Arashi, Arashi, for dream!

Hi again!  Look, ma!  Another post!

This one is about Arashi, the J-Pop group that I absolutely adore.  Arashi means storm, in case you were curious.  Arashi is a 5-member group from the talent agency Johnny's.  A sidenote about Johnny's: it is a talent agency that sort of mass-produces Japanese "boy bands."  They recruit kids when they are in middle school (or younger!) teach them to dance, act, sing, whatever and then try them out in various groups.  They also do a lot of back dancing for the official groups at concerts.  At this point in their life, they are called Johnny's Juniors.  Depending on how good they are, groups then get to "debut" and are officially a Johnny's group.  Most of the boys in the agency will never debut with a group.

Arashi debuted 11 years ago.  Other groups I like are more recent, but Arashi has been around for a while and is extremely popular at this particular point in time.  I think they will be popular for at least another 5 years (I said at least...I bet on more), or until the world ends, whichever comes first.

Ok, so...in April, I took the plunge and joined the official Arashi Fan club.  50bucks, but well spent, and I will tell you why in a few paragraphs.  But first, by joining the fan club, I get a few benefits:  I get beautiful pamphlets once every 2 months with excellent pictures of the group members, I get daily texts with updates and useful information, and, most importantly, I can ballot for tickets for Arashi performances.

Let me explain that whole ballot thing.  Johnny's concert tickets are not something you can just call and get nor are they something you can stand in line to buy.  You have to be in the fan club, and even so, you are not guaranteed to get tickets.  You have to "ballot" meaning send in a form and say that you are interested in going to the concert.  Before the balloting begins, a postcard is sent out with concert codes and details of what to do.  I have heard that who gets tickets is totally random, but I have also heard that the longer you are in the fan club, the better chance you have of getting tickets.

So.......it just so happens that Arashi is touring starting this July!  They just released a new album and the concert tour will have the same name, Beautiful World.  yes.  Well, I figured, why not, I am going to ballot!  So I sent in the form (it was by email) and waited and waited and waited.  And I was getting discouraged, especially as I considered all the things I had heard about how people don"t hit for tickets if they just joined the fan club (which I had) and blah blah blah.

BUT THEN...Last Friday...I got an email and I GOT TICKETS!!!!  I am so excited  (thus the $50 membership fee was well worth it!)  I do not know yet how good the seats will be, but either way, I am going and I could not be happier.  The concert is not until January, but that is fine by me.

On a side note...in case you are curious about just how popular Arashi is, last month, we were in Tokyo for a play and there happened to be a pre-sale of concert goods for the concert tour I got tickets for.  Kim and I decided to go wait in line for goods.  The goods stand opened at 7, so Kim and I thought if we got there between 6 and 6:30, we would be fine.  How many crazy people could there possibly be?  We could wait in line for an hour or so and then be on our merry way.

Well.....

How wrong we were!!!!  This was when we just got to Tokyo Dome City.  It was about 6:15.  It took us 20 minutes to find the end of the line!  Then we had to wait there until 7 when the goods stand actually opened.

PEOPLE!!

And a different view, as we moved forward in line.

Moving on forward.  The good news is that we moved almost constantly for the entire time.

yeah.... I think we had already done all of these loops at this point.

Look carefully, there are lines everywhere.

And finally, close to the finish line.  This is where the line stopped moving.  We were stuck in a nice crowd here for about an hour.  This is where I was reminded that Japanese people do not know how to form lines after all.

Success!!!

A little peek...

The treasures.

All in all, we waited in line for 3 hours.  Yeah, I am nuts.  As I said, the line was almost always moving, at least until the very end.  Also nothing in Japan opens until at least 10am, so it is not like we were missing other things by standing in line from 7am to 10am.  I have no regrets.  Also, as we were leaving the Tokyo Dome staff were announcing that the line had been cut off.  Anyone in line was ok, but no one else could get in line.  I think that means that people waited 5-6 hours to buy goods.  And this was just a pre-sale!  The concert had not even started yet and no one knew at the time if they would get to go to the concert or not.  If you are curious, Kim did her best to remember the route we walked and mapped it out here.  Zoom out if necessary to get the full effect.

One last thing, for your enjoyment.  Look what you can get from UFO catchers!! (claw machines!)

From top left and moving around counter-clockwise, we have a cat driver driving a cat car, a Jack Sparrow, a Michael Jackson bear, a Dragon Ball bear, a Harry Potter bear and a bunch of cat key chains.  They were so easy to get.  I chose to display mine as a bar graph.