Hehe ok I will ^-^ Unfortunately I didn't go to the Trio in Akibazone and I didn't do any theatres, basically my cousin hates Jpop although he still went in with me to the AKB48 cafe and Shop as he was hungry. I did however find CD place where they had a room full of 48 goodies and was cheaper than the AKB48 Cafe and Shop, so i done alot of shopping. If ever I go to Japan next, I will make sure the theatre is on my list although isn't the 48 concerts on lottery demand?
What a terrible cousin! Ditch him next time (what is he, a KPop fan? [sealed] ) Was the CD place Mulan? Theatre shows are a lottery, which is why you'd have to apply for all shows to get one (even if you do prefer a certain team). The other show you could try for is Anta Dare which is at the cafe and would possibly be easier to get a seat at.
No he thinks Kpop and Jpop are the same, I even told him how AKB48 have got to where they are now because they didn't give up and then he's like' so did most groups and bands, but obviously by then, for someone who just isn't interested, I can't bebothered explaining to him. He doesn't understand that they are no ordinary Jpop group and are originally a theatre group. I'll ditch him and you and a few other people from this forum can come with me Funny thing is, I used to be a big Girls Generation fan, then I found AKB48 and then other 48g, then SNSD got alot worse for me when they tried to go for the US and be the same as any other pop group. I do still love 2EN1, Younha and Boa though, but just not as much as the 48g and I havn't listened to them as much since the 48g have been around Well I am planning to go back to Japan sometime in the future anyway, so I will go for tickets then, although I don't know when. You know what we should do? We should try and create LDN48, which would be a 48 group in London and try get Akimoto-sama to recognise the group, it could be cool having a 48 group in England
Hi guys. When you buy CDs through HMV or CDjapan etc., how often do you pay customs charge? It didn't happen that often to me in the past but I nearly have to pay each and every time recently, and I've already indicated it as a gift when I did the purchase. Looking forward to hearing from your meeting by the way! I'm just too far away...
For CD singles I tend to use CDJapan, SAL shipping and order them separately rather than in one order so that each package comes to less than the customs threshold. By the time you add in the different shipping costs, customs charges and RM fees it worked out no more expensive for me to do it this way and means I also get things quicker as I don't have to arrange to pay/redeliver. Of course my postie doesn't necessarily like it when he has a pile of boxes like this morning
Thanks for your advice. Does Royal Mail list out what the customs threshold is? I was just packing 2 sets of CD+DVD together, and I'm pretty sure that I didn't get charged that often in the past. Do they assess each and every mail, or just do it randomly? Would be helpful if somebody else can share their experience as well. Cheers.
Not sure about how it works in the UK. But here in Denmark they open the package if the value exceeds the customs threshold (There is a slip on the outside of the package with it written on), and then if it is actually exceeding the threshold I get charged.
The Customs thresholds are available on the HMRC site ... total cost (item + shipping cost) is judged in the following bands: <£15 .... No customs duty or VAT £15.01-£135 .... No customs duty but VAT is due £135.01+ .... Customs duty is due (but waived if <£9) and VAT is due Duty and VAT rates vary depending on the item (again there is info on this buried deep in the HMRC site). A CD single release from CDJapan with their SAL shipping is ~1600yen + 500yen shipping which is a bit under £13. With two CD's you will be over the £15 threshold. The real killer is the handling charge from RM, Parcel Force or whoever. This is at least £8 which is even more than the VAT I don't tend to see any of my packages actually physically opened so I'm guessing that they go by the declared value unless they have a reason to suspect that that may be incorrect or something dodgy is going on (like an item being shipped as a gift (which raises the £15 limit to £36) when coming from a probable commercial source). In my experience if you do import a lot (which I do at times) then you do get your packages charged more often than if they were less frequent. I expect to have to pay some money to Parcel Force next week for a couple of DVDs which are coming via FromJapan and are over the threshold. My four versions of the latest SKE48 single all came individually so were all below the threshold so no charges via RM despite coming with the packages all shipping together
Well I guess I'll just request to pack the discs separately next time. Thanks. Hope today's meeting is going well!
Oh yeah, how has todays meeting been? Hope it went well? I'll try be there for the next one. It's great to have other 48 fans here, I literally know no one who are fans of J-pop, let alone the 48 groups.
Meetup on Sunday 25th November 2013 We had the meetup today and we had a turnout of 8 people. There were familiar faces and new faces We went to the Japan centre, did Karaoke and then went and had dinner and desserts. We did our janken tournament, which was loads of fun. The final two members were Kitarie and Sayanee; and Kitarie emerged victorious. We did a lot of talking about current AKBG activities and spent a lot of time trading photos. Very pleased with my photo gets today. [party] Time went very fast and without realising it, we had spent over 8 hours together. For the next meetup, I'm thinking of a cozy meetup at a pub or something, have some mulled wine, trade photos, play card games (I have a AKB trump card set ) and chill out. Otherwise desserts and board games at the MADD cafe. Not decided on the date yet.
Sounds like you all had fun Do you go to any Japanese restaurants at all? I don't live near any Japanese restaurants but I do know there is a Yo Sushi! place in Waterloo.
We were going to go for ramen but when we checked out the two best ramen restaurants, they were too crowded so we went for asian snacks at Boba Jam instead. There's many authentic Japanese restaurants in London that specialise in certain cuisine. There's the tonkotsu ramen restaurants, okonomiyaki restaurants and more. Wouldn't class Yo Sushi! as a real Japanese restuarant though
Oh that sounds nice, will we try to go to one next meeting? Yeah probably not lol I do love Asian foods though, when I was in Japan, I also had Vietnamese food aswell which was really nice.
Still on a happy from our third meet-up! Love that new people come each time swelling the UK AKB ranks! With the CDs it's better to order them separately and from different sites, to lessen the possibility of customs and to get a better variety of first press photos Can't wait for meet-up four!!
Thanks for a great time at the meetup, everyone! I had so much fun and can't wait for the next one. I just wanted it to last forever
Great meetup, nice to put faces to forum names! Weird to call each other by forum names though!! Photo trading was amusing, feel sorry for poor iolo!!
How does the photo trading work? and what happens when you only have bigger photo's? Also I found out that AKB48 has a card trading game, will we ever get to play it? Also we should all try go to one of the 48 theatres one day for one of our meetups, if we can get tickets of course lol but obviously it will be very hard.
Hey all, been meaning to post here for a while now. Li kept reminding me, so here I am. I would really be up for meeting everyone, but living in Guernsey means I have to fly into London and then also back to Guernsey. If there was ever any chance people were to meet up on a Saturday I would love to attend. Sundays are a pain as I would need to leave central london by like 4pm to get to the airport to fly home on the Sunday. In the new year I could probably do a Sunday maybe once, as it will be a new holiday year at work and could possibly take a half day on a Monday to fly back monday morning. Anyway, sounds like all the meets have been really good fun and Li told me he enjoyed himself a lot on the past Sunday Thanks for reading and really hope I get a chance to meet everyone sometime. Although i'm not primarily a 48 fan atm, I still very much like idols and casually follow 48 groups Thanks for reading
Just come along to the meetup with your photos and you'll see how it works lol. It's quite simple really, just trading photos so both parties get the photo they want. Not sure about 48 theatre lol, as that would be a trip to Japan Pete: We'll try to organise something on a sat, it will probably be next year though Do you have many photos to trade lol?
