To be honest, I bought the tickets for this concert before even confirming I would be taking a vacation to Japan.
A few weeks back, my friend told me that U-Kiss would be doing a concert in Tokyo for one of the rare few fireworks displays in Japan this year. Since I hadn’t seen U-Kiss in concert since May, I of course jumped at the opportunity to get tickets, and we ended up snatching up a set before general ticket sales started.
The day before general ticket sales, the lineup changed so that 2PM would be at the show as well. Colour me excited.
Fast forward to Saturday, August 6th. I had only arrived in Japan the night before, and my luck was out in full force from the very beginning. After an amazing lunch in Ikebukuro (which I am probably going to go try and find again today) my friends and I headed over to Gaiemmae Station to try and find the rugby stadium, where all of the k-pop artists would be performing. Luckily, there were people all over the place with signs and directions to help people get to their respective places.
Like I said before, this concert was one of the very few fireworks displays in Japan this year. Normally, there are countless fireworks displays throughout the country, and on any given weekend, there are about 5 displays you can go and see if you wanted. Normally, these fireworks displays are sponsored by companies and they can buy fireworks performances for a few minutes. Some of the bigger shows, like the Edogawa fireworks, are huge, where the companies will time their fireworks to music and make a giant show out of it. However, since the Tohoku Earthquake, many have chosen to put their fireworks money into reconstruction projects instead, so a lot of the shows were cancelled. This fireworks display was a fundraiser as well. People paid for the best viewing seats, and got a concert as well.
Because there haven’t been many fireworks in Tokyo lately, there haven’t been many reasons to wear yukata, the traditional summer clothing here. So many of the girls and guys too the opportunity to dress up, and it made the walk to the concert feel really festive. Everyone looked so pretty, it was an awesome way to get into the mood for fireworks.
The first artist up was a Japanese girl group, Super☆Girls. Seeing as they are [a] Japanese and [b] a girl group, I had never ever heard of them. (I love j-pop… but not the girl groups.) They did seem to have some fans though. Their fans were middle aged men, for the most part. The fans for this group provided the best entertainment for the show, with their RIDICULOUS dancing, and the same level of energy as a screaming teenage fan. And when you’re a middle aged man who looks old enough to be the singer’s father, bouncing around and dancing… that’s just funny.
Next group up were Code-V, a Korean boy band. I have heard of them before, but only in passing. Their music was a little slow, and nothing really caught my attention. They had a group of fans there though, so I was happy for them.
The third group up was U-Kiss. This was really the first time the audience really screamed when a band came out. I’m quite impressed with the fan base U-Kiss are getting in Japan, and it’s really interesting to see who the most popular singers are here. Kiseop had a LOT of fan signs, way more than there seems to be in Japan. Kevin had a lot of signs too, but he’s normally one of the more popular members. I was REALLY happy to see the girl two seats down from me had a Hoon uchiwa. Hoon needs much more love.
Anyways, the last time I had seen U-Kiss, their Japanese was very basic, and they were about to head to Japan after losing their most fluent members in Japanese. I knew they had been taking very intensive Japanese lessons over the past two months, but I was seriously impressed at how well they were doing. The first song they performed was Bingeul Bingeul. Everyone seemed to know that song, which was good. Next they broke out into Every Day, which didn’t get quite the recognition, probably because it doesn’t have a music video, and the Japanese release of “Bran New Kiss” won’t be out for a few more weeks. However, I’ve only been able to see this song performed once, at Inkigayo on their comeback weekend, and it wasn’t the full version, so I was really happy to see them perform it.
One thing that was bothering me was realizing that Dongho was not dancing. Instead, he was sitting off to the side. It wasn’t until they were talking and he stood that we could see almost his entire leg was wrapped up really tightly. The boys attempted to explain that he’d done something to his leg, and couldn’t dance. I’m assuming it’s a break, but the words for describing a injuries like that are tough, so they didn’t know the word to say exactly what happened.
After that, the boys started to sing 0330. I was REALLY happy because a lot of people knew the fan chant. One thing that was really annoying was that Japanese concerts don’t really fan chant. I can remember living in Japan, thinking Korean fans were crazy for having a fan chant for everything. Now though, I like them because it feels like I’m involved with the song too. We were all singing the Korean part at first, until they started singing and it was the Japanese version. While it’s taking a while to get use to it, I think the Japanese lyrics suit the song maybe even better than the Korean version. Hoon singing the opening chorus sounds really amazing, in a way I haven’t heard performed before in Korea (and I’ve heard this song performed live a looot at this point.) Luckily, someone with better seats than me managed to get fancams of the song.
I don’t think the rapping works as well with the Japanese, but I guess it’s a bit of give and take. Lastly, U-Kiss sung “Man Man Ha Ni” (Am I That Easy?). This is one of U-Kiss’s best known songs, so the crowd went wild again. Overall, U-Kiss were flawless perfection, as always. ;D I hope Dongho recovers well from his dance injury.
After U-Kiss, a group called Momoiro Clover-Z (ももいろクローバーZ) performed. These girls had a huge following, once again, mostly older men. I always feel bad for girls in these kinds of groups, because despite the fact I’m sure they want to appeal to a tween audience, they always get attention from men old enough to be their fathers. It must be weird at times. I thought the group was hilarious though, because their concept was…. wait for it…. power rangers. They wore power ranger dress things, and had helmets, and colours, and did flips. It was hilarious and I’m still not entirely sure if I think it’s the most tragic thing ever, or the most epic thing ever.
The sky was just getting dark as the girls left the stage. We knew there was only one group left, and that’s who most the girls in the audience were there for: 2PM. They came out in suits first, and sung their new Japanese single, “I’m Your Man“, which is going to be released later this week. It’s a really good song, and I think it sounds more like 2PM should than their first Japanese single, “Take Off“.
After singing “I’m Your Man”, 2PM performed some of their Korean singles, which threw me for a loop because… the all apparently have Japanese versions. And I only know the Korean version. So despite the fact that everyone else knew the Japanese, I was singing along in Korean, because they’re the only lyrics I new. They sung “Without You (日本語ver)“, “Heartbeat (日本語ver)“, then showed a video of the making of Take Off, and performed Take Off. As the show closer, they sung “Hands Up” which was still in Korean (YAY!) and everyone went crazy. With good reason.
After the performance was the fireworks. Now, perhaps I’m spoilt, since I’ve been to the Edogawa fireworks for the past three years, which is one of the biggest fireworks displays in Japan, but… it was a little underwhelming. There wasn’t much to them other than explosions in the sky. I’m really glad they put on the fireworks, but I’ve seen Japan put on much better shows with fireworks and I just felt like they could have done better. I WAS really happy to see that the performers were able to enjoy the fireworks though. I’ve been to a few festivals in Korea where there were fireworks, and every time, I saw U-Kiss having to leave before they could set off the fireworks, and always felt bad they missed them. Seeing updates of people watching the fireworks after was really nice. Especially since I was watching the same ones, it seemed really cool to be watching them at the same time. Yeah, it’s lame, whatever.
Videos: Allston1185@Youtube
That is really cool that everyone put this together, both to give the Japanese people a really good time and to raise money for continued reconstruction efforts.
It never fails to impress me that Korean music groups release Japanese versions. The languages seem so different to me, and then they include English elements too… @_@ It really blows my mind and makes me a little ashamed of the paltry Japanese and Spanish that I know.
These videos are great quality, and I’m glad you were able to take this trip and had fun!
I don’t know about their differences. They have the same grammatical structure, and share a lot of words. I learnt Japanese before Korean, and I found learning Korean is much easier because of my knowledge in Japanese now.
That being said, I do think it’s amazing they’re making efforts to be international. Korea is really growing to respect the idea of being multi-lingual and it being a strength in a person.