Monday, December 30, 2013

BIGBANG JAPAN DOME TOUR 2013

I vlogged about that day!! Please subscribe and like the video!!


The day of the concert

The concert was on December 19th and it was during the interview weekend of my school so I didn't have to worry about missing school. I just saw a poster in Shibuya promoting BIGBANG's concert last month and mentioned it to my friend Sena who happens to be a VIP (Bigbang's official fanclub) and this happened! I'm so lucky to be honest that there were still spots available because I know they are popular in Japan. 
Like you can tell from my video, it was a very rainy and cold day and we decided to go to Korean Town before the concert to buy goods and kill time which meant a lot of walking and lots of shopping. Even though I had an umbrella but I was still drenched after about 2 hours of shopping in Korean Town. 
I will try to make a haul video about what I got there and the official goods that I got at the concert so stay tuned! 

The concert itself (personal thoughts aka rant)

The concert was amazing! I personally am into BIGBANG's music but I'm not exactly their biggest fan but it was definitely very enjoyable. The moment when the lights went off, a sea of red and yellow appeared in front of my eyes. It was so pretty that my eyes started tearing up. The opening guest was a band called WINNER, from the same company (YG) as BIGBANG. Fortunately, I went through some of their videos on Youtube before the concert without knowing they were going to be in the live. I love the leader Kang Seung Yoon <3
They will be debuting in Japan I think so they performed their songs in Japanese. At this point I already went into my crazy fangirl mode... 
After their performance, the main focus point of the night showed up. They started with a video then all the members came out. The first song was "Haru Haru" I believe, followed by some of their classic songs such as "Blue", "Bad Boy" and "Gara Gara Go", etc.. These songs really got the atmosphere in Tokyo Dome to a boiling point as everybody knows these songs so it was easy to sing along. Member's solo time startes with Seungri (or V.I) with "Let's talk about love", then comes Daesung (or D-Lite) with "Wings". Then there was MC time where two of the better Japanese speakers (V.I and D-Lite) of the band leads the talk. The talks are pretty funny to be honest and one thing that caught my attention was that V.I was talking mainly in "Kansaiben"() which is a dialect in the Osaka area. It's mainly used by Japanese comedians so I was surprised that V.I is speaking it too! Through out the whole concert's MC times T.O.P, being less fluent in Japanese, only said the word "Yabai"() over and over again!! He's facial expression was so cute it made the entire place laugh. Then follows the solo of Taeyang (or SOL) with his new song "Ringa Linga" and I love this song so much I had so much fun listening to it! G-Dragon was next with "Crayon", and finally followed by T.O.P with "Turn It Up". They are my two favourites in the band so it was very exciting to hear them live. T.O.P slid down a pole on stage and I lost it at that very moment >.< 
He's sooooo sexy!! *drools*
After a few more songs as a group, the concert has come to the final stage. They performed "Fantastic Baby" and had another MC time and said goodbye to the audience. BUT as most fans know, concerts never end without an ENCORE! The spotlight for me in this section was "Koe wo Kikasete" since this is THE song which led me to BIGBANG because it was the opening theme of a Japanese drama and I loved that drama <3
You can check it out here --> Ohitorisama
The entire live was about 3 hours long and it was definitely one of the most exciting 3 hours of my life! (Another one was Akanishi Jin's concert in L.A just by the way :p)






The Purikura we took

Tokyo Dome after the Live

I bought a lot of goods too so if you want to check that out, it's going to be up soon if everything goes right ;)

ALSO, ALL THE PICTURES ARE FREE TO USE IF YOU WILL JUST MAYBE PUT THE LINK OF THE ORIGINAL POST... MAYBE? PLEASE?
Sorry this got kind of long... And it's not really about Japan... *Tehepero*
If you have any questions or any thing you want me to know please comment below or...
If you want to contact me for anything please comment here or
Youtube: Manou Liu

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Otaku shopping paradise: Animate in Ikebukuro

This week is the exam week at my school but I'm not doing any exams so I was free during the entire week.
On one of the weekdays, I went to Ikebukuro with my fellow exchange student Miia. She's also a big fan of animes and mangas (especially Shingeki no Kyojin, One Piece and Naruto), which led us to Animate(アニメイト). The store is all over Japan, selling manga and anime goods for almost any anime you know.
The one we went to in Ikebukuro is the "honten (本店)" which means main shop in English, so it's probably the biggest Animate in the area. It had an entire building dedicated to the store with 9 floors in total! It truly is a paradise for us anime lovers. It sold goods, mangas, games and CDs and DVDs. It had EVERYTHING ACG related in it!! I went there once with my classmates before and I just couldn't stop screaming in a high pitched voice and this time, my second time, I still couldn't stop screaming because a lot of new things came out after the last time I was there.
Overall, I think if you're visiting Tokyo and you love anime and manga you definitely should visit this store! I know it has stores all over Japan too so even if you're not in Tokyo, you can still enjoy it. If you go on weekdays, maybe you'll see people cosplaying at the store too! The store staffs will be cosplaying too so make sure to check that out!!

I vlogged on that day too so please check it out and subscribe!



After lunch we actually went to a game centre to take purikura. The purikura place has a special service which is lending cosplay costumes for free in order for people to take the purikura while dressed as an anime or manga character! It was so much fun but the store banned any kind of film or photography so I couldn't vlog but here are the purikuras we took.
The lower one is with our cosplay costume on while the one on the top is with our normal clothes.



If you want to contact me for anything please comment here or
Youtube: Manou Liu