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I went to the 2nd and 3rd Christmas Events and both events had the same structure and songs, but the first 'corner' (game) was different.
I walked into the first event not expecting too much, because I was in the 18th row, which is often so far from the stage that you can barely make out their faces. Shoved directly against the back of the middle 18th row however, was a small black platform. A lot of the surrounding seats which all had a rather bad view of the actual stage looked at it hopefully, expecting to see the members up close. There were several people talking about it and I overheard from someone who attended the first event that they actually used the platform quite a bit, for an entire corner and one song.
So the event started and the girls came in singing from the stage, making their way through the audience, to the small platform behind me. Seeing them singing up close was pretty surreal, but since they were facing the 19th row and onwards (unlike the 18th row, there was a walking path in between the stage and 19th row) I was mostly staring at the back of their legs. Some of them occasionally turned around but they pretty much overlooked us as we were too close. They went back to the stage and Keita was called in, who would be MCing the event. The first corner was probably the best part of the event. They would be given a question and they would have to answer it by picking up a single hiragana character each from the small platform in the audience behind me (staff came in behind us and scattered plastic tiles with hiragana characters on the platform). So one of the questions was, what is the concert hall in Nakano that's often used for Harocon. So Yuuka would come in, grab SA, Sayuki would grab N, Uemura, PU, Tomoko RA and Karin ZA. SANPURAZA (Nakano Sun Plaza, I don't remember the exact order but it's just an example). So one by one I saw them from really up close and crouching to pick up the tiles. It was aweeeesoooooome
~. Keita told the audience not to help but we did so anyway by just making different noises when they were close to picking up a right one and wrong one. It started out pretty easy but they eventually solely relied upon the audience's reactions and were spinning around on the stage wondering which one to pick up, lol. Note, they couldn't show each other which character they picked up and they had to reveal everything after everyone picked one up. That said, they miraculously only managed to get one question wrong and even successfully answered 'Name a medicine'. Listening to them asking questions to us on the platform without using the microphone was pretty cool. Karin really struggled to pick up a hiragana character right behind me and I considered helping her out by picking it up, but decided against it, lol. I have no idea how either the staff or fans would react to that. They kind of forced Keita to do one more question and although they were running out of time he complied. He was counting down their time as they were on the stage and they were running on the platform, picking up the hiragana and running off again very quickly. Tomoko seemed a bit nervous surrounded by so many people while Karin seemed very comfortable, hahaha.
The first corner at the third event of the day was less fun and frantic. Instead of hiragana cards there were 'phrases' on the small platform and the members on stage had to pick a scenario to which the member, standing on the platform, had to reply with the random sentence she picked up. The audience had to clap for who they thought did the best. It seemed like the amount of applause was the same for everyone but the staff said Uemura and Yuuka received the most and we had to clap for the winner again; Yuuka won.
They brought out a chocolate cake at the 2nd event which made Uemuu go crazy. Girl has 2 different modes; either she is cool and relaxed or excited and crazy. There's nothing in between, lol. Oh wait, she has ' WHO THE HELL IN THE AUDIENCE SAID THAT?!?' mode too. The speed at which she flips over her mood is almost surreal. So they took a picture with the audience and I think this is when the 2nd corner kicked in, which was the same for both events. They had to recruit audience members who qualified for a certain requirement, written on a card they randomly received, on the stage and the first person who collected 4 of them would win and get their picture taken with the 'team' in a sentai pose the member decided on (since the corner was called 'Juice Recruits'). Because they have an uneven number of members they first did 1v1 and then 1v1v1. There were some really funny moments here. Yuuka drew a card which told her to recruit members members in their 'juudai', which is ages 10 to 19. Lol, good luck with that. The majority of fans (including the girls, which there were a lot of) are over 20, and people that young would probably not be able to afford fan club membership and events that easily. So Yuuka was all like ' Are there even any juudai here? Where are you all!' whilst running through the right side of the audience. I think she managed to get a single person up on stage. She asked afterwards where they were and maybe 2 people on the left side of the hall stuck up their hands. So she said 'Aaahhh....so you were on that side!'. Sayuki got asked to recruit people with a lizard as a pet, and she went like OMG. Thing is, you needed to be able to prove yourself, so unless you actually had a photo of the pet with you on your phone or something you would not qualify. Needless to say, she lost. Tomoko got one that told her to recruit people over 50...? It might have been older, I don't remember. She accidentally asked people who were younger to get up on the stage and apologized once she figured out they weren't that old, lol. Totally a Tomoko thing to do. Akari had one in which she had to recruit people with at least 3 Juice=Juice penlights, which didn't work out well, but people in the audience started borrowing from others to qualify, haha. I just have a Kingblade and didn't qualify for any of the other missions either so just watched the chaos ensue. Games where they allow the audience to participate are fantastic. Went to Karin's birthday event and they had fans dancing on the stage...some of them were really enthusiastic, to say the least. We waved off Keita, and they did several songs. First one was Matsuura Aya's 100回のKISS, performed by Yuuka and Karin. They took turns in singing so changing penlight colors was really easy. Same for the next song, performed by Uemuu, Tomoko and Sayuki which I'm not sure what the title was. They all sang Endless Love together and then went into Mariah Carey's All I want for Christmas is you. Apparently they had a lot of difficulty learning the song and it was their first time performing an English song so they were nervous about it, but they were good! Pronunciation was very good given how it's not their native tongue, and they hit the notes very well. Sayuki in particular was very impressive. I softly sang along with them and some of them definitely looked over at me during the 2nd event at least (12th row is very visible for them), especially Yuuka. At the very end when they were saying their goodbyes to everyone Yuuka also said 'See you!' in English, which might or might not have been because she saw a certain foreigner in the audience.
So yeah, great experience and it has me twice as excited for Country Girls and MomusuXAngerme's Christmas events at the end of the week. I am not sure if they'll be able to able to surpass Juice's events though, I have noticed Juice=Juice's events in particular feel very 'homely' and warm, and they make an effort to involve the fans. It doesn't help that my seats for Country Girls' events are pretty bad (a 2nd floor at a Fanclub event? Are you kidding me Up-Front?). The members said they enjoyed it as well and want to do more fan club events, since there are things they can only do there. Also mentioned wanting to do a bus tour. Who knows, management seemed to have listened to Ayaka wanting to do a hall tour so it seems possible. Hell, the strange combination of Ayumi and Fukuchan have a bus tour coming up during the freakin' working week for some reason, anything is up in the air.
I walked into the first event not expecting too much, because I was in the 18th row, which is often so far from the stage that you can barely make out their faces. Shoved directly against the back of the middle 18th row however, was a small black platform. A lot of the surrounding seats which all had a rather bad view of the actual stage looked at it hopefully, expecting to see the members up close. There were several people talking about it and I overheard from someone who attended the first event that they actually used the platform quite a bit, for an entire corner and one song.
So the event started and the girls came in singing from the stage, making their way through the audience, to the small platform behind me. Seeing them singing up close was pretty surreal, but since they were facing the 19th row and onwards (unlike the 18th row, there was a walking path in between the stage and 19th row) I was mostly staring at the back of their legs. Some of them occasionally turned around but they pretty much overlooked us as we were too close. They went back to the stage and Keita was called in, who would be MCing the event. The first corner was probably the best part of the event. They would be given a question and they would have to answer it by picking up a single hiragana character each from the small platform in the audience behind me (staff came in behind us and scattered plastic tiles with hiragana characters on the platform). So one of the questions was, what is the concert hall in Nakano that's often used for Harocon. So Yuuka would come in, grab SA, Sayuki would grab N, Uemura, PU, Tomoko RA and Karin ZA. SANPURAZA (Nakano Sun Plaza, I don't remember the exact order but it's just an example). So one by one I saw them from really up close and crouching to pick up the tiles. It was aweeeesoooooome
~. Keita told the audience not to help but we did so anyway by just making different noises when they were close to picking up a right one and wrong one. It started out pretty easy but they eventually solely relied upon the audience's reactions and were spinning around on the stage wondering which one to pick up, lol. Note, they couldn't show each other which character they picked up and they had to reveal everything after everyone picked one up. That said, they miraculously only managed to get one question wrong and even successfully answered 'Name a medicine'. Listening to them asking questions to us on the platform without using the microphone was pretty cool. Karin really struggled to pick up a hiragana character right behind me and I considered helping her out by picking it up, but decided against it, lol. I have no idea how either the staff or fans would react to that. They kind of forced Keita to do one more question and although they were running out of time he complied. He was counting down their time as they were on the stage and they were running on the platform, picking up the hiragana and running off again very quickly. Tomoko seemed a bit nervous surrounded by so many people while Karin seemed very comfortable, hahaha.The first corner at the third event of the day was less fun and frantic. Instead of hiragana cards there were 'phrases' on the small platform and the members on stage had to pick a scenario to which the member, standing on the platform, had to reply with the random sentence she picked up. The audience had to clap for who they thought did the best. It seemed like the amount of applause was the same for everyone but the staff said Uemura and Yuuka received the most and we had to clap for the winner again; Yuuka won.
They brought out a chocolate cake at the 2nd event which made Uemuu go crazy. Girl has 2 different modes; either she is cool and relaxed or excited and crazy. There's nothing in between, lol. Oh wait, she has ' WHO THE HELL IN THE AUDIENCE SAID THAT?!?' mode too. The speed at which she flips over her mood is almost surreal. So they took a picture with the audience and I think this is when the 2nd corner kicked in, which was the same for both events. They had to recruit audience members who qualified for a certain requirement, written on a card they randomly received, on the stage and the first person who collected 4 of them would win and get their picture taken with the 'team' in a sentai pose the member decided on (since the corner was called 'Juice Recruits'). Because they have an uneven number of members they first did 1v1 and then 1v1v1. There were some really funny moments here. Yuuka drew a card which told her to recruit members members in their 'juudai', which is ages 10 to 19. Lol, good luck with that. The majority of fans (including the girls, which there were a lot of) are over 20, and people that young would probably not be able to afford fan club membership and events that easily. So Yuuka was all like ' Are there even any juudai here? Where are you all!' whilst running through the right side of the audience. I think she managed to get a single person up on stage. She asked afterwards where they were and maybe 2 people on the left side of the hall stuck up their hands. So she said 'Aaahhh....so you were on that side!'. Sayuki got asked to recruit people with a lizard as a pet, and she went like OMG. Thing is, you needed to be able to prove yourself, so unless you actually had a photo of the pet with you on your phone or something you would not qualify. Needless to say, she lost. Tomoko got one that told her to recruit people over 50...? It might have been older, I don't remember. She accidentally asked people who were younger to get up on the stage and apologized once she figured out they weren't that old, lol. Totally a Tomoko thing to do. Akari had one in which she had to recruit people with at least 3 Juice=Juice penlights, which didn't work out well, but people in the audience started borrowing from others to qualify, haha. I just have a Kingblade and didn't qualify for any of the other missions either so just watched the chaos ensue. Games where they allow the audience to participate are fantastic. Went to Karin's birthday event and they had fans dancing on the stage...some of them were really enthusiastic, to say the least. We waved off Keita, and they did several songs. First one was Matsuura Aya's 100回のKISS, performed by Yuuka and Karin. They took turns in singing so changing penlight colors was really easy. Same for the next song, performed by Uemuu, Tomoko and Sayuki which I'm not sure what the title was. They all sang Endless Love together and then went into Mariah Carey's All I want for Christmas is you. Apparently they had a lot of difficulty learning the song and it was their first time performing an English song so they were nervous about it, but they were good! Pronunciation was very good given how it's not their native tongue, and they hit the notes very well. Sayuki in particular was very impressive. I softly sang along with them and some of them definitely looked over at me during the 2nd event at least (12th row is very visible for them), especially Yuuka. At the very end when they were saying their goodbyes to everyone Yuuka also said 'See you!' in English, which might or might not have been because she saw a certain foreigner in the audience.
So yeah, great experience and it has me twice as excited for Country Girls and MomusuXAngerme's Christmas events at the end of the week. I am not sure if they'll be able to able to surpass Juice's events though, I have noticed Juice=Juice's events in particular feel very 'homely' and warm, and they make an effort to involve the fans. It doesn't help that my seats for Country Girls' events are pretty bad (a 2nd floor at a Fanclub event? Are you kidding me Up-Front?). The members said they enjoyed it as well and want to do more fan club events, since there are things they can only do there. Also mentioned wanting to do a bus tour. Who knows, management seemed to have listened to Ayaka wanting to do a hall tour so it seems possible. Hell, the strange combination of Ayumi and Fukuchan have a bus tour coming up during the freakin' working week for some reason, anything is up in the air.
