Akihabara Backstage Pass
Produced by Tsunku ♂ and Chiyomaru (producer of Afilia Magic School)
As some may know December 23rd, which is also the current Emperor's birthday, was the opening day of Tsunku and Chiyomaru's joint project in Akihabara: a cafe where you raise the idols by choosing an 押し and giving her your points. It is similar in style to the Afilia Magic School (well it is run by the same guy) so you have different levels of point cards and can put your points towards the different girls. As you spend more money, you get different cards. All the cards have different levels of "Producer" on them. The starting level is Assistant Producer. In the picture below you can see all the levels (thanks for posting that yesterday Chiyomaru) the first level is the red one.
Now, before getting our cards we had to GET into the cafe. By we, I mean me and my boyfriend who I convinced to come with me (he loves maid cafes so something of a similar nature as a Hello Project wasn't too hard to convince). The Grand Opening was at 3pm, with a 1hour limit for opening day (and maybe opening weekend,not sure) but there were a lot of people watching Chiyomaru's live stream on Thursday so it was really hard to guess just how many people would be coming. So we left the house around 11 to get there at noon, checked out the 6th floor. No people, wandered back downstairs to look around some shops, went back up around 1 and there were 2 people waiting, one of which had seen us going up and down so let us ahead of him, making us 2nd in line. And then we sat down, with 2 hours to go til opening, on the stairs as we asked and were given permission to do. I had my tablet with me so used that and drinking bottled iced tea to kill time.
And as time passed, it was easy to see that coming early was the right thin to do. The cafe is on the 6th floor of a popular building called Akiba Culture's Zone. By the time the cafe opened, the line snacked down the stairs to the first floor. And since it was 1 hour limit on opening day, with Tsunku and Chiyomaru obviously there... yeah you would be waiting an hour if you didn't get in first loop.
10 to three came and we were asked to stand up and a couple of people from the press came and verified that everyone was OK with being on camera (you probably picked the wrong day to come if you weren't OK since there were obviously going to be news outlets as well as filming crew for Tsuntube and Nico Nico Streaming). Then, one by one we were led inside. Since we were second I was actually quite nervous and when it was our turn smiled at the camera and was led to the door, greeted by a very cute idol named Azuna (or Azunyan as she likes to be called) and then led down (not kidding here) a corridor of all the girls lined up through the center of the restaurant to the second to front table in front of the giant stage. They left the first table open for filming and interviews until the cafe was completely full up.
Wow, the stage was right there, and Tsunku was standing to the wing. Right away he saw me and nodded. Pretty sure he recognized me from the couple of other times I have been in the front of events he has been at. Even if it was just the foreigners well, it was very obvious all the staff were amused at the two foreigners who were practically first in line. There were cast members everywhere (we were constantly told by the announcers and Tsunku/Chiyomaru to not call them maids) film crew everywhere and a giant stage with Tsunku standing to the wing. It was amazing and I was grinning the whole time.
We signed up for our producer cards and ordered drinks and talked with Azunya until she went off (for a long while actually x_x) and then looked towards the stage and Tsuntube staff as they were interviewing different cast members. Then Tsunku and Chiyomaru came out for a bit, did more chatting with different girls before introducing 3 idol groups who had come to support the opening of the cafe. Two of the groups were minor idols: OSU and Doll Elements (the trainees of Lovely Doll) and the third was a very underused group (hehem Tsunku) The Possible. Each said hello and then all together they performed (with Possible in front) the Tsuntube created song (Aiyaya Papaiya Aiyaisa ~) that has now become stuck in my head.
We ordered food, but it must have gotten forgotten about in the busy rushing around, no big deal. As it hadn't come by the time the hour was up they just took it off the order list and it was amazing how quickly one hour went by. Along with Azunyan several cast members stopped over at our table to chat with us, all of them being curious how we came to know about the cafe. One girl even called us the "cool foreign couple" and that made us laugh. All the girls were rotating around to try and build reputation, since they need to earn points from us in order to advance and be given more opportunities to go out into the media etc.
There are about 100 girls who made it through the auditions (unfortunately not me but they were nice enough to email polite rejections to everyone which is pretty awesome actually) and I am pretty sure all were there rotating in and out yesterday, or at least most. Here are two who I know talked to me. Others did talk to me, but I either can't remember their name, or the name on their name tag and introduced to me is not the one on the profile site so I can't figure out who. And it is hard to figure out by looks as there are tons of them.
Azuna - 19 years old
Harushan - 15 years old
Azunyan was so nervous, she kept forgetting parts of everything she had to explain to us in the beginning and it was adorable. I just told her to slow down and relax.
Well the greatest part of the day was actually when we were leaving. Our hour was up and we were led by Azunyan to the counter to pay. Tsunku and another male staff member were standing only a couple of feet behind us chatting, waiting for the first group to all leave probably. So we finished paying and I glanced again at Tsunku, who met my eyes and then walked over to us and first asked in Japanese if we could speak it. I said yes. So he stood there right next to me and asked how I found out about this cafe. I told him I had seen it on his blog, and then Azunyan blurted out how I had told her I knew about it 3 months ago right when it was announced and he seemed amazed. I said that I was a big Hello Project fan so was always going to events. He did the obvious thing of thanking me for that and then I told him I was definitely going to be coming back to the cafe more. He told me he hoped we had a good time, then smiled and said "Thank you for coming" in perfect English before walking off.
I was in shock that we had such a normal back and forth conversation. I mean I knew he had spotted me and obviously nodded at me a few times while on stage but apparently he was really curious as to how I got there on opening day. I was so happy leaving the cafe and promised Azunyan that we would come back soon. Wow... I really should have asked to shake Tsunku's hand but I am just in complete awe that we had a totally normal exchange and I definitely think he'll remember me ^_~
Can't wait to go back again. Price wise it isn't too expensive so hope to get there at least once or twice a month.
