YES ARASHI CONCERT!!!

November 9-12 Monday thru Thursday

So my confidenceness has been paying off. Ever since I pumped myself with more confidence the teachers have been talking to me more and stuff. Particularly interesting is the elementary. On Monday when I went to the Elementary I exuberantly and confidently said Ohayou gozaimasu to the teachers and was so energetic with the kids that the teachers were surprised, but since the kids already knew that was how I usually am like it was nothing new to them. Yeah, I don`t know how the teachers don`t see how genki I am with the kids...eh, whatevs. But at all the schools it made a difference with the teachers. Well, the high school is still the same, but in terms of teaching, it was a difference.

On Thursday night I went to pick up Chingyi from the Asahikawa train station. She flew in from Gunma-ken on the main island. She was here to see the Arashi concert in Sapporo, in which she invited me to go as well, and decided to also visit me since I`m on this island. haha. But it was nice to have another states person with me in the car. The way we talked and everything really felt like I was back in the US with my ol buddies. I missed it very much. And I realized that after not cussing for a long time, I spewed it out almost every other sentence. And that`s bad. lol =O I`ve been trying to be agood girl and not do that. But it just came out....

Anyways, we went to go eat at the all you can eat Shabu-shabu place and I had her try the Hokkaido softcream because damn is it good. And I told her she also needed to try HOkkaido milk. So afterwards we went to Lawson`s to find it, but to no avail. We`ll check out Seico Mart later for it. So then we went home and chilled.

November 13 Friday

My middle school was excited to hear about my friend who came last night. I had asked them beforehand if it was okay if I brought in my friend for a visit of the school after all the students had left and they were totally fine with it. On the other hand, the elementary was f-ing strict with this stuff and it took an hour to okay everything! Are you kidding me? She`s just coming in to see the school after the students have left. ANd they like need to know why she came, where she came from, why she`s coming to the school, what time she`s coming to the school, if she needs a guide via the vice principal. DUDE. It was like a police inquiry. I know it would be dangerous if it was some gangsta guy, but I had already told them she was an ALT from Gunma-ken. Bah, in the end they told me it was okay.

So at around 3pm I went home to pick up Chingyi at the apt and took her to the elementary first to look around. The teachers were all in a meeting so they were in the meeting room. So I guided her around the school and saw a couple of my volleyball girls so went over to say hi and introduce them. Then afterwards I went to the middle school and with whom all my teachers were really excited to talk to her and everything. I love my middle school peoples. haha. Even my kids who were still at the school for club practices were pretty cool with her. =P

After that we went to the Picture Book Library/Museum, one of my favorite places in town. It`s so nice and modern looking. Hehe. So Takeuchi-san, one of my bosses who works at the the Picture Book place and also an awesome father of one of the 6th grade elementary kids whom I dearly love, was there that evening. No one else was at the library except for the workers. So I was halfway giving her the tour when Takeuchi-san came over and said he`ll give us a tour of the place himself. And luckily because of him we were able to go to all the rooms that were locked and even go the backroom or the safe room where the temperature has to be kept at a certain degree so as not to ruin the items kept there. It was soo cool! He even told me that if I ever want to come in here to translate books or anything like that all I have to do is tell him and he`ll let me in. WOO! I feel like one of those special agent peoples who have special access to everything. haha. Anyways, afterwards we went to go eat at the Eki-mae ryokan and then went to go sing our hearts out at the Karaoke box in Shibetsu city. Originally, we were going to only sing for an hour, but when I got there and they said there was a special price if you order free time (no time limit) that comes with all you can drink it`s only 1420yen. If we ordered the one hour Karaoke by itself it would cost us about 800yen for one hour. It`s expensive at night yes.So we were like, dude, 1420yen for as long as we like and anything we want to drink? I think I`ll take that one instead. SO we sang for 4 1/2 hours just the two of us, from 7pm until 11:30pm. Man, my voice was seriously dying on me. haha. But the Arashi concert is tomorrow! Exciting!

November 14 Saturday

Off to Sapporo for the Arashi concert!!! I drove my car to Asahikawa and parked it at the structure next to the train station for an overnight stay and then afterwards rode the train to Sapporo. The trip was pleasant with our duking it out on Mario Kart. So when we got there it was raining like crazy. Like a freakin typhoon. So we rode the subway over to the nearest stop to our hotel and walked the rest of the way. My jacket was soaked,even though I had an umbrella. ANyways, we got there at 12pm so we couldn`t check in yet. We just left our luggage with them and went off to Sapporo dome to buy the goods for the concert. THE LINE WAS LOOOOOOOOONNNNNGGGGGG!!!! We waited outside, in the pouring rain, in the long ass line for 2-3 hours! Just to buy the concert goods. Hah.... It was a good thing both of us had umbrellas and were wearing rain boots. Otherwise I would`ve died from the cold and wetness. =P There were a lot of girls wearing very little out there and non rain repellent stuff so I felt bad for them. But they chose fashion over usefulness and protection. Their own fault. But what they were wearing were cute I have to say.

Finally after 2 long hours I could see the goods. And I saw the really hot posters of them. This concert is their 5x10 Anniversary Tour celebrating 10 years that they`ve been super popular. So all their stuff has that logo on it. But their posters were super hot. And Aiba-kun seriously takes the best pictures!! His single picture was sooo hot! He looked like a prince in the photos. HOT! I caved and bought the single one of him, the one with all the members, and I bought their pamphlet/photo book, and a fan with Aiba-kun`s face on it. Haha. They were selling eco-bags and pen lights and towels and keychains too, but since I`m not a super big fan, I was content with what I bought. Save money!! lol And as I was waiting for Chingyi to finish buying her things I hear "Theresa?" and looked around and saw my two eldest cousins standing there with their umbrellas looking at me incredulously. I was like "OMG!!?? WHAT!??" My cousins don`t live in Japan, they live in the states. So I was super surprised to see them. They were here traveling around Japan and were fans of Arashi so last stop for them was this concert. Freakin amazing! Seriously, big coincidence that we met here at the concert. I haven`t seen them in several years too. And then of all the places, here. So I took pictures with my cousins and said goodbye to them and if we see each other later it would be awesome. But I don`t think that was going to happen because there`s way too many people here. I didn`t even see any of my students who were coming, but I met my cousins. Too cool!

So afterwards we first went back to drop stuff off at the hotel and then went back to the Sapporo Dome (concert venue). Our seats were up in the stands but since the stage was huge and the seats were well positioned there was no problem seeing them. Although the boys were a little small. Our seats ended up being next to these two awesome black girls who were studying abroad here in Sapporo. And get this, one of the girls is from CA`s La Verne University. My hometown`s university! Too coincidental. I was like, wow, today was a day of coincidences.

But anyways, the concert was way too awesome. The crowd all had their pen lights and when the concert was beginning they all held them up in the air. It was soooo cool looking. The whole place lit up red and blue. Well, more red though. But that`s like DBSK`s color....lol There was this giant helium balloon that had 5x10 written on it and when the boys came out they were dangling from this huge balloon flying over the crowd. It was awesome!! And then Aiba did his solo song and he was so freakin cool and hot hot hot! All the other boys were also very cool and hot. I didn`t know that Nino played the guitar. That was cool. And at the end, when you thought it was the end with just one encore, they popped out again with another one. THey did 2 encores! I love these boys! Seriously, this concert made me a bigger fan of them. The special effects and everything were all very cool. An awesome concert.

Afterwards, since there were so many people leaving the dome to get onto the one train leading out of the dome we girls decided to just chill around the area for an hour before getting on the train. We did not want to get smashed in the train with other rabid fans. But there was a line to get on the train that extended all the way out to the entrance of the station. We waited for a while before we got to the actual platform and by then we were lucky enough to catch the last train. I felt sorry for all the other girls who couldn`t get a train back home. But it was already super cramped on there. It felt like the Tokyo trains during rush hour, but luckily it was all young girls standing around us and not old men on you. lol Ah, good times. =P

Anyways, the girls we were with were totally awesome, and I will definitely call them up when I come back to Sapporo next time. So we said our goodbyes and headed over to our hotel. I was originally planning on hitting up bars to drink the night away, but because we didn`t get back until 12:30am and I was super tired after the concert, we just bought bentos from the conbini and went back to chill at the hotel. Yeah, I just collapsed after my shower. Oh, btw, our hotel is located in downtown Susukino where all the host and hostess clubs were located. Oh yeah. The cabaret clubs were there too. There were so many sexy looking buildings that just had club names all over them. There was one named Club Desire and Club Atlantis and I so wanted to go into them!! And our hotel is right across the street from the apartment building where all the hosts live. So we saw a couple of them walking in and out from there as well as just all over the place. haha. It was hot.

November 15 Sunday

Aahh...Good morning. A very good morning indeed. I`m all worked out from the concert and then we get free breakfast. Woo. So we spent the morning wandering around the Sapporo train station looking for empty lockers to put our luggage in after we have checked out so tht we don`t have to carry the damn things around. But because there were so many girls here for the concert majority of the lockers were taken. So we wandered for like 30 min trying to find empty ones. But we finally found them. Then we went to go take some purikura. I love purikura here and it`s so cheap! The first machine we took pics in we held up our Arashi fans and just had Arashi written all over the pics. The second machine we looked cho model-like. Super models. Haha. It helps that what we were wearing were fairly fashionable. I liked that machine. It made me look a little skinnier. haha.

We then went to the pokemon center and I bought 2 little pokemon plushies. Soo cute. The place was pretty awesome I have to say and there were so many lil kids running around. haha. It was cute. Afterwards we met up with Chingyi`s friend who came from Canada to the concert. We met up to give her her stuff that Chingyi had bought for her. We then rushed to go eat and ended up in the same Tonkatsu place as last time I was here because it was the fastest. At 3pm I took my train home to Asahikawa and drove back home. Good weekend.

Otsukare-sama for reading! I will post a video and pictures soon. But unfortunately I will not have pics of the concert since we were not allowed to take pics and there were people walking around making sure we didn`t take pictures. Suck. But good good concert.