U-KISS Concert

Last weekend, I went with three friends to Hiroshima for a K-pop concert. Three of us took the bus up on Friday afternoon, and Sasha came by train. There was an amazing (and terrifying) lightning storm with copious rainfall, which delayed the trains by a huge chunk of time. Fortunately, Sasha still made it to the hostel on Friday night.

We spent most of Saturday checking out the shopping arcade, although for once I didn't buy anything. We had a delicious okonomiyaki lunch, but none of us actually got Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki. In the late afternoon we returned to the hostel to take a break and get ready for the concert. I was the most fidgety of the group; I was ready to go well ahead of time, and probably would've left much too early if I'd been there on my own.

We took a taxi to the concert venue, which turned out to be much further away than I had realized. While waiting outside of the concert hall, we were accosted by another group of foreign girls who were attending the show. They seemed a little crazy, and plenty obnoxious. But we weren't seated anywhere near them, so that worked out in our favor.

Before the show started, we looked through the handful of flyers we'd been given on our way in, and each of us picked a favorite group member. Sasha, Julie and Lindsay were all in favor of Eli, and I was rooting for Soohyun (although I'm still not 100% sure how to pronounce his name). The show itself was awesome; they did all kinds of crazy dance numbers, as well as some slower, more sentimental songs. In between routines they chatted to the audience in Japanese, which impressed me. Apparently their Japanese wasn't flawless, but it seemed pretty good to me. Two of the members are fluent in English (they lived in America as children), but we didn't get to hear much English since they were catering to a Japanese audience. I guess that's to be expected.

U-KISS! Eli is the one with platinum blonde hair; Soohyun is on his right side.

After the concert (which was surprisingly long), we found a Mexican restaurant/bar for a late dinner. We almost didn't get seats, but the barkeep relented and gave us a table that apparently was reserved for another group. The food was delicious. Following dinner, we found a club that we'd heard good things about, but since there was no one there we got our hands stamped and went to do karaoke for a while. About an hour later we came back and the club was packed. The music was good, but the smoke aggravated my cough (which hasn't gone away completely yet) and so we left a little early.

Three of us caught the early bus back to Kochi on Sunday morning. Getting up in time for it was a bit painful, but we made it without any trouble. I even managed to doze for most of the return trip. Sasha transferred straight to the train to go home, but Julie had to stay in town for Yosakoi practice, so we got ramen for lunch and hung out at my place until practice time. And that's about all that went on last weekend.