#it's so hard to remind myself to smile in pictures lmaoooo

[cybervom1t]

coming soon to a pasture near you <3

[nagatsukinura119]

Japan Expo Malaysia Day 2 (27 July 2019) Part 1

Note: This report needs to be split into 2 parts. Because it’ll be long. You’ll see why.

Alright, before the day started, I met up with an online friend (let’s just call her N) and we decided to watch some performances before AKB48’s arrival. I’ve promised to see KiREI again with Hanapii the day before so of course I’d see them again. I hoped they would remember me. From the start of their performance Hanapii had already noticed me and waved at me (man was I so happy that I vigorously waved at her). I got a lot of attention from them, especially from Hanapii and Mianyan. Their bright smiles, their waves, their nods, all of those, so many of those would make anyone fall for them. N, who was standing beside me got pretty excited too and she could see why I fell for them because their fanservice was so good! As I busied myself shifting between taking pictures, recording and waving at them, I realized the reason why they noticed and waved at me so much was because N, who was taller than me (well I’m a smol potato so pretty much everyone is taller than me lmao) waved at them and kept pointing at me and making peace signs at the back of my head lmaoooo. No wonder the girls were smiling so much! (Thanks N, love you so much for this). Side note is that I really, really loved Hanapii’s hairstyle for the 2nd day, she looked so adorable. Chori-chan’s hairstyle reminds me a lot of Takamina, with her long hair and the red ribbon. And Mianyan’s smile was so wide that I legit had to look away most of the time our eyes met hahahaha.

Time for the meet-and-greet. Once again I felt like I was the only girl who joined the line (actually I think there was one girl who wanted to join but after asking me how much each Cheki ticket and shirt and towel cost, she turned around. I couldn’t blame her though since I was intimidated by the price at first). When it was my turn to buy the tickets, I wanted to get the towel, but decided against it at the last minute lol, the man who was selling them seemed to remember me cuz he was very much more welcoming to me than the customers before me. When it came my turn, Hanapii was so happy she started bouncing while waving at me and calling my name three times (So. Darn. Cute! Also, here’s the thing, I still cannot get used to people calling me with a ‘Chan’ so it literally felt like getting arrowed on the heart). She even started to immediately pat my head (the perks of being smol I guess. Wait...) Unfortunately, that was too much for me to handle so I kinda leaned back a bit while giggling a lot. I hope that didn’t offend her or anything. I also told her that I couldn’t look at her in the eyes because the view was too blinding puhahahah! For the first round, she and I took a picture with a heart pose, and for the second round it was the pa! pose (where we opened both of our palms). While she was signing the polaroid pictures she opened the topic of Twitter. She mentioned that she saw my account (the night before she liked my reply on one of her posts! I just did not expect she’d be one to bring it up) and apparently, she looked at my profile and noticed that I make illustrations and comics. I was legit so very happy that I was blushing so much. I made a promise to her; I would draw them an illustration and comics for them. I thought she was already smiling hard enough but that made her grip my hand (when she wasn’t supposed to) and squealed. She also asked me if it was gonna be in Japanese, to which I said I’d do it in English too, since I make my illustrations and comics in both languages. She then patted my head while saying “Ah~ so smart” in English. I couldn’t help but think that she may own a dog cuz honestly if I had a tail it would be wagging vigorously. She then proceeded to say that she’ll look forward to it and I KNEW that I would make that illustration no matter what. It was time to go so I told her that I would come the next day, to which she said she’d look for me. My thought was like “You know where to look for me since I always attend at your concerts at the same spot” but I didn’t tell her that cuz I didn’t want to sound obnoxious. I went back to N, who was saving our spot and showed her the polaroid pictures and told her my experience and how I’ve really fallen for Hanapii (again) hahahah. So that was the end of KiREI’s experience in Day 2.

For the rest of time before AKB48’s arrival, N and I were thinking to get something to drink or eat, but since we didn’t want to lose our perfect spot, we just sat on the floor and waited lol. After KiREI, was a performance by Riona Hamamatsu, who was actually a former member of Team 8, like what are the odds, right??? She came in, and man was she pretty!

What I’m impressed the most about her is how successful she is after leaving AKB48, as according to Aki, she has done several concerts outside Japan. I was at first thought, “Is she good in English”, and THEN she started speaking in perfect English, without an accent which surprised me more, what more can this girl do?? So amazing! When I checked on her, turns out she was raised in Los Angeles until she was 10, which explained her fluency, and that her full name is Riona Crystal Hamamatsu. What I thought was “Well, she definitely has grown and became more successful after leaving AKB. Good for her!!” Her performance opened with her doing a solo dance, and following that were brilliant performances, as she sang some Japanese songs and one song in English. There was one point in her performance that she started throwing 3 colored balls with her signature on them, and to be honest, even though I wasn’t even her fan, I wanted one! Well as expected, she only threw them at the center part of the audience haha.

After Riona, it’s Sorgenti who was performed by brothers Mitsuhiro and Hiroshi, along with their two back dancers. What I loved about their performance and song is how they are a mixture of traditional music and J-pop, so there was a great amount of energy rushed into you and their songs were fun to chant along with. I joined in every one of their chants such as “Ou!” “Washoi!” and “Sore sore!” They were just that fun to follow along. Not to mention their own respective voices were beautiful and honey-like. So their concert was legit fun to attend and makes one very happy to be part of the audience. Furthermore, their smiles were very contagious too!

The next performer is Banzai Japan, which was an idol group where each member represents their individual prefectures from Japan, so there are 47 members in total, but for this event, there were only 7 performers. What I liked about this group was that they definitely were not afraid to get close to the audience since there were many times they’d stand, squat and dance so close to me and N (which very excited us by the way hahahah). Aside from that, their dances were fun and energetic too and there was one dance I legit wanted to dance along to.

Last but not least, the one right before AKB48, was DJ Hello Kitty. As her name implies, Hello Kitty donned her bling dress and started to play music to hype the audience as a DJ. Okay, here’s the thing, I knew that by now 99% of the audience was saving their voice and energy for AKB48’s arrival, but holy molly poor DJ Hello Kitty did not get much hype despite playing hype music (okay there were some parts when the audience did follow along but there wasn’t much). The atmosphere was low enough that the hosts (Aki and Austin) had to step up into the stage to rile up the audience. That worked at some level, but N and I still felt quite bad for DJ Hello Kitty, and I did not want her to feel unappreciated so I tried to follow along as much as I could. Honestly this taught me that to be a wota, you have to have high stamina as well as being quite fit in order to not get tired quickly (is this a call for me to start working out???).

Day 1 report is here! To be continued in Part 2!

Bonus picture:

(Hi! My flower!!!)