I'm still available to join whoever's team. I'll definitely be going so there's no chance of me backing out. ^^

I can't guarantee I'll be much help when it comes to the running but I'll do my best~

@ Hawaii Fan:  :-O  The #1 spot?! Woo, I wish you the best! You've got to be running for your life because worst case scenario is that there's a 6 man team of hardcore marathon runners and they run at full speed during every section. I'd hurt myself if I tried that. HA HA!

@ 320 / Glenn: I thought about pitching that idea to them too but that would take away runners to some degree. If tickets open up for priority seating, then I'd lean towards that more than running, if my motive was the concert that is. (Just a POV). Wouldn't hurt to ask though. Hawaii is a homely place so I don't see them turning a free event into a cash cow... yet.

@ Airi chan: Your help is definitely appreciated! I'll PM everyone on that "extras" list sometime soon to see if we can form a team but if Glenn gets a positive response for priority tickets on the side, then you're more than welcome to go that route if you want. If it does come down to running, just take your time. I'm guessing the time limit is just for the top prize because it would be pretty weird if the event staff stopped your team in the middle of the marathon and carted everyone back to the starting line. That would actually be the same as paying registration and not running. HA HA!

@ Metergun: Flights are $500-600 as of now so expect the prices to go up by March. I'm in a similar situation because of my work schedule but I'm getting the marathon registration done first and worrying about the details later.

haha i'll try my best. lol i want those tickets, been needing to go for a while, but i had other priorities so going was hard.

@topic, not sure if anyone was aware of this prize, however i don't know if they'll keep the same prizes for this year for the teams but if they do, there is a best team costume award where their prize is special VIP seats for the concert portion of the day. 

here's the link of the prizes they awarded this past year. if they keep the same prizes i think it's a good deal, i mean half the stuff their offering is freakin expensive.....lol

http://hnlekiden.com/20130507-honolulu-ekiden-awards/

HELL YES! Now I just need to tell my parents, they did want to get out of NY for a little while this year after all  .common.

Forgot to post about this before the end of the year, but did anyone else sign up for the race before the cost went up on 1/1? Our team (me, Erich, Alan, Neil, Jerry, Sam) did before the price jump, so we're officially registered in the race now. Oh, and they add a $12.35 fee for each team, btw.

I haven't signed up yet.  .sweat. 
I haven't really found anyone that's for sure going and still needs a team aha. If I don't find anyone though, I'll probably just register by myself by the end of January or February. Probably around the time I finish the plans for everything else as well. c: Until then, I'll keep looking for something. :3

So close...but yet so far.

I'd like to be there, but I don't exactly have the money to fly to Hawaii.  .plank.

http://www.his-j.com/kanto/corp/group/event/scandal/

Thought i post this since i just saw it. all i understand at the moment is Hawaii and fan meeting tour. unless i read that wrong

I feel envy guys Scandal Band will perform @Honolulu Ekiden & Music Festival 2014 I hope and I pray Scandal will perform in the philippines ...

just bumping this thread. thought i just update that the link i posted earlier about SCANDAL doing a fan meeting in Hawaii the day after the ekiden has been updated and it has a date for this friday the 14th. 12 noon japan time i'm assuming. not quite sure what it is but i thought i update everyone here.

That date tomorrow is to start signing up for the event. And I think it's very vaguely worded; "fan meeting" could mean either meeting the band, or meeting up with other SCANDAL fans (from Japan).

I guess we won't actually know until tomorrow—hopefully—but for now, until we know more about it, we should not straight-up assume that this does refer to actually meeting the band.

thanks for clarifying. sorry for jumping to conclusions.   got a little too excited. lol

they just updated it and i'm not entirely sure what's going on. just thought i post the update. i understand some of it but i don't know the whole entire context and i don't wanna jump conclusions again. lol

Yeah, my team and I were pretty much going crazy earlier when it was updated, haha.

It turns out that it's part of an all-inclusive package (flight, hotel, etc.) for those in Japan. So, basically, if you're not flying from/live in Japan, you're pretty much out of luck for this. We were pretty disappointed about that. It's a little unfair that they're not even offering it to us in the US when the event is taking place here.

And it seems like it is true that you can meet the band, but they're still terribly vague with what the "fan meeting tour" is and still have not explained it at all. These are the main perks of this package:

1. A welcome lei greeting & handshakes from SCANDAL

2. Super rare! Fan meeting invitation!
-SCANDAL acoustic live, game + talk (dinner included)

3. Fan meeting tour in Hawaii limited to participants! Official goods present!

4. You can participate in the Ekiden with other SCANDAL fans as part of SCANDAL team!
-something about matching fans together

It's limited to 120 people, and it seems like they select them through a lottery. You sign up online and they announce the results later, so it looks like even if you were to sign up, it's not guaranteed that you'd be able to do this.

Before they updated the page tonight, my friend Neil and I were reaching out to both H.I.S. USA and the Honolulu Ekiden Foundation for more information about it. Unfortunately, both were clueless about it, but the Ekiden did direct me to a contact for H.I.S. Japan. I e-mailed them about it, although they've yet to reply back. I'll be going to an H.I.S. branch in LA tomorrow to try and see if we could possibly participate in this--you know, without having to resort to flying to Japan, then flying to Hawaii. haha.


Edit: H.I.S. Japan e-mailed me back and, as of right now, those outside of Japan cannot participate in this at all. Pretty disappointing. I'm tired of us always getting the short end of the stick.  .wew. 

alright so i wasn't going crazy then. i thought i was losing it when i read the flyer part and was like, are they being serious? and then when i saw the packages i was like.....well i'm out of it.....lol

guess i'm crap out of luck cuz i live in Hawaii. haha! but man that is a great deal. acoustic live! i wanna see that.....but sadly doesn't look to hopeful. 

well its cool to know they'll be doing something like this so congrats for them! haha.

Not sure I understand it correctly but by the sound of it it's awesome and very sad too.

The whole fan meeting sound awesome (meet SCANDAL, talk, game and live acoustic are you serious OMG??!!!) but it's only for japanese fans flying there?

There is probably a good reason they do it this way... But IMHO this is also very disappointing towards US (or international of course) fans that will be there. Lately it seems they are opening up to international (this concert, full 1080p PV on youtube, english FB, etc) so this would have been the perfect way to please their fans in the US. So their company or whoever organize this missed a hug opportunity, it's not everyday the ban goes to the US...

Well not enough information for now it seems but... if they do it like that they must have their reasons. One I can think of (if they talk about dinner, game, small acoustic live) is that it would have been some trouble to translate everything in such a meeting for each fan and each girl. I doubt this meeting is gonna last like 6 hours so maybe they were concerned about time/translation and things like that.

Well just my first thought after reading your comments guys.

Now again it doesn't seem perfectly clear and no real details yet so maybe there is still hope for you.

Well if it ends up badly and is only for japanese fans I hope you guys will not be to angry at SCANDAL, in the end they are coming for the concert and that fan meeting is only a bonus and the "cherry on the cake" if it happens. That being said you guys would have the right to be very disappointed of course if it happens like that

This whole tour thing seems to be completely organized/run by H.I.S., and, judging by what I've personally been told by them, I don't think they actually have any good reasons for not opening this up to people in other countries; they just don't seem to want to. They said this to me in their reply e-mail: "We are going sell it only as a Package Tour from Japan." No other explanations at all.

And honestly, having or not having a translator wouldn't matter to us if it meant being able to experience this. We go to events/concerts of theirs in Japan where everything is obviously all in Japanese and there are no real translators for non-speakers. No big deal for us. Most of know enough Japanese to be able to communicate and understand at least a little bit.

The thing we're most disappointed about is that this event is happening in our own country and, as far as we know, we don't get to have the same experiences (other than the race + concert) as those coming from Japan. Yes, they're technically coming from a foreign country, but they get super special treatment and we don't have any special opportunities offered to us at all. Even something small would be okay, but we don't even get to have that. Being left out is starting to be the norm for us, and it's frustrating and unfair.

And speaking of being left out, the full "Runners high" PV on YouTube is not available for the US. No love!

Enough of me being pessimistic. There are still 3 1/2 more months to go; hopefully something good can come our way!

Also, for those in the US who are planning to come, maybe we should start a tweet campaign and tweet the band things like, "Please have a handshake event for local fans!" I think RINA at least will definitely take notice if enough of us do this, and maybe something can actually come of it!


Oh, and on another note, H.I.S. also said this, basically disproving that the band will participate in the race: "And this is just a information, maybe Scandal members are not going to participate in the race, because they want to more focus on the play on music festival."

Oh I understand totally how you feel, it's clearly disappointing from the infos you posted. It seems H.I.S took an opportunity to make money/advertising with the japanese fans only. Why not do the same for the US fans coming? After all it's in the US, use that opportunity for the US fans...

About the translator thing, you and many people would have no problem but it's surely not the case of all the fans there. Also the "problem" wouldn't be on your end but more for the band/staff/organizer, because this fan meeting is not just playing on stage, it's meeting the fans close and from the description you posted it involves a lot of things.

I was just trying to found a reasonable excuse for them to make it japanese fans only but yeah it could easily be solved if they really wanted to make an effort for the US fans.

Just wondering, is it okay if you can't join the ekiden? and just watch the live? sorry. i think it's quite obvious, but still. haha

@d3nise: haha no, you don't need to join the race. It's free to watch the live.

A SCANDAL acoustic live.. thats something i'd really like to see!!!

thanks for answering jade. xD
ah, 6 hours+ trip, i want to go. (つд⊂)

Hey Hawaii Fan....referring to your last post in the Member's Activity thread. When they came to AM2 in SoCal, we lucked out on figuring out when they will be arriving at the airport. They played a festival the day before they were scheduled to come here. Their start time was posted so we figured when they would finish, how long it would take them to get to the airport, and came up with a couple possible flights. We need to keep an eye out for something like that as well as tweets.

Sometimes management for bands tell the members not to tweet anything about their schedule until after things have already happened. I'll be arriving on the 28th or 29th so hopefully they won't be arriving before me.

lol that makes sense. yeah well at least we have a general timeline right now and hopefully we can come up with something. not a guarantee or anything but i see your point. we shall be on the lookout. since we don't know who they are flying with its gonna be hard since so many flights come in to hawaii from Japan. lol a possibly as mentioned earlier in this thread is that they may fly on hawaiian since they are a sponsor of this event. but then again i can be wrong. lol

we shall see in the upcoming months. trying to meet them at the airport since i got tons of stuff to give. lol

Nice Hawaii fan! Just another thing I should mention. When we met them at LAX we were instructed to keep a distance from them. That came from the AM2 people but I don't know if that was also coming from management. I don't want you to get your hopes up about being able to give them leis and gifts directly, although I pray that it will happen.

^ I'm pretty sure we could have gotten closer but we were just being respectful of the request. Although it felt kind of weird and awkward that we were standing far away... stalker like even. As long as we didn't get in their way or start mobbing them like zombies, we should have been at least 10-15ft from the van to chit chat and such. Now if it were up to the paparazzi, they'd have been all up in the door jams and seat belts.   

@ topic: So Glenn is forming a registered support team. *AHEM* Info please?