Lord of the Rings Live

This Saturday, I went to New York to see The Fellowship of the Ring at Radio City Hall with my not-seen-for-ages friend, Alex. And it was pretty darn amazing.

We had a pretty good day before the concert even started, at least in my opinion! We met up outside Grand Central, and headed up Madison in pursuit of an elusive Japanese bookstore I heard was lurking there. It proved difficult to find… but that was OK, because we DID stumble across a Lindt chocolate store. The woman offered us free dark chocolate samples, and we both ended up buying probably the cheapest thing there: little “spooky” ghost chocolates on sticks for a dollar.

The Japanese bookstore, Asahiya, was rather heavenly, although it easily made me think I was back in Japan again. Unlike the bigger, more well known Japanese store in New York, this place was quite small (the size of a regular town bookshop, maybe), and only sold Japanese language books (except for, I think, a small section of English language books on Japan) and magazines. I picked out a couple of pop star themed magazines (yay for interview based reading practice! Also, useful summaries of this season’s dramas in case I magically get more free time, and an Arashi poster!), and browsed the manga for a while, although I decided not to buy anything from there in the end. Such a cute store, though, and relatively cheap too! Shame I also found out that it’s closing down at the end of the month.

We also found a street market, where we could buy cheap Thai food and lemonade, and wander around going, “Oooh, this is cool!” Then I dragged Alex to the OTHER Japanese store, because I am cruel and coldhearted towards her German-and-Italian-studying-self, and we browsed for a bit, although I didn’t buy anything there. And then I felt bad for inflicting such torture on her, and we went outside to sit in the sun in Bryant Park and talk. There was some kind of Cosplay thing going on, and lots of families playing with their kids… it was perfect, until Alex commented that it was the sort of day where Godzilla was bound to attack. Because it was. It felt like the “before” scene in some kind of horror/disaster movie. So then we fled to China Town, where we… stood in line at Starbucks and ate at Subway. But it was in China Town! So it was more exciting and cultured! Or something… neither of us had ever been to China Town before without several Chinese speakers in tow, and it turns out that it’s way more intimidating without people to tell you where to eat and what sounds good!

And then… the concert. Ahh, the concert! They projected Fellowship of the Ring onto a big screen, and then a huge orchestra (complete with all the singers) played the soundtrack live. I have love the Lord of the Rings soundtrack since I first heard it, and so I was reeeally excited. And the music live was simply gorgeous. Especially the tear jerking moments – if normally I would be a bit sad, here, I cried. If normally, I would cry, here, I was bawling. The only problem was that I kept forgetting about the orchestra, and then wondering why the music was so much louder than usual!

Either way, I hadn’t seen the movie in a couple of years, so a lot of it felt fresh again. And so moving. The story of the Lord of the Rings has always affected me very deeply. With that music played live with it too… it really got to me. Especially the end. So much loyalty and friendship and determination against the odds… and corruption of good people, sacrifice of so much… it was really affecting.

My hope now? That I’ll be able to see “the story continue” with The Two Towers in October, 2010.

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