MANO HANDSHAKE EVENT MANIA - DAY 1

This week Mano's newest single is released and as always there's tons of handshake events being held to pump the amount of sales. These events are usually a lot of fun because you get to talk to Mano and the H!P Egg members she usually is having as guests for a long time. I had been worried that they wouldn't have any for this single because of the new Oricon rule only counting a low amount of the CD event sales. However, it's 30% of the event sales up to 3,000 copies, so she can still sell 10,000 copies during her events. Definitely a good reason to keep having the handshake events. Plus, Mano seems to love doing these. She is always really into the events and gives her fans a lot of time to talk to her.

Today I went to the first day of six in total around Tokyo area filled with handshake events. It was held at Tower Records in Shinjuku and was only with Mano-chan. Since they had announced that they would start selling the CDs giving you tickets to the handshake event at 11 AM, I had to get up early to get there. When I arrived at 11:15, it turned out that not many people had been going there early and my two tickets I got for the handshakes was only no. 30 and 31 that had been sold so far! The handshake event wouldn't start until 6:30 PM, so I could go back home and catch some more sleep.

I got back to the shop right before it would start and waited next to where the event would take place. When Mano showed up she noticed me right away and I was the first one she waved to. Everytime she's having these events she waves at me when she's arriving and notices that I'm there. :D

The event started and I didn't go line up right away, instead I just stood there and watched the other people shaking her hand. I wanted to see how much time you got with her and I don't think I've never seen such a slow handshake event before! Every dude got to talk to her for like 10 seconds. No one really got pushed at all. You could just babble on and wait for Mano to reply to what you had to say.

After about 15 minutes I decided to line up, and wow, that line was surprisingly really long. The event was held at the 10th floor in the building and everyone got to line up in the staircase. I had to walk down all the way to below 7th floor and since the event was so slow it took almost 20 minutes before I got up to Mano. Today I had planned to tell her about my mom being born in the same city in Finland where Santa Claus lives, since Mano has some obsession about one day visiting Santa-san in Finland. The line I said to her was pretty long and I started stuttering, being unusually nervous. I said: 「サンタさんはフィンランドのロバニエミに住んでいます。僕のお母さんはそこで生まれましたよ。」. Too much for someone who never really speaks much Japanese, haha. Mano-chan replied with a 「おぉ～すごい～！本当ですか？」 and had a big smile on her face. :)

I went one more time and then said 「僕はオマリーといいます。覚えて下さい！」 (I'm called O'Malley, please remember it!). Mano's reply: 「オマリー？はい！」. Then I just said 「じゃ、明日ね？バイバイ！」 (See you tomorrow, bye-bye!). I decided to not loop today's event to save money for the events with the eggs instead, so there's more girls to meet if I'll take a loop going like 5-6 times. ^_^

Mano's outfit for the day from her blog:



















Tomorrow there's a mini live with Mano and S/mileage, of course with a handshake event afterwards. It will be held at Odaiba, which is a nice place so I'll probably spend the day there. After that there's also a radio show recording in Yoyogi which I think I'll try make it to as well.

オマリー