day.

Anyway. We created KIDS, we helped L!W with his small project, which turned out to be Hagiwara Mai in Hachijoujima - and upon completion of my work he then turned to me and said, "Where is the commentary script?"

I wasn't even aware that there was one, but I was convinced that we should work on it. And, while there were only two voices to contend with, and therefore much easier than the C-ute AH from before, I still had a lot of trouble with it. Not as much as Wolf himself, though. Who struggled on, and it was my turn to convince him not to just drop it (after I'd done all that work on timing it), and we did make it through. The reason I tag this on to the end of my post is because of the realization that, to my knowledge, only 4 H!P commentary tracks have ever been subbed, and I've been involved in 3 of them. I timed Momo OK's commentary, part of C-ute's Alo-Hello! commentary, and Hagiwara Mai in Hachijoujima. The only one I didn't do was the Berryz Koubou Alo-Hello!, and I guess that's just because I wasn't an ICU member at the time, or Hulk would have probably had me work on that too.

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Welcome to the Wonderful World of Fansubbing; Of He-Hulk and ICU-Subs

KIDS are the latest Hello!Project fansub group to storm the community. As a group which, as the name implies, focuses primarily on projects relating to the Hello!Project Kids, we've done our best to pick up where ICU left off.

While I had been minimally involved in the fansubbing world for some time before*, it wasn't until I was approached by The Incredible He-Hulk and asked to join ICU that I really got plunged into that world.

*I had initially started by doing very poor quality PV subs under the name Berryz Kyuuden Fansubs with the intent to eventually join Hello!Fansubs. I then went on to become, what SacredCultivator calls, a H!F Trainee Timer/Karaoke Typesetter. The name was actually incredibly misleading. I was given a list of PVs that had been requested, picked one, and then was left to it. BexXz was appointed as something of a big brother to guide me through it, but to be honest I'm not sure what he was there for either. I guess I was supposed to go to him if I had any questions, and, I presume, he was to judge my final efforts and decide whether they were good enough for H!F or not, I dunno. It wasn't long before growing tensions within H!F led to BexXz and sferris leaving and creating Hyakupa with me still barely motivated to do anything on the project I had chosen for myself. I was neither confident with my abilities to typeset, nor had I been instructed in any way on how H!F works, exactly what they were expecting of me, or how to TS properly. I was still in that same situation months later when I was approached by He-Hulk.

The 5-minute 100-or-so line skit from one of the Berryz Koubou & W(Double You) concerts couldn't have prepared me at all. It served no purpose at all, it'd seem, but to be used as a tool to teach me what ICU expected of me. A "training project", if you will, but, like the H!F training, no actual instruction was given. Hulk told me what he wanted (still more than SC did), gave me a work encode and a script file and off I went. CynicaltheCat did join at the same time as I did, however, so it's entirely possible that it's real purpose was simply to provide him with a timed script with which to be tested on his translation. I don't know. But it's exactly the kind of thing Hulk would do.

Anyway, I turned in that script, I got a little feedback on it, and then I never saw it again. (Or it seemed I wouldn't. The project was actually released later on, though it wasn't intended to be, after Cynical had nagged Hulk about it for a while.) I knew from that point on that I would never go back to karaoke typesetting. I lack the skills to do so, or perhaps simply the creative flair. Anyway, I was then unceremoniously welcomed into ICU and, before I even had a chance to get excited by the prospects that lay in front of me, was told to get to work on timing Momoko's Solo DVD "Momo ONLY" (which seems to have become a recurring project in my life). It was yet another project I would time that CynicaltheCat would go on to translate.

It was a pretty simple project. More work involved than my training project (about 6 or 7 times the number of lines) but, because for most of it there was only one person speaking, relatively simple work. It was released seemingly without incident, and I quickly realised that the best part of the whole subbing process is the part when all the work is done and you can just sit back and watch all the happy comments flow in. (Seriously, whether it's a release I've worked on, or someone else's, we love that stuff. No comment is too trivial so go ahead and post it. I found it to be a bigger motivator to work harder than all the whips in the world.)

Next up, Hyakupa had said that they wanted to sub "Momo OK", the next Solo DVD in the Momoko list, but first asked Hulk if ICU had any plans to work on it. Hyakupa didn't want to do the commentary track, only the main audio, our translators didn't want to let them do it if they weren't going to do it all, and Hulk didn't want to use up valuable resources doing it if we didn't have to, since C-ute's AH was right around the corner, and we had an invested interest in getting that done quickly. Especially after the incident the previous time around when H!F had undercut ICU with their own less-full subs of the Berryz AH. So a compromise was reached. They would work on the main audio, and we would do the audio commentary.

And I was the person told to time that commentary. It was the largest project yet. A whopping 1300 lines on my part, as well as whatever the others had to work with on the main audio and onscreen portions of the translation. But, in a way, it was also far easier than the previous one, which was only half of the work. There was only a single voice to listen to, and I could time it and enjoy the commentary while I worked (or the parts I could understand at least). I had actually completed my work before the guys at Hyakupa had even started, and before the other ICU members even knew that we were doing it. 

ute AH. He had been telling me for a while that I would be working on the AH, and I'd been saying the whole time that I hoped I got the main audio because I simply wasn't used to timing C-ute DVDs - their voices all sound too alike to my ears. But there we go, he sent me the usual stuff that I needed to work, and left me to it. And when I say that I timed the commentary, it wasn't quite so simple as that. It was a lot of work, so the project was split into 4. Two timers per audio track. I was tasked with completing the first half of the audio, with someone else tasked with the second half. The main audio track was similarly split amongst another two timers.

Working on the Momo commentary couldn't have prepared me any less for what I was faced with. A group whom I was still very much unfamiliar, in one of the most chaotic messes I've ever had to make sense of in my life. It got so overwhelming that I didn't even finish. I struggled on, time went by. H!F once again beat us to it, only subbing the main audio, and I was very angry. That anger and desire to "get back at SC" (for lack of a better phrase) motivated me for a while, but time went on and I couldn't cope. The work was too difficult, real life issues were starting to build up, and I was getting more and more stressed all the time. It hit fever point, and I gave up. I had done something like half of the work I had been tasked with, but I couldn't go on any further. I sent the work I had done to Hulk, which then found it's way to another timer to be completed, and I took an indefinite break from subbing.

Of course, that project is now famous as the major one which never got released. Internal issues developed, and we found ourselves indefinitely unable to release it. Not least of which was the issue that Hulk vanished. And the group had been constructed in such a way that it just couldn't function without him, so the wheels stopped turning, the steam stopped pumping, and the whole train locked up with little hope of moving.

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Paris Japan Expo: Day Four

The night before we had decided to head out at around 6am in order to get to the expo queue in plenty of time. And so that morning, Kitsune woke me up and said it was nearly time for us to go. I must have passed out pretty quick the night before. Don't really remember much of it. In fact, I still don't remember ANY of the journey back to the hotel from the restaurant. I remember being at the restaurant, then I remember being back at the hotel, knocking on our room door to see if there was anyone in. The middle bit is gone.

Anyway, either due to all that yelling at the concert two days prior, or the strength of the sake the day before, I woke up in good health, but with a horrible sore throat (which then turned into a bad cough that I had for 2 weeks after I got home). But I got up, fixed my hair, grabbed my bag, and we were ready to go. Couldn't get changed because the bag with all my clothes was in the other room - luckily, though, the t-shirt gained 10 pounds in rainwater the morning before, which kept me cool (and no doubt gave me a cold) for the whole of the day before, and by now it had dried. I also figured that JunJun would be more likely to recognise mnhuik and myself if we were wearing the same shirts - which we were. 

We walked to the Expo, and because it was still early, it was a very quiet walk, and the temperature was very cool - much as it had been the night that Ole and I walked to the Expo after the concert. On the way there we were approached by two other guys who had been following behind us for a bit. They spoke to us in French and we didn't understand at all, but with some awesome explaining that we were Scots and asking if they spoke English, we had averted the crisis. They asked us if we knew the way to the Japan Expo. What luck! We're headed the very same way. I did find it strange, however, that they were only coming on the last day. Clearly they weren't Momusu fans, but all of the better stuff happened during the first 3 days, to be honest. And if they had been there before, surely they would already know how to get to the Expo?

Unlike on Day Zero, when we met Kerichan12 and Miekie, we didn't really talk with them. They followed behind us, speaking to each other in French, and we walked ahead talking between ourselves.After our normal 20 minute walk to the Expo, we finally made it. We just kind of directed them where to go, they thanked us, and we headed off on our own and joined the queue. We were surprisingly close to the front of the line. There must have only been a dozen or so people in front of us - no-one we knew, however. Seems we were the first of our group there - and the only people there for Morning Musume, it would seem. We sat down and did what we had learned to do so well over the last 4 days. We waited.

It wasn't long before other members of our group started turning up. It started with Gina and Mark. Kitsune and I seized our opportunity to comment on the fact that we had met Morning Musume at the Eiffel Tower the night before, and that they should have been there. They explained that the bus to get to their hotel never turned up, and eventually they just got a taxi back and passed out in their hotel room. It was also here that Mark told me that the piece of insider information that sent us into Paris in the first place was a hoax, and it was thanks to his lie that we met MM. True. Although not just the lie. The fact that we had failed to get a signing ticket, catching the wrong train, all the places we stopped at while in Paris, waiting for replies (which never came) from the rest of our group while at the Eiffel Tower, and finally us spotting and watching the UFA staff for a bit just as we were on our way out to find a pub... If any of those things we did had been just a tiny bit different, it would have messed up the chain of events and wouldn't have led to the ending it did.

Our group swelled, and eventually we got let into the warehouse section to queue, which was about an hour of queuing in there before we could move on to the last section. Luckily, Ole had brought his speaker, so we hooked that up to Mark's phone, and started blasting out various death metal bands (just to creep the people aorund us out), and everything from Moon Kana to Morning Musume. All the while watching out for reactions to the H!P from anyone around us. Seemed that there were no fans queuing with us. There was a random in a Morning Musume expo shirt just behind us, but we didn't think she was even a fan, since she didn't seem to recognise any of the songs that we were playing.

We got through, and after I was enjoying the performance by the ouendan, they let us into the expo. We, of course, made a dash for the lottery queue, and started waiting there.

This queue moved, and we got closer and closer. 3 or 4 people in a row in front of us all got winning tickets, then it got to our turn and our luck ran out. Laa'Kea had managed to procure us some spare expo tickets, however, so we were able to go around for another try. My ticket said my name was Stephanie or something, though, this worried me a little. But I just folded it over in such a way that you couldn't actually see the name, and the girl at the ticket booth didn't even bother to check.

After we failed our first draw, we found Orob and Maoh lurking halfway up the queue, and after standing talking to them for a bit, we found the queue moving up with us in it. Essentially we cut in front of half of the queue. No-one seemed to mind, or notice, however. And so, we each got our second go, and I failed again. I had bought a copy of Alo-Hello! 4 in order to get it signed, but failed to get tickets to signing sessions. Oh well. I got to go to the fnac one, and got to meet them at the Eiffel Tower, so I wasn't too bothered. Even Orob, who had queued from 3am at the fnac with us and somehow didn't get to get a signing ticket seemed pretty happy knowing that he got to meet them and got his picture taken with them at the Eiffel Tower and so the signings didn't really matter anymore.

Curiously, I can vividly remember Gina crying over it, which I found weird since she had won a ticket on Day 2 on her first attempt anyway. Oh well, I didn't stick around to find out. The public Q&A was supposed to be starting shortly, and so Kitsune, Maoh and myself left the others to make our own way there to try and get a good seat.

I've no idea what happened to Maoh then. He was with us on the way there, and then vanished when we went to take our seats.

The whole hall, which it took me a while to realise was the same place where we had watched the concert becuase we went in a different entrance, was set up with large "Blocks" of chairs. Three large blocks in front of the stage, which were filling up fast, then behind them there was a raised area where I assume all the lighting and technical stage stuff was controlled from. On either side of this there was another block of seating. And, I think, there was a further two blocks of seating behind those.

Kitsune and I grabbed seats quick, we ended up in the middle of the right-most second block. So the very middle of the hall, I guess. But people in front would move or leave, and we would quickly get up and move seats, until we ended up at the very front of our block.

The questions were all ones that had been sent in online, so unlike their AX conferences, you couldn't stand up and ask one yourself. Questions and answers were in French and Japanese only, so for many of us, we were pretty dissappointed to not understand most of what was being said. And tiredness from the previous days was beginning to catch up on me, so I was fighting hard to actually stay awake.

I didn't catch it myself, but I was told later that they actually mentioned us during the conference. They said that they had even bumped into some fans at the Eiffel Tower the day before. I was pretty happy to hear this. Even if they probably didn't remember who we even were or what we looked like, they still remembered us.

Well, the Q&A ended, and we got up and made our way to the front by the stage where a crowd was building to cheer and wave them off. We weren't quite close enough for them to really see us. But they waved at me. Albeit in a quick, wave-at-the-whole-crowd kind of way.

Well, the signing session was due to start shrotly after, so we left and quickly made our way to the stage where they usually did their signings. Kitsune vanished ahead of me into the crowd. I never expected it to be so hectic on the last day. But it was definitely the busiest I'd seen it all week. I struggled through, and found him standing near a stall looking back into the crowd. I assumed that he was waiting for me, and made it to him saying, "Right, which way was it again?" and when he didn't respond I turned around to see what he was staring at. And there was Sayu right behind me. They were making their way through the crowd, passing little more than a foot away from me. I was pretty startled, and all I could do was wave to them.

Unfortunately, I still don't think they had recognised us. Need to try harder and get a good spot at the signing to wave from!

When we got there, I was annoyed to find that the entire front row had been taken up already. Orob and Nimrod had already gotten a place at the very front, so I decided to lurk behind them. But Nimrod is big, and hard to see past.

The previous act were actually still on the stage, just finishing up with some photos. I actually felt sorry for them, because it seemed that their session had been fairly quiet when suddenly hundreds of Musume fans turn up en masse before you're even finished.

This turned out to be the worst signings of the whole expo. Huge crowds swarming round, and Expo security patrolling the queue forcing anyone with cameras, which the expo staff, Morning Musume, and their management had all been very lax about until now. Orob, in front of me, kept trying to sneak photos in, and then this black security guy would come up and tell him to put the camera away, he'd appologise and ignore him. After the 5 or 6th time, the guy threatened to throw him out, and he gave in and stopped taking pictures.

I saw another security guy yell at one person further back in the crowd to stop taking pictures and when he, presumably because he didn't hear, didn't stop immediately, the guy actually attempted to vault over the fence. Wasn't a clever idea. Those red boundaries in the queue look quite sturdy and made of wood, but it's mostly cloth with a wooden frame.

The atmosphere was tense and heavy. The staff were pissed off at us, we were pissed off at them, and things were fairly quiet. Then, of all people, LinLin helped break the tension. Up until this point, if there was a gap in the line where one of the girls wasn't signing, we would all start yelling and waving to get her attention. But this time LinLin got a free moment and a couple guys in the crowd behind me started chanting "Linlin! Linlin! Linlin!" which eventually spread to most of the crowd.Suddenly we had a hundred or so fans all chanting her name,  and she encouraged us by pumping her fist to the chants. I saw her and her manager exchange laughs about it, and now we had found a way to have fun. We did it once more with LinLin and then we were off. Any time a girl had a break and was free, we'd start chanting her name just like that. Even when there wasn't any girls free, we would start chanting the same Momusu chants that were used in the concert.

One by one, the girls started to recognise us from the night before too. At one point I saw Aika look at us and her jaw fell as she waved at us. I saw similiar reactions from Eri, Sayu and Reina, though theirs were a lot more subtle. I think LinLin also noticed us. She should have anyway, we were standing in front of her part of the stage. And she waved to us alot over that session, as well as the ones on previous days, that I imagine she probably did. Unfortunately for mnhuik and I, JunJun never seemed to notice, or if she did, I never caught her reaction. I wonder if she still has those photos she (and the others) took of us on her phone...

Anyway, the atmosphere became fun, and it ended up being one of the more fun signing sessions of the Expo, despite the first half being the worst.

Eventually the girls all left and, as was normal for previous days, we all moved and crowded round to the side of the stage by the exit, where they normally leave from. Time seemed to go on, though. Usually it'd only take 3 or 4 minutes for them to leave, but we got up to 10 minutes before one of the Expo volunteers came up to us and told us that they had already gone. I've no idea how they managed to get away without us noticing, but the news spread and the crowd dispersed. We wondered around for a bit before going back to Culture Japon. Curiously, on the way there, we noticed that the Hello!Project stall had gone. All of the merchendise had vanished, the staff had gone, and the TV above it that had been playing the same H!P concert for 4 days was now blank. All that was left was a few French stall hands and a damaged poster, which they refused to sell.

It amazes me that they managed to all escape so quick and so stealthily, that I actually believe UP FRONT is a front for some kind of ninja dojo.

We had heard from some Japanese wota that MM's flight was to leave at 7:30pm. And so we were prepareing to go to the airport to go see them off, but Laa'Kea assured us that it wasn't true. It was now close to 4pm, I believe, and she said that they'd have to get back to their hotel, get out of their costumes, shower, etc. They'd probably not leave til the 9:30pm flight. Mark and Dean had vanished off somewhere anyway, so we had to wait for them to turn up. But Orob checked the flight timetable using his phone, and we uncovered that there was no 9:30 flight, only a 7:30. So we found everyone, and made our way to the airport, though Orob couldn't join us, as he had to catch a ferry back to England the following morning.

We arrived at the departure check-in for JAL, and it was empty. Mark decided to go up and ask if Morning Musume had checked in yet. I have no idea how he tried to explain to the guy who Morning Musume were, but he had no idea. And so we sat around waiting in front for them to turn up when Lolli went off to find a store. After 5 or so minutes of hanging around, Kea's phone rang and when she answered it it was Lolli. I cannot stress how comic the timing was on this, but most of us were mid-conversation when Kea repeated what Lolli had said, "Morning Musume are over there?"

We jamp up before she could even finish and started running towards the passport control where, sure enough, we found a group of 40 or so fans all crowded up waving to Morning Musume in the queue.

Apparently they had managed to get here early enough to see the girls actually arrive, but we were presumably too slow. Still, we did get to see them leaving through the gate. Well, I say "see", but I myself only caught sight of Eri.

After they left, we found a McDonalds to eat at. Dean's plane was also due to leave in a couple hours, so we got something to eat. Mark stole his MM poster and hid it in his own bag. And we finished and went outside to get our pictures taken.

Finally, we made our way to the terminal were Dean was to leave, and I suggested that we do the exact same thing that we had done with Morning Musume, and yell at him like he's an Idol as he goes through to the gate. And so we did. He's queuing to get through to the departure lounge, and we're standing at the end waving to him and yelling, "Diinu-sama! Daisuki!"

It was pretty fun, although it was missing something with so few of us there, unlike the 50 we ended up making at the MM one. Still, he seemed pretty embarrased by it all, yet played along. I can only imagine what the other people queuing up must have thought. And so, everyone started to go home. We said goodbye to everyone we'd met, and Ole, Kitsune and I went back to our hotel as the group started to split up.

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Graduations in Morning Musume make way for new members!

It's been widely reported everywhere today. The Hello!Online thread gained upwards of 30 pages in posts in less than 24 hours. The usual IRC channels haunted by Hello!Project fans have been talking about it all day, and of course, the blogosphere and microblogging networks like twitter alike have exploded with the news.

This morning, the news broke that Morning Musume would see the graduation of not one, not two, but three members simultaneously. Kamei Eri, leaving due to long-term health problems, and our two Foreign Exchange Students, JunJun and LinLin, who will return to China, are to graduate at the end of the coming concert tour.

The decision has proven to be controversial, with Tsunku's twitter account being bombarded by questions about his intentions as well as simple threats and insults from disillusioned fans. Of course, these fans seem to forget that the revolving door lineup has existed since 1998, and getting angry about it all now, 12 years on, is a little late. It was expected. We all knew that each of these girls would graduate at some point or another.

As it stands, JunJun is my current favourite member of Morning Musume, and so, I'm of course sad to see her leave. But it would appear that JunJun and LinLin both must return to China, where they are set to become artists in their own right if all goes well, due to the fact that their Visas won't last forever. They've lived in Japan for 3 years now, and from the start they were added as "exchange students", meaning that their placement in the group was never permenant, and that eventually they would return back home. What it is they'll do with the training they recieved over the course of the last 3 years remains to be seen.

Thinking about it, however. I noticed that since I became a fan, around January 2007, each and every graduation has involved my favourite member of the time. Back in 2007, I started off as a Yossy fan. And 5 or 6 months after I became a fan, her graduation rolled by. For a long time following, my fandom existed in limbo. Remaining a Yossy fan, though her inactivity caused that to wane. I then became a fan of Berryz, and have been ever since. But even beyond this point, there was something of a ranking battle going on in my head between the various Morning Musume members to determine who it was that was my favourite. Eventually Koharu won out, and all to quickly after reaching a solid decision, Koharu was also set to graduate. Following that, I had a fair idea almost immediately about who my new favourite would be. JunJun, only cemented by my excursion to Paris last month. And here we are again, stood in front of Tsunku anouncing that she too will graduate.

Am I cursed? Probably. Three graduations in a row, the only three graduations since I became a fan, have all resulted in me losing my favourite member of the group.

But, those who read my blog will recall that last time, when Koharu graduated, I said that I was happy. Koharu was "taking one for the team" as it were. I stand by that same mentality this time. I love graduations. They keep Morning Musume, a group that was built upon the foundations of that Graduation/Audition system, interesting. I've been asking for graduations since 2008. It came with Koharu. Now it's come again with Eri, JunJun and LinLin. I can't get angry at Tsunku like everyone else seems to have when I wanted graduations, just because he didn't graduate a member I didn't like.  That'd simply be hypocrisy. 

Of course, one thing that many people are forgetting is the new auditions. Announced the same day, Tsunku is looking for at least one girl, aged between 10 and 17 to join the group.

As per usual, this causes much debate over the issue of age. Is 10 years old too young to be an Idol? I don't think so. Airi was 9 when she got her semi-debut as a member of Aa! Is it too young for a Morning Musume member? Given the current age range of the group, I'd say so. Unless Tsunku plans to add 2 or 3 girls around 12 years old to bring that average back down again, I think a slightly older girl of 15 or 16 might be best. Though I, famously, prefer Idols to start out younger. It's often the soundest business strategy.  But it is quite a context sensetive thing. I'm not entirely sure that a lone 10 year old will sufficiently be able to come out of her shell and show off her character with Idols 8 years her elder around her - some of whom having been in the industry since she was born.

In order for it to work well, I think Tsunku will either draft in a single girl in her mid teens, or multiple girls in their early/mid teens.

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Paris Japan Expo: Day Three

So after showering and convincing Ole that we should go queue up (it was now around 25:00) we left and began walking to the Expo. It was a fairly pleasant walk, it was night-time but it was still relatively light out - especially in comparison to how dark I'm used to Scotland being - and the temperature had really cooled down so rather than sweating like pigs on the 20-30 minute walk to the Expo like normal, we were relatively free to enjoy it. We walked along chatting to ourselves about the concert we had just seen only a few short hours beforehand and noting how, interestingly, we were exhausted in the hotel room but felt completely alert out walking in the refreshingly cool air in the middle of the night. 

Something I noticed alot of during the time out there, actually. I learned that as long as I kept moving, I never felt tired. It was only when I was sat still, like on the train (and the heat on those trains didn't really help) that I started to feel sleepy. I guess the fact that I had to be fairly active for much of my time in Paris meant that I was able to survive so long with minimal sleep. Doing so much with so little sleep might have killed lesser men, but I guess we wota have to be made of slightly sterner stuff.

Anyway, we made it to the train station, and were pretty surprised to learn that it had all been locked up. The trains were no longer running, so the station had gone into lockdown with all the gates blocking the entrances, as well as the entrances to the tunnel that runs under the tracks straight into the Parc des Expositions. Annoyingly, there were no other entrances, as far as I was aware. Or if there was, the thought of finding one was a daunting task, to say the least. We found staircase behind the one leading to the tunnel under the tracks though - or rather a group of French guys who were lurking outside the station found it and we just decided to follow them. This path took us straight onto the platform... Great. One step closer to the Expo.

The entrance to the station from the platform side was also blocked off, so we had no choice but to climb down onto the tracks and cross to the other side. At the time this worried me a little, but after a little sleep and looking back on the events of what happened, I have the brainpower to deduce that there was zero risk from crossing the tracks. The very reason that forced us to do so was that the station had closed because the trains didn't run past 1am. Anyway, we made our way across to the other side, but it didn't help in the least. There was nowhere to go from there. The group of French guys from before, who we were trying to avoid, approached us and asked us if we were also trying to get to the Expo. Ah good. So they weren't here to assault us. We told them we were, and decided to try find a way there together. 

We found the only way. Climb over the fence at the back of the platform, jump down into the ditch and then climb the 8 or so-foot fence into the Parc. I'm not much of a climber, and never was, so this was worrying me. But I threw my bag over the fence with all the others, helped the others up and finally it was my turn. I was unlucky enough to go last, so there was no-one to help me over - not from my side anyway. I climbed onto the fence, and they tried to grab my feet from the other side to keep me up - which I imagine must have hurt alot, as I was wearing boots with pretty painful soles. Credit to the French guy for sticking through it long enough for me to clumsily climb over the fence, which I fell from about once, grabbed onto the tree on the other side and vaulted over which my ass being assaulted by spikes at the top before finally falling off the other end.

Only later did I learn that this fence apparently had barbed wire hidden along the top. I never saw it, but I sure as hell felt it. My hand (and curiously my armpit) was aching for several hours. Seems it had pierced the skin, as I was bleeding a little, but all a day in the life of an wota. 

We lurked around in the darkness for a bit, trying to work out where we were. It didn't look anything like the area we normally appeared at from under the station, but our new French comrades assured us that we were in the right place, and they had friends who would come and meet us all before we'd find a place were we could all go sleep for a few hours (in fact there were some people who had already set up tents in the tree cover). I guess Ole and I still didn't trust them, as we wandered off on our own and eventually found the Expo building, with the Frenchies trailing behind us. We thought we saw a person moving around near the entrance, and heard voices and decided to go check it out. Though we did move somewhat stealthily as we weren't sure wether it was people queuing or security. I'm not sure why there'd be security lurking outside the building at 1am, but at the time it felt like a very real possibility. 

However, we found a group of people in the line. Two Japanese people, it seemed, who we spoke to and asked if this was the queue for Morning Musume. "Morning Musume? Yes." they agreed. Though I'm not sure they actually knew what we meant, since they didn't look like MM fans. They looked more like Visual Kei fans to me, but I digress. We joined the queue behind them, before climbing back out again to see if we could find our group, who we found at the front hidden under makeshift tents.

I don't have any pictures, so I'll try to explain what I mean. The line for the queue was created by metal barricades, but nearby there had been some larger barricades set up by the stairs leading down to (what I assume was) the station entrance, which had large banners strapped to them as advertisements for fnac and the expo. Apparently Mark had seen these and lifted one up, placing it ontop of the barricades in the line making for a good two walls and a roof. Some of the people further back in queue had seen them do this, thought it was a good idea, and copied them, so you had most of the entire queue sitting under these makeshift tents with still-bright glowsticks from the concert stuck under the frame, providing a little (however negligable) light. It really was a fantastic set up.

We found our group all sat under there, and so Ole and I climbed under the tent (which was high enough to sit under, but was barely taller than waist-height standing up). I found Orob sitting there with his laptop out, piggybacking on the free wifi at the Expo and chatting on Hyakupa's IRC. I sat beside him and the group chatted for a while. Orob's wifi ran out, it turns out that they only give you it free for an hour or so and then you have to pay, so there went our net connection. By this point, the fatigue of the last couple of days was catching up to me, so I just made some space for myself, laid down and after 20 minutes or so was fast asleep.

By that point some of the other people queuing had taken down our makeshift tents, as we would have been kicked to the back of the queue, or disallowed entry all-together if the staff saw it.

Despite sleeping on the cold, hard concrete I actually got the best sleep I'd had so far. I woke up 5 or 6 hours later, already daylight - though still early morning. I woke up, and it appeared that most of the other members in the group had also fallen asleep as half of them were still sleeping (or appeared to be) when I woke up. Unfortunately, despite it being such a refreshing sleep, I woke up with an uncontrollable chill. My body just continued to shiver. It wasn't even that cold a morning, I was just shivering uncontrollably with my teeth chattering away. After 5 minutes of trying and failing to stop it, I was hit with a stroke of genius as I reached into my bag and pulled out my Maasa sweatband, which I had taken off the night before as it was drenched in sweat from the concert (especially since I forgot to take a towel, so the sweatband was all I had to wipe the sweat from my brow with). It really is incredible just how warm those things make you feel, for such a small area of the body that they cover. It had mostly dried out overnight, so I put it on and almost instantly felt the effects of the tiny wristband. My teeth stopped chattering, and my shivering went down to 20% of what it was before. Incredible. Over time I'd stop shivering all-together, but it never ceases to amaze me how much warmth those things can provide.

Anyway, it wasn't long before everyone was awake and banter ensued. I'm not going to repeat what was said here, because I'd be here all day and it wasn't in the least bit relevent or interesting but eventually the Expo staff did turn up and he was friendly enough to let us remain where we were. He told us that by rights he should have sent us back to lineup outside the warehouse, where they had staff to watch us, but he wasn't going to do that as he understood that we had been waiting all night and it wouldn't be fair to send us to the back. We just had to promise to be good, and to close off the entrance with the barricade (which we had left open so we could get out to walk around or go to the toilet) so no-one gets in or leaves. This was fair, so we did as we were told, and got back to queuing.

It was Awesome Day (a name for Maasa's Birthday as coined by Charmy_Risuzu), and so the discussion of what we would do for Awesome Day were starting to take off. Little did we know just what kind of a day Maasa would have in store for us. It was the worst and best day of the whole Paris trip.

It all started to go wrong for us about an hour before the doors opened for us. The heavens broke loose, and we were hit by the one and only instance of real rain of the whole trip. A proper summer storm, complete with incredibly powerful thunder and lightening. In a matter of mere minutes, we were totally soaked. mnhuik had managed to get out his umbrella pretty fast, and we all took cover under that. Or Kitsune, Nimrod, Orob, mnhuik and myself did. I've never seen so many grown men try to huddle under a single umbrella, but I imagine it was a pretty funny sight. Except it didn't help much with me. I was stood in such a place that the umbrella protected the front of me from the rain, but the rain was building and running straight off of the umbrella of the Japanese guy standing right behind me, and straight down my back. I ended up with the front of my clothes being relatively dry, and my back and bag carrying more water than Loch Lomond. 

The chaos of the sudden rain wreaked havoc on the order of the line. The barricade was pushed aside and there was a huge rush for the entrance, which happened to have something of a sheltered overhang above it. We stuck around in the queue for 5 minutes before joining the mass of people now huddled by the doors. In order to compensate for the rain the staff, and kudos to them for not just leaving us out there to drown in the rain, opened the doors and set up barricades around them to prevent us from actually getting into the Expo, but many of us could still crowd inside the building. Needless to say, there was lots of pushing and shoving and our group, which beforehand had been right at the very front of the line, ended up scattered through the crowd with no real position in line to speak of. We stood around waiting. Premium ticket holders were already being let in, but the rest of us who had pre-sale tickets were forced to stand around to drip dry until 10pm when we were supposed to be let in. The crowd held together suprisingly well, and it wasn't until the last 10 minutes or so that it started to get restless. If you've ever seen the football fans crowd a Metro station in Britain with their loud chanting and singing while the police try to contain them, then you have a good understanding of how the crowd started behaving during those last 10 minutes. Then finally we were allowed in. It was a mad rush to get our tickets scanned and we ran straight to the signing queue. Because our group had all been seperated, I didn't know where they were, but I ran. I didn't have a clue which direction I was supposed to be running, but there were a few other people around me also running, so I just followed them and they led me straight to it.

We joined the queue, but after 5 minutes the staff member working on the draw stood up and gave this massive 2-handed wave to all of us. All the tickets were gone. I ended up being like 100 in line, and the tickets had all been taken already by premium ticket holders. This was incredibly disheartening. We had queued since 1am, vaulted over train tracks and barbed wire fence, braved the torrential downpour for a moment that was snapped away from us by people who owned tickets that were only available to the French fans?

We made our way to the signing stage in a pretty poor mood. Luckily I'd learned from previous mistakes, and got there early enough that a crowd hadn't built up, so I stood right at the very front, near the center, which would give me a good view of all the girls, and sat there for the hour or two til the signing session started. I don't think anyone really spoke all that much in the lead up to the session, we were happy to watch it, but we were certainly (and I think understandably) annoyed. But then it started, and I used my position in the crowd to great advantage.

Because I was in a fairly central position, all the girls could see me really well, only boosted by the fact that I was standing at the very front, so when I wanted a girls attention I would put one foot on the barricade, use it to hoist myself up so I was taller and wave to the girls, throwing hand gestures (Peace! or hearts usually) at them all whenever I got the chance and hope that they would return the gesture. All of them did. All except Eri. I kept turning to lolli and mnhuik who were beside me and saying, "Only 3 to go" or whatever as, in my mind, I was trying to "collect them all", as it were. After I got Sayu to return my Peace! I tried to get her to do Usa-chan Peace! but that never worked either. It was my one goal from Sayu for the whole trip, and she did it to other people, but never to me. Still, aside from Eri, all of the girls reacted to me at least once. And I was pretty pleased with that. 

In fact, by the time it was over, it'd cheered me up quite a bit. I got a great position and used it well at every opportunity, and even though I still hadn't gotten another chance to go up and meet the girls, I still felt like I had connected with them when not only did they make eye-contact, they also returned my gestures. It's a small thing, but I left that session able to smile.

The crowd dispersed, and we used this opportunity to grab a couple group pictures of the lot of us together. I find it amazing how we were able to smile despite our terrible morning.

And so it was now that we decided we should go have our Awesome Day celebration. Despite our bad mood, it wouldn't be right to not celebrate Maasa's birthday. Perhaps this was a test, because what happened that evening was more incredible than anything we could have imagined in our dreams.

Mark had turned to us and said that one of the staff members had leaked a bit of information to him - that Morning Musume were now headed into Paris to do some shopping, and that they were planning to go into Paris and see if they could find them. We decided that it was a pretty awesome idea, and went to tag along. Everyone was going back to their hotels first, however. Everyone except -Kitsune-and myself, that is. We just wanted to get going, and couldn't be bothered with a 20 minute walk to the hotel just to walk back again. So everyone parted ways, and we decided that we'd contact eachother and meetup before heading out into the city. Kitsune and I decided to tag along with Oroboras, Nimrod and mnhuik. We'd just follow them to their hotels, they'd dump their bags in their rooms, and then we'd go into Paris.

Things didn't work out as we planned. At the station we got on the first train that pulled up. Since it was going in the only direction possible, we never would have imagined it to be the wrong train. But it was. We got the Express. It skipped all of the normal stops and went directly into Paris. After it went straight past Orob's stop and pulled into Gare du Nord, we asked ourselves the question, do we get the train back to his hotel? Or do we just stay in Paris? We chose to stay in the City.

We tried to get in contact with Mark and Gina, who we believed were possibly on the same train as us after sending them a text saying "About to pull into Gare du Nord and falling asleep" or something, to which Gina simply replied "Same here lol". We weren't sure if that meant they were also headed into Paris, or if they were simply falling asleep. Turned out to be the latter, and they were still waiting for the bus to take them to their hotel, so we decided to go out on our own in the city and meet up with them later.

Now, it should be said that even though we had gone into Paris on Maasa's Birthday looking for Morning Musume, none of us really expected to find them in such a large city. But we were always on the lookout for them. Are they on that open-top tour bus? No. In that high-class clothes shop? Nope. We would walk past stores which we seriously imagined they would visit, and we'd wander in just to check. We saw the Disney store and thought, "Hey! That's a place Gaki would want to visit!" and so we went inside. No-one there, glanced downstairs and Morning Musume weren't there either, so instead of sticking around, we walked back outside and continued walking.

Eventually we walked past the fnac store where we had spent the first night in Paris lining up for the signing session. They still had all the barricades set up, and we considered for a moment looking inside, but opted not to. Too many difficult memories for Orob, who you may remember had been in line with us since 3am and bought the last CD in the store, but they had run out of signing tickets already.

We did stop in a nearby Starbucks. Orob said, "Japanese people seem to love Starbucks, lets go there!" and so we went inside for a drink. Of course, Morning Musume weren't there, but we sat down and had a really bizarre conversation along the lines of "What would happen if MM did walk in and we invited them to join us?"  "There's not enough seats, so Aika can sit on my knee," was Orob's answer to that scenario, and so we all started discussing who we'd have sit with us. Kitsune of course claimed LinLin straight away as well as Nimrod with Reina. mnhuik and I were both JunJun fans, so it was decided we'd either have to share, or resolve the issue with a deathmatch. After this conversation we got up and continued onwards, making our way to the Arc de Triomphe.

I had never realised just how big it was from the pictures until I was standing there beneath it. It's massive. They have a lift which takes you to the very top, but the line was too long and too expensive, and we simply didn't care. We sat down underneath it for what felt like an hour as we looked around for Morning Musume. I'm not sure if Orob actually expected to see them there or not, but I didn't really. They had already visited it a few days beforehand - in fact a brief clip of them at it had appeared in the concert VTR the day before, I didn't really imagine them going to see it twice.

After a while I said, "Shall we head to the Eiffel Tower?" I don't think the others had been to the Tower yet, although Kitsune and I saw it the first night there. Still, I thought it'd be interesting to go again during the day. The others agreed, so we could a couple of trains down to Trocadéro and made our way to the tower. Just as at the Arc de Triomphe Nimrod was continually taking photographs of it, but we slowly made our way past all of the football fans who were watching the Germany vs Argentina game on a massive screen in the Gardens below and crossed the bridge over to the tower. We hung around there for a while, imagining Morning Musume waving to us from the top of the Tower, before sitting down nearby while Nim tended to his blisters and we all took a rest... Well, when we were not being annoyed by people trying to sell us Eiffel Tower keyrings or begging for money. Seriously, they were there by the dozen. We just kept telling them to f*ck off and leave us alone. Harsh, maybe, but Orob was in a pretty poor mood.

We really were sat there for an hour or so, wondering what to do next. We hadn't heard from any of the others, and Gina wasn't answering our texts, so eventually we decided to go and find a pub to celebrate Maasa's birthday without them. We made our way back over the bridge, and up the path past all of the football fans and people trying to sell us flags or Eiffel Tower souveniers and back to square overlooking it all.

Just as we were about to leave, someone (I think it was Kitsune?) noticed a familiar person. One of the women from the concert who was taking pictures of the crowd, and then the camera man who was with her. We stood there watching them for a couple of minutes talking about how we had seen her before and she either worked for a Magazine, or worked for UFA. Just as we were pondering this, we turned around to leave, when at that very moment at the other side of the square, barely 10 yards away, we saw the girls of Morning Musume running up the stairs to look at the tower. We were floored by this point.

We honestly couldn't believe our luck. If we hadn't been distracted from leaving when we did by the sight of the UFA woman, we would have completely missed them by a matter of minutes. But there they were, standing right in front of us.

As they were being followed by staff and camera crew, we decided to do the decent thing and step to the side a little and let them get on with their business. We were perfectly happy to have just seen them. But as they made their way closer to the tower, they walked right past us, within the space of about 3 or 4 yards, and they happened to glance over to us as we were watching them, and suddenly they got very excited. You see, after the Expo we had gone straight into Paris, still wearing our Hello!Project t-shirts. So they saw our t-shirts, maybe even recognised us from the signing session only a few hours beforehand, and instantly realised that we were a group of five Morning Musume fans.

They got excited and the members who had seen us drew the attention of the other girls to us and they waved to us. We waved back with, what I imagine were probably the biggest grins our faces have ever borne. The look of surprise on their faces is something I shall never forget.

After that, they went on to stand and pose for photos from the staff with the tower in the background. We watched them do this while talked amongst ourselves about just how incredible the whole experience was, and how it had totally made up for the shoddy morning. But that wasn't all...

After their brief photoshoot, Morning Musume made their way back past us, and noticing that we were still there, in the same spot we had been before (we may have been looking for them, but we wanted to give them room to work), when all of a sudden they all ran up to us. We were waving to them and greeting them when all of a sudden they all got out their cellphones and started taking pictures of us. The thoughts going through all our minds as we posed for those photos were "Hold on a minute, isn't this the wrong way round?"  Reina got incredibly excited when she noticed a picture of herself on Nimrod's arm. She asked if that was a real tattoo, to which we all assured her it was, and it just blew her away. The jammy git. JunJun, excited to see mnhuik and myself in blue t-shirts (I was a JunJun fan, but didn't have the heart to tell her that the shirt was actually a Maasa one) and made sure to get a picture of the two of us together. They then left again, and started to make their way back towards their car while getting in some last pictures.

The whole experience was too much, I had to sit down. And so there, on the same spot which I had posed for Morning Musume, I sat on the ground, and the rest of the group joined me there. We continued our earlier discussion about just how incredibly lucky we were, when I looked up to see the female staff member from before running back towards us, and the first thought to flow through my head was, "Huh? Maybe she wants to speak to us?"  And my intuition was right, but the words which came out of her mouth were completely unexpected.

"Would you like a picture with Morning Musume?" She was asking us what? If I recall correctly, we actually had to ask her to repeat herself, or perhaps that was just my brain trying to work out what had just happened, either way we answered with a clear and definite "YES!"

I think she wasn't expecting our answers when, as we made our way back towards the girls, she asked us where we were all from. I imagine she expected us to be French, but upon learning that we were in fact 2 Scots, an Englishman, an Italian and a German (which sounds like the set up to a really bad joke) she simply laughed and said, "Oooh Okay!"

We approached the confused looking girls and staff, to whom the woman explained that she wanted us to get our picture taken with the girls, to which the other staff simply OK'd, and there we were, greeting and bowing to the girls more nervously than ever, with them all lined up on the steps, and us all lined up behind them. The staff told us where to stand, and made sure we didn't get too close, which I found quite funny, they made sure there was a good 3 or so feet between us and them.  But there we were, having our picture taken with our Idols. In fact, it even seemed to be recorded with a video camera too.

We never got to see a copy of the photo, and it may never even surface, but for the 5 of us it was one of the greatest moments of our lives. They say that the dearest memories are stored deep within the brain, and that those memories of love and friendship are the last ones you ever forget... I imagine my memories of meeting Morning Musume there in Paris totally by random encounter, though blurred slightly by the numbing surrealness of the whole experience, is one of those ones that I'll never forget.

Anyway, after the picture, we waved goodbye to them as they got in their car and, waving to us to the last moment, drove off.

And you know what the most incredible part of the whole thing was? I learned the following day from Mark that his story that sent us all into Paris looking for them in the first place was a total fabrication. He hadn't spoken to the staff, and they hadn't told him that Morning Musume would be in Paris. He had just made it up, and we, believing him, wandered into Paris looking for them and incredibly the lie turned out to be the truth.

It's not often that I put a Church of Maasa spin on this blog, but I think that given that this happened on Maasa's Birthday, after an incredible string of what seemed like bad luck, when our faith remained and we went into Paris with the intent to celebrate her birthday and actually met Morning Musume... It seemed plainfully clear that this wasn't just coincidence, but that Maasa had tested our faith and, by way of divine intervention, rewarded our incredible devotion with the experience of a lifetime. The only thing greater would be to grace us with her own presence, but that was impossible as she was 6000 miles away.

In order to celebrate such a glorious encounter on the anniversary of Maasa's birth, we decided to go out and have a great time. It didn't even matter that the others, who had promised to come along time and time again before Paris, weren't there. It was their own fault. We were gonna have a great time and decided to head into Chatalet les Halles, where Kitsune and I had seen a couple of Japanese restaurants before when we went out for a meal with Ole and Gunnar.

We managed to find one of them, a Sushi restaurant called Villa Tokyo and after looking at the menu on the sign for a few minutes decided to stay there for our meal. We went in, and the guy working there had us sit outside, which was nice. Not often you get to enjoy terrace dining, being Scottish. We ordered up some beers (with the exception of Kitsune) and then our meals. Now, in hindsight, drinking the beer which was a good 5% alcohol content before the meal wasn't a good idea. I hadn't eaten at all since the day before... and that was just a hotdog bought at the Expo before heading to the concert. By the end of the first beer, I was already starting to feel it.

As we enjoyed our meal, however, the guy working there would come out and chat to us, he saw Nimrod's tattoo and was saying that it was very beautiful, and we would tell him about the fact that we'd come to Paris from all over Europe to see Morning Musume. He didn't know who Morning Musume were (turns out he was from Hong Kong and had lived in Paris for over 20 years) but we explained it to him as best we could. He seemed genuinely interested. And upon learning that Nimrod was German, he felt the need to inform us that Germany had beaten Argentina 4-0. None of us could care less about football, but I simply commented "Deutschland uber alles".

After our meal, we heard from Dean that he and Ole were planning to join us in the city, so we told him where to find us, and paid the bill. We figured we'd finish our drinks and start a new bill when the others arrived, but they never did. We sat there and finished our second beers and continued to sit there and chat with one another, and with the waiter (who by the way, we made sure to give a good tip). He even brought us out complimentary sake. I've drunk sake before, but this stuff was alot stronger. (what did he say it was? 45%?) It was pretty interesting to note that at the bottom of the sake cup you could make out JAV images which, after downing the sake left a strong trailblaze down your throat* - delicious, would no longer be visable after there was nothing in the cup. Only in Japan (or a Japanese restaurant) eh?

*I think this, and all the yelling I did at the concert the day before, was the reason behind my sore throat when I woke up the following day. Despite being moderately drunk, I was totally fine the next day, except for my sore throat.

After it became apparent that the others weren't going to turn up, we all made our way back to our hotels. I couldn't contact Ole because my phone was dead, nor could I remember the passcode for the room (and when I knocked on the door, there was no answer, later turned out that they didn't get back to the hotel for another couple of hours), so I ended up sleeping in Kitsune's room that night, who was luckily just down the hall from us. We wanted to be up pretty early the following day so we could get into the Expo in plenty time for the last signing session draw, but we weren't prepared to queue overnight for it again.

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Paris Japan Expo: Day Two

I got as decent a sleep as I could hope for in a small hotel room in France with no air conditioning. In fact, so much so that I completely slept through two texts from -Kitsune- informing us that he was, first, waiting for us at breakfast, and then second, in line for the Expo. We got up around 8 and, after learning from -Kitsune-'s texts that the line was already pretty long for the Expo, left as soon as possible. On the way out we ran into Paul.Thomas in the elevator - though I had no idea it was him until he got out and Ole told me who it was. I do remember wondering, "Why is he here? Shouldn't he be at the Expo already too?"

When we got there we found ourselves a little lost. We tried walking in the same entrance that we took the day before, but the staff stopped us and informed us that the doors weren't open yet. So clearly this wasn't where the line was. We wandered around a bit, looking out for where we were supposed to go when another staff member kindly showed us where the entrance to the queue was. And so we began queuing. The heat was becoming just as unbearable as the day before, and I'd left my uchiwa at the hotel, but the three of us took it in our stride, as we winded our way through the line, before we reached a large warehouse filled with nothing but barricades and people lining up.

There were alot of people, and we were stuck lining up here for a good 20 minutes before we finally got to the end and got to rejoin the queues in the sun outside. This one moved a bit faster though, but we were still getting a little impatient. But eventually we made it inside.

Gunnar went off on his own to check out other parts of the Expo as Ole and I made our way straight to the line for the signing lottery. It was already pretty long. Long enough that it had already reached the barricade seperating it from the exhibit/stall behind, and the line had somehow forked off in either direction, so you had two lots of people lining up to join a single line. We got there just before this forked tail started to really develop though, and we had about 30 minutes to an hour before the draw actually started, so the line kept growing, but wasn't moving. (By the end of it, it became twice as long as it was when we joined it)

Ole had brought a speaker that he bought specifically for the Expo, however, so we hooked our iPods and MP3 players up to it and killed the time by blasting out some Hello!Project music, which those around us seemed to enjoy.

I noticed a familiar looking wota sitting next to us in the line, however. I recognised him as one of the Mexican wota, and one who had joined the FNAC queue around the same time we did (though his group were slightly behind us). In fact, in that queue he came up to us all and told us about the plans for the concert and us singing Happy Birthday to Sayu. He didn't want people to chant Sayu's name before the encore as is normal in concerts in Japan, as he felt it would put a little too much attention on Sayu and not enough on the fact that this was Morning Musume's first concert in Europe, so instead we would all sing happy birthday to her after she introduced herself during the first MC. We all agreed that this was a good idea and we would be sure to tell other people about it too. I found it strange, though, that at that time he knew me by the name "Dran" and, even though I recognised him, I didn't have a clue who he was.

So back to the present, lining up waiting for the signing draw to start, I spoke to him asking him who he was and how he knew me. It turned out that it was Carlos, a fellow lurker/chatter in the #hyakupa IRC channel under the name OkAichan. So that was how he knew me.

Actually, this turned out to happen from time to time over the course of the Expo, where people would recognise me and say, "You're Dran, right?" and I wouldn't recognise them immediately or at all until after they informed me their screenname (usually by way of flashing the H!O nametag attatched to their bag). This always made me feel a little bad, that so many people knew me, but I couldn't return the gesture. I'm not particularly good with names or faces, but I do feel I should have made more of an effort to learn what people looked like beforehand.

Anyway, the line started moving, and so we turned off our music and prepared ourselves for the lottery, drawing on the power of Maasa (or whatever other Idols were favoured by the others) to guide our hands to winning tickets. Well... Unfortunately the answer to our prayers was a clear "No." None of us got a winning ticket. Slightly dissappointed we joined our group (which was to now include Kiss!Kiss!Kiss! [or Dean], gina and markRAWR and blu-cheri.) only to learn that Gina had won a ticket. She and Mark hadn't bothered to turn up for the fnac signing, so at least she got to go to one of the sessions.

We spoke to Oroboras and Maoh for a bit, who were a bit further back in the line than we were, before deciding to go get some water and then make our way to the signing session. We also ran into CFB in the line even further back, who informed us that there were already people lining up for the concert - about 30 or so. This came as a bit of a surprise as the signing session hadn't even started yet, but we spoke about it a little and he directed us on how to get to the concert, when we left him to finally grab that water.

We got back, and Orob and Maoh were getting pretty close to the front of the line, so we stuck around and spoke with them a little more. Throughout the Expo there was no-one we felt deserved a ticket more than Orob, after he was in line for the fnac session since 3am and got the last CD in the store, but they had somehow managed to run out of tickets before they did CDs (which they neglected to tell anyone until after the CD had been bought and paid for).

But he and Maoh both failed to draw a winner. So we all made our way to watch the signing session.

We actually got there pretty early, there weren't that many people there. But for some reason which escapes me, we didn't immediately take a spot at the front of the crowd. We hung back, and joined (what became the middle) of the crowd about half an hour before the session started. We ended up at the barricades behind the line, but on the rightmost end of it. A good spot if you're an 8th Gen fan, but it wasn't a great spot to lurk if you wanted the attention of the other members. I made the most of what I had though.

Whenever a gap developed in the line and one of the girls were free, we'd yell her name and wave to her, or various other hand gestures also became frequent. And these gaps developed an awful lot around the 8th Gen members, as Reina was just before them, and she takes notoriously long to do her signature. Despite the fact that we only ever got to wave to those 3 members (and sometimes Sayu or Reina), I had a great time. And it didn't take long before I noticed something odd. Aika kept looking at me, I'd wave to her, and she'd wave back with that grin on her face. I hate Aika. Or I did. Over the course of the time I was there, she waved to me more than any other member (with LinLin bringing up the rear in a near 2nd*). I gradually started to think that maybe I had misjudged Aika. And that became something of a theme at the Expo, there were countless Aika haters in the audience who went home at the end of the 4 day Expo as an Aika fan.

*Actually, there was one moment during one of the signing sessions where LinLin wasn't doing anything, but I noticed her looking over in my direction, so I waved to her. One lone wota waving to the beautiful Idol at the end of the table. She saw me, and happily waved back, which then sent all the other fans around me (and ultimately the whole crowd) into an uproar trying to wave to her and catch her attention. I was quite pleased with this little moment we shared.

I also got JunJun to wave to me from time to time, but not as much as I would have liked - her being my favourite member, of course - nor, indeed, as much as the other 8th Gen members.

Gina went up there at some point, and apparently Brian managed to sneak in pretending to be a Press member who had lost his Pass (they saw his camera and thought it must be true?), but I barely even noticed any of that. My attention was entirely on the three 8th Generation girls sitting in front of me, who time after time would smile and wave to us as we yelled.

Anyway, time went on, and the girls left. And so, we made our way to the shuttle bus for the concert. The heat outside was unbearable, I briefly tried to sit on the concrete, but realised after only a few seconds that my arse would catch fire if I sat there for any longer.

Eventually the bus arrived, and everyone crowded on. In fact, it was crowded to the point that it looked like those buses you see in India with people hanging off of the sides. Okay, a slight exaggeration on my part, but it honestly wasn't much of one. Anyway, half of us decided to go for the next one, which was stopped 30 seconds behind, as they honestly couldn't close the doors we were packed in so tight.

We got on the next one which was alot easier to move in. It took us to the carpark and everyone else but the half of our group on the bus got off. For a moment I was worried that we had gotten the wrong bus after all, but Orob spoke to the driver and asked him if it went to the Morning Musume concert, and the driver simply replied "Concert? It's over there!" and drove us there. It was a little strange, after seeing the previous bus leave packed to it's bursting limit, and then us turning up at the entrance with an entire bus to ourselves.

We had no idea where the others were, but Orob, -kitsune-, Maoh, blu-cherri and myself all joined the queue and sat down. It was only around 3pm, so we still had 4-5 hours to wait. But we passed the time well. There were lots of Japanese wota around trading/selling photocards and my only regret about the whole day was that I didn't buy up all of the Maasa photocards. Oroboras had lots of H!P PVs on his phone, so we put a few on. Maoh found it very funny when Orob and I started doing the nose flick thing with the thumb from Hana wo Pu~n. Then we asked Blu-cherri to request a song, and she chose Yuke Yuke Monkey Dance.

What happened next I should have expected, but didn't. A girl walking past in the queue behind us stopped and started to do the dance, so blu, who is rather well-known on YouTube for posting videos of herself doing the dances for Hello!Project songs, got up and joined her. And the two of them, there in the queue went through the whole dance for Yuke Yuke Monkey Dance practically flawlessly. The two were pretty tired out by the end, but when it did end our group, and even lots of people sitting around us who had been watching too broke out into applause.

She said she wouldn't, but she did do another dance when Minimoni no Jankenpyon came up, which provoked a similiar reaction from the crowd as the first time.

Soon everyone started to get ready to go inside, so we all stood up and the line tightened up. We managed to move to the front-most line of the the queue. Orob turned to me at this point and, drawing my attention to the time on his watch, said, "It's now Maasa's birthday (in Japan)." And so, moving down the line, we broke out into song singing Happy Birthday to Maasa. Some nearby Japanese wota laughed.

While we were lining up, Morning Musume could be heart rehearsing inside. And every now and then the staff would tease us by opening up the doors, so we could see all the way to the stage where they were practicing, and we'd all cheer, before they close the doors again. Then the UFA staff (or maybe they were journalists?) brought their cameras outside and took lots of pictures of the crowd. They kept running past with video cameras and getting shots of the crowds going wild. If they ever publish that footage, I'll be on it, since we were right in front of the cameras. We also saw on of the UFA staff taking pictures of us on her iPhone. Seeing her would prove to be one of the most important things we did in the queue. We didn't know it yet, but she would go on to lead us right to Morning Musume, which I'll be sure to explain in great detail in the Day Three entry.

The doors did finally open though, and we all rushed in for a pretty fantastic concert. There were no seats, so the term "row" is pretty ill-defined in this context, but it's the best way to describe how close we were to the stage. We got to the 7th "row". We were as close to the stage as one could hope for. And standing behind Maoh, a short Japanese man, meant I had a fantastic view of the stage. No heads in front.

I broke my glowsticks in preperation for the concert, but unfortunately most of them didn't survive the trip from Britain, wether it was the post to my house from England or the flight over to Paris, I'm not sure. But most of them didn't really work. I did get a Gaki green and Sayu pink to light up pretty well though. But next time, I need LEDs rather than liquid glowsticks.

I'm not really going to go into much detail about the concert itself. I've never been one to review concerts, and the people who can TBT them are pretty crazy people in my eyes. But also because I don't actually remember much of the details of the concert. I couldn't even tell you what the setlist was. The heat was incredible, the energy (in our part of the audience at the front) was fantastic, and the performances were perfect. But my recollection of the whole thing is somewhat hazy.

I do remember, however, that the plan for singing Sayu's happy birthday didn't go quite as well as planned. She introduced herself, went to step back, and apparently some people hadn't gotten the memo. Some people like myself and Orob started to sing happy birthday (not at the same time which made it all the more confusing) other people were simply cheering, and some people were yelling "AIKA!" (because she was up next to introduce herself).  Fortunately Gaki realised what we were trying to do, maybe they heard the people at the front singing better than the people at the back shouting for Aika. But Gaki brought a somewhat shocked Sayu back to the front, where she led us into singing Happy Birthday to her. Alls well that ends well, but I guess we all should have done a better job of getting word out about when to sing happy birthday.

After the concert, I was dead. I'd used to much energy up, and I didn't have much room to do any warm up before the concert as the line was pretty tight. I'd been on my feet for the last 3 or 4 hours without sitting down at all, and had done alot of jumping during the concert. So after it was over, I kind of made my way into the grounds outside like a cripple and sat on the concrete and I've got to tell you, the cool, hard concrete has never felt so comfortable. And I'd been sleeping on it the previous morning.

Originally we had planned to go straight to the Parc des Exposition after the concert (it was after 9pm, the Expo had long since closed) and camp there overnight to get to the following day's First Come First Served signing session. After the concert we realised that this wasn't a great idea. We had been sweating like pigs during the concert, and it just felt disgusting. So we all decided to head back to our hotel rooms to shower, before meeting up again at the Expo queue.

Ole and I weren't actually sure if we were going to. We had all planned to, but when we got back to the hotel room we just collapsed on the bed, too exhausted to even shower, we seriously contemplated just staying at the hotel and lining up in the morning, but after we both forced ourselves in the shower, I convinced Ole that we should head to the Expo to line up.

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