As you may be aware, the Maji Love Live concert has evolved from a weekend affair to a week-long event! This is mostly thanks to the goods they had for sale as early as the weekend before the concert! Since my adventure began before concert day, I decided to write my first report about buying (and trading) goods! This post will focus on the first (and easier day) of shopping.
I arrived in Tokyo on the night of May 24th. Before that, my friend in Japan had attended the goods pre-sale on the 21st and she was able to pick up some capsule goods that I need to purchase for the 6th Stage Proxy Shopping Service that I hosted. Sadly it was too late in the evening for me to do anything other than have dinner that day, so my concert buddy and I just prepared for our first shopping day, the 25th.
The 25th—a Thursday—was thankfully not as busy as anticipated. This might be because they didn’t restock anything since the previous sales day, which was the 21st. We took it easy and got in line at around 9:00am, thinking that sales would start at 10am. Turns out they weren’t supposed to start until 11am that day, but it was still a good thing we got in line when we did. It helped that the weather was decent!
So here’s how shopping worked: While waiting in line, the staff members handed out an order sheet, which was to be filled out and submitted once you got inside the exhibition hall where the merchandise was sold. They had PDF copies of the order form on the official webpage, so that helped me keep track in advance of what I needed to purchase. You’re expected to calculate the total yourself, but it turns out that the cashiers will re-calculate everything anyway. I definitely missed a few numbers here and there but the correct total was given to me at checkout.
They had three people accepting forms: One person accepted only orders paid for with cash (which was the vast majority of us, including myself); one person took the ones paid for with credit card, and one person accepted either. Once it was your turn, you’d pick a line according to how you planned to pay. They’d attach a numbered ticket to your sheet and give you a ticket of the same number. Items for each order were processed in the order that forms were received.
If you had participated in my proxy shopping service, you might remember when I said that you could name some alternate items to purchase in case items were sold out. That didn’t work, and the reason why is that they don’t allow you to change your order after you submit the form. So once that form is handed over, it’s a matter of waiting and hoping that they have what you requested. Since there was no restock of items on the 25th, I didn’t have to worry about T-shirts or light sticks since those had been sold out on the 21st and weren’t being re-stocked until the 26th. So I used the first shopping day to pick up what I knew was available, like the trading items.
The wait in line after submitting the form was probably around an hour? I can’t quite remember. I spent that time texting my friend who was a bit separated from me in line because they needed to check to make sure her U.S. credit card would be accepted. They played UtaPri music in the background too! ^^
Once it was our turn, we were directed to the first available cashier. We’d give them our numbered ticket and they looked for the corresponding basket, and then confirmation of items began. Fortunately I was able to get everything I requested for that day! After payment was completed, we were then directed towards the exit/back of the room, where there were tables set up with shopping bags so you can bag your own items. I took a bunch of bags just in case, although I didn’t really need them (I used one as a mat to sit on the ground when it was time to trade XD)
Towards the exit, there’s a station selling CDs and DVDs, and on the opposite side a barricade separating the incoming customers from the outgoing customers, decorated with banners of each character. At the booth, they were doing a promotion in which you received a poster with the purchase of a CD, or a signed bromide with the purchase of a DVD. I wasn’t interested but my friend ended up buying two CDs, thus receiving two posters. I think were done some time after noon, but before 1pm. Either way, it was a LONG wait.
After that was done, my friend and I exited the area and went outside of the mall, where we found a lot of other customers sitting around trading items. This part was fun but also kind of frustrating. What was fun was the trading of course! I noticed that people had different trading styles—some people walked around to look at what other people had, and asked which character(s) they were looking for. Some people who were sitting around had come prepared with signs indicating which characters they were looking for and which ones they had to trade. And though it was hard to tell, many people were probably also tweeting photos of their stash and naming their requests, waiting for responses to come in. I’ll talk more about trading via Twitter in my next report.
I mainly sat around instead of hunting because there was an array of characters I was looking for on behalf of other people, and also to help my friend who was trading for Syo items and doesn’t speak Japanese. It was pretty successful, although I hadn’t completed my trading that day, which meant I had to continue over the next few days.
What was frustrating was the fact that the staff refused to accommodate customers when it came to trading. There was a rule stated on the website that “trading around the merch area was not permitted,” meaning most of us sat outside or around the mall area. Trading was also not permitted by law in the park next to the mall as well. When the area outside the mall got crowded, staff started to tell people to leave. A friend told me that people inside the mall were also eventually told to leave because they were taking up sitting space for other mall goers.
What I'm thinking is, why are you making “trading” items and going through the trouble of renting out mall space to sell said items, yet refuse to offer the space for us to trade that would prevent the public from being inconvenienced?? Why not create a designated area to be able to trade the items that you MEANT for us to trade??
They do this for cosplayers when it comes to photography—at most exhibition events, they designate “cosplay areas” where cosplay photography is acceptable. Taking photos of cosplay is banned in other parts of the event because it can get in the way of other attendees and cause crowding. If you know that customers are going to want to trade the items that you’re selling to them, and you don’t want them to cause a disturbance to the general public, it would make sense for you to create such a space that benefits the customers and other shoppers. Hopefully if there’s a suggestion box or a survey then people can suggest this for next year!
My next report will be about the second and most grueling day of shopping—it was incredibly tiring but a lesson well-learned if I ever get a chance to go back to Japan for a future concert!
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