Kagrra、に会った

On Wednesday Kagrra, released their new single 誓ノ月　(Chikai no Tsuki). As part of the promotion for the single they were also holding a special 6 day fan meet-up at various locations around the country. One of the third day meetings was held yesterday at the HMV in Shinsaibashi Osaka roughly an hour by train from Kyoto and I was fortunate enough to be in attendance. Since this was one of two meetings that were held, the other being about 500 km away in Chiba prefecture, not all of the band was there, but I think I lucked out cause at my meetup were the bassist, Nao and one of the guitarist, Akiya, 2 of the three people that I would have really like to meet.

We arrived in Osaka a bit early and grabbed some dinner. Then we went up to the HMV and joined in the small crowd that was already assembled. Andy and I being the only foreigners stuck out like sore thumbs among the crowd of mainly high school girls. There were a couple other guys but in total crowd of roughly 150 we were heavily out numbered.

The event started around 7 with them showing us the new music video for the single. Then Nao and Akiya came out and all the girls were going wild. This was also the first time that I really noticed how much taller I am than most people as I was a good 6" above everyone in the crowd. Surprisingly, both Nao and Akiya are quite tall. Akiya was only an inch or two shorter than I was and Nao was just a bit shorter than him. They were wearing normal shoes too. I checked just to make sure.

They talked a bit about the new music video and the anime that the single is the theme song for. Nao did most of the talking and Akiya played shy-boy dodging most speaking responsibilities. When he did talk Nao was feeding him words quite often. It was actually kinda funny. They talked about a couple other things, upcoming shows, Nao's forgetfulness, toilet troubles, and answered a couple of questions from the fans. A cool thing during this part was in mid-sentence as Nao was saying something he stopped and said in Japanese of course "Aa, gaijin came too, cool!" Then everyone in the crowd turns toward us and we return little courtesy bows.

After this the handshake part of the event came where everyone got to go up on the little stage, shake their hands and talk a little one-on-one. Akiya seemed to be a lot less shy during this part as he was talking with people. When it came our turn up in line both Nao and Akiya gave us real Western-style friend handshakes. Locked it up and everything. Wasn't expecting that, and it actually caught me off guard a bit, but not enough to mess up the flow. I asked Nao how Dragon Head, a little side-project band that he Akiya and the drummer, Izumi are in, was going and he said ぼちぼち　which is a real Kansai-Osaka way to say "so-so" which I found funny because he's not a Kansai native, and I'm clearly not as well. I asked Akiya how the English learning game he bought for the Nintendo DS was going. He said it was fun, gave me the thumbs-up, and handed me the two posters that we all got as presents for coming.

All in all a very enjoyable time and I'm very glad I went and had the chance to meet a couple of great guys from a great band.

Pictures weren't allowed but I managed to sneak a couple. If I got caught I always have the gaijin excuse to fall back on. Not the best quality, but better than nothing.