Iwasa Misaki 10th Single Special Edition Mini-Live at Entaba Akiba (2022/05/26)

Misaki-chan has been doing a series of live and online events to support the Special edition of “Akira,” her 10th single. Many of her mini-lives have been scheduled during the week, and during the day, which are inconvenient for me since I work in Saitama during the day. However, I was given the day off on Thursday because of my school’s Sports Festival, which enabled me to attend this event, the second of three consecutive days that Wasamin had a performance at this venue.

Entaba Akiba, located down the street from the AKB48 Theater, is less of a CD shop, and more of an event space, although they do sell CDs. However, they are in limited supply and exclusively from artists who perform there. I have seen Wasamin at Entaba Akiba before, as well as Desurabbits. The shop is easy to miss since it’s down a small staircase inside Onoden electronics shop. The walls are adorned with autographed posters and hundreds of artist chekis in a series of frames. In fact, I found this cheki of Waasamin from last year…

Since the admission was limited due to COVID restrictions, I decided to head down to Tokyo early, have lunch (I was really in the mood for a kebab sandwich) and then get to the shop early to line of for a ticket. I ended up wandering around Akihabara for a good 90 minutes before the shop opened and began accepting people for the event. I spent the last twenty or so minutes standing in front of the shop listening to endless loops of both the Onoden theme song and Maid Dreamin’s “Moe Moe Kyun” song. LOL

Star Kebab Akihabara

It turned out that I arrived early for no reason. Not only were there more seats than people who showed up, but the admission order was random. I was third in line when they opened, and I got admission ticket #18. Oh well, it’s a tiny venue anyway. So I really didn’t care whether I got in first or last. Anyway, I ended up being the 8th person let in, and scored a seat second row center.

After explaining the usual rules, Wasamin came out looking fresh as ever, with a cute and summery dress and really nice shoes. It was really nice to see her up close li this again. I mean, I DID see her relatively close up at the play in March, and at her concert late last year, but mini-lives are always on another level of intimacy. By the way, here is the setlist…

1. Moshimo Watashi ga Sora ni Sundeitara (2nd single)
2. Wakare no Yokan (8th single c/w)
3. Yoru ni Kakeru (new release c/w version A)
4. Akira (10th single)

Wasamin talked about this being the first time she had performed Wakare no Yokan live in a very long time. Although to be honest, the same could be said about many of the songs she used to regularly perform at events. She also mentioned something about the new release getting a #1 ranking somewhere. I know it debuted at #25 on the Oricon daily pop chart, and Oricon only does weekly charts for Enka, so I’m not sure where she was talking about. I was really happy that she sang Yoru ni Kakeru live, since that’s the song I mentioned in my message to her at the Limista online event. It’s a song I’m very familiar with since YOASOBI is really popular right now, so I’ve heard the original version quite often.

The funny part came at the end. If you’ve read some of my old mini-live reports, one of the schticks her fans like to do is whine and cry when she announces the last song. However, we are still under the “no cheering or calls” rule at mini-lives, so people were trying different ways to do it without saying anything, like making crying gestures, or turning their glowsticks blue and hanging them upside-down from their face. Wasamin got a kick out of that. On to chekis…

As I said, there weren’t many people there, so the cheki portion went rather quickly. I was 8th in line, and Wasamin was making the “heart” gesture before I even got up to her. She mentioned she hadn’t seen me in a long time. Now that she mentioned it, I hadn’t done a cheki or handshake with her where she could see my face in about a year.. There wasn’t time to talk, but I did tell her that I was now working in Urawa, which she got excited about. I’m guessing because 1) she knows where Urawa is, and 2) it’s considerably closer to Tokyo than my previous job.

Oh, and you also got a choice of signboard or sticker if you purchased both versions of the CD.

Wasamin is wrapping up this series of promotions with two mini-live events today in Asakusa. Then it will be on to her play with Umezawa Tomio and Ken Naoko in Osaka and Nagoya. So Wasamin will be keeping busy.

CK in Japan