Short fanaccount of the Tokyo INU release event

January 31^st 2016

Ok so today was a day I had been waiting for for a LONG time. Today was the day I finally got to meet Bangtan. Face to face. I’ve been a fan for almost a year and a half, and I have seen them live 13 times. In all that time, there have been a few instances of eye-contact, but I had never really “met” them. Last December, when they released the Japanese version of I NEED U, I bought a ton of CDs and I was lucky enough to win two “hightouch” tickets. I was however, totally unlucky in winning any “handshakes”. Even though I entered 60 times. That’s right, 60 CDs and nothing.

Wait, I see you are confused with me talking about high-touches and handshakes, let me explain. First of all, you should know that in Japan, everything idol-related works by lottery (which is stupid af…). For this particular release, there were two events that you could win for: handshake and hightouch. When you opened your CD, inside, you would either find a pink high touch card or a coupon with a serial number on it. If you got the pink card, it meant you won automatically for the hightouch. Yay for you. If you got the serial number (99% of the time), you had to go on this website, enter all your personal information, and hope to god that the lottery would pick YOU as a winner for a handshake with one of the members. You didn’t get to pick the member. So yeah, basically, if you won the handshake, you would get an email saying “you won SUGA at 16:00 on the 31^st” or something like that. And that meant that if you went there, at that time, you would get to meet Suga, shake his hand, and get a little special card for him. You could only meet with one member, but that got you a few extra seconds and a one-on-one interaction with them. And for the high-touch, it was all 7 members but you just got to smack their hands really fast one after the other.

Ok? Get it? I’m not sure I did a great job at explaining but anyways. Let’s move on.

Like I said, I won zero handshake cards, but two high-touches. Since I thought it’d be kinda dumb to do the hightouch twice, I decided to trade one of my cards for a J-Hope handshake one. It’s fairly common practice in Japan and you can easily find people willing to trade on Twitter.

So I lined up around 4pm for the event that was gonna start at 4:30. Once we got inside the room, you had to split up to go into the line of the member whose paper you had so I went in the J-Hope one. When the members came in, all we saw was the doors in the back open because the boys were completely hidden behind tall panels, like little cubicles. Jimin, however, raised his hands above the panel and waved and made a heart with his hands and everyone squealed in cuteness. Finally the line started moving and my heart started beating really fast.

As my turn got closer, I was watching the people going in. You could kinda see the girl inside and her reaction but not the member. Most girls stayed in there maybe 5-10 seconds, but sometimes they would stay a bit longer, and the staff didn’t seem too intent on ushering them out. That was good. When I was about 4^th in line, I started to be able to hear Hoseok’s voice because of course, he was being noisy af. XD

Finally it was my turn, and I rounded the corner. You see, the way it was set up, the boys couldn’t see the fans lining up outside until they came into their little “box”. Now, bear in mind that I was pretty much the only white girl at that event. I swear, I didn’t see another white person there at all. I saw a girl who look half-black, and another who looked Indian, but that’s it. No other whities. As such, I already knew that he would be surprised by seeing me, but honestly, I could’ve never had imagined his reaction at all.

He went “Wow!” in surprise when I came in and then just didn’t say anything and just stared at me. Like, I want to describe accurately the way that he was staring but I don’t think I can. It was like, not in shock, but in wonder. He even leaned over a little bit above the table, as if he wanted to look at me closer. His eyes went wide. They were sooo beautiful. I wondered if he was wearing contacts but I actually don’t think he was. I just stared back at him saying nothing. How could I not stare back at his big beautiful eyes when he was looking at me so intently??? He was wearing that black polo shirt with the yellow stripes on the collar from the J. INU photoshoots, and his hair was a little curled, and he was beautiful. So beautiful. I wanted to cry. Also, he was TALL! I didn’t expect him to be so tall!!! I’ve always heard people say that Bangtan are not tall except Namjoon and that idols lie about their height all the time but he was tall! (Ok, I’m pretty short, 163cm, but still…. He was a very good height for me!! XD) and I’d kinda expected him to be all frail and delicate looking but he was like, how do I say this… man-size. lol. Anyways, he took my breath away. But then I remembered what I wanted to say so I said, “Hobi! I really love you so much!!” and he laughed and repeated “Oh! I love you so much!!” in this funny, energetic, sing-song voice, and I just laughed a little. Then he gave me the card and said bye, and he was smiling at me and waving with both hands and I said bye too, and walked out.

I had a mini freak-out on the way out of the building, but I think I held it together surprisingly well, all things considered. I was surprisingly calm afterwards, haha. It was only about 10 minutes later, while I was relating my adventures on Twitter, that I realized with a horrible shock that I HAD NOT ACTUALLY SHAKEN HIS HAND!!!! What are you doing, Vanessa?! It’s a HANDSHAKE event!!!!! >.<  Aaah well. At least I had a really good memory.

After that my friend and I killed some time waiting for the high touch event to start, and headed back in there at 5:30. I had expected that there would be less people for the high touch, but actually there were MORE! It was kinda crazy, there were about 2000 people in the line-up. For sure. And the building was super over-heated and it was really hot while we waited in there in our winter coats :/ . Finally the line started moving around 6pm, and our time must’ve come around 6:45… I’m not sure because we had to put our phones away since they are super about it in Japan. In fact, when we were just about to go in (there were maybe 30 people ahead of us) a girl got kicked out because she got caught trying to film the high touch. And then they STOPPED the line for like 10 minutes, repeating over and over on their megaphone (that made their words nearly impossible to catch tbh) that we had to turn our phones off and put them in our bags, NOT our pockets. Then finally, the line started again and we could go through.

I want to say that it was amazing too, but sadly, it was not. The staff pushed us – literally PUSHED us – to go really really fast down the line. Ok, they weren’t forceful, but they were still ushering us all along to go really really quickly. It was so fast that I barely had the time to register each member’s face. I don’t remember seeing Jin at ALL, and Jungkook and Suga’s faces were such brief blurs that I couldn’t tell you what they were wearing or what kind of hair they had. I have no ing clue. And we didn’t have time to say anything, I must’ve had this really dumb look on my face the whole time cuz like, I just couldn’t register anything.

I remember Jimin because he was first. His hair was that pretty shade of orange and he gave me such a pretty smile. And I remember V because he had such a funny/shocked expression on his face when he saw me, but even he didn’t get to say anything to me because I was already being pushed onto the next person by the time he realized “omg there’s a white person there” lol. Like, his eyes went wide and his mouth made a big ‘O’ and it was just really funny. And he looked so silly with his little beret on. Then there was Hoseok, who is the only one who said anything to me. He smiled and said “Oh! Hello!” and I’m pretty sure he remembered me from before <3 And then finally, the last was Namjoon. I was really looking forward to Namjoon, because he can speak English and because he is my second favorite, but I don’t think he even looked at me :( or if he did, I missed it. He was already onto the next person by the time I looked up at him… but, he held on to my hand for the longest. We’re supposed to just tap their hands right? But he was holding my hand, haha… or maybe I was holding his…  hum… I’m not sure lol XD Anyways, I let go and walked out the door and that was it.

I was really disappointed. I mean I’m still glad I got to see them. But I’m so sad I couldn’t even look Jungkook, Jin and Suga in the eye. I briefly remember Suga’s smile, and maybe Jungkook’s face a little, but it was all a blur. I dunno why they planned things like that… It’s not doing a service to the fans, or the artist, to go so fast like this, if you ask me.

Anyhow, it was still a good day, and I’ll never forget that moment with Hobi. I also managed to take a pic with that Namjoon cosplayer again, and he was pretty nice and said he remembered me from before <3

Now I’m really tired and I’m gonna go to bed!! Goodnight!