UtaPri 6th Stage Event Report: Shopping, Part 2

I apologize for the delay, it’s been a rough month! This time I’ll be talking about my second day of shopping for 6th Stage goods and what I learned from it.

To start off, an official tweet had been sent out a few days before alerting everyone about a change in restocking procedure. Originally, sold out items were going to be restocked at Sunshine City on Saturday, the first day of the concert. This was changed to Friday, possibly to help relieve some of the anxiety that some concertgoers might have had about going to Sunshine City on Saturday and then rushing to the concert dome. It was probably a smart move because the wait on Friday was incredibly long—had we gone on Saturday, we might’ve been late to the concert!!

The information about changes being made, posted on the UtaPri website.

After our first day of shopping, my travel buddy Lisa and I met with our friend Kyukyu, who was a valuable source of information throughout our trip! She warned us about what it would be like getting in line and how early we’d have to get up to leave. After hearing her advice, this is what we ended up doing on Friday morning:

We woke up at 4am.
Yes. That’s right. Four o’clock in the morning. And we took the first train around 4:45 from where we were staying, into Ikebukuro (I had almost regretted not having a closer place to stay, but we did save money), and arrived a few minutes past 5am. When Kyukyu said to run, she meant RUN—throughout the station there were a few girls with their itabags dashing towards the exit leading to Sunshine City!!!

I was ill-prepared not only for running but also the rain. I had carried with me a small, lightweight suitcase for all the goods I had to buy, but the added weight of that and my itabags made me tired pretty quickly. Adrenaline kept me moving but I had to slow down so that Lisa could keep up. We reached the station exit, continued running in the light rain, and tiptoed over puddles (I almost slipped and fell) until we finally got to the end of the line at Sunshine City. There were already at least 300 people there! We kept in contact with Kyukyu through LINE and it turns out she was ahead of us by maybe 100 people. She asked us if there was anything we wanted her to get since she was ahead of us, and therein lies my first "mistake"—I only asked her to get a Ren bear plush for me, because I didn’t want to give her the responsibility of getting items that I needed to pick up for the group order, such as the T-shirts and penlights.

I probably shouldn’t say that was my first mistake, actually—my first mistakes were not traveling light enough, and not having a raincoat! The weather was AWFUL! My friend and I shared an umbrella because I didn’t want to cause extra crowding while we waited in line. But the raincoat absolutely would have helped, along with a trash bag or two to cover my stuff (I had one shopping bag to cover my NIGHT DREAM itabag and that was it). My Cecil Prince Parka ended up being soaked due to the wind blowing rain in our direction, along with my Tokiya hand towel which I used to try to cover my backpack as much as possible as I cradled it against my chest.

The line of people waiting to get in looked something like this (click for a full-size image):

Even though we arrived hours earlier on Friday, we still ended up behind more people then we did on Thursday!

I edited the diagram with my notes, and I also color-coded which area of the line was outdoors (the light blue area). That was by the far the earliest I had ever gotten into any line in my life—the “UtaPri Merch War” was a war indeed.

I noticed that there are a few people here and there moving about through the line, and I soon realized that they were probably going to the bathroom. Around maybe 8:30, I asked Lisa if she wanted me to find something warm to drink since it was a bit chilly from the rain; she said okay so I set out to see if any of the vending machines had them. As I walked around the corner I saw even more people…there was no telling where the end of the line was but I could say that it was a good thing we lined up when we did. While I couldn’t find a vending machine with warm drinks (I guess May is too warm of a month), I did manage to take refuge for a bit and wring out the rain from my parka while in the bathroom.

The line started moving quite early—I would say before 10am? I can’t quite remember but I do know it was quite early. Since I already outlined the process in my last report, I’ll skip that and go on to the results of my shopping.

In essence, my consideration of Kyukyu—and not wanting to hand off to her a responsibility that was my own—was probably the right thing to do. But as I saw her near the front of the line to pay just as Lisa and I were coming in, I was pretty certain that I had missed the one chance to get those penlights and T-shirts during the event. It wasn’t until another hour or so later that they announced that the penlights were sold out, and later each size and colors of the T-shirts. I was surprised that I managed to get all of the jackets I needed as well as most of the bears, and I did pick up a few more trading items.

After we finished shopping—around noon—Lisa and I met up with Kyukyu and her friend, and we all stuck around the area for a bit to trade. Kyukyu is the person who helped me by using Twitter to trade items on my behalf—if it weren’t for her I would’ve had to try myself, which would’ve taken forever! So it’s thanks to her that almost everyone in the group order got the trading items they requested!

With the next day of shopping out of the way, the only thing left was the concert. We had considered going back to Sunshine City that morning knowing that the restock had already happened, but after the stress of getting up before sunrise and standing for over six hours, there was no way that was gonna happen. During lunch, I wrote out the remaining requests I had for trading items, and handed the list and my stock to Kyukyu so that she could trade at the stadium over the weekend. Lisa and I had a reservation for the Sailor Moon Ani-On Station cafe in Akihabara, so we headed there and did some shopping first, and I was lucky enough to find a 4th Stage penlight for a bargain price at Lashinbang, just in time to use at the concert :)

So the important lessons I learned that day were:

1.  Pack light. If you need to buy a lot of goods and don’t wanna carry them around everywhere, you can always leave them in a coin locker afterwards (just don’t forget to get them out before you head back!) 
2. If rain is in the forecast, wear a poncho and cover your bags! And bring a towel in case anything gets wet! We predicted that the shirts sold out fast because people were buying them to change into after getting caught in the rain. 
3. If you have a friend ahead of you in line and they offer to order stuff on your behalf, TAKE THE OFFER. If you’re lucky they’ll be able to get it for you! (Just don’t get too greedy–go for items that are high priority and sell out quick!)

The next part of my report will cover the first day of the concert! Following that I’ll cover my visits to the Animate Cafe!