Kouhaku + Aiba's (Belated) Birthday Celebration

Since we have yet to celebrate Aiba's birthday (somehow Christmas ended up with us making other plans), and wanted to watch Kouhaku together anyway, we decided to combine the two this year :)

Syiena and Hana arrived around 4, and we watched Himitsu (the latest Mannequin Five SP) while we waited for the rest, and I finished up my year-end posts. Usually when it comes to gatherings of course life gets in the way and there would be last-minute cancellations, but this time everyone who said they were coming managed to make it!

 

(In this pic, Salwa and Anis haven't arrived yet ^^)

It was pot luck, but my offering was pasta and Salwa's in charge of cake. Awa , Fatin, and Yan brought pizza, while the rest brought snacks and drinks. We ended up with so much leftover, even after breakfast the next day.

Anyway. Here in Malaysia we're one hour ahead, so everyone's excited in front of the television by 6:15.

 

And then - Arashi! On television! And it's not a DVD! Miracle! :D :D

**random newsflash: Hana just messaged me on FB saying that Arashi's the 24-hr tv personality this year!**

Being fangirls, of course as we watched there were long running commentaries on stumbled words, tight pants, OTP moments (esp the Maotsujun shippers), Aiba's Kara butt dance, etc. And massive screaming/squealing in approval during the interval between Meikyuu Love Song and Hatenai Sora. We sang along with Furusato and the other two songs. And our favourite songs by the other performers, of course.

Somewhere in between all that, we found time to distribute food and cake.

 

Cake made by Fatin; tastes very yummy!

After Kouhaku was over - we all preferred Red Team in general, but were still hoping for White Team to win because of Arashi, so we weren't sure whether to be happy or not with the result - we went on my laptop to watch Johnny's Countdown.

More Arashi. ♥ And Eito (quite a few Eito fans among us!). And all the senpais :D We enjoyed the JCD muchly. For me personally, the highlight was blender!Yoko. We were expecting Yoko to be super weird the moment the rest came out as vegetables, but still, a blender. Ah, I hope they never change XD

Then, then, then - it hit 12am here in Malaysia! We all rushed to the balcony to watch the fireworks in Dataran and KLCC. There were lots of other fireworks from various places, too, but the KLCC ones were the best, as always. Oh, and there were some right across the road from my apartment, too, which made the balcony the perfect place to watch it from. To see it so close up was awesome.

After fireworks, we watched CDTV, downloaded Kouhaku clips, and re-watched those. At some point we walked down to McDonalds to grab some burgers, and came back to flail some more. Anis couldn't stay over, so she left around this time.

We went to sleep talking about our favourite fanfiction. katmillia & astrangerenters's The Lost, and waxrose's Erase and Rewind came up a lot.

And the next morning we woke up to find that NHK was showing a re-run of Kouhaku. So of course, we watched it again :D

 

One more group pic before everyone leaves! In front of the TV where NHK is still on ^^

We realised that we haven't even started on the Aiba birthday cake Salwa bought, so celebrations continued ^^; before everyone left. Breakfast included lots and lots of cake. I think we've all pretty much filled up on our cake quota for the year. Or at least for January. (Sorry, Sho-kun, we'll think of something else on your birthday this year.)

 

tiramisu birthday cake, from Salwa

However the year had been, we certainly ended it in an enjoyable way! For 2012, most of us are hoping for another AAA (it's been too long since the last one, and even if they never come to Malaysia, an Asian tour would still be much more affordable). Since I don't have any more annual leaves in 2012, I hope for another AAA in 2013, haha.