A miraculous day - a lifetime in the day of a superfan

 Avoiding the end of the year ceremony, having made a huge excuse, my husband and I got on the Shinano.  The train was packed like sardines with overseas tourists and Japanese families going to their hometowns for the New Year holiday, and our destination, Nagoya.  It was the 28th December, the last working day of the year.  Although we were rather uncomfortable on our journey, we were overjoyed with the prospect of being able to see the final show of our favorite singer,Yumi Matsutoya, Yuming, on her 54th concert of her tour, “The Journey “.

When we arrived at Nagoya, there was an announcement of cancellation for further service to Shinano because of some falling rocks.  We felt so lucky to have gotten on an earlier train, even though it had been a very painful two hours.

Our seat numbers of the show only came out at midday on the day of the concert on our phone, and we found out that our seats were on the 2nd lane in the arena, the best seats we’ve ever had in the seventeen previous shows we’ve been to!  We were absolutely thrilled to see that but the seat number was so tricky that we never knew if it was a real good seat or not until we were actually in the concert hall.

knick-knacks

With our huge expectations we arrived at Nihon Gaishi, and joined a long queue to purchase some concert souvenirs, such as a tin-badge unique to every venue, T-shirts, bags…. During this concert tour, concert staff had been introduced through Instagram and we felt as if they were our old acquaintances.  So when we saw the person in charge of the stalls, we greeted her, and she kindly responded with her beautiful smile, which gave us more familiarity.

After we had had a happy little chat with the sales lady, it was time for the lottery for the special pair of glasses, released as a commemoration set; we had been able to get the lottery ticket only when we bought her new CD.  Actually we bought four, even though we already had three copies : to tell you the truth, we had a little discussion about the necessity to buy this same CD just for the glasses, even though they were ‘special’.

There were lots of people in front of us and we had had no luck so far.  It was our turn.  We were at the lottery desk without any hope.  First my husband, Isamu tried and failed, of course, then me…  Goodness gracious!  I’ve made it!  Yeeeeeeees!  Hooray!  The lottery guy was so surprised that he dropped the big hand bell and there was a huge noise and he screamed ‘You got it!  Congratulations!’

I was extremely surprised and couldn’t believe it because I had never won any lottery before.  Of course I was very happy but at the same time I started being anxious about what would happen next, as we had been too lucky that day so far.

It was about 4 pm and the concert started at 6:30 pm, so we went back to our accommodation, only a ten minute walk from the hall to calm ourselves down.

At the hotel, we had a little snack, changed into the white tour T-shirt which we have always worn on this tour (our uniform) and got perfectly ready mentally and visually by 5:30 pm…and off we went back to the hall and found an excited audience of!

About 10,000 people were already there, and we lined up to find our seats, East 3 Block 2nd lane 11, 12, which were super good seats, we called ‘god’s seat’!  We were absolutely delighted and thrilled!!

We felt all the audience’s huge excitement and anticipation, the concert started with the familiar introduction, then our goddess, Yuming, was walking towards the stage in front of us!  That stage set up was centre-stage so if our seats were the opposite side of the 2nd lane, we couldn’t have seen her passing through.  So we were super lucky indeed!!

superfans 

The concert was the very best, Yuming and the other performers played so well and I felt as if I had made eye contact with Yuming a couple of times.  The absolute highlight was when she pointed at me in the middle of  ‘Mamotte Agetai’ … I almost fainted with joy.  

We were dancing, jumping, clapping our hands, waving at her frantically, screaming, singing along, enjoying ourselves every minute, I have never been happier!

At the end of the show, all the staff were on the stage and they hugged each other, which was a very emotional scene and made us cry as well: the show, the tour, The Journey really is finishing…

There was a triple encore that was very rare, and moreover Masataka Matsutoya, Yuming’s husband & producer and director of the show and a great musician himself, accompanied her on keyboards for her last song, ‘Sotsugyo Shashin’, one of her iconic tunes and the best song for the final.

Mr and Mrs Matsutoya came down from the stage and they walked past in front of us, under the thunderous applause from the crowd.

Finally the overwhelming show and our miraculous day was over.