"present for you, my heart..."

Ahhh today was a long day. My feet are so sore but I think it was mildly worth it. A friend and her little sister came to the city to see a Versailles concert at the Knitting Factory. They are self-professed otakus so I took them to a few Japanese stores including Kunokuniya, JAS Mart, Tokyo Toys, and got a quick lunch at Men Kui Tei and an avocado shake from T-Kettle (mmm). I explained a few things about the neighborhoods we came through and the basics of the MTA. I spend a bunch of dough yesterday already so I decided not to buy anything unneccessary today (a bunch of Kera, lolita, fruits, and hairstyle mags at Kuno, and a bunch of blind boxes at tokyo toys). The strange thing about Toy Tokyo is that it seems like you have to enter through someone's apartment. The only thing that distinguished its storefront was a sign on the sidewalk. We also tried looking for J1 Pan toys but apparently it doesn't exist anymore. We went to the exact address listed on Yelp but it was just an apartment building. period.

So we arrived at the Knitting Factory at 6:00 and were let in at 7:30 (I picked up Subway for the other two and a Clif bar for me because we were hungry while waiting in line). We had to wait another hour and a half inside however, because the opening band cancelled. The band members were gorgeous in their Victorian-esque costumes, especially Hizaki (who is the most feminine man I have ever seen in VK and that's saying a lot). I also figured that Jasmine You, the only other member who cross-dresses, was also a man by his facial features. The band played around 8 songs and then came out for TWO encores, performing 2 songs and 1 song respectively. The posters at the band merch stand were huge (and would probably take up 1/4 of my wall) and so I purchased a sticker of the band for a couple dollars instead. The above post title is just one of the many lines of Engrish the lead singer tried on the crowd, in which each time there was an somewhat awkward silence while people tried to decode what he had just said before wild cheers from the crowd. At the very end of the 2-hour concert the members flaunted their stuff (especially Jasmine You) and let the front-row fanatics touch their hands. I found it really nice of them for interacting with the crowd and throwing freebies into the crowd (like Hizaki's guitar picks). Oh, and last but not least, their American spokesperson said "see you in February" which could mean they they're coming back to NYC!