I’ve been working on this entry this past week and I still haven’t gotten past the first paragraph. When I first started writing I was still very very bitter, since the Yatterman experience was far from what I had expected prior to setting off for NYC. I got kind of sidetracked as I ended up taking time to sum up all my bitterness in a nasty (but eloquently phrased) email to the Comic Con organizers to express my disappointment in the way they handled the Yatterman premiere. After letting off some steam, I was finally able to focus on the positive aspects of this experience

And that brings us to here.

*****

First, I should mention how excited I was when the initial announcements were made about Sho-kun coming to NYC. They had announced it about 2 weeks and a half prior to the con and the news had spread like wildfire throughout all the communities. At first I didn’t even think it was a possibility of going to NYC on such a short notice, but after two days of serious deliberations, the plans were set in motion.

There was quite a bit of ups and downs before the con, namely the misleading messages from the website. At first there was suppose to be an autograph session, then it was scrapped. Then with Sho’s busy schedule and their ‘security’ concerns (ahem, more like JE restrictions), they couldn’t confirm his appearances at all the events. Needless to say, it was a huge relief when they finally confirmed that he would be at the panel and screening, although the autograph session and second screening were definitely cancelled.

At least we’re guaranteed to be in the same proximity as him!

*****

The actual trip to NYC wasn’t as bad as I imagined, although the Air Canada Embraer (which seats 93) was the tiniest plane I’ve been on. Imagine my utter astonishment when I realized the beverage cart actually fits down the aisle! It was a bumpy ride getting there, but it ended up taking less time than they predicted, so we got to La Guardia quite early.

I’ve never actually flown to NYC before, so I wasn’t familiar with the airports. In my mind I’ve always pictured La Guardia as a big airport, like O’Hare and Sea-Tac, so it was quite a shocker when I saw just how ghetto La Guardia actually is! It was definitely an eye-opener!

The rest of the night passed by without any other suprises, although I was quite amazed at how nice our hotel turned out. Mind you, the hallways were extremely narrow and the elevators were so slow I could have walked up to the 6th floor at the same speed, but the room was large and spacious (although it had a hideous looking art deco paper lamp hanging from the ceiling). Either way, I was pleasantly surprised.

****

The day of the con we got up early and headed over to the Javits Center. After getting lost finding the correct subway line and receiving no help at all from the disinterested booth worker (who would have been FIRED if he was ever working in Toronto), we finally made it to Penn Station. It was quite chilly stepping out of the station as we made our way towards Jarvits. We had anticipated standing in line outside for the next 4 hours, and even with the many layers we had on underneath, I was not looking forward to it at all. Luckily as we got closer to the building, we noticed that it was actually open to the public. After wandering inside for a bit, we realized that they had opened up an area for us to wait in the basement level. By the time we made it downstairs, there was already a line forming for the con attendees. It was funny because the majority of the line were actually Sho fans!

The next 4 hours passed by quickly. I met sooooo many fans that travelled from all over to see him. There were fans from Peru and Columbia, fans from all over the States, even fans from Japan! (Don’t they get enough of Arashi in Japan?!) I was a bit surprised by the amount of gaijin fans there were. I never would have believed these girls were Sho fans if I were to see them walking on the streets!

We all gathered around to take pictures of the ‘Sho Brigade’, then we rehearsed ‘Believe’ as we hoped to serenade Sho at the panel. Everyone was so nice and so enthusiastic, it just made the experience all the more worthwhile.

*****

When the 4 hours finally passed, we were all excited to go inside. I had already peeked at the Yatterman booth from upstairs, so I knew where to go once we were let in. At this point, it was sheer pandemonium watching the amount of people converge on one tiny little booth. I swear within 5 minutes there was close to 150 people jammed into the small space surrounding it.

This was where I started my rant to the Comic Con organizers, since they neglected to prepare the space before letting the fans in. There was absolutely no line control, despite the futile efforts of one lady who was deluded into thinking she could make us form a single-file line. Totally not happening.

The next 2 hours was undoubtedly the worst –

It was hot.
It was claustrophobic.
And oh-so-packed.

There was hardly an inch of space between me and the next person. As hot as it was with my many layers on, I couldn’t even maneuver my arms to take my coat off. There was just NO SPACE. I only had enough room to angle my hand so that I could fan myself with my uchiwa. I nearly passed out from all that waiting, but there were two events that happened that snapped me out of my misery –

One, the crowd started screaming and a whole wave of people shifted over to catch a glance of Sho-kun who happened to be walking past the second floor windows. I had no idea what they were looking at since I was stuck with my back towards the window. When I finally pried myself to turn the other way, I couldn’t tell if it was Sho or not since there was a whole entourage with him. Apparently he did wave at us before going on his way.

Two, about 15 minutes prior to Sho’s appearance at the panel, they announced that ‘due to safety concerns’, Sho will not be appearing here. Instead, he was going to greet us from the second floor room, which was close to where he had stood earlier. Needless to say, we were not happy with the arrangement.

Once the announcement was over, they finally decided to hand out the tickets. This caused even more commotion to occur, as everyone was fighting and pushing their way to the front. It was a pretty bad situation, and I think a girl’s kid brother was trampled in the process. However, it was all a hopeless effort since they handed out about 15 tickets before they said they were ‘all gone’.

All gone my ass.

If they didn’t want fans to push and shove, then maybe they should have thought of a better way to hand out the tickets beforehand. But when you’re taunting the tickets in front of a crowd of eager fans, what”d you expect would happen?

*Bitterness seeping in*

*****

We eventually did make our way over to the windows and found a spot to stand. It wasn’t as packed this time which was a relief, although we were once again overcrowding the area. I do apologize to all the other booths we blocked in the process, but no one was budging to get out of the way. There were a bunch of cameramen setting up their equipment in front of us, probably amused at the amount of fans that were there. Since 2:45pm was fast approaching, everyone had gotten their uchiwas and banners ready. The security guard upstairs at the door kept letting people in and out of the room, but Sho never came in. Past the 15 minute mark, many of us were getting annoyed with him for toying with us. I think there may have been a few fingers up in the air; and from someone else’s account, heard a fan yell out ‘we came to see cute Asian boy, not fat white guy!!’ =P

When Sho finally came in, the shrieks were through the rooftop. I think everyone inside the con heard us screaming. It was actually a good idea that they placed him on the second floor, because everyone got a good view from the bottom. The only thing I couldn’t get was a good shot from my camera, since banners and flags were obscuring my lens and I gave up soon after. The crowd starting singing ‘Arashi’ to him, but we were so blatantly out of sync that he had to cup his ear to hear us. When we got to the last line ‘Arashi, Arashi, for dream’ Sho did the hand movements along with our singing and it was sooooooooo cute! He bowed to thank us, but immediately left right after. Although it was short two minutes, it was well worth it to see him!

*****

After the high of seeing Sho had passed, I realized how crappy the con had turned out to be, especially since we had waited for so long and STILL didn’t have a tickets in hand. I exchanged some words with the ticket sales staff outside to give me a refund of my ticket, but to no avail. Hence I was fuming mad and disappointed when I left the building.

The cold air helped to calm me down as we walked back towards Penn Station. We decided we were going back to the hotel to drop off our stuff before getting in line outside the Directors Guild Theatre. After going on the wrong direction on the subway, we made it to the theatre at around 4:00pm. There was already a line up outside, with about 70-80 fans in front already.

It was getting cold, so luckily we still had our layers on from before. More people came behind us and the line quickly stretched as the afternoon grew on. I was standing beside two girls and their mother who had flown in from Ohio that morning. One of them didn’t even have a jacket on and the other was wearing sandals! I was shivering in my coat and boots so I could only imagine how cold they must have been. Luckily by Toronto standards the weather wasn’t too cold, probably in the -3°c to -5°c range, but after a few hours standing outside, you really begin to feel it.

The line didn’t look that bad around 6:00pm. We knew that there were more VIP and press/industry people that held tickets, but it still looked promising from where we were in the line. But by 7:00pm, the line for ticket holders just doubled. One of the organizers (who I’ve dubbed as pink suit guy) had an entire roll of tickets that he handed out to people on the guest list. By 7:30pm, his roll was practically gone!!

*Starts panicking at this point*

Everyone was still waiting for Sho and Miike to arrive at the red carpet. There were a few camera crews that went around to filming the fans’ reactions, so we all waved enthusiastically at the camera (which also helped us defrost our limbs in the process). We heard the screams before we saw the limo, but as it came into view, we saw Sho sitting inside waving at us! He had graciously turned the light on inside so that we could see him. He looked so spiffy in his suit! There was one girl with a sparkly uchiwa that ended up chasing his limo, but other than that, the fans were all well-behaved.

We couldn’t really see anything once the limo passed, but Sho and Miike had lingered on the red carpet briefly before making their way inside the building. The theatre staff then started letting all the ticket holders into the theatre. It was so painful waiting around for everyone ahead of us to be let inside. The line controllers had already announced that there were no tickets left, but fans still refused to move. It wasn’t until pink suit guy reemerged and informed us there were no seats left that it actually got through to the fans. He apologized profusely to the crowd, explaining that he honestly believed there’d be extra tickets for 150 fans to be let inside, but they had received a few last minute requests that they had to oblige to. In the end, they ended up letting in about 20 fans from the line before shutting the doors.

I think I was too numb at that point in time to really register anything besides ‘it’s too cold outside’. There were a few fans still lingering by the theatre, but we had all given up hope at this point. Some fans wanted to stay to catch a glimpse of Sho as he was leaving, but the theatre staff were desperately trying to get us to clear the sidewalks. We didn’t want to make their jobs harder than it had to be, so we took off in a taxi.

*****

My mind started to go a mile a minute during the taxi ride, but my entire body was still frozen after standing outside for over 4 hours. We went back to the hotel and decided to indulge ourselves at the Japanese restaurant next door. After warming up with some green tea, I was finally able to comprehend just how disappointed I was at everything that had happened.

Even though we had managed to see Sho, it was certainly not under the most ideal circumstances. I was so upset that night that I couldn’t even think about it without feeling like I would breakdown into tears. I was trying to numb myself by continuing with our sight-seeing plans, but I wasn’t as excited about the trip as I was before.

Anyway, it has taken me a full week before I could write about this experience. I didn’t want to continue dwelling on things that I had no control over. It just wasn’t meant to happen this time. But if you were to ask me if I would do this all over again for Sho, I probably would say it’s not worth it. It’s not even about the money we spent or the time we waited that bothered me, it was the immense letdown at the end. But focusing on the positive side of things, there were certainly aspects that made it worthwhile:

1. I met so many Arashi fans. Everyone was super nice!

2. I got to see Sho up close! In a suit! Closer than we were at the concert!

3. Sho got to experience firsthand the warmth of North American fans. I think we all did a fantastic job leaving a lasting impression on him.

*****

On another note, after coming back home we were trying to catch all the Japanese news channels for coverage on Yatterman. We made it on Zoom in Super! You can catch us on screen for a split second as they pan across the line.

The best part was making it on News Zero! It must be uncomfortable for Sho when the newscaster is actually the subject of the broadcast! Either way, there’s no doubt that it’s us on screen, since it was such a clear shot. They started looping the playback as they discussed his experience, so we were in the same frame as Sho!

Thank you News Zero camerawoman!

Anyway, to wrap up this long entry – I’m glad I went to NYC, even if my time with Sho was ever so brief. I’ve learned to let go of the disappointment and take what I could get. There were a lot of fans that couldn’t travel to NYC, so I was very lucky that I could arrange this trip. Thank you to all the people I met that made the trip awesome! Arashi fans are the nicest.