#spoiler: I had a longer convo with yudai in Japanese!

[ai-da-ice]

[Fan Account] ai-da-ice at Tokyo’s Tonikaku HEY Pre-release Event/Handshake Meeting

So, previously I wrote a guide to attending in-store-lives after going to FlowBack’s for their single “Booyah!”, but a pre-release in-store or live event is a slightly different beast since you can’t just buy a physical copy at the store and receive a lottery ticket. I went into this experience of going to a pre-release event for Tonikaku HEY a little blind, not really understanding how it would work but praying I would figure it out as I went along. Still, since I’ve had a bit of bad luck attending events such as missing the priority seating ticketing (Da-iCE’s Stickyle event), getting the worst lottery number and missing the autograph session (FlowBack’s in-store), and getting on the wrong train and blowing some of my shopping money on taxi fare (Chiruran), I was actually expecting for things to go wrong, but I think it went incredibly smoothly, so I’m a little shocked!

These were the basics I knew before the event: at 9, the venue (in this case, a pretty decently sized stage near the movie theater MOVIX at a shopping village in Akishima) would begin opening preorders for Tonikaku HEY as well as the handshake tickets, which vary from order to order. Basically, if you pre-ordered one album, you could get a ticket to have a brief handshake with all the members. If you pre-ordered all three versions, you could get an extra ticket for a longer handshake with an individual member. At 10, you could start participating in the priority seating lottery (sticking your hand in a mystery box and pulling out a ticket to determine how close to the stage you will be) after you secured your pre-order receipt. At 2 PM, the mini-live would begin.

Naturally, I was wondering about the huge gap between drawing the lottery at 10 and the actual performance starting at 2, so I was thinking I would have a lot of extra free time in Akishima. I even skipped breakfast, thinking I’d grab something when I was there. Also, since most of the events I had been to in Japan thus far hadn’t been big on letting people line up too early, I decided to arrive exactly at 9 for the preorders.

This wound up being kind of a mistake, although it wasn’t one with as many consequences as I had thought. When I arrived at the venue, the line was snaking all over the place and was looooooong. I arrived at 9, but didn’t even reach the pre-order tent until closer to 12. Naturally, I severely regretted skipping breakfast. Luckily, they played Da-iCE’s “Next Phase” album to keep us entertained, but it was still a long wait. Here’s an idea of what the line was like:

(PS I FAILED ART LOL)

There were a few downsides to this other than just waiting a long time and starving, though, like I said, nothing wound up being too big of a deal in the end. One was that we were allowed to choose which member we wanted to do the individual handshake with, and they had a limited number of tickets for each member, to keep everyone from all going to the exact same person and having one member with a gazilion more visitors than another. Sota’s tickets ran out pretty early into my wait, and Taiki ran out about an hour later, and so on. Also the priority seating tickets were also a limited number, so I was pretty convinced I’d miss out on both since I was so far back in the line.

As I finally got close to the pre-order booth, I received a form to fill out to let the staff know which albums I wanted. At that point, the all-member handshake tickets were available and Toru and Yudai hadn’t sold out yet, so I opted to pre-order all three versions and go for the individual member handshake if it was still available. Toru and Yudai are about equal in popularity, so I wasn’t sure which would run out first, and I didn’t mind handshaking with either because I love them both, so I waited to see which tickets were left before writing down which handshake I wanted. The form was fairly simple Japanese, so I was able to understand most of it-- you could choose whether you wanted the albums shipped to you or if you wanted to pick them up in Akishima. The shipping cost was actually cheaper than a round ticket back to Akishima for me, so I decided to have them shipped.

When I arrived at the pre-order booth, I was relieved that both the member handshake and individual handshake tickets were still available. Phew! I wound up with Yudai’s individual ticket, which I was very excited about. Unfortunately, the priority seating tickets were all gone (the bad luck finally strikes!), but the venue was set up in such a way that even people outside of the priority area were close, and when we actually got into the mini-live, the members looked at our area to the side frequently.

By time all this was finished, it was already around 12:30, so I made a break for the vending area so I could finally get something to drink and eat. I was a bit short on money, so I wound up getting an ice cream cone from the 17 Ice machine (the company Da-iCE/AAA/TRF rep for-- Hayate was on the vending machine), which also was kind of a mistake since it was very hot and promptly melted all over my hands. But since I got the handshake tickets I wanted, nothing could bother me. (Naturally, I washed my hands right away after finishing my messy ice cream out of respect for the members haha)

Around 1ish, the priority people started being admitted, and at a little after 1:30ish, guess who appeared a bit early...Sota and Yudai!! The two did a mic test and rehearsed Tonikaku HEY and Paradive right in front of us! Of course, this was just to check their mics and make sure the speakers were positioned correctly, so it wasn’t a full vocal performance, but it was still amazing to see them a little extra! They even had a little bit of audience participation by having us sing the songs when they were adjusting their sound sets.

At promptly two, the full group came onstage to kick off with Tonikaku HEY... or at least they tried to, but there was a slight technical difficulty in the intro, and they had to stand on stage for a second waiting for the music to come back on. Then it was off to showcasing their new single. It’s definitely a song suited to live performance like all their summer releases, and calls for several instances of audience participation through chanting the “HEY!” part along with them and mimicking the choreo during the chorus. I think it’s a really fun release which blends retro and modern music and am looking forward to the full release.

After, the five members had an MC about several subjects including the recently wrapped up Chiruran performances and Golden Week, the holiday going on in Japan right now which is one of the reasons the stage was so crowded--students are out of school, and a lot of adults are also off of work. They also did a brief Q&A, which I’d normally love to translate, but i‘m not quite sure what the audience members said because of the high levels of wind during the performance. I have a feeling there was something about ideal types and something about food based on Da-iCE’s responses. Da-iCE also went through and asked what areas of Japan we all came from. Since it was Golden Week, several people had come from quite far since they had the vacation time.

With the MC finished, they moved on to their final song, their hit from last summer “Paradive”! This song is truly a fan favorite for several reasons, but mainly because there is a lot of fan participation from the towel twirling during the chorus to the “HEY!” fan chants during the “come on and feel the heat...” breakdown. The energy whenever “Paradive” is performed at an event is crazy.

Since it was a mini-live, there were only those two songs, but thanks to the hand-shake event, there was still plenty to do afterwards. The group handshake was first, and went by pretty quickly-- I would say you have about time enough to say one quick thing to the members before being pushed along. I decided just to go for “ganbarimashita”-- “You did a great job”--since it’s short and to the point.

If I’m remembering correctly, the handshake order went Taiki-Toru-Yudai-Hayate-Sota. Though it was brief, it was a legit handshake where they clasped your hand in both of their hands while make eye contact. 3/5 members said “Thank you for coming” to me in English (Taiki, Toru, and Sota), while Hayate and Yudai said “arigatou”. Toru and Sota seemed to remember me from Chiruran since they both said “Thanks for coming again” T^T. For both Toru and Sota, I responded coolly with “Oh, it’s no problem,” but YES, it was a problem, because I felt ready to die of happiness~

I was naturally freaking out, but had to run back to the other side of the venue where everyone was lining up for individual handshakes. How this worked was after the group handshakes were over, the members went backstage to change out of their Tonikaku costumes, and the staff set up queues using partitions in front of the place each member would be standing. We lined up behind the signs of whatever member we had a ticket for. If people ordered A LOT of albums, they could potentially have multiple tickets, but they were advised to line up in the longest line first, and if there was enough time, to go back to another line to handshake with a second member. However, there was a cut off point for the event so the members wouldn’t be there all day (once again, it was quite hot).

Since I always blank out when speaking to idols, this time I spent some time practicing the general idea of what I would say depending on which member I was shaking hands with. I had to wait in Yudai’s queue for about twenty minutes before reaching him, so I felt like I was ready by time I reached him. Of course my heart was fluttering like crazy, but I stepped up, and he took both of my hands, and the following conversation occurred (in Japanese):

Yudai: Hello again, do you speak any Japanese? Me: Yes, a little. I met you last year in California. Yudai: Oh, that was [he couldn’t remember the name of which city]... Me: San Jose Yudai: Yes! Waaa, you came so far Me: I'm really happy I got to meet you again Yudai-kun! Yudai: Yes, me too me too (in English) me too 😃

Unfortunately, since my Japanese is so slow, that’s all we were able to say, but just having a longer length conversation with him made me so happy. Yudai, I’ll work harder next time!

After that, I was about ready to pass out from lack of food, so I had to hurry home. But overall, this was one of my most special experiences with Da-iCE. They’ve been so kind by greeting me in English all the time, but I’m going to improve my Japanese more so I can be more confident next time!!