Parfaits & Perfume!
Mäneka
The morning started with our favorite breakfast from the last trip: matcha sweets at Nakamura Tokichi. I was excited to relive my matcha kakigori experience, but Mom warned me that “Japanese are seasonal people” and they might not have it so I should not get my hopes up. She turned out to be right. Kakigori was off the menu. Instead we had a parfait double feature. Mom had the special autumn parfait and I had the regular Maruto matcha one. Both were a delicious jumble of textures with a variety of matcha delivery mechanisms, from straight powder, to flavored whipped cream, to matcha flavored anko. Mom’s had figs to make it autumnal and some yellow stuff whose kanji description we did not decipher.
The sweets had us wired and foiled our plans to nap on as on the Hikari train to Nagoya. We also left our ekiben, which Mom had been very excited to purchase, uneaten. I had gotten train station nigiri. Mom had purchased a beef box and the world’s slimiest salad. It had wakame and okra in copious quantities whose slime overtook most of the other ingredients. We ended up eating in the hotel room in Nagoya.
Then it was time for Day 1 of the whole reason we came to Japan this time around: Perfume 7th Tour Future Pop in Nippon Gaishi Hall (First Day)! Mom and I went together. Initially there was a bit of confusion about where to line up because the tickets have a 管理番号 (kanri bangou or control number), but not a seat, which is assigned on your way into the venue.
Our seats were in the stands, in the very top row, which lent us a nice overhead view of the action. The main rectangular stage had a runway leading to a smaller octagonal stage, which was right in our line of sight. The venue was filled to capacity, including some standing room only attendees all along the tops of the stands.
I have watched many Perfume concert DVDs over and over again and their visuals are always impressive. Their staff certainly know how to put on a show with spectacular lights, moving stage pieces, and awesome graphics. Of course the girls always bring the energy too.
Given that I usually watch Perfume DVDs alone (or with a few others that I have forced into it), it was a contrast to be shouting and clapping along to the music with thousands of other fans. Unfortunately, our section was kind of a dead zone. In fact the guy next to me did not stand up the entire time even though literally every other person there was, including Mom, whose feet were tired.
We got to be on Nocchi’s team for PTA Corner. The team names were Pa, Fyu, and Mu, not the most clever. There was also some shouting of “Angel” and “yeah yeah” and then some air guitar from a~chan before we were taught the dance moves from the first part of the Tokyo Girl chorus. I thought this was a strange choice, as they had already performed Tokyo Girl and it would have been more fun for everyone in the audience to dance along with them.
As for Linda, while she doesn’t go to many concerts, she says that she has never been to a one where there was so much effort put into the graphics. She was also impressed with how everybody in the audience is so choreographed in their dance moves and shouting. She is glad she went!