Brace Yourself, Tsunku

Ladies and gentlemen, a little under fourteen hours ago, Hello! Store USA opened.

As an American wota, I never thought I would be able to see it in my lifetime. The Hello! Store USA opening? It's not just a myth? JapanFiles isn't actually just playing a cruel early April's Fool joke? (Or is it late? I'm too tired to check a calendar)

When I woke up, the first I thing I did after getting ready was log onto the store and see what they have. It was around 6:30 AM. The store had only been open six and a half hours. And already, a good amount of the stuff there was already sold out. That pleased the hell out of me--hadn't JapanFiles advertised the store has having 250 items each with thousands in stock?

And they had sold out already?

Those of us at AX were incredibly disappointed that they weren't selling more merchandise. Yes, apparently there were bags of things, but those had sold out the moment the dealer's hall opened. We've been deprived of H!P stuff for a long time. We've had to resort to buying through Japanese wota, a kind thing for someone to do for the foreign fans, but at a much, much, MUCH higher cost.

There's something about western fans that I think the Japanese music industry forgets. We have tons of money. Well, I don't, because I'm a minor and have to rely on babysitting and birthday money to buy anything, but think of the guys who work full time. They have money to spare. And if they don't, they'd probably readjust their budget to fit in some photocards.

When I logged on after school, I was surprised to see that more than half of the items were sold out.

I wasn't disappointed. I don't have the money to go on a shopping frenzy just yet. I'm aiming for some Nine Smile T-shirts, which haven't been added yet. I was actually thrilled that they were making such enormous sales. They'll restock, they have to. Tsunku will probably look at the sales reports and think "Why didn't we tap into this sooner?"

Maybe with the added funds, we'll be able to see some more shuffles?


My only concern is that already I have hundreds of dollars worth of stuff in my wishlist. I was already having trouble affording DVDs and CDs. xD