I met Rose / Roze Kato at her First JAV Event

With Japan now open again to tourism, one of the first items on my list of "things to do in Japan" was to go to a JAV fan event! The problem with JAV fan events is unless you live in Japan there's not much choice as to who you'll get a chance to meet in person as the fan events are announced generally 2 months or even less before the event day; while a person planning to go to Japan probably planned to take time off of work, bought plane tickets, and reserved hotels among many other events/restaurants months before then. This was certainly my case but luckily there was someone I wanted to meet, which I rearranged a few events to go to, Rose Kato, and it was also her first fan event despite debuting in March 2022. How could I not go to her first fan event!

As per usual, to participate in her fan event I would need to at least buy the DVD for the fan event she's having it for. In this case it was for her new NTR JAV, HZGD-235 by maker tsumabana. It would be my first event at Mulan AKIBA and since it wasn't on the main streets of Akihabara where I've been to other fan events I needed to use Gmaps to find it. It wasn't too far off the main street I was impressed by the size of it compared to other similar shops. As per usual for these kind of shops, the first floor is full of video games, DVDs, and other otaku goods then on the second floor and third floor was filled with JAV DVDs and adult toys. It's wall to wall JAV DVDs and shelves so as it was my first time there and not seeing Rose's DVD prominently displayed by the cash register as I've seen at other shops, despite this being where the event was being held, I asked an employee at the register to show me where her DVD was and if tickets to the event was still available. I asked as the event would be limited to only 50 participants and it has been a couple days since tickets where made available. Luckily,as you can tell, tickets were still available. With 3 DVDs in hand I went up to the register where they confirmed if I was participating in the event, took out a paper ticket for the event, and stamped it 3 times for each DVD purchase.

With the 1 DVD purchase you get to meet her, talk with her a bit while she autographs what is normally the DVD cover, 30 seconds of taking pictures of her in a swimsuit, and a photo gift.

This is the photo gift they gave out.

As I wanted the full event experience I bought 2 more DVDs to participate. The 2 DVDs you need to buy need to be from the same maker so I bought 2 more DVDs that I'd enjoy watching with two other actresses I knew of. The second DVD also gets you 2 photos standing next to her. The third DVD gives you an additional 30 seconds of taking photos of her.

Come the day of 12/9 I made my way to event. With my heart beating hard I stepped into the shop knowing the person I've only seen on the screen will soon be right in front of me. The event space is on the stores 4th floor, which is accessible by a side staircase separate from the stores main staircase or by elevator. What's amazing and left me dumbstruck about the stores stairwell between the 3rd and 4th flood is every square inch of the wall being plastered with pictures of current and past JAV actresses who had events there previously, which they left a kind message for and autographed. Here's a few who I'm sure you'd recognize.

After gawking at all the photos I proceeded up to the 4th floor, luckily the event lasts 2 hours from the start of the event so I knew I had some time to look. On the 4th floor is a narrow hallway with the small event room on the side of the hallway. A Mulan employee greeted me and confirmed I had a ticket before leading me into the room. Upon entering I saw Rose Kato, the excitement that I was finally meeting her is now reality. The small room was separated into 3 parts, the biggest being the waiting area to wait for your turn to meet the actress, a small area to do the autograph signing and to talk to the actress, and lastly the photo spot. Due to the pandemic things have changed since I've last been to an event pre-pandemic. The waiting room likely held around 15 chairs in it before but upon entering you'll see only 6 chairs with lots of space between them and a clear curtain in front of each chair. The autograph area also had a partition between the actress and the fan. Masking is required for the fan but the actress doesn't need to be. This is all very reasonable to ensure the actress and participants will be kept safe and healthy.

A video of her dancing from her popular TikTok in front of the photo spot; popular TikToker is how she got introduced on her AV debut.

As Rose is still relatively new to the industry, not even 1 year in, I wondered if the event would have lots of participants. Looking around I only saw 1 fan who was talking with Rose at the autograph area with all the seats empty. As I sat down to get my DVD cover ready to sign the other fan left and the employee told me it was time for photos. I was surprised as normally the autograph come first then photos; so I assumed I had some time to get ready when I saw the fan talking to Rose and assumed he'd be taking photos after. With smartphone in hand I followed Rose to the photo area. She has a bubbly look to her combined with sex appeal. As I don't normally request for poses I left Rose to do whatever pose she wanted.

She did a multitude of poses, standing up, hands on hip, turned around to show her backside, squat pose, and more. What's interesting about Japanese smartphones is each picture taken releases an audible camera noise to know a photo is taken, which is not something I have on my own smartphone by default. To let Rose know I took the picture and to change poses I said "hai" (yes), after every photo. After the 1 minute solo photo session I took 2 photos with Rose. Pre-pandemic the actress would normally wrap her arm around yours and touch shoulder to shoulder if you were the same height. It's changed now and depends on the actress if she's comfortable doing that. For Rose she didn't do physical contact at this event and when we did a hand heart pose it looked like a broken heart as our hand were separate from each other LOL. We also did the classic "V" hand sign pose. While we didn't stand too far from each other it was a little disappointing to not come back after a couple years to the normal arm grabbing pose. Again, it depends on the actress, so you might be able to still have that experience if you go to a JAV fan event.

After the photo session came the autograph session. The first question I asked her was if she spoke English, while asking in Japanese. She said she spoke only a little, soft spoken in fact, a heads up for those who are interested in meeting her at future fan events or to spend more time with her. Who knows, Rose might be interested in learning more English if she gets more overseas fans. When I first met Hitomi Tanaka she spoke only a little English as well, but knowing she has lots of overseas fans she learned to speak and understand English. While not fluent, Hitomi now knows enough English to have a casual conversation with English speaking fans.

We spoke a little, like how I was coming from overseas and came to meet her while I was in Japan. I showed her my Twitter account and her eyes got big when I did and said she appreciated me tweeting/RTing her. It made me happy to be know she saw my tweets. She asked where I came from and some other small talk before she finished autographing my DVD cover. Normally you get a handshake before or after the autograph and like earlier I did not get a handshake due to health reasons during the pandemic. Again, understandable but a little disappointing. 

When I turned around from my seat in the autograph area I was happy to see what was an empty waiting room now had all its seats filled with Rose fans. My worries about her not having many fans show up for her first fan event was gone as at least 8 people showed up and there was still time left before the event ended.

As I walked back to the 4th floor hallway the Mulan employee from before guided me to the elevator in the hallway and pressed it for me to go down to the first floor. We talked a bit while waiting for the elevator then after I entered I turned around to see the employee bowing to me through the ever closing door gap. I left the store and back into the cold winter weather of Akiba to recollect my thoughts on the event.

It was great to be able to go to a JAV fan event again after so long. For the most part everything is still the same, the exception being pandemic safety procedures. Would I do it again? Of course! It's the luck of the draw if the event of an actress I want to meet will land on a day I am available but hopefully it will be, fingers crossed. Hope you get the opportunity as well!

Btw, sometimes the maker of the JAV will do promotions for the DVD release, like tsumabana did, by giving away exclusive polaroids. You can enter and if you win you could always have them shipped to your hotel if you don't live in Japan.