The moment the tickets for this show went on sale, I bought then. Literally. I sat at the website until noon, and swooped in and purchased them. If there had been seating for the show, we (me and K) would have been in the second row!



Learning from the lessons of last year's Sephora event, we decided we should get to the Fillmore by 3 at the latest (show started at 8, doors opened at 7). K was also going to drive, but then the snowpocalypse happened, so we took the train again. The snowpocalypse apparently wreaked hacov on SEPTA, because K's bus was MIA, so we wound up meeting an hour later than we had planned.

We got to the Fillmore a bit after 4, and of course there was already a line. Some superfans apparently camped out there since the night before. (We laugh now, but they got ticket numbers, so they were able to leave, then come back to the front of the line!) Some people came at 7 in the morning. There were people who had come from Canada and Peru. But, the line really wasn't bad. It went around the corner, but not too far down the sidewalk. Soon as I got there, I said, "Sephora was worse."

So with three hours (which turned out more like three and a half for us) to kill, we made friends with the people right in front of us in the line, a teenage girl and her mother who she dragged along. Let's just say that was awesome, because the mother went all Mom on us and insisted on buying us hot chocolate, not taking our money, and even gave me her coat while she went to the Starbucks. And she went on Mom lectures, which were actually interesting conversations. And the daughter? Turned out to be from Pennsylvania as well, and we might have a third person to add to our Utada-stalking group.

Of course, once again we had people asking about what we were waiting for. We got a good laugh at how people just nodded their heads, as if they knew who Hikaru Utada was. There was a shady-looking guy asking if anyone had an extra ticket to sell. And there were cameras galore.

The line started moving at seven to let us in. We were told absolutely no cameras and that the Fillmore normally doesn't care, but the show was being recorded. Then some excitement about that DVD we all had been hoping for. (Still hoping on a domestic release rather than having to ship it from Japan...) I snapped some pictures before and after the show, but wussed out on taking one while Utada was on stage, because we were literally right next to the camera crew and staff.

We get inside, and I am very glad K and I are both pretty small, so we were able to slip between people and move up a lot more. Then there was an entrance and more stairs, and no one would tell us what was the difference, so we took our bets and went in the entrance (and lost track of our new friends). We were close-ish to the stage, but then K pulled me to the side of the room, where we were able to slide even further up, and wound up in about the fifth/sixth row. Yeah, I'm still not sure how exactly we managed to pull that one off.

Then they decide to torture us for at least 45min (I think it was almost an hour) with a DJ. Though I was really amused that when he got to Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi," everyone started singing along. I guess most Utada fans are also Lad Gaga fans! Then there was a remix of "Dirty Desire," and the crowd went wild...and we waited some more. We started chanting "Utada" after a while, and eventually she finally appeared.

Instead of trying to remember the exact order of the songs she sang, I'll just list them:

Japanese songs
- Kicked it old school with "First Love" and "Automatic" (but no "Automatic, Part II"!)
- "Can You Keep A Secret?" Which is actually the first song I had ever heard by her, so that was reeeeally cool.
- "Sakura Drops" while playing the piano
- "Passion/Sanctuary," she sang parts in Japanese, parts in English
- "Stay Gold" on the piano with a new arrangement that was freakin' amazing

Christ. And I saw someone on Twitter bitch she didn't sing many Japanese songs. Uh, considering this is a ~US tour~ to promote her ~English album~, I was surprised she sang so many Japanese songs.

English songs
- A Placebo cover, reminding me that I really want her to do a rock album
- From Exodus, "Opening," "Devil Inside," "You Make Me Want To Be A Man," "Kremlin Dusk"
- From This Is The One, "On and On," "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence - FYI," "Apple and Cinnamon" as a rock ballad, "This One (Crying Like A Child)," "Dirty Desire," "Poppin'," "Come Back To Me," "Me Muero"...all but two songs, really
- Of course, "Simple and Clean," which EVERYONE sang along to. She said if she ever forgets the lyrics, she can always watch us, lol.

The crowd was really rowdy, it was pretty much the running joke of the night. The start and finish of every single song got a ridiculous amount of cheering and clapping. Utada made a crack about us all being hyperactive and hot chocolate, "the people in the front know what I'm talking about!"

People were yelling all kinds of things in between songs ("Canada loves you!" "I love your shoes!" "We waited for you since 2 AM!"). One guy had met her before during an interview at a radio station in New York (which was hysterical), and he told her that. Utada said she's seen some of us before, and then a ton of us yelled, "SEPHORA!" There was also this one guy who was yelling looooong comments, which was funny at first, then annoying. Utada playfully pointed at him and said, "You, stop talking!" The crowd went wild. He shut up for the rest of the show. She said that we were the loudest show so far.

Also, she was surprised she didn't have much to say, and that at the other cities, she did something in the city to talk about later, but...she lives in New York already, so. LOL. At one point, she said she was going to sing her favorite song on the album, and we all yelled "Me Muero!" She laughed and said, "Shut up, I know you already know."

Of course, when we demanded an encore, we were really obnoxious. They made us work for it--I think we went through two or three different chants, and finally started stomping our feet.

There were a couple of points went the cameraman blocked my view, and I kept yelling, "Down in front!" at him. Didn't do anything, but made me feel better, lol.

She threw the baseballs out into the crowd, which I had no chance of catching one, since she only threw one in our direction and I'm waaaay too short.

We left once the show was done, clearly in a sleep-deprived stupor--we had talked about the possibility of getting an autograph, and I even brought her book with me. Yeah, so later on we read a couple of people had waited by the back door and got her autograph. FOILED AGAIN. Next time. Next time, my pretties...

And the lulzy part of the story--we caught the train to Trenton, thinking we'd be able to catch the one to Philly from there, but nope, missed the last train. EPIC FAIL. Again, sleep-deprived stupor and not thinking straight (it was 1 AM at this point), otherwise we would have just stayed in New York overnight. Instead, we stayed at the transit center for the next few hours, hit up the Dunkin Donuts as soon as it opened, and took the first train at 5:30 AM.

I got home at about 8, a full 24.5 hours since I woke up the day before.

Awesome show, will stalk again.

Because pictures are huge like whoa and I'm still too tired to deal with it:
Before show
After show
Venue