Wednesday, May 23, 2007

To make up for all of the tl;dr posts I've been making...
According to my video iPod, I have:

100 pictures of Ryo-kun
181 pictures of all other JE boys
185 pictures of DBSK

...I can still be considered normal, yes? :D

And that is the reason why DBSK has the most pictures. (ILU JAEJOONG.)
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Tuesday, May 22, 2007

The More You Know (about Korea) with Bell
- Korean honorifics seem to deal primarily with age. (ex. Oppa is used from females to older males, Hyun is used from males to older males, etc.) In comparison, Japanese honorifics have more to do with a person's status; when explaining Japanese honorifics, the words "inferior" and "superior" are often used, which don't exclusively relate to a person's age.

- Rock in general is not a popular music genre in Korea, which is why good K-rock bands like THE TRAX often get left in the dust. This breaks my heart. :(

- Korean citizens (I think males in particular rather than females) are forced to do at least two years of military service some time during their life. Celebrities are not excluded from this, although they're allowed to wait until they're older and their careers slow down.

- Whereas stalking is the main issue for celebrities in Japan, in comparison, Korea has a major problem with anti-fans. Yunho of DBSK actually got poisoned by an anti-fan a couple years or so ago (he was fine after a few weeks hospitalization), and then other anti-fans threatened to do similar harm to the other band members and even certain celebrity friends of theirs.

- It's considered very noteworthy if a Korean group or artist is able to "break" into the Japanese music industry, but not so much the other way around. Same goes for the rest of Asia. (I recently wrote a short paper on this very topic for Creative Writing; my argument was that the international popularity of foreign music typically has more to do with that country's economy rather than a language barrier.)

- Not about Korea, but I found this interesting: Yunho stated in an interview that Japan is seen as a country with many individualistic people--which is funny to me, since I have the exact opposite view of Japanese society as a whole. Perhaps Japan seems more conformist to Americans, but more individualistic to Koreans?

Okay so this ended up being more of a Japan/Korea comparison than anything, but whatever. :)

Moral of the post:



Korea is srs business. You don't mess.
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Monday, May 21, 2007

Yesterday was my birthday.
I was gone all of yesterday, so I couldn't post about it on time. Aside from money and clothes:

- I will soon have a paid LJ account. 8D
- I will also soon have the Letters from Iwo Jima DVD. (NINO FTW)
- And the big one, a video iPod. I will enjoy filling up its 30GB of space with JE and DBSK crap. :D

Also, I am currently in love with this picture of Junno.



To clarify, he is Japanese. Because I'm sure someone out there is confused by now.

EDIT: OH, and I'm also likely to be attending AX2007. Sadly, I will also have to endure two weeks living with my evil cousins in California. Pray for me. :(
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Friday, May 18, 2007

ACen Con Report Part 3

Sunday
Gothic & Lolita Fashion Show:
My sister dropped me off at almost exactly 10:00AM, and I immediately headed off for the Fashion Show panel. The line was HUGE. It easily extended out from the hallway and into the main lobby area. The panel started about half an hour late, mainly because of problems fitting everyone into the room.

I took a seat far off to the right side of the room, which turned out to be a huge inconvenience; the models walked through the aisle in the center of the audience, which was a long distance from where I was sitting. Luckily I spotted one of my classmates (the one I had bumped into right before the Masquerade, and who I will now refer to as Ona) sitting right next to the aisle, so I just snuck up behind her seat and took my pictures from there.


Click here to see the rest.
I learned a lot about the many, many, many subcategories of lolita/gothic clothing, my favorite being the Gothic Pirate subcategory. When the male models started walking past, Ona turned to me in amazement and said, "You can make guys do this too?" XD

The panel ended at about 11:30, at which time I decided to head to the Exhibition Hall to blow off some time before the High and Mighty Color autograph signing.

Exhibition Hall:
I somehow ran into Ona again on my way to the Dealer's Room, and the two of us just sort wandered around for an hour. We occasionally ran into some of Ona's friends throughout, and apparently a couple of them ended up sleeping over at the hotel--without an actual hotel room. One of them even fell asleep on the roof. XD

Eventually, Ona and I ended up losing each other in the chaos that is the Dealer's Room, so for the rest of the time, I headed for the High and Mighty Color booth to get some official merchandise for the signing. Here I made my last purchase, HandMC's G8VER CD.

High and Mighty Color Autograph Signing:
I arrived a little after the signing officially started, and the line was about as long as the one for the fashion show. I waited in line for over half an hour before I got inside the room where the signing was taking place.

Here I had another THANK GOD FOR REMY moment. At first the signing was pretty typical, until I reached their aforementioned adorable drummer. He was the first one to take notice Rem, and apparently he thought he was amazing or something, as he kept pointing at him and grinning and saying, "Ikite mitai!" At this point, Maakii took notice of Rem as well and said that he was "sugoi." After signing my CD, she took another look at Rem, and then patted his head! ^_____^

After getting our merchandise signed, we were allowed to take pictures of the band from a distance. My camera is terrible when it comes to long-distance shots, so I quickly gave up on attempting to take a decent pic of them.

Nevertheless, I was in a daze after this event, one that lasted for the last hour or so that I spent just wandering around the con.

Leaving the Hotel:
At a little after three, I went to the front of the hotel to wait for my sister to pick me up, and who just happened to be outside but three members of HandMC. (Sadly, the drummer was not present.) One of the guitarists acknowledged me and stared at Rem for a long time, while I just pretended to not notice.

Only after they started posing for pictures with a couple other congoers did I realize that, duh, this would be the perfect opportunity to take a close-up shot of the group.

A few minutes after taking this shot, the band hopped into a van, presumably heading off to O'Hare. And a few minutes after that, my sister arrived and I left the convention for good.

Overall, this was probably the most memorable convention I've went to so far (Otakon perhaps being the exception), if not just for the amount of times that I got really lucky. There were plenty of times, particularly on Saturday, when I felt like things were going terribly wrong, but I'm glad that everything worked out so well in the end. :)

Just to end this on a lively note, here's a gummy pr0n pic taken by stepbackwards on her way to the con:

ACEN 2007 Con Report: END
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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

ACen Con Report Part 2

Saturday
Exhibition Hall:
I arrived around 10:30AM. The BJD meet didn't start until 12:00, so I decided to head over to the Dealer's Room, not really with the intention of buying much (BJD hobby = only $20 leftover for convention stuff), but rather just to wander and blow off time. I ended up running into a lot of classmates here, but that was the last time. I only saw a few of them again afterwards.

I was surprised to see that the House of Anime booth is almost entirely J-Rock now. Most of their merchandise are of visual kei bands that I'm not terribly interested in, but I found another J-Rock filled booth and made the first of two purchases, a photo of Hyde (L'Arc~en~Ciel) back when he looked like a Hispanic girl. :D

BJD Meet:
Admittedly, I had forgotten where this meet was supposed to take place, mainly because I was so worried over the JE meetup taking place later in the day that I neglected preparing for this one. During the half hour before the meetup started, I mainly just ran around the Artist Alley (where a lot of BJD owners had booths) and the main lobby of the hotel, approaching random BJD owners and asking if they knew where the meetup was taking place. NO ONE DID.

Finally, close to the starting time, I ran into one owner in the lower level of the hotel who said to check the main entrance of the hotel. No one else was there when I arrived, but after a few minutes, a small group had formed. The meetup had a very rocky start; a lot of people were upset that there was a lower turnout than expected, mostly because of the confusion as to where/when the thing was taking place. I actually ended up avoiding one particular owner, as she's known for being generally snarky and she was already in a bad mood. XD;;


But otherwise, I enjoyed talking to the other owners and seeing all of the dolls. The above pics are a handful of the ones I took. As a note, the Naruto and Gaara dollies shown in the pics above are likely smaller than the palm of your hand. ^^

myO Meetup:
I had thought the meeting started at 1:00 instead of 2:00. So I basically spent this hour waiting, then finding a working payphone, calling Katana, and wandering around until 2:00. I waited again at the front of a coffee bar near the main entrance of the hotel.

Now this is where I had a THANK GOD FOR REMY moment. A couple BJD owners, who were not present at the meetup, stepped into the coffee bar to buy some drinks. One of them saw Remy and started a conversation with me about BJDs while she and her friend ate lunch. After about fifteen minutes of this, I started to get worried that no one from myO had shown up yet. Luckily these girls had cellphones, as I probably would have never met with the myO group if I did everything through payphones.

Katana missed the first call I made, but she called back and left a message on the other BJD owner's phone. (Good lord, I forgot her name. *facepalm*) Funny thing is, she had no clue who Katana was, so she found the message baffling when she listened to it. The convo went something like:

Her: Hey, I just got this strange message. *plays it outloud for us to hear*
Katana: *talk talk talk talk talk Bell talk*
Her: I have NO idea who that is!
Me: ....I think that's for me. XD

I eventually managed to contact Katana, and Shinkiro, Schultzie, Waffles, and her came over from the Dealer's Room to the coffee bar. The other BJD owners left when the myO people arrived, and all of us sat in a circle off to the side and talked.

Big, mindblowing truth revealed here: Bell is quiet! Or at least I'm quiet in comparison to everyone else on myO. :3

So yeah, I don't really remember what all of us were talking about, but I DO remember Katana and Waffles eating my Koala Yummies, the whole group looking/WTFing at passing cosplayers, me forcing DBSK music on Shin, and when 4:00 rolled around, we all got up to find Shinkiro's lost coat and a schedule.

While Katana and Waffles were at the bathroom, a classmate of mine appeared from out of nowhere with a few friends of hers in tow. So I ended up pretty much ditching the myO people for my classmate. (Sorry about that, guys. XD) The group of us talked for a little while, but they eventually decided that they weren't interested in going to the Masquerade, so I headed off to the line alone.

Masquerade:
Another lucky moment here: there was a ticketing process for the Masquerade, but by the time I arrived, all the tickets were gone. The attendant stated that there were more tickets coming in, but he had no idea when. So I stood there for a while, panicked because I've NEVER missed an ACen Masquerade before and it would feel like breaking some sort of tradition if I ever did.

But the attendant I had talked to just a couple minutes earlier suddenly pointed to someone behind me and said, "You might be able to get a ticket from him." So I turned and saw a man giving out a handful of tickets to a crowd of outstretched hands. Naturally, I THREW myself at the man and managed to grab one.

The Masquerade started at 6:00, an hour later than scheduled, but I didn't reallly mind the wait since the Masquerade this year was incredible. The costumes were so good that I was even entertained by the walk-ons alone, and that rarely happens. One of the costumes I remember best was a Speed Racer cosplay, in which they crafted a car that had actual, albeit limited mobility.

[WARNING: Fangirl moment ahead]

Another favorite, although for very different reasons, was a young Asian man cosplaying as DMC Dante. He was with a group of other video game cosplayers, but I point out Dante because....

HE HAD ABS YOU GUYS. ABS. THE CAMERA FOCUSED ON THEM WHEN HE WAS BACKSTAGE AND HE NOTICED AND STUCK HIS TONGUE OUT AT THE CAMERA IN RESPONSE. (AND I CHEERED FOR HIM.) IT WAS SO HOT ASAFDLKF;DS@21!! Even the girls next to me were OMGing over him, and they were pretty damn critical throughout the whole thing. What sucked is that I remember seeing that very same Dante sprawled out on a couch while running around looking for the BJD meetup, but I didn't bother taking a picture because I was in a hurry. Damn do I feel stupid now.

[/fangirl moment]

The skits were, for the most part, also very entertaining and impressive. My favorite was a crack!Princess Tutu skit that was actually rather suggestive, so I'll refrain from quoting any lines here. XD

The Masquerade ended with a real-life proposal from the cosplayer to a member of the ACen staff. Everyone say it with me now, "Awwww."

JE Meetup:
The Masquerade ended at 8:00, right when the JE meetup was planned to start. Ironically, this was the meetup I was the least prepared for/most worried about, but had the least trouble finding. I basically just caught sight of a group of girls in the corner of the conference area, and when I realized they were listening to NEWS's Sayaendou, I knew I was at the right place. The meetup started with brief introductions from everyone, and I found out I was the newbie of the group! Some of the other girls have been fans of JE for years. ^^;

An Arashi fangirl, who for various reasons I will refer to as Sasuke, arrived shortly after I did and sat next to me. At first, I was more intent on talking to the kanjani/NEWS fans than I was on talking to Sasuke, until she opened her laptop. That's when I saw that right next to her mousepad was...

A DBSK STICKER!! OMG DONG BANG SHIN KI FANGIRL. Naturally, I clung to her. For the first hour of the meet, we mainly watched kanjani/Arashi PVs and other JE-related videos. Sasuke showed me some videos of Ohno, her favorite member of Arashi, including a video in which he demonstrated his excellent grasp on the Engrish language. I found out that Sasuke is also a BJD owner (she currently owns two, one having just arrived a couple days ago), and is fond of my awesome Japanese double-flavored lollipops. After the first hour of the meet, Sasuke had to leave to pack, but we exchanged LJ info before she left. :D

So for the last hour of the meet, I watched NEWS and KAT-TUN vids with the remaining girls. We mostly talked about Akanishi Jin, who I love, but who the other girls think is an arrogant h0r. A funny arrogant h0r though, since we spent a large portion of the time watching Jingrish vids.

When the meetup ended, it was almost 10:00, so I called my sister to pick me up from the hotel. In the middle of the meet, someone passed around a notebook asking for our LJ usernames and other contact info, so I've been in contact with a few of them since the con. :)

[to be continued in the next post]

*Note: Profile song change. Guess who!
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

ACen Con Report Part 1

Thursday
Registration line:
Thursday morning before school, I made the last-minute decision to head off to the Hyatt after school for early registration. This was mainly because if I registered Friday, I would end up possibly missing both the Spiral Spiders and High and Mighty Color concerts, and attending the Saturday concerts wasn't an option if I didn't want to miss a couple meetups.

The pre-reg line took almost three hours to get through. I kid you not. None of my friends came with me since most were only going on Saturday, and I didn't bring anything to read, play, or eat, so I just stood there and acted somewhat pissy all throughout.

That is, until I finally started talking to the girl in front of me. The conversation flowed fairly smoothly, which was surprising considering that it took over two hours for us to start talking to each other. We mainly talked about con and school-related stuff. (She recognized the school I go to.) She mentioned her plans to attend one of the High and Mighty Color concerts and hoped we'd see each other there. But once I got out of registration, I never met with her again.

I suppose I find this encounter important to mention as ACen 2007 was the first convention in which I spent most of my time hanging out with total strangers, despite many people I personally knew already attending the con. In a way, this was a fitting prelude of sorts to the rest of the weekend.

[/dramatic intro]

Friday
Spiral Spiders:
I arrived a little after 5:00PM. The Spiral Spiders concert started in less than half and hour, so I immediately ran over to main programming. ACen hadn't posted the concert regulations prior to the start of the convention, so I was worried that there would be some ridiculous ticketing process that would keep me from attending. Thankfully, for the first time EVER for a convention concert, the ticketing process was very simple and painless. I basically just had to walk towards a desk ten feet away, grab a ticket, then head back to main programming.

The Spiral Spiders concert was a lot more fun than I had expected it to be. The vocalist was VERY energetic and prone to running around, behind, and through the mosh pit. He was very ninja; one moment he was onstage and the next he was crawling on some chairs from across the room. And his Engrish was cute. :3

High and Mighty Color:
There was a twenty minute wait inbetween the Spiral Spiders and H&MC concerts (I just stood/sat in the mosh pit during the wait). My feet were already hurting like hell at this point--I jump far too much than I should sometimes!

When the H&MC concert began, I first noticed two things:

1) The mosh pit grew almost twice as large
2) The audience was also almost twice as loud and crazy

I actually only recognized a few of the songs played, but it was still exciting regardless. I was fairly close to the stage (at the very least, close enough so that Maakii might have been able to see me if I jumped), although this was primarily because the crowd had grown very very tight. Admittedly, I ended up accidently hitting a few people who were within my fistpumping space. XD

It wasn't until near the end of the concert that I noticed one very important thing: the drummer of H&MC is adorable. He hardly ever sticks out much in pictures of the group, but MY GOD, in person. IN PERSON. At the end of the encore, I was THIS close to catching one of his drumsticks, but a guy two feet away got it instead. Lucky bastard. Although something almost as good happened on Sunday...

Panel hopping:
After the concert, I slumped onto a nearby couch and looked through my programming schedule. I had another stupid moment here: for whatever reason, I had accidently left most of my Friday schedule at home. So I just ended up going to an RPG discussion panel I saw listed on the part of the schedule I did have. Admittedly, it wasn't terribly interesting to me; I really just wanted a place to relax my feet.

At around 8:30, the guy sitting next to me took out his full programming schedule, and I asked to look at it out of curiosity. And there I realized that a Gankutsuou lecture panel was going on at that very moment.

OMG.

So I immediately left in search for it, but got lost multiple times because who the hell is supposed to know where "Da Vinci AB" is? I ended up only being able to see the last 15 minutes of the panel, but what an informative 15 minutes it was. The tidbits I found most interesting were in relation to the many hilariously bad spin-off TV series based off of The Count of Monte Cristo, including one where the Count and Haydee travel to Texas to do good deeds. Texas, you guys.

The panel ended a little after nine, and I decided to call it a night and took the train home.

[to be continued in the next post]
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Monday, May 14, 2007

Currently too tired to write an actual report, so you'll all have to live with this preview of sorts.

1) It pays to be a BJD owner. Even High and Mighty Color thinks Rem is cool.

2) JE fans think Akanishi Jin is "a stuck up bitch." And he screams like a girl.

3) Gothiloli enthusiasts are, apparently, also stuck up bitches.

4) Katana kept staring at me strangely.

5) I missed out on DBSK cosplayers WTF

6) "I'll go speed dating too, but only if I can be the man."

7) I don't eat or sleep hahahaha.

8) HOT DANTE COSPLAYER

9) HOT DRUMMER

10) And just to live up to my current reputation:







HOT

More detailed reports forthcoming.
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Thursday, May 10, 2007

I probably won't be able to post or even go on LJ much throughout the next OMG!three days beause of ACen. So I figured I might as well go out with a VENGEANCE.

Have a good weekend, everyone. :3
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Wednesday, May 9, 2007

It's sort of funny how, in the last few posts, I have neglected to mention that the members of DBSK are actually quite talented. They're very well known for being a group of strong dancers and equally strong singers. (And rappers, haha.) They're a boyband with range, yo. Heck, they can even sing in Japanese.

But really now, who cares about talent when you have Jaejoong camwhoring himself 24/7:

....Have I mentioned that he's pretty? *o*
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Tuesday, May 8, 2007

I love Hero Jaejoong. Really I do.

That's it. I'm sneaking into a box and shipping myself off to Korea. WHO'S WITH ME.
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