Mucc @ Shanghai Ark Livehouse
Day 0 - 20 Apr
Geez, I've never been so unprepared for a trip before... I had to get to the airport at 11.30pm latest, and I was still rushing work at 9.30pm in the office. =_=; Plus my office has one of those irritating lighting systems that dim themselves every half hour after office-hours... unless you have the remote control... and I was in too much of a rush to look for that @$!remote control that night...

Rushed home, threw clothes and toiletries into my luggage, left the house, but had to return because I forgot my camera ^^; ...

This trip I brought my dad along... am glad i did, because he had an awesome time sweeping books off their shelves, and catching up with his ex-colleagues. We've made a pact that if I ever go another time, I'll bring him along again :) With mum too.

Day 1 - 21 Apr
Reached the airport way early... looked up at the clock in the airport... 6.09am! :)

Called a cab to the hotel... checked in... rested a bit... roamed the streets with dad and had some sort of brunch at a bakery/cafe. Our hotel (which Peggy had helped us book) was at a district that was carved out to the Dutch during the Manchu era, which explained why there were a number of interesting euro-style buildings around.

One part of the hotel 安亭别墅

We came back to the hotel... dad was tired and wanted to take a rest in the room... at that moment, received an sms from yuj saying they're on their way... i better get ready for Ark...

***

Arrived @新天地
First thing we saw that hinted at the coming live... street banners!

Chinese translation for Acid Android is kinda weird.. "幻形乐队"... luckily they translated mucc as '69乐队' which is quite apt, i suppose...

When we finally found Ark, there was already a crowd there...
We collected our tics, then asked whether we could ballot for the meet & greet tics, only to be told: "how many of you? just go up!" 8D! So basically if you turn up, you'll be able to enter.

Up the stairs, into the livehouse... first impressions: narrower than i thought, facing the stage, to the left, is a higher platform, with stairs up to the 2nd floor. Media were seated in front... a group of muckers was holding a mucc banner up front, some were waving self-made flags, but by and large, most of the people there seemed to be coming to see Yukihiro (the Laruku fan base in China is quite large). There were 2 large acid android banners made by the fans, one of which ended up getting hanged at the second floor balcony.

Shanghai fans are tall! Spotted some Muccrew at the back.. finally after some waiting (and there was a false alarm.. my heart was pumping..pumping.. i've never been to any Mucc Meet-the-Press session before! what's gonna happen?).. they arrived! Mucc was represented by Miya and Tatsurou (where's Yukke & Satochi?).. once they sat down I could only see the top of Tatsurou's hat, so I quickly went over to stand on the stairs..

Most of the session consisted of Q&As.. the mike was passed around the audience.. questions asked were quite run-of-the-mill.. except there was a question on the changes in Mucc's albums.. but the two MCs (who obviously did minimal homework on the band -_-;) messed that one up cos they weren't sure what album the question was referring to.. anyway, Tatsurou answered along the lines of how they try to explore something different in each album.. interestingly most of the questions were posed to Mucc..

Some of the questions were posed in Japanese.. the members were trying to see who was posing each question but because the mike travelled quite a far bit in the audience XD, it was difficult to do so at some points...

Above: Tatsurou just doesn't keep still... XD Check out Miya's cool hairdo ;)

Above: This was when Miya replied to the now-famous question on how they find Shanghai, in particular Shanghai girls. He seemed faintly amused by the audience's response to his reply.. Tatsurou's still restless... XD

Then it was Tatsurou's turn to reply to the same question... ;)

At the end they stood up for a photo op... Tatsurou livened up the atmosphere by making hand signals to the audience... Tatsurou also invited Yuki to stand in the middle but he politely declined... but later Tatsurou himself walked over to Yuki's right side so that Yuki will be in the middle. That's really considerate of Tatsurou.. I like his style.

After they left the stage and as we were on our way out, Yuki re-appeared on the 2nd floor and did some fan-service, muahaha... question in my head was still: "where's Yukke and Satochi?"

Oh well... that was pretty much all the exciting things that happened on the 21st... It had started raining when we were at one of the cafes at 新天地... Man... trying to hail a cab in Shanghai during weekday peak hours when it's raining is close to impossible!!! uuurrggghhhh... XD XD XD Thinking back, I suppose it was all just part of the whole experience of "Shanghai, Spring, 2006".

To be continued...