DAY 3: COUNTDOWN TO AKIHABARA

Woooo-ey, today is the day im heading on down to as Eddy Grant would say Electric Avenue, OH YEAH! Well Electric Town but close enough. Still bright and chipper early here in Shinjuku but in just in a couple of hours im going to be walking in the nerd capital of the world! Yesterday I finally braved the Subway system and found it remarkably easy once I got the jist of it. Though I did ask the ticket desk for help and the old dude rudely snapped back at me "NO ENGLISH". Yeah, i'd probably be cranky as hell to working in a position like that. Full report dudes coming up on how the day went down in Wota Paradise!

Speaking of Wota paradise, yesterday was the final concert of the morning musume 2008 spring tour right here in Shinjuku. I was worried that the girl who sold me the ticket would flake out on me leaving me extremely sad and pissed at the same time but alas it was not to be, she was there with her sister and I got my ticket! I finally was able to have a full fledged English conversation!

There we are up above proudly displaying our hard to get Morning Musume tickets. I tried and failed earlier in the day to get tickets to their afternoon concert but the prices were freakin insane. They wanted $500 for a first level row 6 and that was a price drop from $700 since the concert was only hours away. I would have stuck around for the prices to drop further but looks like there were already several wota waiting for that to happen ahead of me. You guys aren't gonna believe this but she was a bit too young for me (20). Seriously...

Dave I can hear you saying "Nawwww, that's not true mate" but Im being straight up. I swear on a Fosters and Shrimp on the barbie. She was really cool though and so was her sis. Her sis wasn't a Morning Musume fan but she was saying how amazed she was not only at the concert but at the wotas as well. In fact she spent a fair amount of time watching the wotas do their thing in the afternoon concert haha. It was time for the concert!

I got great seats up on the second level on row 5. Some of those had been selling for around $300. The only bad thing is that in the first 5 rows they didn't permit people to standup so I had to remain seated which was the hardest thing I ever had to do while watching Wotas get their daily workout. I swear that I sat with a bunch of nursing home folks. In my section, I felt guilty of even clapping loud which I did anyway. Some of these folks were just watching, yawning and one bastard was even sleeping! What made up for it though besides the effin awesome performance by MM was the two characters who sat to the left and right of me. There was an old granny wota'd up with the shirt of her fave MM member and glowsticks and boy could she dance...well as much as she could sitting down. I swear dudes it was a Wedding Singer Rapping Old Lady singer moment. The dude to the right of me was even more of a riot. He looked like a regular business coming in from after a hard days work and just sat down up right not even nodding his head to the beat when the concert began but once his favorite member came out that all changed. He had come prepared with a notepad with messages written in Japanese to his favorite member that he would hold up when they spoke on stage. He wouldn't even hold it up up in the air above his head though, he would do this all at knee level trying to be kinda coy about it. Then he would do a Mark David Chapman kind of wave from knee level too trying to get their attention. The music got the better of him and I even caught him sneakily trying to do some dancing hand gestures when he thought he was in the clear. God I love Japan.

Happy Wota after the concert! They're all color coded wearing the official shirt of their fave member.

On the way out I managed to get a piccie of Team Wota. No idea what the sign says but im sure it's funny. My heroes haha.

Man, Im definitely coming back to Japan later on this year or the next to catch another performance. Im telling ya guys its one of the wildest experiences I have ever have. These wotas put all other fans worldwide to shame.

Well dudes, time to don my Slayer shirt, sandals and jeans and get ready and Im off to Akihabara and hopefully find some Tonkatsu. Maid Cafes here I come!

Team Wota Redux. Banzai!