The Honolulu Festival!

Halko will be performing at the Honolulu Festival on March 15th and 16th. I originally wasn't planning on going, and then I found a really cheap plane ticket ($358 with tax round trip) so I'm there! I'm staying at a cheap hostel a few blocks from the "official" hotel of the tour group for only $31/night.

I'm really excited and looking forward to this trip. Hopefully I'll get some time to hang out/tag along with my friends. I'll post links to pictures and such when I return.

A January Un-Birthday Event...

Well, I asked for the time off work for Momoi's birthday and it was a no-go. The boss flat out refused to give me time off in December.

So then I had the wacky idea of moving things to January - exactly one month after her birthday. I asked around and this seemed to work better for everyone, and hopefully I can locate a cheap ticket for the middle of January... we'll see!

So the plan is to go to Japan in the Middle of January and cover two weekends during this timeframe. Hopefully there'll be a Momoi event during that specific timeframe. Regardless if there is or not, we'll arrange a gathering during that time for those folks who attended Anime Expo and/or Connichi's Momoi concerts. I think it will be fun for all of us to get together again.

Since I can't make her birthday proper in mid-December, we'll try to do a secondary birthday (an un-birthday?) exactly one month later for people like myself who really wanted to be there.

If you're in Tokyo during that timeframe, I hope you can join us sometime during the week!

Tickets to Momoi's Birthday Event

I'm really hoping I can pull this trip off, and am looking forward to it. (I plan to visit a lot of friends while I'm there as well), but the one unknown factor is - can we get tickets for her event?

I know myself and a handful of others want to come from the US to attend her 30th birthday (it's extra special for me as we met on her 21st birthday, so...), but I'd hate for any of the group traveling so far to Japan specifically for her to not have access to a ticket for this event. Nothing against the Japanese fans, it's just much MUCH harder for us to see an event than any of them. :) I wonder who we should talk to.

Cheap Plane Tickets

I've been searching since August and I haven't been able to find a flight under $925 for the timeframe of her birthday. I've been thinking of flying out here December 7th, arrive on the 8th and rest as much as I can, then go enjoy Sunday with coverman and other friends. Spend the week doing random stuff, attend her party (I assume it'd be Thursday or Friday... or even Saturday... and then fly back on Sunday the 16th.

I just found on hotwire.com you can give a date range and it tells you what the price would be for any day you flew out. As of this weekend, it's now $1050 to fly out on Friday the 7th, but only $753 to fly out on Thursday the 6th. Hmm...

Maybe I should make the trip longer by a day or so and just relax and enjoy myself. :) (I still haven't asked for the time off work yet! Watch me buy the plane ticket only to have them deny me the time off.)

Setting up a site...

I've been kicking around the idea of documenting this trip - or rather, the journey just to pull off the trip itself. I saw someone on the Zune team have a blog setup and I figured instead of getting the domain and installing Wordpress and such, I'd just go this route so I could get it done and not procrastinate any further!

Here's a quick background:

I've known her since 1998. I discovered her TWO WEEKS after she was less than three miles from my house, and we've been e-mailing back and forth ever since her 21st birthday that year (December 14th).

I've had good jobs, with not so good pay since then and I enjoy them because I get to help people (the last job was a non-profit who counsels teens who've had major issues), but I can't afford to travel, especially to Japan! So we never met in person until this year at Anime Expo, and that moment was cut short.

That moment really touched me, and so now I have a new goal - I'm going to go to Japan to meet her again in person for her 30th birthday in December. I don't know how I'm going to get there or if I can pull it off, but I think it'll be a hell of a trip, and I'm going to document it all right here.