I think the one word to summarize the con good experience is this –

WET.

Man, it was raining steadily the entire day of the first show! I guess considering it’s Sapporo, it was a good thing that it wasn’t actually snowing, but the rain really dampened the spirits lining up for concert goods, especially so early in the morning!

My sister and I had gotten out of the subway station around half an hour before the con goods were on sale. Stepping out of the subway, it was easy to make out the route towards Sapporo Dome, which was about 5-7 minutes away. All you had to do was follow the trails of umbrellas leading out of the station!

Luckily it didn’t take long for us to get in line and we were already in position before they began selling at 10:00am. I remember last year in Taipei we waited around 4 hours for concert goods. Since the line looked like it was moving quite quickly, I estimated it would take 2 hours to get to the end. Surprisingly I was right on. It was just unfortunate that the weather continued to worsen as we waited. In NYC, the longer we waited outside the Director’s Guild Theatre, the colder it got. However in Sapporo, the longer we waited, the wetter we got. As we got closer to the front my umbrella was starting to feel a little soaked through! After going through the rest of my belongings, I also noticed my passport had gotten wet too! Yabee!

When we finally got to the front of the line, I realized why the line seemed to move so fast – because they had separate lineups for each good! It was so annoying because it meant we had to wait in another 4-5 lines to get everything we wanted. In Taipei, the line barely moved but at least we were able to get all our items in one go. With the rain situation it made it ten times harder to juggle all my purchases, carry the umbrella, deal with loose change, then duck under everyone else’s umbrellas to make my way back in line again. After a few times, it was proving to be impossible to keep everything dry. Of course my instincts told me to protect the con goods as much as I could. However it was my bills that got the most wet! (I know, most people tend to protect their money first. However, here’s me trying to protect Sho). I apologize to the people working behind the counters for all my wet bills!

At the end we got through all the booths. Somehow we managed to get everything organized and made sure the rest of our money was safely tucked away. By the time we left, I took a quick glance at the lineup and it appeared to have doubled. They even started a new area diagonal from where we were standing as the parking lot had run out of space. I’m so glad we had gotten there early! It seemed to be raining quite steadily afterwards too.

Lugging all our con goods, we made our way back to the hotel in attempts to dry off. My mitts, coat and hat were soaked. So was the backpack. Luckily only the corner of my passport was wet. I had to switch coats to dry up. It was a little uncomfortable with the wet sleeves! The con goods managed to survive relatively unscathed. As we laid it out to inspect, I snapped a few shots of our purchase:

Anyway, after a quick break, we headed out again to grab food. Concert report to come next!!