Reita: “Ruki-san, Reita-san, good evening. I know you guys travel a lot when you’re on tour, but is there anything you don’t like about taking the bullet train or airplane? For me, it’s the whole exchange around reclining your seat. I want there to be a standard as to whether or not you should ask the person behind you [before putting your seat back]. Please take care of yourselves! We rock!”
Reita: I feel this. The seats on the bullet train…well, if the person behind me is one of you, I feel super relieved. Cause I can just recline that shit all the way back.
Ruki: But there are some people who worry about that, you know.
Reita: Well, maybe a little bit.
Ruki: I don’t worry about it at all.
Ruki: Especially if it’s a first-class car, people are more or less prepared for that.
Reita: You ride first-class?
Reita: Of course (laughs)
Ruki: Oh, shut up. Huhu. But if it’s first-class, it’s not that cramped [even if someone reclines their seat]. But in a regular car, it comes back pretty close, you know?
Ruki: In that case, I would check.
Reita: If I was just gonna put it back a little, I wouldn’t feel like I have to say anything.
Ruki: Ah, you’re not the type to say something?
Reita: Well no, if the person behind me was a stranger, I wouldn’t put it back in the first place.
Reita: I would just have a sore back the whole time.
Ruki: I put it back right away.
Ruki: Yeah… well, I don’t ask, I glance back at them.
(both burst out laughing)
Reita: Like you’re coercing them?
Reita: You just look at them like, “I’m just gonna put this back?”
Ruki: I look back just to be like, “…sry”
Reita: (laughs) But if you’re just putting it back a little bit, I think it’s fine.
Ruki: I mean, there’s a lever to put it back and everything.
Reita: Yeah, so why do you have to go out of your way to ask the person behind you?
Reita: I mean, if you were gonna put it all the way back, that’s different. But I think you shouldn’t be doing that in the first place.
Ruki: Well, you can only go as far as the lever lets you.
Reita: Okay, yeah, I guess.
Ruki: If it was a plane, though, I wouldn’t like that.
Reita: Cause you always fly business class, right?
Ruki: I never fly business class…Never.
Reita: If someone is behind me, I never recline my seat.
Reita: But some people do – I mean, and that’s fine. It’s tricky, eh…
Reita: Oh, if you’re in the middle seat, and you have to get up to go to the bathroom, but the person beside you is sleeping with their legs stretched out, what do you do?
Ruki: I jump right over them.
Ruki: I do. I hold onto the seat in front of me and go, boing!
Reita: Well, what else are you gonna do, right.
Ruki: And there are some times too where we’re on the same plane as fans.
Ruki: That complicates things, you know?
Ruki: It makes it hard to go to the bathroom.
Reita: Yeah, we can’t go…a while ago on the world tour, I went to the bathroom on the plane, and when I came out a fan was standing right there with a paper waiting for me to sign it – an international fan.
Ruki: Oh– I got one too. You know how we bump into fans at the airport? Why do they just stand off in the distance and look at us?
Reita: Well, they’re probably thinking they’re not allowed to come up close, aren’t they?
Ruki: Nah, they can come talk to us, no? Like, “good job guys” or whatever. Like, I’m not gonna ignore you.
Reita: Ahhh, yeah yeah yeah.
Ruki: That’s a real mystery, eh? I don’t think that happens to other bands.
Ruki: It totally doesn’t.
Reita: But yeah…they definitely don’t come up to us.
Ruki: Mhm – but when we’re on tour, I kinda get it. There are quite a few [fans]. Like in Sapporo, we’ll see them on the plane, and it’s so intense, they’re all just watching from afar…
Reita (laughing): And they don’t talk to us…maybe they think they shouldn’t bother us while we’re travelling?
Ruki: I wonder if they think there’s some kinda rule like that, or they just don’t wanna talk to us.
Reita: …Probably both? (laughs)
Ruki: Well, that’s what I thought, but then in Sapporo, I was drinking milk.
Ruki: I thought no one was around, and for some reason I had my hand on my hip –
Ruki: Just drinkin my milk…and then a fan comes up like, “Hello~” …Like why now of all times?
Ruki: I guess I seemed approachable?
Reita: While you were drinking milk.
Ruki: I guess I’m easy to approach when I’m drinking milk with my hand on my hip.
Reita: It felt kinda comfortable….oh okay, what if you were approached by 50 people?
Ruki: What, like in a line?
Reita: Like, they all came and surrounded you. (laughs)
Ruki: What? After a tour?
Ruki: …I don’t know…It’s a mystery (*how the fans gather around them)
Reita: It is, but I think they’re just being considerate of us.
Ruki: …But they just look at us.
Reita: Ah, so it kinda bothers you?
Ruki: If I don’t notice them looking, it’s fine, but when I see them and they’re just looking at me and whispering shit…
Reita: (laughs) Yeahh, it bothers me.
Ruki: It does, it does. Like wtf.
Reita: Yeah…but you know that just means we’re looking at them too.
Ruki: Omg tru – that’s scary man.
