So this post has been sitting for almost two months because I wanted to wait until I got a dress stand and glass case to show off a certain special item, but it looks like that is not happening soon. I figured I should probably post this before Animelo comes around or it will get outdated if I start posting about the next Momoi event and this STILL isn't up. On May 23-25 weekend, several Momoists made a trip to Ontario, Canada to see Momoi perform at Anime North. Specific names have been omitted for privacy reasons.

Arriving in Toronto on Friday morning, I and another fan (we drove up in a car from New York) met up with everyone at a hotel to drop off 1300 glowsticks packed in our trunk purchased with funds donated by various fans. In all, our little international group consisted of 7 members from Japan, 4 from US west coast, and 2 from US east coast. After settling down and swapping materials (Momoi doujinshi, call books, Hawaii DVD, posters, etc) we headed out to a nearby Canadian chain family restaurant Swiss Chalet for lunch. Some American fans had the idea to secretly arrange a surprise for the Japanese fans by inviting Momoi to the same lunch.

We finished our food a little earlier than expected, and Momoi showed up a little later than expected. These circumstances led to hilariously obvious attempts to stall for more time at the restaurant via repeated ordering of drinks. After what seemed like an eternity due to the stress, Momoi appeared in a conspicuous sweet lolita dress complete with ribbons, lace, and a rabbit ears hood. She arrived along with manager Mr. Suzuki, Mr. Sawa (I remember this guy because he was on the delivery signature for fanclub calendar), and one other guy who was filmed the whole event. After going around to thank each person, Momoi settled into the middle of our table of 13 where she received gifts from almost everyone, including Japanese fans who apparently keep a stash of presents and concert materials on hand just to be ready for the remote possibility of meeting her any time. We also pooled some money to get a gift for Mr. Suzuki for letting the whole thing happen even though Momoi's schedule was so packed. Although we would have been satisifed with just a few minutes of interaction, the whole thing went down way better than expected as Momoi spent a pretty long time with everyone at the restaurant.

After this, we headed to the con to pick up some volunteer passes (one fan had managed to contact AN staffers and explained our plans to distribute glowsticks and teach calls, so they ended up making us official con volunteers). An unexpected perk to being part of the fan club and also volunteering was that AN staff let us into the "Meet & Greet" event room before the scheduled time. We just decided to spend the entire duration of the session with Momoi. Since the area was very limited in size and only limited to about 60 people across ALL guests, there weren't many people there and only a few recognized Momoi. Because of that, we managed to hog Momoi all to ourselves without feeling guilty about preventing someone else from having a chance. Actually, every time someone not from the fan club came over, it was a big exciting event to see how Momoi would interact with them.

One such notable incident was when a young Mii cosplayer was spotted by Momoi in the room. Momoi pretty much flipped out when she saw this and ran over to the cosplayer screaming "MIITAN" and possibly freaking out the cosplayer's mom. Speaking excitedly in half broken English and half Japanese, Momoi tried to explain she was the Japanese voice actress for Mii, and jumped up and down exclaiming "pikohan magical" and other signature Mii phrases while trying to get the girl to follow suit. When the cosplayer had left, Momoi said she got so excited that a little girl did it with all the correct accessories.

Momoi spoke too soon, because minutes later when we were posing for a photo, she turned around to find the Mii cosplayer back, but this time carrying something Momoi did not anticipate: Popotan underwear (as see on TV). This caused Momoi to giggle uncontrollably, followed up by a literal anime-style spin and collapse. She launched herself at a nearby table that I was sitting at. She declared the popotan apparel to be awesome and insisted on taking pictures while holding it up. Momoi ended up signing and mock-wearing them.

It should be noted that Momoists who never got a chance to see an UNDER17 concert live owe this cosplayer a HUGE debt of gratitude, because she directly inspired Momoi to sing one of her most famous old songs the next day: Popotan! Holy shit I never thought I would ever hear that one live in post-UNDER17 times...

Thanks cosplayer whoever you are!

At this event, we would also meet some new fans who joined the fan club on location, and helped out with the concert call preparations later on.

Immeidately after, we staked out the plaza ballroom for an hour to fill in the front row for opening ceremonies and make sure Momoi got cheered when introduced. While waiting, we scoped out the stage for the concert which would be in the same room. Everyone had glowsticks ready that they wave for cheering when Momoi went on stage but we ended up breaking a few of them early when Momoi suddenly came out and sat in the front row with us while waiting to go on stage. Following protocol, Momoi got massively cheered anyway when announced to go on stage. AN was pretty generous to her and treated her like a major keynote speaker at the opening, so she had plenty of time to talk to the fans and describe her feelings about coming to Canada.

Following the opening ceremony, we had a quick makeshift dinner of hotdogs and headed to lineup at Momoi's Q&A panel. The turnout was decent.At the panel, Momoi squashed the rumor that she was under Avex's thumb in terms of image and said she enjoys controls her current style. She also talked a bit about her clothing and how she became interested in lolita fashion. She revealed that she wore the same outfit when touring Casa Loma earlier that morning since she felt it suited the setting, being a castle and all, and the swords in there "looked kind of scary." As the session drew to a close, Momoi helped out our Momoist call workshop by giving it a little publicity and asking everyone to attend it so they could learn how idol calls work in Japan. Momoi also apparently was not referencing the Knights who say NI in her Naito de Naito song (although she said her friend Nogawa Sakura is a big fan of Monty Python).

After the panel ended, we headed back to the hotels to plan for the next day. The fanclub began applying Momoi sticker labels to the huge pile of glowsticks with amazing efficiency finishing all 1300 in about an hour.

The next day, we hauled all the materials to ballroom in order to set up the Momoist call workshop. Attendance was quite sparse with only about 10 showing up although this grew gradually as the panel went on. However all participants were highly enthusiastic and not in the least embarassed to be learning and doing the calls with the rest of us. The steps were taught directly by a Japanese fan and subsequently translated by another west coast fanclub member and were pretty informative, going over concepts like rallying calls and tips on recognizing them, UO signals, meanings behind some hand gestures, song-specific chants, and even practicing on another member who acted as a stand-in for Momoi. For a (very basic) example of some of the things covered, you can see a few at the Momoi call website.

After we finished hosting the workshop, we stuck around to take some group photos with a few fans who had attended the workshop and then headed to lunch. Then we headed back to the stage area to measure out and cut streamers. These were basically long ribbons that we would throw towards the stage during the concert (but not long enough to hit Momoi), and materials to make them were brought courtesy of one fan had pointed out Momoi liked idol concerts with streamers and hoped to give her the same treatment.

Near the start of the concert, staff began showing up. We went over a basic explanation of what were were planning to do with the glowsticks so they cordoned off a section of the front for us and gave us a place backstage to stash all of our stuff and change into our concert gear. Once plaza ballroom doors opened, people began filing in. Several members were stationed at the door, with others patrolling the aisles to make sure everyone had working glowsticks (now we know why those glowsticks were cheap: about 10% of them were duds). I ended up filling my loading belt with returned or defective glowsticks as long as they still gave off some amount of light.

I won't go too much into the concert, as there is already a great summary of concert specifics (broken down by songs) at denpa no sekai written up by another fanclub member who was with us. I can say it was the most fun I had since Hawaii. My only complaint revolves around the bracelet system, since it was all the way at the other end of the convention center they should have just been letting people when the concert itself started instead of having them go back to get a bracelet (although they might have done this later and I just didn't know).

When it was over, Momoi said she would be giving autographs downstairs in half an hour. Since we had already monopolized Momoi most of the previous day, the fanclub decided to sit out the autograph session so anybody who became a new fan from the concert could have a slightly better chance to get in line for Momoi. As the crowd exited and began lining up at the stairs, we decided to take a break around the stage area instead before going backstage to retrieve our things. Momoi surprised everyone there by showing up backstage and thanked everyone again before leaving to host her autograph session at the merchandise table. We just in a group next to the autograph table to observe the line and see the interactions Momoi had with other fans.

Since that was the last Momoi event for the day and the last day for our con responsibilities, at night we did regular touristy things like visit downtown Toronto, check out Casa Loma, and eat at the rotating restaurant at the top of the CN tower. Apparently we hadn't considered the CN tower restaurant was supposed to be fairly ritzy so we all 13 of us went in still wearing t-shirts, Momoi wristbands, backpacks, glowstick holsters, otagei jackets, etc...much to the disdain of the waiters serving us who seemed clearly irritated.

On Sunday we attended an awards brunch since Momoi was supposed to be a guest there. Momoi noticed us from her table and came over several times to chat. No matter how many times she does this, it still impresses me that Momoi likes to establish such rapport from fans...having approached us first before we approached her (originally we had remained respectful distance and simply waved because we didn't want to interrupt her meal).

Momoi hosted a second panel that afternoon which, following the concert, which was understandbly much more packed than the last one and had people standing at the doors due to lack of room. The crowd was pretty lively, and Momoi joked around a lot with the audience: She suggested putting a glowstick should be in the Toronto museum since it marked a historic event. When asked if she had many boyfriends in middle school, she replied only in her imagination, and sometimes, she was the boyfriend (referring to times when she would play bishoujo games). When apologizing for her English being bad, she sang "Good Enough" impromptu as an example of what kind of English she knew. Momoi said a number of times how much she appreciated people coming from around the world to see her and invited everyone to visit Akihabara and come see her in Japan some day.

After the panel, we headed to catch Momoi at the charity auction. First auction item was one of the glowstick boxes, signed by Momoi and renamed the "Memory box" which was picked up for $40 by one of the new Momoists that we met earlier during the Meet & Greet. A T-Shirt signed by all the guests including Momoi went for $120. Momoi had also signed a copy of her "Halko Momoi Best Clip" DVD but due to technical difficulties with getting the DVD to play during the auction and time constraints, it was not auctioned off separately. Last item was Momoi's LOVE.EXE dress that she wore in her music video shown here:

I ended up winning it for $750, proceeds which I think went to a local childrens' hospital. The auctioneers decided to just throw in the signed DVD too since they didn't have any time left to auction it, and Momoi wrote some more stuff on the CD case. Then some staffer told me it was the highest charity bid so far in AN's short history so I'm glad at that at least for now, they can say Momoi was responsible for it.

The last activity of the day was Momoi's final autograph session in the afternoon. We had previously decided to sit this one out since the lines opened at the same time as the auction, and we wanted to cheer at the auction instead. So, we just did the same thing as last time and waited around the autograph table for Momoi to finish without being on line ourselves. The line had closed at that time due to the maximum capacity being reached anyway. However a nice staffer saw us and let us know that Momoi would go overtime and do some extra autographs for fanclub members so I got a Sunday Early Morning tour shirt signed. We met Momoi one last time at the staff exit to send her off (a fanclub member apparently had a really sharp eye for spotting Momoi).

After Momoi left, we decided we would spend the rest of the time doing a bit more sightseeing in Canada rather than spend it at a convention without Momoi, so our group squeezed together into three cars and headed for Niagara Falls. After enjoying the falls we headed up to the shops to see explore the shops. One last ditch effort was made to find Momoi again, as we had received information earlier that Momoi might be touring Niagara Falls so a small search party went down along the falls to stalk accidentally bump into Momoi while we kept browsing the stores. It proved unsuccessful however, so they eventually gave up after multiple passes. We had dinner at some jungle themed restaurant which had a cake with sparklers on it.

On Monday after a night's rest, I and the other east coast Momoist made the drive back to the States while West coast and Japan crew headed for the airport. It had been a great weekend jam packed with Momoi events almost nonstop. On our way back, as one final tribute to Momoi we stopped by Casa Loma in the morning to take this:

We stole the angle from Momoi's blog.