My Meeting with Miki Sunohara

20 hours. That was the plan. 20 hours for my Miki Sunohara trip, from start to finish. Wake up at 5:00 AM, catch the first train to Tokyo, get some breakfast-lunch, attend the event, grab a quick dinner, and then catch the last train home before arriving at the station around midnight and getting to bed at 1:00 AM the next day. That was the plan that I’d made because of my foolishly forgetting to book a hotel a month in advance, and thus assuming from past experience that I was out of luck in finding accommodation for the night.

Of course, I could always pop into a capsule hotel or net cafe or Laqua spa, but the former two are far too small for me, and the last one, while lovely, wouldn’t open until 11:00 PM anyway, so I might as well have recaptured the scant few hours of rest I’d miss from avoiding Laqua on the train ride home, and save myself some shekels. As for hostels, no thank you. Every hostel I’ve been to has had at least one uproarious snorer whose heavy breathing keeps me up all night. And love hotels, while allowing one to enter without a reservation, wouldn’t allow me to enter all by my lonesome. As such, it looked like I was gonna have to do two long train rides in one day.

Of course, by sheer lucky happenstance when I complained about this to a friend on Thursday of that week, he pulled up a Toyoko Inn by Shinagawa Station on his phone that had one (and only one!) room left available for that night. So, thanking the heavens I hadn’t yet booked a return train ride yet, I managed to snag the hotel and avoid having to do two rides in one day. Even so though, I knew that just one ride would really take it out of me, especially if that ride was happening before the crack of dawn, and especially since that Thursday night saw me coming down with a cold. (What is it with me and getting some sort of illness or injury just before fan meets, by the way? If I was a fictional character, I’d think my author was resorting to cheap narrative tricks to up the suspense.)

As such, I did everything I could to make sure I would be as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I could be come 5:00 AM that Saturday. I ate a hearty dinner, went to bed at 8:00 PM, took all my medicine, and kept the heat on high so that I might sweat out some of my cold. And as I laid myself down to rest, I knew I was as ready as I’d ever be for the following fan meet.

You might be wondering at this point just why I was going to all this trouble. I mean, sure, JAV fan meet events are nice and all, but surely not nice enough to get up in the wee hours of the morn for, right? Even for us loyal readers who enjoy all the trips you take, surely no actress is worth this much hassle, right?

Ah, but you see, this wasn’t just any actress I was heading off to see. This was Miki Sunohara. Yes, the actress who got me back into JAV after I’d started to fall off of it. Who’d reminded me that there’s far more to JAV (and Japanese women) than what stereotypes tell us. Whose jet black hair and porcelain skin remain fondly in my mind’s eye as I recall my early years living and working in Japan. Miki holds a special place in my heart, and the chance to see her before her eventual retirement was too enticing to pass up. And, since Miki is also a favorite of the big boss man himself, I was not the least bit surprised when I got the go-ahead to attend this event.

Unlike the sort of events where I have gone to stores and shops, this was an event more akin to the Hibihata and Shimiken fan meets I had attended previously. You reserve your ticket online, and for this event, you had the option to select certain activities to do with Miki for extra charges, similar to what they have on various floors of SOD Land. I knew ZENRA, and all of you, would want to see me do at least one activity, so I picked alongside my standard ticket the onanism option, where I would get polaroid pics of Miki masturbating and a pair of her panties to show you all. And then, once my ticket was secured way, way back in January, I put the event out of my mind as I focused on my SOD Land trip.

In hindsight, this wasn’t the smartest move, since focusing all my attentions on SOD Land meant that I forgot to book a hotel for Miki’s event until it was too late. But hey, it all worked out in the end, so there’s that. And when I woke up bright and early that Saturday morning, feeling genuinely rested and ready to face the day, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the train ride to Tokyo was. Even my cold had fallen from a level of miserable to simply annoying, and all I needed to do throughout the day was pop an occasional lozenge for my throat. Soon I was at the building where the event was scheduled, and I joined the line to the elevator ingress. Some employees of the bar where the event was located showed up to check our reservations, and then we all rode up to the sixth floor of the building in chunks.

The makeup of the guests was about what I’d come to expect. There were the sorts of fellows you’d think would be in attendance, the professional photographers, and a handful of dirty old women who were the life and soul of the party. There were only about thirty of us there in total, and yet it was soon apparent to me that even thirty was a far larger capacity than what this bar could normally handle.

The venue was small. Very small. Smaller even than that Ali Baba store where I almost met Mao. The elevator opened to a narrow corridor. On the right side of said corridor was one little bathroom and two cordoned off areas for guests’ coats and bags and Miki’s green room, respectively. And then on the right side was the entry to the staff area, which was of course closed off from us guests. There was barely any room for two people in this corridor, it was about as narrow as the space between seats on the Shinkansen, but surely once you got out into the proper seating area of the bar things would be better, right?

Well, yes and no. Yes, the seating area was much more spacious than that narrow corridor. There was of course the bar itself, behind which stood employees of the place and artfully arranged bottles. There were the seats and tables on the other end of the room, where I quickly snagged a seat, not much liking the idea of sitting for all that time on a stool or someplace else not tall enough to support my height. And there was the karaoke tv and dart board sitting in a tiny corner next to the bar. But apart from that, that was it. My own apartment was about the same size as this bar, and I wouldn’t dream of cramming thirty-plus people in there. But as I spotted the staff hurriedly moving every spare seat and stool they had to the area, I realized with a sinking feeling that that’s just what we would have to do.

Each of us attendees were allowed one free drink that we’d purchased with our initial tickets, and since it was far too early in the day for me to consider even an Asahi, I went with the tea. After much hustle and bustle soon all of us had taken up seating arrangements and were crammed together like sardines, and the ceremony began.

Miki was there with not one, but two MCs, and she was dressed in a charming blue yukata. And after everyone had been seated and given a beverage, the actress and her two fellas led us in a toast. I did not drink my bottle of tea, not wanting to get anyone else sick (and believe me, packed in that tightly I was going to give at least one person my cold, should I remove my mask), but as I leaned back into my seat, I was happy that I’d made it to the event without any trouble.

This is where things started to get a bit odd. See, I’ve been to events before with more than one MC, but this is the first and thus far only one I’ve been to where the MC pair operates like a manzai duo. For those of you unaware, manzai is a type of stand-up comedy routine popular in East Asia involving rapid-fire, back-and-forth banter between two funny-talking guys (Dashan from China is probably the most internationally famous manzai comedian). There were plenty of chuckles and outright guffaws from the audience as our MCs explained the course of that afternoon’s events, but as the audience laughed and giggled, I slowly realized that the quick pace and quirky voices of the explanations made it very difficult for me to understand things.

Still, I was there, and I knew enough from experience to know what the basic rules of event etiquette were. So even if I only caught about half of what our funny men were saying, I wasn’t too worried, especially when one of the things I did catch from them was how we could purchase two calendars of Miki (one of which, they whispered conspiratorially, had nude photos of her!) and have her sign it.

That piqued my interest. You all remember I was able to get a calendar of AIKA, which I still keep fondly on my wall, and I was unable to get her to sign that for me. So why not make up for that by getting a signed calendar from Miki this time around? I knew what I would do once I got the chance to head over to the little makeshift stall they’d set up at the employee entry to the bar.

At this point, the MCs and Miki mimed the various activities that we had all purchased with our tickets. Each of them came with you getting to take a video of the action, so you could essentially make your own JAV mini video for personal use at home. And I must admit, several of these activities were significantly saucier than anything they offered at SOD Land.

Would you like to lie on your back and have Miki bounce up and down in a cowgirl squat on top of you? How about wrapping her legs around your waist as she sits in a chair, so it looks like you’re fucking her? Or perhaps you’d like to lick a lollipop she holds between her thighs? Have her obdurate your esophagus with said thighs? Or (don’t do it!) what about this? You know that movie Nothing but Trouble with Dan Ackroyd and his penis nose thing? And you know those Groucho Marx glasses that everyone has tried on at least once? Okay, so, what if you put on some Groucho Marx glasses, but instead of a nose it’s shaped like an erect penis, which Miki performs fellatio on while an MC films the whole thing for posterity? What would you say to that? Sounds pretty nice? Sounds pretty good? Well, it can all be purchased here and now, at this event, for a price.

Yes, this is where things got even more unique. I had clearly seen all these activities listed on the initial application site, and, though I didn’t fully understand everything about the activities when I was buying my ticket, I assumed that you would, like every other event I’ve been to, have to purchase the activities before you attend the event. Here though, the MCs were saying that you could purchase the activities right now. Which suited me just fine, as I wanted to buy that calendar. But it also confused me, especially since the manzai routine of it all made me wonder if I had simply misunderstood things.

Whatever the case, once the explanation ended, the MCs began the first activity, the Standing Cunnilingus activity, and had us attendees begin to line up. And here’s where the cracks in the event started to show. In every fan meet I have been to in the past, everything was tightly organized. You registered for your activities before the event, the time for each activity was clearly demarcated, and even if you’d forgotten what you purchased for whatever reason, your name and what you bought was in the system, so when they called for you, they’d remind you of everything you purchased. And what’s more, everyone went up to the actress in a specific order, based either on your ticket number or the seating arrangement.

For this activity though, and every subsequent activity that night, there was no such order. It was first-come-first-serve, and instead of a line it was more a messy mass of whoever was quick enough to get there first. I took the opportunity to sidle on up to the stall and purchase a calendar, but then I encountered the other issue with this event. It was all legal tender only. Now, obviously, coin is still very much king in Japan. But at every other fan meet I’ve been to, debit or credit worked just as well. And credit had been used for this exact event, when I’d reserved my ticket online. But for some reason, now nothing would be accepted other than the portraits of Japanese luminaries. And after coughing up the necessary coinage for the calendar, I not only realized I had too few clams left to purchase any other activity, but that the staff here wouldn’t even give you receipts for your purchases.

Sighing, I returned to my seat while the other guests flocked over to Miki. Maybe the boss man and the readers would have liked me to get more things, but with no bread it wasn’t happening, unless I dipped out to find an ATM, and who knew how long that would take? No, better to stay there and simply enjoy what I had.

The Standing Cunnilingus activity was basically what it sounded like. Miki stood up straight and spread her legs for the attendees, while they got on their knees and placed their faces about six inches away from her coochie. This went on for about 15 seconds, before they called time and the next person came over. I confess, I couldn’t much see the point of this. But everyone seemed to be loving it, so who was I to yuck their yums?

After the line petered out, I assumed we would move on to the next activity, but then to my surprise, the MCs singled me out and asked if I’d had my turn. I hadn’t, but since I hadn’t paid for it when I registered I assumed I couldn’t now. Yet it turned out that the Standing Cunnilingus activity was free, so for 15 seconds I got to put my face close-ish to Miki’s nethers and try to keep a straight face. See, even on my knees, my head was still well above her waist, so Miki had to place one foot on a table to prop herself up, and even then we were nowhere near aligned. If I wanted to put my face in close, I would have to bend uncomfortably forward, so Miki and I both ended up just chuckling at the sheer awkwardness of it all.

After I returned to my seat the next activity time began; Photo Free Time. We all got about a minute for Miki to pose for us all, as we set about cameras flashing to capture as many snapshots as we could. The fact that we were all crammed together in a confined space didn’t exactly help matters, and I saw several photographers struggle to get enough elbow room to take proper pictures. But eventually we all got some shots, and Miki went to her area to change for the next chapter of the event.

I decided to take that time to check on when exactly I would get to do the stuff I’d reserved, and I returned to the stall to ask about it. To my surprise and annoyance though, nobody seemed to know what the hell I meant when I said that I’d paid for an onanism polaroid when I first reserved tickets. The employee at the stall had to go to the boss, who then had to confer with the MCs, who then yucked it up as my patience grew increasingly thin. This whole event was so chaotic and disorganized, it felt downright slipshod. Eventually someone found a record of my ticket and confirmed that the polaroids were not in the next chapter of the event, but the fact that it took so long and the MCs cracked jokes about my simple query put me in a cross mood.

Not even the sight of Miki, returning for the next chapter in a wonderfully stunning getup, was enough to fully lift my spirits. But it did help, and by the time the MCs called me up, again to my surprise, I wasn’t sure what was going on, but decided to just roll with it.

It turned out it was time for our pictures together, and given my height, Miki wanted to stand on a chair as she hugged me tightly. I was surprised at how close she got, and apologized for my cold, but she said it was fine, and thanked me for keeping my mask on. As you can see, my face is mostly covered in the pics we took, but Miki looks quite happy, so that’s good.

It was during this chapter that I finally realized why there were two comedian MCs. What purpose their rapid-fire banter served. See, I’d assumed initially that they were essentially entertainers, and they were to a degree, but a better description of them is that they were auctioneers. Their banter was as rapid-fire as “Going one, going twice, sold!”, and as they worked the crowd into trying new activities, they soon had quite a lot of currency in their hands. I would not go so far as to call this event a rip off. But I will say that spending far more than you expected/intended to was, how shall we say, encouraged by the staff. The point of the MCs’ presence was not so much to explain what we had already purchased, but to cajole us into purchasing even more. And honestly, if I’d had more coinage on me, I might not have been as immune to the MCs’ charms as I was. Or maybe I would have been. I was able to resist the house’s calls for me to gamble more at the pachinko parlor where I met Julia, after all. So who’s to say?

Eventually the second chapter ended, and the third and final chapter began. Each of these chapters lasted a full hour, making this easily the longest event I’ve ever attended. But for this chapter Miki put on yet another outfit, this time that of a beautiful bunny girl, and while the other guests paid for more activities once again, I patiently waited my turn until I was called up for the video roll I’d reserved. For this, I was allowed to take a 30 second video of Miki posing about in her bunny girl outfit, and then when it was over, she got to whisper in my ear for 15 seconds. Like Nana Hayami, she tried to speak dirty in English, but unlike Nana she didn’t have a script, so like a teacher assisting a nervous student, I gently encouraged Miki as she stammered out a full sentence in English. When she’d finished, I congratulated her on speaking very excellent English, and though she laughed and said she was no good at all, I know she was really trying, which goes a long way.

I also took the time to show her ZENRA, and explain how much of a fan the big boss man is of her, to which she was pleasantly surprised, since she recognized ZENRA from Twitter. I don’t know if anything will spring from this, but I hope I gave a good impression of our site to Miki.

With the third chapter closing, the event ended for good. However! If you all, uh, wanted to do even more saucy things with our girl Miki, the event organizers would be putting on another event later that evening, which you could sign up for now, and where you could spend even more dough! I was satisfied with what I’d gotten though, or at least what I was going to get. And after Miki and the MCs gave a final speech thanking everyone for coming, they asked anyone who wanted something signed to form a line, which I promptly joined.

It was at this point that I finally had a look inside the calendar I’d bought. Sure, it was for last year, so not much use to me now, but I’d been promised nudes, and was eager to have a signed nude from Miki herself. So imagine my surprise when, after flipping through each month on the calendar, I didn’t see a single nude photo at all. Not one!

“What do you mean?” a staff member huffed. “She’s completely topless in this one!”

And it was true. Miki was only wearing a pair of panties and some hosiery for the month of July. But her hands were tastefully covering her bare breasts, thus rendering the whole thing no saucier than a swimsuit pic. Still, it was better than nothing, I shrugged, and as Miki scrawled a loving message on the portrait, I felt satisfied.

“Say, by the way, do you have a black bag or something I can put this in?” I asked, to which the staff all stared at me blankly before shaking their heads.

D’oh! But… how was I supposed to take the thing back home with me? The gossipy obaa-chans, their eyes are everywhere in my tiny town! They would surely see me carrying this calendar!

The staff shrugged. Well that stunk. I was eventually able to roll the calendar up and stuff it into my knapsack, but I worried about it getting crushed on the way home. Still, one thing I knew couldn’t get crushed in my knapsack was those onanism polaroids I was promised. I was still getting those, right?

“Yep, here you are,” a staff member plopped a tiny bag in my hands, inside of which was a polaroid (singular) that had already been taken well before the event, alongside a pair of Miki’s panties. I stared dumbly at the gift before me for a moment, realization slowly dawning on me, but then decided fuck it. This whole event had been a series of chaotic swerves and surprises. There was nothing to do but just roll with it. So I rolled with it, and rolled my way out the door, before rolling on over to the hotel where I spent the night.

And as I checked into the Toyoko Inn, I realized something. This has all become quite normal to me. A year ago, the thought of traveling like this would make me ill. I’d get motion sickness on the Shinkansen. Yet now, my body could handle it easily, and it even felt up to doing that 20-hour trip I had earlier dreaded so thoroughly. Also, despite her being one of the actresses who first got me into JAV, an actress I’d had, well, almost a crush on really, in my younger years, once I met Miki face to face, I wasn’t the least bit flustered or nervous. And it wasn’t because I found her ugly or unappealing now. She’s still just as beautiful and sensual as when I first encountered her. But I’m not the same as I was back then.

I’ve changed. I’ve grown into a different person than who I was ten or five or even a single year ago. Seeing Miki in the flesh was like revisiting the town I lived in when I first discovered her work, years ago. The streets and the weather and the people there were just like they’d always been, and yet it was unrecognizable because I was now a different person. And I suppose, that’s just how time works. People change. I’m changing now. I’ll probably change even more once I enter my thirties. And then beyond that? Well, obviously there’s the apocalypse, but who knows? If I survive that, will the me of ten or twenty years in the future even recognize the me of now? It’s an interesting idea, the sort to keep one up at night, but perhaps a bit too heavy to consider on a JAV website. So perhaps it’s best for me to bid you all adieu. I’ll see you in the next one. Until then, take care.