Anton at Alibaba meeting Hazuki Wakamiya

So! Everybody remember that Hazuki Wakamiya event I mentioned in my last article? Yes, well, less than a week after returning from Tokyo I was already on a train ride back to that city, so that I could attend that event, alongside one other, but we’ll get to that when we get to that. For now, let’s talk about my trip on Friday, and the forces that prompted it.

As you know, I’m a big fan of Hazuki Wakamiya. There’s no real deep psychology as to why. She’s energetic, enthusiastic, and effervescent. She’s loud, lively, and lascivious. She’s beautiful, bold, and bawdy. In short, she’s spectacularly sexy and seductive, and she brings a bubbly smile to every scene she’s in. What more could anyone ask for in an adult actress?

As such, when I discovered that Hazuki would be having a fan meet event in Tokyo, and said event would have tickets go on sale starting the 30th of March, the same day as a Suzu Honjo event, I quickly slotted Hazuki into my schedule. Of course, as you recall, said schedule was a house of cards that only required a single day of rain to collapse, but even if I could no longer attend the Suzu event, if there were still tickets available to Hazuki’s event on the 7th of April, when I would be going down to see Rizu, I could still snag one and see her.

Thankfully, there were indeed tickets still available, and to top it all off, an actress’ debut fan meet event would have tickets available starting on the exact same date as Hazuki’s event and at the exact same store. Said actress, Himari, is already quite popular with several key members of our staff for obvious reasons (two of them, to be precise), and so I figured hey, why not snag some tickets to see what a debut fan meet event would entail?

And so it was that I took the train down to Tokyo that Friday, and found myself at the store shortly before Hazuki’s event was to begin. This was the Alibaba store that I’d briefly entered during my doomed attempt to meet Mao Hamasaki, and to my genuine surprise it seemed much tidier and more organized when I arrived the two times this month than when I’d visited earlier this year. Perhaps they were undergoing renovations or sumsuch the day I went to see Mao? I couldn’t say, but I can go into a bit more detail of the premises in this article.

It’s a single floor in an otherwise unassuming building. As one might expect from ungodly real estate prices in Akihabara, the place is significantly smaller than any Kaitori Max I’ve ever stepped foot in. And as such, everything is packed in quite densely. While there are stairs leading up to the floor where Alibaba is (the third floor), the entryway to the building guides you to the elevator instead. And, given how the door to the stairs in the store is lit up with EXIT in big, bold letters, I have a feeling that the generally agreed upon etiquette for entering and exiting Alibaba is elevator, THEN stairs. Said elevator also has a security camera in it, which is not so unusual in this day and age. But what is unusual is how the footage of said camera can be seen at the elevator door on the ground floor. So as I was waiting with two other gentlemen for the elevator to return to where we were, we could see all the people inside the elevator getting off on the floors where the elevator stopped. I’m not quite sure what the point of this was, but perhaps it’s to allow onlookers to sneer judgmentally at the dirty perverts getting off (yes, haha) at the porno shop. Tsk tsk.

Whatever the case, everything in the store is crammed into a single floor about the size of my apartment. The space between shelves is tiny, so tiny that even two people cannot pass by one another without some serious squeezing, and certainly too tiny for my big ass to pass by anyone. Also given how the tops of the shelves hold promotional banners to entice and interest customers, I kept unintentionally knocking said banners loose with my head. Thankfully the staff were all good sports about it, but I still felt deeply embarrassed by my status as a kaiju in a china shop.

Said shop was filled with the wares you would expect. It’s mostly naughty DVDs, which are organized by maker or by actress if said actress is popular enough to warrant her own shelf space. Posters from popular porno titles are lovingly displayed on any empty wall space available, sex toys and non-JAV DVDs are located near the back, and there are also toys and games you can buy at the front of the store by the small room for events.

Essentially, when you step out of the elevator, there’s the wall rack with all the cool otaku toys and games, and to your left is the small room for events. To your right are the stairs out and then the register, and if you walk through the space between the wall rack and the register, you can enter the rest of the shop, which is where all the DVDs and sex toys are crammed in. I turned right upon my initial entry into the store and made my way to the register, where the banners for fan meet events were all centered, next to the special shelf with the DVDs necessary to purchase for tickets to said events.

This is where I noticed something interesting. See, at every previous store I’ve been to, there have only ever been a handful of events on display, since the venue will only be holding that many events each month, and they don’t start selling tickets to their events until a week before the event date at most. Here at Alibaba though, there were a whopping 22 event banners displayed on that register, some of which wouldn’t happen for over a month.

Thankfully, I was in no hurry, as I assumed there would still be plenty of tickets to Himari’s event. And when I snagged a DVD to purchase (for this event, instead of more DVDs getting you more benefits at the event, the first 40 tickets would get to have their holders’ picture taken with Himari and all that fun stuff, while the rest of us would have to contend with merely being in her presence) I asked the clerk at the register if I was within the 40-DVD window. He didn’t seem to understand the question, and standoffishly asked if I wanted to buy the DVD or not. I tried explaining myself again, but nothing was getting through to him, and I could see he was growing more impatient with me, so finally, not wanting trouble, I simply bought the DVD and left the man in peace. Perhaps this was the same man Friendpatine encountered way back when?

I don’t know, but what I do know is that after putting my things by the entry to the event room, and hearing Hazuki’s voice chatting with the event organizers, I couldn’t find a ticket in my bag! Your man at the register had failed to even give me the ticket I had just bought, and I had to go back to the register to ask for it, which resulted in his complaining that I hadn’t made myself clearer. I’m still baffled by this, but I was getting tired of dealing with this dude, so when I finally got the ticket and put it in my bag I went back to the entry to relax before the event started.

After only a few minutes of doing this though, the head clerk of the store drew the curtain to the room and told me that I wasn’t supposed to wait there. There were little stickers on the floor amongst the DVD shelves that were set up for event attendees, and I ought to go back there and find the first available sticker. I sheepishly apologized, being completely unaware of this rule, though as the head clerk assured me it was fine and this was a common mistake I realized this arrangement made sense. If space was limited, and the event room was right next to the elevator and stairs, then of course they couldn’t have folks crowding the only ingress and egress space available to the general public. I headed over to find where the sticker-guided line began, and soon found myself in the right place, which… just so happened to be right under the enormous flat-screen tv.

Yes, I haven’t mentioned the tv yet. I was saving it for this moment, see? It is a truly enormous television set, located right by the back where the sex toys are. And it plays a single video on loop, for eternity. I didn’t recognize the song at first, but as I stood beneath it, I soon came to appreciate the sight of a Japanese Danny Trejo rapping about how I love Tenga, we love Tenga, never surrender. Then as the minutes dragged on (events always do start a little late), this appreciation began to sour. You know how “It’s a Small World” isn’t that bad of a song by itself, but when you’re on the ride at Disneyland and said ride stops for whatever reason (there’s always something) and you’re stuck there waiting for what feels like an eternity as the same saccharine jingle repeats itself again and again and again in the background as those animatronic dolls continue their preordained routine again and again and again, you, uh, well, you start to go a little insane? The Tenga rap was not quite that maddening, but it did make me start to get a bit… fidgety.

A brief respite from my descent into madness came when one of the Momotaro staff from the Rizu Suzuki hanami picnic event entered through the back door, right by where I was, and when he saw me he blinked in surprise before asking in confusion what I was doing there.

“Rizu isn’t here,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” said I. “I’m here for Hazuki.”

“Oh,” he seemed surprised, but rolled with it before I moved away so that he could squeeze his way towards the event room. And after that, the clock continued to tick while the event began in earnest. Slowly, as seconds turned to minutes, I was able to make my way away from the tv, until I couldn’t even hear the Tenga rap over the radio, which was playing the current top 40 pop hits instead. And when I finally was next in line to enter the room, and the Momotaro man came out to present the guy in front of me with the various swag he’d purchased with his bounty of DVDs, your Momotaro man also took the time to mention who I was and what I did to the head clerk, who was most impressed by my shoe size. I got to chat with him for a little while as I waited my turn, during which time I also got to overhear the saucy talk Hazuki Wakamiya said to the dirty little pig whose mere sight offended her, whilst he squealed oink oink in delight over being humiliated in such a way. I don’t know how many DVDs this pig had to purchase to get this benefit, but I’m glad he got his monies' worth.

Now it was my turn. I entered the room, and was of course greeted by the usual shock and awe at my height. And this time around Hazuki’s manager was there to also tell her my shoe size. We briefly spoke to one another in English, before Hazuki went to write a message for me and I took a look around the room.

It’s small, obviously, but it’s also a lot more well-kept than any other place in the store. On the top of the walls, near the cornice, are signed snapshots from various actresses who have had events at this venue, and there are quite a lot of them. There’s a little table for the actress to sit at as she signs things, and the area where she can pose for pictures is made up to look almost heavenly in its shining whiteness. I marveled at the sheer number of actress photos on the wall, and the Momotaro man nodded, happy I was impressed.

He then asked me who my favorite actresses were, and, of course, even though I didn’t have to lie to say “Hazuki Wakamiya”, I made no mention of anyone else, since it’s never good form to go on about other women you find attractive when in the presence of one such woman. Hazuki was curious if this was my first event though, and when I responded in the negative, your Momotaro man asked me about other actresses whose events were my favorite.

Again, I did not have to lie to provide a diplomatic answer, and regaled Hazuki with the story of the Hibihata Anniversary Event I attended, in which I got to hoist the MC up like a princess. Hazuki laughed, while the Momotaro man began to look a little nervous, and he decided to start photo time before I could suggest hoisting him up as well.

You and I both all know the drill on this. I got to take as many pics as I could within the time frame. But in this case, your Momotaro man was kind enough to let me snap one last shot after calling time, since Hazuki had taken the time to strike a new pose for me. I was very thankful for this, and when the Momotaro man took my phone for our picture together, I got a laugh from both actress and manager when I showed that, even in heels, Hazuki came up under my arm.

I wasn’t entirely sure where I was allowed to put my hands, and thus erred on the side of caution. As such, you can see my arms are in rather awkward positions, but neither Hazuki nor the Momotaro man seemed to mind, and I think the photo came out alright. So after handing back my phone to me, the Momotaro man declared my time up, and he and Hazuki thanked me for my attendance.

Honestly, it had been so long since my last regular fan meet event, I’d forgotten just how short they were, once the moment to meet the actress actually comes up. It was all maybe five minutes, tops, and after collecting my things and saying goodbye, that was pretty much it. I walked out of the room, and then out to the stairs, and then out the building, and it wasn’t even half an hour since the event started.

Still, I could walk away from the event in triumph. I got to meet a favorite actress of mine, collect her signature, and have a fun, new experience. I’d say things went pretty well. And to top it all off, I didn’t even have any health issues this time around! Of course, immediately after meeting Hazuki I went to go get dinner, and I don’t know what was in that sauce but it sure as heck wrecked my insides, but… that’s a story for another time.