D Tour final at Shinjuku ReNY

Yesterday I went to my first gig this time around, and it was no less than D's final live for their tour Wonderland Savior!

The concert was held at Shinjuku ReNY, i've never been there before so I was a bit worried I might get lost but their webpage had a very excellent map and I had no problem finding it at all!

I got there about 17.15, which was a bit late, but on the other hand I didn't have to wait so long for my number to be called. Shinjuku ReNY isn't that big though, I read it has the capacity for 800 people and my ticket was 561. Their drinkcharge is 600yen! (I was looking to find this information to have the coins ready but couldn't seem to find it)
Anyway, they call the numbers on the street entrance, and then you take the elevator or stairs to where the actual hall is. They have coinlockers for 300 yen and also a cloak area for those who have bigger belongings which costs 500 yen.

I acctually thought I had a chance to get some chekis, but unfortunatley not. They were all sold out by the time I got there so I only got the new, and very cute t-shirt based on the song 海王鯨島　亀毛海浜夢珠工場.

If there's one thing I don't get in Japan, it's when people go to these kinds of events with friends and they expect to stand in a line with a lot of space infront of them. When I got into the actual hall it seemed about full because people had so much space, and others wanted to get it, so I just walk closer to the stage. Might have seen rude for some people that I went infront of them but I don't get how they think people are gonna get in if they don't move. This other girl seemed to be annoyed I kept accidently touching her arm, but it's a standing gig and there's people all over, how am I supposed to move:P

Anyway, to the details about the actual concert!
The members came out one by one like usual to the "theme song" for this tour, and for anyone who missed previous photos, they wore the white outfits. One thing I haven't seen before on Asagi's costume is that it has a bunny tail on the back! During フューシャピンクとフランボワーズの鍵盤,  those who have the glowing sticks were supposed to use them, and Asagi also had one of course. At the end when he went back to leave the stick he put it behind his back (near his ass really) wiggling it like a tail, hehe.

To be honest, I'm not a huge D fan, I like them and think they're a pretty good band. What I especially like about them is how they keep changing style and inspiration for their music, but far from everything they do are great in my opinion. The setlist started off pretty strong, within the first half they had played most of my favorite songs and they were of course awesome live too.
The song which captured me most when I first listened to the album was 海王鯨島　亀毛海浜夢珠工場, and when I read the cute lyrics I liked it even more! For those who haven't read the lyrics or a translation for it, the song's about a dream factory and the boss is the mock turtle from Alice in Wonderland. My favorite part of the lyrics is just before every chorus, because then Asagi sings different ingrediences used to mix a dream, (like mermaid tears and hair from a unicorn) so cute. Besides that, my favorite songs include Wonderland Savior, and for this Asagi acctually used the cool mic he has in the PV! This tour D had some CG on screen during the concerts, and it was really fun, during the songs which has a PV though, they showed those (also great because I haven't seen any of the PV's since I haven't got the CD versions which includes the DVD's)
シュレディンガーの夢遊猫とジャッカロープの杖 is also a song that has grown into a favorite and it was really fun live, it included alot of parapara though, but it was so great live!
During Master Key member cards came down from the ceiling (and also some dust I noticed, do they ever clean those hatches???) I wasn't able to grab a card unfortunately, however I did get a Wonderland Savior strip that was let down later (see my picture below).

During the encores (which was 3 this time), they played a lot of old songs, the classics like Eden and Night Ship D, but also Yami no Kuni no Arisu which I thought was a nice suprise! Another song I didn't expect, probably less than Yami no Kuni no Arisu was Kuro bara no kishi from Kingdom. That's one of my all time favorites so I was very happy to be able to hear it live again! Since they played Yami no Kuni no Arisu I sort of began hoping they'd play Musouka since it was also from the same period, but unfortunately they didn't play it.
During one of the encores Ruiza presented some of the goods, he came out with the tote bag filled with some stuff. Among those was Asagi's photobook, and he never showed the inside but he shouted out that the pictures was good and asked if we wanted to see it. Obviously people said yes, and he replied "then please buy it!" XD

One thing I like with D is that it looks like they really have a good time when playing live. Some bands just do their thing but they seem to enjoy it and I, as an audience, think that brings a good atmosphere!
Another thing worth mentioning that happened and I felt was a very kind gesture was during Night Ship D. I don't have the D flags, I've been thinking about buying them but always end up not to. So when Asagi came out on stage with the D flag everyone grabs theirs (except for me and the others without any :P) but the nice lady next to me turned my way and offered me one of hers! She had earlier also offered me her place, she stood infront of me but her friend was standing next to me so we switched. Anyway I thought it was really kind, a bit difficult to do the moves with just one but it's better than nothing and it was such a kind gesture of her <3

Overall I had a really fun time and hopefully I'll get the chance to see D once more before I go back to Sweden. (and hopefully be able to get my hands on some chekis :P)

Shopping services

I've been using, and constantly looking for, different shopping services for years now and I know how hard it is to find a priceworthy shopping service. Therefore I've decided to talk about the two I use for the moment!

First out is my favorite one; Zenmarket!

I was recommended Zenmarket about a year ago by a fellow D-fan. I wanted to purchase an item from their official webshop and since they only ship within Japan I was in need for a shopping service, and I wanted one that didn't have silly expensive fees. Since then I've used Zenmarket a lot and I'm very pleased with their services!
Everytime I've left a message with an inquiry they've replied very quickly, they re-pack the items you've bought for free and best of all: they only charged you 300yen per item! This however might get expensive if you're buying many things from the same shop, but if bidding on yahoo auctions for example this is the shopping service I'd recomend! If bidding, it's in realtime too. As for your credit, you can easily add more from paypal anytime you want and it will be available immediately for purchase.

The second shoppingservice I've been using a lot lately is Tenso.

Tenso isn't as much shoppingservice as it is an actual address in Japan! So you use it as you would any internetshop, place your order and pay for it, then wait until it gets delivered to Tenso's warehouse and from there you vill get your items. The positive thing about this service is that you can buy a million things and they won't charge you based on items, but weight and size. An example is when I bought 4 chekis from closetchild, the fee for that was as low as 50yen! But on the other hand when I ordered a bigger sized box with magazines and a couple of other things it ended up costing 2000yen for them to handle. They also charge extra if you want special packing, otherwise it will be shipped the same way they received your package. They offer a lot of different shippings and overall I'm satisfied with Tenso. Good to keep in mind is that you have to be able to pay for your items, with paypal or credit card directly to the store because Tenso doesn't take care of any of that, they just receive it and store it for you.

There's a lot of services available and I'm also using people in Japan who attends concerts I want to buy items from as well as the services mentioned above. If you have any question whatsoever, please leave a comment and I'll try to reply as fast as possible!

Trip down memory lane

So my first week back in Japan has ended, and I'm starting to feel at home again. I have school five days a week so on the weekend I try to do things I can't do on the weekdays, and this weekend I met up with a friend for dinner and then some fun at the 8bit café!

I wrote an entry about it last time I was in Tokyo, which you can read here.
Not much had changed, other than the place was packed this time! I guess more and more has heard about this place now.
What's so funny about this place is that they have games lying around, some you can try and they also have original cocktails. Last time I tried the awesome Dr Mario which is served with a test tube containing two "pills", if you want to read more please click on the link above!
Since their list of original cocktails are very long I want to try as many different ones as possible, so this evening I went for:

 A boy of Pink Dark, or as it was called in Japanese,　ピンクダーク少年. It was supposed to be flavoured with blueberry but I just thought it was bitter, not to be recommended.

 Princess Peach Temptation, ピーチ姫の誘惑. This one tasted so sweet and the peach flavour was really strong, I loved it! (You can always count on Mario :3)

As I mentioned in my previous post, the bar charges you 500yen for staying there and you have to order something every hour. If you want to visit you can easily just google 8bit café and google maps will show you the way! Highly recommended for any gamer to visit.

This time around they had this huge Game Boy standing next to our table, still don't know if you could acctually play it...

Food from afar

Okey, not so far away, but for the first time I got the chance to eat food from Okinawa!

How sad it might sound but I've only been to Tokyo in Japan, I'd love to see other cities but I love Tokyo so much I just can't see myself going to Japan without going to Tokyo. Someday though, I will cross the Tokyo border... O_o

Anyway, I met a friend from my exchange time here in Japan and he knows a lot about a lot! So this time he took me to an Okinawan restaurant in Kouenji (高円寺) to introduce me to their cuisine. I love going to these kind of niched, tiny places because I'd never go there myself.
So, what was on the menu?

 Okey, so to be honest I don't like having opinions about things without experience it but this time I sort of did get a biased opinion. I tried it and it tasted nice, but then I was told what it was and felt a bit sick to be honest. What I had just ate was pigs ears. Since about 7 years back I haven't ate pig, accidentally it has happened twice, and now. The texture was a bit like the hard parts of chicken, a bit on the crunchy side...

 Sashimi! I love sashimi, so this was a big hit, and I love how it was served, as a tiny piece of art. Delicious.

 By the first look of this, I thought it was fish eggs or something, but it's not! In English it's called sea grapes, and in Japanese umibudou (海ブドウ). It's a sort of seaweed grown in south asia, and just as it's name it's tiny grapes attached. They didn't taste that much on it's own, but where kind of fun to eat and I thought they looked very decorative.

 I forgot to take a picture, then remembered when we were almost finished. This was a dessert which tasted sort of like donuts, it was fried and I really liked it!

 The name of the restaurant is 抱瓶 (dachibin) if anyone wants to visit! The atmosphere was kind of cozy and there was so much stuff on the walls I could've walked around looking at things forever. The food however may not be for those who's looking for food similar to western, but please try it out!

Register at city office

I've been in Japan for one week now and I'm starting to feel at home once again. It takes some time for me to adjust to a new apartment, and when I first sat foot into this one I hated it to be honest. However I've done my best to make this my home and I think it's all right now. One thing that has been bugging me for this one week though was to visit the city office to register, and that is what I'll dedicate this entry to.

When you arrive in Japan on a visa you have to register in the city you'll be living within 14 days after you arrived. To go through this procedure you first have to know in which city you'll be living in, then find the office obviously. There are no ways around this, and unfortunately most offices don't offer any English help, so if you're not speaking Japanese you just have to do the best out of the situation.
In my case I live in Itabashi, so to find my ward office, I just simply googled Itabashi ward office and google handled me a map and their opening hours. By doing this I also came across a document in English, explaining the procedure. However, it also explained that the staff only speaks Japanese and that you are recomended to bring a Japanese speaker with you. Despite having studied Japanese I felt very nervous about this since I got help from native speakers last time I had to go through this, and there's paperwork and questions asked and I hate not being able to understand (I seriously woke up in the middle of the night last week thinking about this XD). Like I said though, there's no shortcut and I hate being of trouble to others so I decided not to ask for help but to go there myself, and so I did this morning.
I arrived at 9.30 am and was done by 11.40, my advice: plan this well, it will take time.

So the first thing you ahve to do is to find the register, at Itabashi it was at the Family register department so I went there and found only documents entirely in Japanese and I had a bit of a hard time to understand some of them, so fortunately a lady working there approached me asking if I needed help so I told her in Japanese that I was living in Itabashi since last week and that I'm a student, and she handed me an English version of the document aswell as an example showing how you should fill it out. After that I received a number and when I was called upon a nice older women took my document, copied my passport and Japanese ID which I received at the immigration office when arriving at Narita. There's not much to do at this point, she gave me some information about the town (like when you can throw garbage etc) and then asked if I already had the health insurance. The health insurance is sort of a have to have. Last time I was in Japan this was the biggest issue in my registration process, because I refused getting it since I was fully insured by my university. The staff however claimed that if I were to be hospitalized and would hand the doctor my insurance, in English, they'd not be able to understand and it would not be valid (or I would at least probably have to cash up to begin with). I don't want to make a fuss and the insurance is really cheap if you're a student, so I entered and did so this time too obviously. The insurance covers 70% of medical care, so you only have to pay 30% and I'm guessing those 30% will be paid by the insurance I have from my own country if I would have to visit a doctor. I think last time the price ended up on 5000yen for half a year, and this time I think it was even less, no idea if that depends on the city you're living in or not. Anyway, the nice lady told me to go to the window for health insurance, after they had printed my address on the back of my Japanese ID. So I went to that line and there I had to fill out some more papers (in Japanese only), stating my current address, name, birthday, sex etc. They then printed a card for me and informed that the bill would come by post in February and that I could pay at most convenience stores like last time.

This is no fun event, and I can't imagen having to do this without knowing any Japanese. Sometimes they will call out the numbers without any screen showing it, if you don't understand any Japanese that will make it impossible to know when it's your turn. If so, I'd recomend that you look and see if anyone else is approaching and if not walk up and show your number tag. By the end of this entry I have written down keywords that might be of some help if anyone having to do this finds his or her way to this blog. I can also recomend to bring a dictionary of some sort, I have one on my phone and at one point when I didn't understand a word the woman who helped me was asking I could easily check it up. I tried looking for a walkthrough before arriving in Japan but not much information was given, hopefully this will be of help for someone. If wondering anything else leave a comment and I'll try and reply as fast as possible!

Keywords
留学 Ryuugaku - Study abroad
登録  Touroku - Registration
市役所 Shiyakusho - City hall
保険 Hoken - Insurance

Back in Japan

As the title implies I'll finally be back in Japan!

After almost 2 years I'll be back in Tokyo, from January 10th until June 19th. As before I'm ready to help with purchasing music (or other things available in Tokyo) for a fee of 50 swedish krona.
Below I have listed all the events I have planned so far, leave a comment if you need help with any purchase!

2017.01.27 -D Wonderland Savior Tour Final
2017.01.28 - BUCK-TICK Fish Tanker's only live
2017.02.14 - Versailles
2017.02.24 - Schwarz Stein der Winter
2017.03.18 - 生誕典礼祭〜Mana様Birthday〜 (Moi Dix Mois)
2017.03.19 - 生誕典礼祭〜Mana様Birthday〜 (Mois Dix Mois)

I will also keep updating with all the fun stuff I'll be doing, so stay tuned!