Concerts Concerts and more Concerts

So on Sunday, June 30^th I went to a concert I've been dreaming of going for a very very long time; a Koda Kumi concert. I've been a fan of Koda Kumi ever since I saw her perform Butterfly on Music Station Super Live 2005. I think she is one of the most amazing female artists out there and she definitely stands out in the sea of cute singers here in Japan. But that's not the main issue here. We are talking about concerts in general (well, specific concerts but yes, this is not a Koda Kumi fangirl post, that's what I'm trying to say).

I wanted to write this post after this particular concert because it would give a larger scale of types of concerts I've been to (not really). I've been to 8 concerts in Japan, 5 of which have been in this year and a half. Four concerts were Johnny's concerts, 3 Kpop artists and 1 "regular" Jpop artist. The differences are mostly in production cost and fan interactions but the vibe seems to be the same.

Concerts in Japan start pretty early (around 16:00 or 17:00) so that they'll be able to finish before the last trains since people come from pretty far away. People tend to make a day out of it, they arrive pretty early, around 9:00 or 10:00 and then stand in line for the tour goods. Japanese tour goods are not to be taken lightly, we're not talking about just T-shirts and albums. We're talking about phone straps, posters, tour pamphlets (which are really photobooks), socks, chopsticks, underwear, overalls, earrings, nail stickers, candy etc etc etc. Everything is organized to the T so even though you might 1 or 2 hours in line, no one will push you, no one will cut in and everything will go smoothly. There are pictures and displays of all the goods so you can just point at the stuff you want if you can't say it in Japanese. After you have all your stuff, look around you. This is my favorite part of the concerts (well, except for the concert itself obviously). Japanese fans are hardcore. They will come cosplaying their favorite artist's outfit from music videos, some would dance to the songs and it's like a big festival of fan appreciation.

The gates to the arenas usually open an hour before the concert (Unless in the Tokyo Dome and then it's 2 hours because well, that place is huge). People start to line up in front of the gates around 20-30minutes before the gates should open and this is where Japan shines. There's no fence in front of the gates. Just a bunch of scrawny security guards with their arms spread to their sides a bit. If they want to make more room in the back, they'd ask the people in the front to take 5 steps forward and you'll see 1000 people taking exactly 5 steps forward. This is of course due to that fact that all tickets have an assigned seat (you don't have to seat the whole concert, but you do have a seat so no one can take your spot).

Depending on the arena and the artists, you might be able to take pictures at that point (but NEVER during the concert, that's a big no no). When the concert starts, everybody gets up and turns on their stick lights and let the party begin!

Here the differences start to show. All concerts are fun and great, but some artists show more effort in interacting with their audience. Koda Kumi brought 4 people on the stage, tied them up to moveable walls and then proceeded to molest each one of them, finally choosing one girl and climbing on her and kissing her. Dara from 2NE1 had a boy brought on stage during her solo song and gave him a kiss. KAT-TUN had a lottery and one person in the audience got a giant poster. These are great of course to the people it happens to, but is usually happens to fanclub members or people who get arena seats. Us regular folks who get stand tickets don't get much. Koda Kumi interacted with the whole arena, but not much with the stands. 2NE1, G-Dragon and all of YG Family (during the YG Family concert) pretty much stayed on the stage or went to the very first row only, TOKIO as well. KAT-TUN and YamaPi though are good examples for Johnny's concerts. They try very hard to interact with all the audience. They have trollies that drag them all around the arena, they go up the floors, they hang from the ceiling and in the end they have BAZOOKAS to throw signed balls to the audience.

All in all, concerts in Japan are one of the main reasons I dragged my ass here and one of the mains reasons why my ass is still here. It's just wonderful seeing 50,000 people cheering and dancing and singing and just having fun.