Woke up before 8am, to catch the 9:04am bullet train back to Tokyo. Spent the 1 hour 45 min ride filling out the questionnaire (you see, I wasn't enamoured with the "MOTTO Sweet" song or PV, but when I woke up the damn chorus part was just stuck in my head with images of Hekiru dancing, ugh...). Arrived in Tokyo before 11am, met up with friends, and took the 11:45am bullet train to Shizuoka. All hail the almighty JR Pass! BTW, we searched the platforms but no Hekiru ;_;

We arrived at 12:45pm and went to the usual unagi place in the train station for lunch, but to our horror, it wasn't there anymore! It had been replaced by some seafood place. So we were forced with wander into the streets of Shizuoka before spotting a small hole-in-the-wall unagi place (and I really mean hole-in-the-wall... 4 counter seats, 2 table seats, 4 traditional sit down seats, one old lady to prepare the food!). After our meal we dropped off our luggage at the hotel and headed to the hall.

No flowers today, since we were *ahem* financially strapped and it would be a pain to get anything together. We instead spent our time hanging out in the usual spot at the hall. There were quite a few of us today, with some friends from Nagoya coming in as well. Altogether there were about 350 people today? More than Sendai but still a small crowd. Today I had great seats - last row in the middle right in front of the PA ^_-

Basically, the event was the same as the day before. Hekiru wore a red spaghetti strap blouse and yellow pants. Maybe the same yellow pants as in the "MOTTO Sweet" PV? Tairaku-san went on about how Hekiru had overrun the time schedule and caused the staff a lot of trouble, so today they would try to hurry (looking pointedly at Hekiru, who did not seem too terribly chastised) and wrap it under 3 hours this time! Much of the talk was similar, but luckily they did not seem to be tired of it, or worn out. A noticeable difference with the crowd at the beginning was that the fans did not laugh at the amusing bits in the making video, which was cause for some concern as we were afraid it would be quite dead for the mini-live part. But it actually went quite well! Now that I think about it, a very large portion of the crowd had been at Sendai (in fact Hekiru did ask, I think, and was half-resigned, half-amused when so many people raised their hands!).

The funniest thing about this day was, of course, the posing, um, I mean singalong corner. As matters had it, Ken-chan was quite adamant about doing the posing, and the crowd of course was far more enthusiastic about that than Hekiru's version! So Hekiru said, "Fine then! You make up something proper! Oh, and I want this captured on camera! Camera please!" and so someone ran out with a camera to take pictures of the crowd as Ken-chan started making up a set of four flexing poses, one arms up biceps flex, next arms down flex, then turn the wrists out with one leg in front, then switch to flexing the other leg! And Hekiru was laughing so hard, but then when they started the practice and at that first note the entire hall just flexed their arms up, the entire band cracked up and Hekiru was literally flat on the floor in hysterical laughter at the sight - and it must have been quite a sight, because even from the back I was laughing so hard my sides hurt! It took her like 3 minutes to recover, and the next round of practice she was once again bent double trying so hard not to laugh but failing miserably ^^ After a couple rounds of this they finally got around to singing the song, and I was quite impressed that she managed to actually sing! Hmm, chalk another one up for professionalism.

So that was Shizuoka. The rest of the live went very well, although I was once again quite quiet for the last part, and everyone looked like they really enjoyed themselves. I think Hekiru and Tairaku-san talked about a lot of stuff, just random things and whatever as well as regurgitating topics from the previous day, but I don't really remember. I remember the staff trying to hury Hekiru along again, as she took her own sweet time with the practicing. Oh yeah, there was one part where Tairaku-san made a god-awful pun that Hekiru took about 30 seconds to register, but when she did she just lost it completely, turned away laughing so hard she was completely silent, just shoulders shaking. She would try to pull herself together, then suddenly double over laughing again, repeat 2x or so. It was pretty damn funny to watch! In fact, Hekiru's reactions are always great and I would say that's why the crowd does all that baka stuff that they do. Heck, that's what we did before, at previous concerts like waving those pamphlets or doing the dances and stuff ^_^

Thanks to that sort of atmosphere, and perhaps because there were more people, today's crowd was more alive than Sendai. The sound was much better with the drums sounding clear and Ken-chan's guitar not so overwhelming during "Precious Things". This time we ran over two and a half hours.

After the event we filed out of the hall, said our greetings to everyone, and about seven of us headed over to a seafood izakaya that we had been to a previous tour. The food was excellent and we all had a great time laughing and chatting over "Natsu Shitai!" which had become our name for "MOTTO Sweet". After that, the car people set off for Nagoya, while the rest of us took to our respective lodgings for the night.

We took the 10:45am bullet train to Nagoya, arriving at 11:51am. No Hekiru. Upon arriving we met up with some others and six of us went for tonkatsu at Yabaton, a famous tonkatsu restaurant which just opened a new branch in Nagoya station. Since this was the last of the 3 days, Masa and I decided to send the staff and Hekiru something. He chose vitamin drinks for the staff (since Hekiru had given them such a hard time with her schedule overruns) and I picked shuu cream (cream puff) for Hekiru since on a recent radio show she had really enjoyed the shuu cream the staff got for her birthday. I picked one which was like "Famous Shuu Cream - only 200 per batch, 2 batches a day! Once it's sold out, no more! Please line up here" thing since I thought it might as well be something special. Of course, I made a valiant personal sacrifice to try the shuu cream first, to make sure it was good enough. It was pretty good ;)

Uh, okay enough about that. We waited in the hall, once again in our usual spot. Today there was quite a fair number of people gathered. I think more than 500 overall. Once again, yours truly was in the last row, to the left side of the PA booth. All the tickets I got this time were last row... Hmmm... Never mind, I had a clear view of the stage and plenty of space around me. I'd prefer that to getting stuck somewhere tight in the middle, anytime. Now, stuck somewhere tight in the front, that's another matter of course! Perhaps better luck for summer.

I won't repeat the line-up, as it was the same as the previous day's. Today Hekiru wore... Um, I don't remember what she wore for her top but I certainly remember her wearing a very short skirt with a slit right up the side, and you could see very very short white shorts underneath, with heeled white boots. I think it was the same white boots and shorts as she wore for the first part of Budoukan live.

I can't for the life of me remember what Hekiru and Tairaku-san were talking about today, which goes to show how memorable the conversation was. :P Wait, actually this time, Tairaku-san talked once again about how this was the first time he had cried listening to one of Hekiru's songs, and that "I guess that shows that even Hekiru has grown up a bit. Gosh it sure took her long enough though..." or something like that. Trust him never to toss in praise without a barb! But unlike before when Hekiru would just take it on the chin, she's become quite fiesty. She shot back a reply, and they argued back and forth. Tairaku-san didn't mention this at Shizuoka. Hekiru also talked a bit more about the theme of "Love your name", which was that no matter what other people say to you or tell you how you should do certain things in your life or career, you should listen but never get swayed from your own convictions. Because in the end, you yourself are the most important person of all, and everyone should recognize that and hold themselves up.

Then Tairaku-san announced that, in addition to a guest appearance at a live radio show tomorrow at noon in Nagoya, Hekiru would almost be a guest on another live radio show in Gifu Prefecture, at 4pm. Oh man! We panicked at that announcement, all of us thinking, how to get from Nagoya to Gifu after the first show?! Okay okay, I know we're mad but no doubt all of the die-hard crowd were already running through ways of finding out the studio location and mapping out routes from Nagoya to Gifu. And to be honest I don't think many of those intending to go had been to Gifu or knew where it was exactly! (It's actually a sleepy little obscure prefecture next to Nagoya, about 25 mins away by train but at the time we didn't know and were envisioning trying to catch bullet train rides and wincing at the anticipated expense required, ugh.)

Okay, so that was that. Hmm, the other thing worth mentioning was, of course, le posing corner. Ken-chan wanted to do the posing again, so after due protest Hekiru started the practice. And at the first, "Aaa" almost the entire crowd flexed their arms up! This proved far too much for Hekiru and the band, especially Hekiru who, half-collapsed with laughter, managed to choke out, "How did you guys know what to do?!" After catching her breath she said, "That's just messed up! Did you guys attend the previous events too? Did word of this already spread though the 'net?! You guys catch on way too fast!" Ken-chan, I think it was, chipped in, "Your fans are damn fast learners though, even before!" Hmm, I wonder if we should take that as a compliment ^^;;

Then Hekiru started talking about how there was one time at her concert, there was a guy in the crowd who had taken off his shirt and began really doing muscle flex poses during the live. He was really built and looked like he had gone through hair removal as well, since his chest was bare. The craziest thing was that he also used his spit to wet himself down so that he would gleam! Oh man, talk about nutty people... Hekiru seemed pretty impressed though, keep going on about how muscular he was. Well, she is a fan of K-1 (no hold barred unarmed combat) and pro wrestling...

In any case, we did the posing, with Hekiru protesting all the while. After a couple practice runs, Hekiru said, "But Kine-san made this song especially for the fans to sing in harmony! What would he think if he saw what's happened to his beautiful vision of everyone joined shoulder to shoulder on a soccer field?! Oh no... luckily he's on tour right now, but what if he saw this sight at Omiya?!" Then Ken-chan said, "Okay, well, you wanna try it the other way?" And Hekiru cheered up and said, "Yes! Let's do it!" and got the whole crowd to do the arms around shoulder swaying side to side thing. Hmmm, I must say, from the back it looked pretty, um, well, you see, each section and each row was swaying left and right but not in coordination so it wasn't a terribly pretty sight either! Actually the funniest part was my friend in the row behind me (he had moved from the front to the very back as he preferred the space) had the row to himself and so he just stuck his arms to the side and swayed left and right all on his very lonesome! I happened to glance back and see it and just cracked up like no tomorrow. So, although I had refused on dignitary grounds to participate in this, this was just too good to pass up and so the few of us in the back started doing the same thing, arms outstretched swaying side to side on our own! Sorry, the whole silly mood was too infectious! I hope that gives you an idea of how this FC event had a completely different mood from a normal concert which is usually intense and serious. Personally, I like the light, relaxed atmosphere a lot... Been to plenty of lives but the best times are when you just cut loose and mess around with friends, but it's not something you can really do usually since it would be kinda rude to the performer on stage, yah? This FC event gives a great excuse to just fool around in the back. :D

Well, after that I was in a great mood. Even though it was day 3 and Hekiru must have been tired, her voice held out fine during the mini-live, and she had plenty of energy for us. I rode the wave, and found myself headbanging all the way through the last part, including Dakishimete, One and Graduater, and of course Jungle Life! I really didn't expect to, since those three songs are what I consider "extraneous" to the mini-live, but all of a sudden I just... flipped. Heh! It was great fun, awesome! The only drawback was that I was wearing leather pants that day, and boy I must say those things feel really disgusting after you sweat, yuck! After that, I had real respect for Hekiru who had gone though summer of '98 doing the encore in leather pants for 30 concerts!

So, awesome finish, Hekiru was pretty high. Quick "Want You!!" as before, and it was plastic ball tossing time. I stood in the back in a batter's pose, and Be-an noticed! Because he pitched as hard as he could at me! :D Unfortunately I was in the 19th row, and the ball only made it to the 17th row or so, oh well. Good try though!

After the event, we filed out in high spirits and some of us headed for dinner at Fuuraibou, a restaurant that is famous for Nagoya's chicken wings speciality. Hmm, but there are several stores and this one wasn't that great. In any case, after dinner we retired to our hotel, took a shower, and after 11pm I headed out to check out the radio studio and to wait out for the next morning, when they would hand out the numbered tickets at 7am for the order of attendence for the radio show. Why set out the night before and do something so wacko? Well, I've always liked being number 1... :P