Since Kei was too embarassed being seen lining up for Kaoru's booth which is right across Umeko's, he passed me the card and asked me to go to her. I originally didn't planned on going to her but I'm curious what made her so popular among the fans. Sure she's pretty and all but she's not really the outgoing type like Yuuna and Asahi. These three members had the longest line that day IIRC. I was a bit surprised that the Yokoyama only had a few people lining up for her and Ton-chan had almost no-one in her line. Maybe it's just the timing that I went in the hall but Asahi, Yuuna and Kaoru almost always have 10+ people in their line.
I always go and line up without thinking what to say to the members, it's better to have a conversation with them naturally instead of memorizing things because things don't always go as planned. It was the first time for me shaking hands with Kaoru individually. Usually you get around 20 seconds to say anything you want until the staff started ushering you out. This 20 seconds feel very short if you go to your favorite members but feel long as hell if you don't have anything to say which is in my case the latter situation. After handing the card and saying who it is from, which takes around 10 seconds and I had around 10 seconds left but totally had no idea what to say to her after that. I think she saw that the conversation would stop there and she tried to make the conversation alive again by asking me some questions. I think this is what made her popular, although she is a bit awkward on the show, she never lets the conversation dies there, because one of the worst thing that can happen during handshake event is awkward silence (which happened to me a couple of times with certain members). Plus, Kaoru is known to peek outside of her booth to welcome her fans before they enter her booth. For fans who's not used going to handshake events, she can make you feel welcome and even if you blanked because of nervousness in front of her, she will make the effort to spring up a conversation. For most fans, the first handshake is very important. I have some members who I went to once but swear to never go to them again because of bad experiences during the first handshake with them.
She's different compared to Asahi and Ai-chan, who will give you a high spirited handshaking experience, she's much closer to Yuuna and Amimi who you can have a nice conversation even if you have nothing planned. If I were to categorize the members into certain handshake experience:
Serious, honest: 3, 6, 9, 17, 19, 28 (8 )
High spirited, high tension: 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 29 (7, 24)
Soothing, relaxing: 21, 22, 27, 30 (11)
Fun, interesting: 16, 23, 25, 26
This is just my opinion though
Topic: The Idoling!!! Discussion Thread (Read 759260 times)