A Morning Musume。’14 Hawaii 2014 Report

Part 5: The After Show.

The show had ended, the fans were getting their handshakes, and we were taking down our signs. We had done our part to help make the tour feel a little better but we wanted to be able to do a little more. Three of us together had decided to put our plan in action.

I won’t go into details about this here, there is a certain amount of discretion necessary at this point as to protect both us and them from any kind of misinterpretation here. I wouldn’t want you to think that we were ignored, but at the same time I wouldn’t want you to think we did something crazy either. For the sake of clarity I will compare what we did to the kind of normal thing people do to celebrate people coming to or leaving from an airport. We wanted to see Morning Musume, especially Sayumi, off with as much energy as we could. We prepared for months, ideas we could do, trying to balance possibility with feasibility.

The balance for what we could do is finicky, you can’t do much, they still go with the same rules they always do. This means you can’t give them things that could hide other things in. You can’t approach them, anything you do is purely just an expression of appreciation the best you can do. Work too hard and you’re basically doing it for nothing or possibly being disruptive, do too little and you’re not doing your feelings justice. After months of planning we had an idea and were putting it into action.

As the fans were getting handshakes we began to work. We tried to work quickly never knowing when they’d finish, and we wanted to make things nice. Time rolled slowly, we did our best, as the last of the tour vans left campus. We sat around waiting, giving each other “Otsukaresama”s and listening to Momusu songs to keep our energy up. The sun begins to set and still they don’t come out. Staff has come out and back in, seeing our work and thanking us for the display of appreciation. We give thanks back.

The sun has disappeared now, as we sit in the low glow of the campus lights, not nearly bright enough for our full display to be effective, and yet we weren’t prepared for such a scenario. Eventually they emerged. We screamed our thanks and “Otsukare~” as we thought, but besides some light waves they walked away in a quickened pace. Most of them barely saw or acknowledged the display, though thanks to a bug, some of them noticed the work we put out around the area. After a long time in the theater, the girls looked exhausted, or at least like they had given it their all. We could do nothing but wave them good bye and wish them a good night. Sure it wasn’t a spectacular reaction, but we got a wave, and in their tired state they seemed to appreciate the effort. At the time we didn’t know what had happened, we didn’t know they were playing around and lying under the Hawaiian sky, that wasn’t known till the blogs came out later. We parted that evening, us fans wishing each other a good night and went our separate ways, not given the best outcome, but not taking for granted what we witnessed on our own.