As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently traveled to Tokyo and spent some time completely freaking out in Akihabara (ok, so it wasn't
that bad, but like, Akihabara is the the holy ground for any AKB48 fan and coupled with the Hello!Project shop that's also in Akiba, I was having the time of my life, haha). I visited Akihabara twice and it was only on the second visit that I gathered enough courage to head to the 8th floor of Don Quijote in order to see the AKB theater in person.
My younger sister headed up with me and one of the first things I noticed (aside from all of the AKB promo decorating the outside of the building), was that there are images of the various AKB CD covers plastered on the walls which you can see when you're taking the escalator up (or down!). There are tons of covers and they're all HUGE! It was really neat for a fan like me and definitely built up the anticipation I had to get to the theater itself.
Guess what? I woke up this morning at 3:30 am (after having gone to bed at 12:30 am) and didn't go back to bed until 8:30 am. Why? I wanted to watch the AKB48 election live! I voted this year more than I have any other year and I wanted to see how my favs would do (both those that I did vote for and those girls who I didn't have enough funds to vote for but still support). This year, I split my votes 4 ways; I joined a campaign for Watanabe Mayu and one for Tano Yuka. For Watanabe Mayu, my donation bought roughly 5 votes for her. For Tano Yuka, my donation bought about 1.5 votes for her. For the final two members I voted for, I used a proxy service. I sent money to a member of the Stage48 forum that was in Japan during the election voting period and he bought the votes for me at a super cheap price ($9 a vote! Had I bought the CD's from my go-to place, YesAsia, the votes would have been about $18 each. So by using the proxy service, I got two votes for the price of what would normally be 1.) In return, my proxy buyer got to use the handshake ticket that came with the CD to meet one of the girls (something that I wouldn't have been able to use anyway since I'm way over here in the U.S. so it's a win-win situation) This was one of my best decisions this year because I was able to buy 10 votes. My proxy buyer took a picture of the voting codes and sent them to me through email. I inputted the codes and voila! I had voted for two girls. I sent 8 of the 10 votes for my favorite member - Yokoyama Yui. I sent the final two votes in for my favorite NMB48 member Watanabe Miyuki.