K-ON! Invades Convenience Store In Front Of Universal Studios Japan, Pay Close Attention To Mugi-chan’s Name

Nov 28, 2011 by Steven

Attention K-ON! fans: the Lawson convenience store near Universal Studios Japan (USJ) in Osaka has undergone a K-ONplete makeover to celebrate the release of the K-ON! movie next month.

The promotion launched November 27 and is set to run until December 29 and this Lawson is the first and ONLY store to participate.

As such, the USJ Lawson staff have decorated the store with a vigor that, at this time of the year, is usually directed toward bringing out the Christmas spirit: the interior and exterior of the store are decked out with pictures of the K-ON! girls, the staff are wearing promotional K-ON! movie blazers, and even the store’s background music has been set play a rotation of 30 songs from the anime.

There is also, of course, a selection of limited-time K-ON!-themed goods for sale.

On November 27, the voice actresses of all 5 members of Hoka-go Tea Time, the fictional band which the main characters play in, appeared on stage to promote the movie at a special event held at USJ.

The event drew a crowd of over 5000 fans, who cheered on the 5 girls as they performed the movie’s opening and closing theme for the first time in public.

While we weren’t able to make it out to the event ourselves, one of our Osaka-based correspondents stopped by the Lawson store later than night, long after the crowds had left.

Here are his impressions of the promotion, wrapped up in 3 points:

1. K-ON! fans will go nuts and probably buy more than they actually need
If hearing K-ON! songs playing in the background the moment you walk through the sliding doors doesn’t get you excited enough, wait until you see the shelves stocked with K-ON! goods.
The aisles are also decorated with cardboard posters of the Hoka-go Tea Time girls smiling at you as if to entice you into filling your cart and emptying your wallet.

Not only that, but it seems the store will continue to introduce new promotional goods throughout the duration of the campaign to keep us coming back for more.

2. Lawson may have an Azu-nyan bias
While all 5 members ofHoka-go Tea Time are represented, Azusa Nakano seems to have gotten a lot more attention than the other girls.

I have heard that, for some reason, products featuring Azusa sell out much faster than others, so perhaps Lawson is trying to appeal to fans by pushing the most popular character.

3. The ‘S’ in Tsumugi is positioned awkwardly on the front window display
Before the promotion officially launched, I actually visited the USJ Lawson one night while they were still setting up. As I was walking around the store, I heard one of the staff exclaim: “Ah! We forgot to put the S in Mugi-chan’s name!”

Looking to the front window, where large graphics of each of the 5 main characters are posted along with the character’s name in English, I immediately noticed that Tsumugi’s was indeed missing the ‘S’ and read ‘TUMUGI.’

A member of the staff quickly came to put up the missing S, but there was no open space between the T and U, so they had no choice but to stick it off to the side and hope that no one notices.

Original article, images: Daiichiro Tashiro

▼The five girls of Hoka-go Tea Time
▼The view from inside the store