KAT-TUN 2 Me

Just got back from the Arashi concert at Tokyo Dome tonight. WOW!!! Is all I can say at first. I don’t even know where to start. There’s so much I want to tell you! The whole way back on the train I was all impatient to get home and update my blog. Lol. Wait! I know exactly where to start.

THERE WAS OMIYA ASS GRABBING. Very important point that. And we’re not talking a quick grab and go. More like a relatively long period of fondling during “Hitomi no Naka no Galaxy” of all songs.

Okay. Back to the beginning. The tickets were indeed marked down somewhat. I got my seat some 15 rows down from the top (read: still really f*ing high up) for about $500. In hindsight, I really wish I had paid more for a better seat. It would have been worth it.

There were several songs on the setlist that I wasn’t very fond of. Then again, there were also pretty much all the songs that I like. I think, and correct me if I’m wrong here, that they sang every one of their singles (some of them twice!) plus like a dozen other songs. Crazy! The whole concert went for nearly 4 hours (3 hours 45 minutes) with three encores. Not to diss on KAT-TUN, but if at one of their concerts you get 2 encores you feel lucky. If you get only 2 encores at an Arashi concert you feel kind of cheated. And now some highlights.

-When the show started, the music starts and some girls are screaming, and I’m like “What? There’s no one on stage? What is going on…oh” for they were all suspended from a giant balloon at the very back of the arena. Pretty cool.

-Aiba seemed determined to dislocate his shoulder by enthusiastically waving at every single member of the audience at every opportunity. Bless his heart.

-Sho loves to do some sort of arm movements and try to get the audience to follow along.

-During his introduction, Jun accidentally said that it was November 6th. He made sure to get the date right on his outro though.

-Nino’s solo was the coolest thing EVER. He played the guitar and sang a sort of rock version of “Kotoba yori taisetsuna mono”.

-Ohno messed up on a line in his solo and said, “Ah! Machigatta!” (Ah! I messed up!) in a really funny way. He must have been flustered, because when tried to leap off stage at the end he lead with the wrong foot and did this really weird kicking jump thing. Both of these mistakes would come back to haunt him in the MC.

-The other solos were Aiba doing Pikanchi (accompanied by the Junior drum line), Jun with a swing/jazz version of Wish that was pretty cool, and Sho with Tomadoi Nagara.

-There were cool fireballs during “Truth”. Lots of other special effects throughout the concert. Water, lasers, fireworks, confetti, you name it.

-Ashita no Kioku was really nice because they showed baby pictures of all the guys. Not just the baby pictures you always see circulating on the internet/japanese magazines. There were a bunch I had never seen before and they were all super cute! Then, as the song went on their pictures started getting older until they were current. Then all the pictures sort of zoomed in together to form the Arashi kanji. That description might suck, but you’ll just have to trust me that it was cool.

-I also really enjoyed the medley of songs, one single from each year. Arashi in the plastic costumes was hilarious. Sakura Sake and Happiness are favorites. Believe is a BIG favorite.

-Speaking of Happiness. I swear Aiba and Sho were having a contest to see who could do the highest spinning jumps.

-I don’t remember when, but at one point, Nino and Sho spent a while running in circles around each other and sort of..flapping like birds? There were a lot of silly dance moments, but that one stood out to me.

-Sometimes they were on personal little float things with a camera-man. Jun spent most of this time shoving his face in the camera to the point where I can say with some confidence that he flossed his teeth today. Nino’s camera man had to dodge around because Nino kept trying to kick him.

MC

-I couldn’t understand all of it, but one of the first things that happened was Ohno taking Jun’s shirt off, much to the crowd’s delight. He unbuttoned it and everything and then handed Jun one of the concert staff’s shirts to wear.

-Sho made Aiba redo one of the pikanchi lines. It had an audience response part, so on the second run through, Sho said he wanted to hear the “manly version” with guys doing the audience response. Aiba said the line and…silence. LOLOL

-Nino called Ohno out on his mistake during the solo. Then everyone made him redo his little leap off stage over and over again. “Okay, do the normal version! Now today’s version! Now the normal version again!” and so on. Very funny.

-And there was the expected talk about Kohaku, Aiba’s drama, Aiba and Ohno’s recent birthdays (Nino said Aiba just turned 42), and a bunch of other stuff that was apparently funny but I couldn’t understand.

ENCORE

-Fight Song happened during the second encore. I think they set a new record for “fewest lines actually sung” Many were spoken, but Ohno sang one of his lines and Jun sang one…and I think that’s it. Of course, the chorus dissolved into a everyone jumping all over the place, with lots of fist pumping and “Oi!”s. Fight Song at it’s best!

-Gori Muchuu was great!  Jun grabbed one of the sparkly streamers that had been shot into the audience and tied it around his head. Then he jumped up on the stand in front of the crowd so those lucky bitches in the front of that row could actually touch him. Sho was waving his red concert towel like a matador flagging a bull.

-At the end of Gori Muchuu, there’s the “3,2,1 Jump!” part, but the band kept doing the drumroll and holding the last note so they had to do the “3,2,1 Jump!” thing like 7 times.

-They sang my girl at the end of that encore.

-After the second encore, there was no way the crowd was moving until we got another song. We started hearing their voices, “Hey? What’s wrong? Why don’t you go home?” teasing us. Then they showed up on the screen from back stage and pretended that they weren’t going to come out again. They said “goodbye and thankyou” again and then walked off camera (Nino leaving last with a sudden super-cute smile), but the crowd just wasn’t having it. So they performed A.Ra.Shi! Kyaaa! I will never ever get sick of that song. Ever.

And now, my feet are killing me, getting up for work tomorrow is going to be awful, and I’m a good deal poorer than when I started out. But going to this concert was such an amazing experience it’s way more than worth it. There’s something really magical about seeing a group you love in person for the first time. Until you do it, there’s a part of you that just doesn’t quite believe they’re really real people. I was in the same room, singing to the same songs with the members of Arashi tonight. How dumb of me to think I could even put a price on that experience.

~Celestia~

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