March 2019 Update

Sadly, while most of my March was somewhat okay, I fell again, into an even deeper and darker place than I had already been in. There was a few happy moments in there: I watched Shojiro Yokoi in Oretachi Majiko Destroy on stage, a whopping seven times. And I did manage to visit the Secret Garden Party exhibit in Shibuya and the HEAVENS Only Shop at Animate Ikebukuro I've posted photos on my Twitter and I'm slowly catching up on Tumblr.

Unfortunately, some more problems came up shortly after that and I've been handling it poorly...but I've realized that I still have many people counting on me to keep going. And along the way I decided to host the Secret Garden Party group order that people have been hoping for me to do.
Like Mysterious Halloween Party and Angel & Devil, these items are not made-to-order (there will be limited quantities) and I will likely not be able to order right away when they open sales, so certain items could sell out.

Since sending invoices and then sending refunds for sold out items will probably be too much work, I've decided to do the following:

1. I'll open the form a few weeks ahead of the sale date, and close the form on the deadline as usual.
2. I will not send an invoice beforehand; rather I will wait and see how much I can order, and then send out invoices after the orders are completed.
3. The items I can order will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis. For example, if five people request a Tokiya tote bag and I am only able to order three, the first three people who signed up will have the tote bag included in their invoice. (If for some reason someone changes their mind, I will offer to the next person in line.)
4. There will be a deadline set for payment, but I will give people a little more time to complete it. As usual, shipping invoices will be sent separately once everything arrives.

If there's any other information to provide, it'll be included once I post the form! Since pre-orders don't start until July, I will probably open the form sometime in June.

In new group order news, I suddenly remembered that Movic will have items from the VR ZONE STARISH Secret Party promotion, so I've opened up a sign-up form for that! See my Group Pre-Order Info page for the sign-up link. (The info page has also been updated with two new pieces of information in relation to changing orders and the refund policy, so please check that out as well!)

As for updates on in-progress orders, I am slowly working on sorting out what's still remaining. I'm very glad to say that the majority of orders are sent out! I know a few of you are still waiting, I've been working on trading items still and I'll be trying again this week, but it's likely that I may not find everything requested. If you ordered the Halloween Bears, they are being released later this month so I'll be sorting those out when they arrive.

I think many of you are aware of how overwhelmed I've been in the past few months and you have no idea how much I appreciate everyone's understanding even as I've made a couple of mistakes during the shipping process. It's an incredibly difficult time for me right now and I'm praying that I can recover because I don't want to stop helping you all.

I can't say it enough, but thank you for counting on me.

February 2019 Update (and Announcement)

Following the fan event I attended in January, I crashed.

Meeting Yokoi-san was an incredible experience that left me drained, around the EXACT same time that a bunch of pre-orders came in, and then I caught a cold, and THEN I had a bunch of personal matters come up which completely derailed my efforts to get myself back together.

It was so bad that I missed a Shining Live event for the first time, and I barely celebrated Ren's birthday. It's been really tough, and while I started the year taking better care of myself, it was under the impression that I wouldn't encounter any new hardships.

My once-clean apartment is currently filled with boxes, and I'm trying as best as I can to process shipping, pick up packing materials, and visit the post office while handling a full-time job, trying to find time to rest AND revive my presence on social media as a cosplayer.

This has led me to consider making a very tough decision, but I wanted to announce this as early in the year as possible.

I am considering towards going on hiatus from hosting UtaPri group orders by the end of this year.

I never expected so many people to rely on my services, and what started out as doing favors for a few people turned into a full-time hobby, to the point where I'm now treading in small business territory.

As I'm sitting here trying to figure out where to begin on filing my taxes, I realized that regardless of how carefully I've been tweaking and polishing this service, it still involves a lot of complicated financial matters that I was never prepared for.

So not only am I thinking of taking a break for myself, I'm considering taking a break just so I can  step back and figure out how all this works.

I have a couple of ideas on how I can scale back without quitting entirely, and I'll try to find time to  lay out those ideas in the next few weeks. I'll be asking for everyone's feedback as well.

Everyone's words of gratitude and appreciation is what makes it so hard for me to say that I need a break, because I still love UtaPri so much and I feel like this is the biggest contribution I can make to the fan community.

Knowing that so many people around the world could get the items that they wanted because of what I was doing made me feel so happy. I want to help as many people as I possibly can, but I realize that there's only so much I can do as one person.

Once I make a decision on how to approach this, I'll write another update. In the meantime, in case more merch is announced and I'm not ready to host a group order, I highly recommend using a proxy service (you can see my guide here). As far as trading items, I absolutely would like to continue helping with that, because it's the one thing that proxy services don't do.

Now that the recent Tokiya event on Shining Live is over (which served as my therapy for the past week), I'll get some proper sleep and then resume working on sorting out all of this stuff. I know I talk about this being a lot of work, but I really do enjoy looking at all this UtaPri merch before I send it off to everyone.

|￣￣￣￣￣￣ |
| UTAPRI |
| SAVES |
| LIVES |
| |
| ＿＿＿＿＿__|
(\__/) ||
(•ㅅ•) ||
/ 　 づ

— Blushface Tokiya@Top 1% (JP) (@bitchfacetokiya) February 20, 2019

As for my emotional state that I hinted about over Twitter, I'm happy to say that I'm feeling much, much better. UtaPri played a big role in helping me get back on track, and that's why I continue to dedicate so much time to it.<3

January 2019 Update

January is already almost over...but also, 2019 has just started and I've already experienced an incredible start to the new year.

I was very, very lucky to attend two events for Shojiro Yokoi, the stage actor for Cecilmaru and Cecil Aijima in the Gekidan Shining 2.5 plays. 

I was so nervous and embarrassed myself in front of him multiple times but he was very kind, funny and sweet! He is an amazing and talented person and I encourage everyone to watch one of his plays, especially Tenka Muteki-no Shinobi Michi and Polaris. He's also great in Revolutionary Girl Utena where he plays Saionji!

I also mentioned this on Twitter, but there was a short meet and greet corner after the JOKER TRAP talk show earlier this month, so I was able to say thank you to the main cast. Ryunosuke Matsumura (who plays Perfect Diamond TOKI in JOKER TRAP and Tokiya Ichinose in Polaris) saw my JOKER TRAP itabag and said "WOW!" He had the brightest smile and enthusiasm for everyone and it was such a great experience even though it was only a few seconds! 

Since I was so busy preparing for that special weekend, I didn't have time to notify everyone about some important updates that came up around the same time, so here goes:

• Mystic Light merchandise and Shining Store Annex/Candy Shop merch have arrived! Please allow me a few days to recover from the past weekend and focus on wrapping up the Maji Love Kingdom order. Once that's taken care of, I'll be working on trading items and processing orders for those who didn't require combined shipping. I am a bit overwhelmed because all of this stuff showed up at the same time, but this weekend I'll do my best to start sorting everything out.
• I am hosting a PRINCE CAT Winter Holiday Group Order! The sign-up form is here. This request period will be a little shorter than Maji Love Kingdom, so please sign-up as soon as you can so I can send out invoices!

And one thing I'd really like to remind everyone of because this was a recurring issue during the Maji Love Kingdom order: When filling in your address, PLEASE type out your FULL address, not just the house number and street name! I've managed to look up the entire address by Googling what I have, but it's a bit awkward for me to do so and I'd rather rely on your word directly. So please double-check that information before continuing through the sign-up form!

Thank you all for your words of gratitude and encouragement! I'm still in disbelief that I could be face-to-face with Nosuke and Yokkoi, my two favorite stage actors, within weeks of each other. It's a dream come true, but it's also such an honor and blessing to hear from such wonderful UtaPri fans all over the world who trust and depend on me to keep doing these group orders. Let's continue to do our best for 2019 and beyond!☆