part 2.....

曇りのち、快晴 (Ohno solo)
a Day in Our Life
Oh Yeah!
ハダシの未来
Beautiful days

Kumori Nochi, Kaisei: Ohno in the Utaonii costume, with juniors dancing backup. My angle of this was really bad, couldn't see anything. The screens showed a backdrop of cartoons of all the mascot character costumes from Utaonii.

a Day in Our Life: standard awesome fun with lots and lots of screaming. Jun and Ohno with their arms around each other.

Oh Yeah! is still one of my ultimate concert favorites. I love the, "Jump, jump, jump, jump!" part. Arena seats for this song are the best since you can jump like crazy!

Hadashi no Mirai: Kokuritsu seating is annoyingly narrow, not enough space to dance this nicely.

Beautiful days was done on the center stage as it rotated, with Nino standing alone on the top platform. There had been problems with the microphones all night with them fading in and out and fucking up because of the rain, but just as Nino was singing his solo, his microphone completely died!

Not to worry, Jun to the rescue: Jun instantly jumped up on the top with Nino to share his microphone with him. They pressed their cheeks together as they sang into the same mic together, and then Nino pecked him on the cheek. After the song ended, they pulled away and were laughing together.



MC: It was seriously beyond pouring at this point. Sho said, "This should be the point where we make a joke about Arashi calling up an arashi. See, because it's us, it's okay that it's storming, riiiiight?" The audience cheered, but he was like, "No, but really, this rain is past the point where we can make cracks about it." He began to tell us to sit down as usual, but as he realized our seats were all puddles, he paused and said laughingly, "I'm really not sure which is better at this point, standing or sitting." Everyone opted to stay standing up.

Last year Aiba asked speculatively, "Do we get umbrellas for the MC if it rains?" It turns out they don't, lol. I actually wondered why nobody gave them any since it would have solved a lot (though maybe they thought it was unfair since the fans aren't allowed to have them?). The staff kept throwing them towels, and Jun was like, "In rain this heavy, towels are pretty pointless..." They kept wrapping the towels over their shoulders and the towels just got soaked in quick order.

They sort of hung around awkwardly for a few minutes just talking about the rain because there was just nothing else that could drive the conversation as they were getting TOTALLY SOAKED. Jun asked, "Don't you guys wish we could have windshield wipers here?" and did a wiper motion in front of his eyes with his fingers. "I've got contacts in so it's terrible, my vision's a total blur."

It was really awkward with them getting rained on, and Nino burst out, "Well, how lucky we were, to be blessed with three straight days of perfect weather!" They asked Ohno for his thoughts on the matter, and Ohno replied that he thought what Nino said was right even though he had said it sarcastically: "Isn't it kind of memorable to have it rain on the last day like this? This is a live I'll never forget for the rest of my life, that's for sure."

As they were talking, their microphones kept getting messed up from the rain. Jun asked the staff for smaller towels to wrap the mics in to see if that would help. They got them, but realized the towels were too thick and you couldn't hear anything if they were wrapped around the mics. They asked Aiba to wrap his mic up and try talking into it, which he did, and it didn't work, and Nino was like WE CAN'T HEEEEEEAAAAAAR YOUUUUUUU

Their costumes had really long fringe on the sleeves. Jun was adjusting his as everyone else was talking. Sho said, "Wait, everyone, we must wait for Matsujun to fix his soumen sleeves!"

"They're not soumen!"

"Reimen, then?"

"Not that either!!"

"He says they're not reimen either~~"

Shortly afterward, someone from the staff brought plastic wrap for the mics and that worked like a charm, so they were all wrapping up their mics in plastic. The mic problem fixed, they still couldn't really bring the conversation past the rain, so Nino was like, "...shall we just give up on talking and go on to the next thing? We would love to stand here and tell you guys all kinds of funny stories, but it's just not gonna happen in this situation, so let's move on." XD

They all began walking back up to the main stage. Jun exclaimed, "But this rain... Isn't it totally drama rain?" (Plz to imagine the Rain Scene from Hanadan, where clearly Jun and Mao had a full water tank being emptied on top of them at max pressure. I thought that scene looked ridiculous because it just doesn't rain like that, in real life. WELL IT WAS RAINING LIKE THAT TONIGHT.) Sho said, "I was just thinking that! I'm feeling quite F4, actually. This whole time I've been like, oh, so this is what it's like to be Doumyouji in the rain."

Jun said, "I can't remember it ever raining this hard on my birthday before."

Sho said, "If it had rained this hard on your birthday before, why would you have been out in it like this?!" Jun realized that was true.

They switched the topic to Aiba's drama.

AIBA: I'll be doing my first drama lead.
NINO: First...and last!
AIBA: Nooo!
NINO: Oh, so you think you'll keep going after this one, then?
AIBA: Nooo, I'm just saying it hasn't been decided yet!

Then he pimped the drama timeslot. Nino chimed in to promote Tenkimi. They asked him what time and date. He said, "September...24th...and it's on at.............um, I have no idea, let's just say 'turn your TV on around eight PM and it should come on sooner or later'??"

They turned to Ohno and asked him to please promote something, since they were doing it. Ohno was like, "What have I got to promote?"

"You could talk about fishing! ...don't say you're going tomorrow. You're not, are you?"

Ohno complained, "Who could go out on the sea in this weather?!"

Then Sho said there was something else they had to promote that day: Matsujun's birthday! The juniors wheeled out a MASSIVE cake and the whole audience sang happy birthday.

The cake was covered up from the rain in a giant plastic dome that was also covered in plastic wrap. Jun said it was a waste not to show off something so pretty, so they unwrapped it super fast and got the camera in there. It was white with brown lettering and a bunch of really pretty fruit toppings that looked way fancy!

Then they were like OKAY CAMERA OUT!! And started covering it back up again before it got rained on, and Jun was like, NO WAIT, and shoved his hand in right as they were closing it and took a HANDFUL of cake and ate it. He said it was yummy.

Aiba then popped up with a bag and said it was Matsujun's present from all of them, and they'd bought it together in June (Nino was the one to pick it out?). He said, "We want you to wear it tonight. During the encore!"

Jun was like, "Thanks! ...oh wait a sec, I need to wash my hands!" Then he ran downstage to a giant puddle and washed his cake-covered hand in it. XD

Nino yelled, "Very nice! Very eco-friendly!"

Sho said, "What's eco-friendly about it?!"

Jun ran back up for the bag to open it up, then stopped and asked, "Is it something okay to get wet?"

Nino said, "Totally."

Jun started opening it, and Nino added, "...because it's your gift, not ours, so if you wanna get it soaked it's not our problem." <3

Jun peeked in as it was half-opened, and made this FACE. "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME." He didn't say it, his FACE said it. It was SO funny. He stared at Aiba incredulously. "You BOUGHT this?"

He pulled out a jacket covered with giant coin-sized dangly gold sequins. "You couldn't have bought this, they don't SELL things like this!" JE needs to make things that ridiculous by hand! But he turned it over and it had the Adidas logo on it! Jun started to pull it on, and Sho said, "Matsujun is the only person ever who could come in to work wearing something like that and say casually, 'Morning!' like it's totally normal."

Nino said, "We have no idea how it's supposed to be laundered, so figure it out yourself." XD

Jun wore it for a little while. It was fabulous. Aiba said, "Matsujun's become a disco ball!!"

After wearing it a while and getting soaked, Jun then concluded, "I don't think this thing is supposed to get wet, actually," and they helped him get out of it. XD

And then back to the music...

During the MC I put my uchiwa down, and it got soaked and ruined... ;w; まあ潤の誕生日のために作ったうちわだったから、今回のツアーでまた入れる事になったとしても、使わなかったけどね。でも…頑張って作ったのにぃ… ORZ



とまどいながら (Sho solo)
WISH (Jun solo)
Attack　it！ (5×10 secret track)
truth

Tomadoi Nagara: Sho came out in a green sequined hoodie. I wondered if it was from an old performance from a long time ago. Either way, the hoodie had a magical effect that made him look years younger. He looked almost the same age as the debut footage. I asked my friend if she thought he looked way young and she agreed, so it wasn't just me.

WISH: this was magnificent. The special arrangement of this song was absolutely ace. Jun was wearing black pants, suspenders, white shirt, and a black hat. Very retro-looking. The new arrangement seemed to have a bit of swing influence, maybe?? I don't know if that's right, but anyway it was ADORABLE.

As he performed on the main stage, there was a scrapbook-type setup on the screen. In one scrapbook "window" it showed his real-time performance, and in another it showed old drama scenes from him. I was watching the real-time part over the drama window, but the drama clips shown had the proposal scene from Hanadan Returns (shot of him in the dark, smiling reaction to Tsukushi saying she forgot the dress he sent), cooking scenes from Bambino~!, and the last shot was the panning shot of Doumyouji in his white suit from Tsukushi's POV at the wedding in Hanadan Final.

At a point, the fountains started up. I didn't mention them before because I can't remember which songs they were used for (...in that rain, it's not like I was thinking, "OMG *~WATER~* THAT IS NEW AND EXCITING"), but they were in a different location this year, set up all around the moving stage track right next to the stands. So they formed a huge arc around the tracks, and it looked like a fountain show. Reminded me of the Hanadan shoot outside the Bellagio (for that reason??).

Anyway, I loved absolutely everything about this. The new music arrangement was just SO GOOD. WISH actually isn't a big favorite of mine, but I thought this was way better than the original. Adorable.

Attack it!: So that's the title of the hidden track! Big laser show going on, totally wild. All five on trucks being raced around near the stands at the back. I wasn't into this song on the album but predicted I'd go crazy for it live, and I was right. My friend and I both caught each others' eyes as we were singing, "Kokoro nusunda orera wa hannin~?" together and burst into grins. After all, it's good to go with like-minded fans. XD The responses for this were really fun and they got very into getting the audience to scream along and jump.

truth: Center stage, dancing. Pyrotechnics again, you really can feel the heat even when they're super far away!