Iwasa Misaki mini-live at Aeon Mall Hanyu (2022/11/27)

Sorry that this one is so late. I just haven’t been in the blogging/reporting mood. Anyway, I had been jonesing for a Wasamin mini-live since her other events these days have become prohibitively expensive. She announced two in November, one in Moriya (Ibaraki Prefecture) and the other in Hanyu (Saitama Prefecture) Ibaraki Prefecture would cost me close to 4000 yen just for the round trip, so I pretty much ruled that one out. That left Hanyu, which despite being in Saitama, was still quite a trek from where I live. Also, my friend @Tensai was in town, and I really wanted him to say hello to Wasamin since he hadn’t been to Japan in over three years. So it was decided.

We met in mid-morning at Omiya Station, and made our journey to Hanyu. I know I have seen Wasamin perform there before, although can’t remember how long ago. Taking the Utsunomiya route, we transferred to another train out in the suburbs. These lines run parallel to where I live, but much further east. Eventually we made it to Minami-Hanyu Station, and met another Wasafan. Despite what it read on the website, we couldn’t find any evidence of a shuttle bus at the station, so we decided to walk the 2+ kilometers. The weather was nice, and we were early, so no biggie. We eventually made it to the mall.

Aeon Mall Hanyu is a huge complex in a very suburban area. You get the feeling that the entire town converges on the mall every weekend. Lots of shops, restaurants, and a huge food court. I’m always excited when I find a Subway Sub shop (one of my guilty pleasures) Anyway, after lunch we headed back to the stage area just in time to get seats before they allowed the non-buying attendees in. We were third row on the right side. The event space was filled with people in both the standing area and along the balconies upstairs. Eventually Wasamin came out in casual clothes…

Setlist
1. Tomonoura Bojou
2. Blue Light Yokohama
3. Ettou Tsubame
4. Akira

It was surprising setlist for a couple of reasons. First, she didn’t perform any of the c/w tracks from her recent single. But second, she hasn’t performed Ettou Tsubame in ages, which was one of the most popular tracks from her first album Request Covers almost 9 years ago. She tee’d up Blue Light Yokohama as a “winter song,” despite us being quite far from Kanagawa Prefecture where she usually performs it. She also mentioned her recent camping trip she went on with Kuramochi Asuka, but admitted she’d much rather go ‘glamping’ in the future. After the show we were queued up for 2-shots based on our seating. Eventually it was my turn…

Wasamin greeted me with a faux-crying “Kurisuu, aitakatta! Aitakatta!” Wasamin is now well aware that I am not attending all of her events anymore. It is strictly for financial reasons. I would love to see every event she does. But to be honest, they have become a lot more expensive, so I have to ‘pick my spots,’ so to speak. I told her that I used to go camping a lot in America, and she jokingly said “Let’s go camping!” But then I dropped a little bombshell on her. It isn’t something I can talk about publicly, but suffice it to say that I am a co-worker of someone who is closely related to one of Wasamin’s good friends. She was shocked at first, but then took it all in stride. It is something I need to keep close to the vest for privacy purposes, but I wanted to tell Wasamin about it.

The cool thing is that Wasamin was totally stoked to see @Tensai again, and even made reference to him on her blog. After the event we walked back to the station and headed back to Omiya, where we decided to have dinner. However, all of the east exits were blocked. What was going on?

It turns out there was a huge fire outside the Omiya Station east exit that day, destroying the Matsumoto Kiyoshi drug store, the McDonalds, and a ramen shop. It was major news on TV that day. But we managed to make it to dinner at Torikizoku, and back home to watch the Japan World Cup match.

Wasamin has a bunch of events this month, many of which I am missing. However, I will be attending her Christmas Day event in Tokyo with Hasegawa Ai and Matsui Sakiko. So I’m looking forward to that.

CK in Japan