July 20th, 2008. I may have just had the best experience of my young life. My secret fear about going to the KAT-TUN concert was that I would discover that they weren’t really as great as I thought they were. Rest assured any of you who might have that same fear. In person, if anything, they’re even better, and certainly more handsome. All of them. Kame is the cutest thing ever. Seriously. I never fully realized how adorable he is. Once in his solo he did a kiss at the audience and this cute little embarrassed shrug that was just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I just wanted to put him in my pocket and take him home. Jin is absolutely beautiful. I always knew this, but it’s good to have it confirmed. Also, they are all really good dancers. Again, I knew this, but it’s good to have it confirmed.
I’ll go back to the beginning. The concert venue in Ishikawa is kind of in the middle of nowhere, so almost everyone going to the concert came through Kanazawa station, some 15 minutes away by bus. There was an entire fleet of buses taking people to the concert, all of which had “Emergency Bus” on the display, something that I found to be quite amusing. Oh no! It’s a KAT-TUN emergency!!
We got there about an hour and a half before the doors opened which was good because the line for concert goods was very short, but bad because it was rather hot and we had to sit out and wait for a while. We passed the time by painting our nails, freaking out over the fact that KAT-TUN was somewhere in that building right next to us, and trying to identify who’s hand was who’s in one of the pictures in my pamphlet. Did I mention that I bought a “pamphlet”? And by pamphlet I mean a hard cover book full of lots of thick, high quality, wonderful KAT-TUN photos. Definitely a purchase that I will not regret. I also bought one of the awesome sword-shaped pen lights, which really came in handy during the concert.
After we were finally herded inside, we found our seats. They weren’t the best seats in the world, but certainly not the worst, and since Ishikawa was a pretty small venue (about 7,000), there really weren’t any bad seats. All of them were on ground level anyway, no balconies. The rest of this will be in bullet points in what might approximately be chronological order. I apologize, but it’s such a blur right now that that’s the best I can do.
-Jin introduced the concert. It started so suddenly, with very little warning. Suddenly BAM! Jin is standing a matter of feet from me. Nearly had a heart attack.
-Kame had this giant piece of grass or something in his mouth during some of taboo (like a farmer). So random
-Kame planted a kiss on the cheek of one of the ABC boys
-During one song (gah! I can’t remember which one!!), Jin spent a lot of the time pretending his microphone was a flute. Ueda, meanwhile, jammed on the air guitar.
-During the introductions Koki, kept bowing for an absurd amount of time. It was funny.
-Nakamaru started doing belly dancer style belly roll things with his shirt pulled up a couple of times. LoL.
-The tengu skit was waaay funny. Kame’s “tengu” voice is great
-During “Lips” the microphones sprayed smoke (like in the PV). Jin attacked Junno with his, but then they both ended up ganging up on Koki who just closed his eyes and basked in it.
-Jin talked a lot during the MC. Probably more than anyone else except Maru. Yay! The best part was when he was talking about how some of the parents in the audience grab their little kid’s arms and wave them around and, and he did an impression of a kid being shaken like crazy by his mom.
-Jin and Kame sang a little bit together during the MC, both on the verge of cracking up the whole time. There were some REALLY intense fangirls sitting behind us, and a couple of them were so excited by this that they were actually crying. Like, tears were rolling down their cheeks as they hugged each other and squealed. Whoa.
-During “Mother Father”, Ueda was kind of crying…awww
-Also during “Mother Father” Koki put the ship’s bell on his head
-There was a section where they individually appeared on stage, supposedly running from the Tengu. Jin ran across the stage screaming and then “fell” off. Kame advertised some crunky, taking a bite with an ecstatic look on his face, Junno read one of his love letters, Ueda shot Junno off stage with increasingly large weaponry ending with a bazooka, all with an extremely devilish look on his face, and Koki and Maru did a bit of their Tanaka skit.
-At one point Nakamaru and Koki were pretending to cry, but Maru kept making this really funny face by opening one eye while he was doing it. As a side note, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I ended up laughing during the concert. Some parts were super funny.
-During Junno’s solo, he went over and talked to a girl with a Junno uchiwa who was so excited she looked like she was about to faint. He asked her where she was from and she responded “Oosaka desu!” in the squeakiest voice I’ve ever heard, followed by, “Taguchi-kun DAISUKI!!!!”
-Jin sang the acapella beginning to “Bokura no Machi de” mostly without a microphone. It was soooo beautiful. As a side note, all of his singing sounded incredible, and he added his own vocal embellishments to just about every song.
-Kame, Jin, and Koki came by our section (at different times) on those little cart things they use. Jin actually came by twice, once on each side. I didn’t make eye contact with Kame, but he was so cute and sexy, and really close to where I was sitting, so I didn’t care. I made eye contact with Koki very briefly, and when Jin was coming by our section the second time, toward the end of the concert, I made eye contact with him! For reals! All I could do was grin like a fool and give a really awkward wave. This earned me a half-smile/half-smirk. I can now die happy.
-During the end of Jin’s solo, he danced down the center walkway under strobe lighting. It was fricking awesome.
-Nakamaru did this thing during his beat boxing segment were he hummed a tune while still keeping up the percussion part. I’ve never heard him do that before. It was impressive!
-Ueda sang really well during his solo. As someone who’s not usually a fan of his solo singing, I quite enjoyed it.
-During the encore “Real Face” Jin made Nakamaru sing part of his line at the beginning, and Nakamaru did the “ooh” thing at the end in such a sexual way.
-Junno did Koki’s rap at the end of Real Face “ore wa Junno!” with Jin, Ueda, and one more of them…maybe Kame?…standing right behind him and staring at him incredulously. I think he did a rather good job!
-My favorite performance was probably “Six Senses”, because it was fun to do the clapping and counting with them, and the dancing was great!
Three hours later, and I simply cannot believe that it’s all over. It flew by SO fast! I want to see another one! Like tomorrow! Overall, it was a surreal and wonderful experience. I might think of more things I’m forgetting later, but for now, I think I’ll call it an entry. As a final bit of advice. If there’s any way you can go to a KAT-TUN concert, DO IT.
*contented sigh*
~Celestia~
