Day 43 - BoA's Concert

Wow was this day a troubling one. After a night/morning of drinking and partying I woke up with a smile on my face because I knew just hours away I'd be sitting down with Kenji watching BoA's concert. Well, when I took a look at the tickets, to my surprise the location was unfamiliar to me. I checked online and after a few minutes, I came to realize this place was no where near Tokyo and the fastest way to get there would be by the bullet train.

Kenji and I figured it'd be best if we didn't go because those train tickets would be ridiculously high for just a few hours in another town. So we went along with our day in misery -- eating what should have been a delicious bowl of ramen became bland and flavorless. This was a day that I wouldn't forget about Japan, my first real concert, and that of a talented beauty - BoA.

It was about 3:00 and we were debating going to back to school or not to see what the others had planned for the rest of the day. I only decided on Kenji's way out the door that I would tag along with him because a few hours out doing nothing beats staying indoors doing nothing. So we rode the trains to school and found that there was an "Ochakai" (tea ceremony) being held in one of the classrooms. So students and the Japanese volunteers alike were sitting around eating and drinking tea.

We ran into a familiar face, Kanako from our Monday conversation class and told her what was going on about the concert. She asked to see our tickets but I told her I left them at home, seeing how we wouldn't be needing them. When she caught wind of the location, she grabbed us and told us it was no more than roughly a half an hour away from Shinjuku. Shocked, we rushed home to get the tickets and out the door to get to the concert.

After waiting for what seemed like the slowest trains in the world we got home, rushed to get ready, and ran out the door to the station. Seeing as we don't know when the trains come exactly, we actually ran all the way from our apartments to the station in the matter of minutes. From Shinjuku we didn't bother finding the right train ourselves and immediately asked the first station worker we found where to go. Rushing from place to place it was a real rush seeing how from the time we left the school we had no more than two hours and twenty minutes to get to the concert.

Once we reached the train of a half an hour or so, it actually took more like forty-five minutes to get to the right town. From the station, we ran yet again to find the building where the concert was being held, only to get there a mere five minutes before the concert started. But boy, when we got there, we had the biggest smiles on our faces with disbelief of being able to get there on time. We went through all sorts of emotions throughout the day from disappointment to shier happiness when we entered.

When the concert started, everyone rose from their seats with excitement and started waving, cheering, and singing along to the songs. BoA was absolutely wonderful with an outstanding voice and a presence to be known. From slow familiar ballads to her new poppy singles, everyone couldn't get enough.

During the short breaks between songs BoA would speak to us and tell us various things -- such as the city, and things that happened recently. Although she spoke rather fast and slurred, I was able to pick up the gist of what she said and laughed along with the crowd. Whenever she left the stage there'd always be people shouting behind us for BoA to come back out, or other little phrases. When she was on stage you could often hear the word 'cute' being thrown out there. The funniest thing I heard someone shout was "Mos Burger!", making both me and Kenji crack up to no end.

I was the only one that night to shout something in Korean, Saranghae (I love you!) -- for those of you not in the know, BoA is a Korean singer who does much of her work in Japan. Although embarrassing, I didn't care one bit -- I wouldn't see any of these people ever again.

After a little over two hours the concert ended with a bow and the crowd cheered and chanted again for BoA. Leaving the concert hall was a bit unnerving because of how many people were exiting at once. But once in the clear, we made our way back to the station to catch our train home.

However, to our surprise the trains we were soon to catch had its own agenda. We caught the same train to get here to head back, but it wound up going to Ueno. From Ueno, we caught a train which led us to Akihabara. From Akihabara we caught the same train we would home everyday back to Shinjuku. From Shinjuku we caught our usual train making a total of 100min from the city the concert was held in back home.

Adding up the amount of trains caught for the day, we wound up catching a total of 10 trains throughout the day, going to and from places for the purpose of a very well worth concert.