SMAP, The review. Part I- The show.

I feel I can't blog about the SMAP concert in one post, there were far too many things that annoyed me about the whole day, so I fear it will become a trilogy filled with racism, big hair and sarcasm, hmmmm my favourite combo!

I thought this first installment should be about the actual show, as I'm likely to forget the small details. The second part will inevitably be devoted to the quirkiness and racism of SIL, and the third post will be my musings and observations on the general phenomenon of concerts in Japan.

Sooooo, we got to Osaka dome with 5 million hours to spare, (see tomorrow's SIL post for more ranting on this) bought our overpriced goods (this will be explored further in part III) and took our seats, soft cream in hands. As we waited for, well, anything to start, the stadium slowly but very surely started to fill up. 60,000 people fill-up like! Sorry, can we just do some quick maths here...

1 ticket= 8,000 yen...

Overpriced goods= At least 1500 yen per person (and every fucker except the 3 gaijin present buy them!)

x 60,000 people....

x 4 shows in Osaka....

OK, that's a shitoad of cash contributing to the tweaking of Kimutaku's hair!

Anyway, with about half an hour till starting time, a huge clock came up on the big screen, and.... started ticking. Was this supposed to build up excitement?? Because all it did for me was make me want to throw my soft cream at the screen to make that fucking ticking stop. SIL assured me it was all part of the suspense though.

At about the same time, people with white sheets over them and a huge world globes on their heads (the globe is the theme? logo? for the tour this year) started mingling among the crowd. I actually got to pat one of their globe heads as I walked past from throwing out my soft cream wrapper. By the time the show started, there was about 30 of these globe heads walking around. We all had our suspicions, the crowd was rife with whispers at the possibility that the SMAP boys were under the big globes. And 'yappari!' when the show started with all it's fire works and big screen video glory, 5 dudes in space suits got out of the space ship making us think they were our idols, but they actually jumped through this big arse hole in the stage (that was one of the best parts of the show for me!) and low and behold... The boys took globes off their head, making all the ladies in the crowd soak their panties at the thought that they had mingled with them before the show.

This was a little predictable for me, but meh, good for light entertainment. It basically went downhill from there, they did the big numbers, sekai ni hitotsu and the other 3 songs I actually knew the words to in between a lot of the songs where I was thinking about other things and just fake jigging around. I felt the show was lacking in acrobatics this year as well, 2 years ago, the boys all came on to the stage on flying foxes but this year the most acrobatic they got was Tsuyoshi-kun and his back flips, which are pretty impressive I must admit.

Nakai-kun was his usual off-key self, they disguised his solo parts well as usual too, distracting the audience with big music or dancing. The part which made me laugh the most was actually Nakai-kuns solo little part. (they usually all have one solo song) They showed a comedic video of Nakai kun as 3 different kids talking about their futures. At the start of the video he did a little solo that made my ears bleed. He seriously sounds like a cat with laryngitis getting de-bollocked, horrible singing! Then the second part of the video was the little kid saying he wanted to be a big a star as Michael Jackson, then it was like 5 minutes of Nakai-kun dancing like Michael Jackson, and I say 'like' MJ, but it was actually really, really shit. There's just not any other way to describe it!

After this atrocity, there were many boring solos from the other boys (lovey dovey type songs), so more wet panties I'm sure. Amid the boring solos and few upbeat numbers, there was a part where they all talked to the audience and each other. I'm going to say my Shingo stole the show here, he's a much better entertainer than the others in my opinion, but then, I'm biased as I would very much like to have my way with him...

Tsuyoshi annoyed me, Goro was his usual painfully shy goody-two-shoes self, Nakai was an idiot, and Kimutaku, well, don't get me started, some brain vessel may just burst in my brain. he is just sooooooo up himself, hot, but up himself, so I guess it balances out.

My feet were killing me, as absolutely EVERY bastard stands up, the entire time and I was very over it by the end. There were good moments and I'm glad I went, but really don't think it was worth my hard-earned 8,oo0 yen. At the end of the show, they said bye bye and thank you and sayonara and there was the obligatory encore where they sang at least another 4 songs, WTF, doesn't encore mean one more song, fuck off already I'm tired!

And then there was ANOTHER encore, how does this work!? Finally, they sunk into the stage on a big podium, but not before going round the whole stadium on big wheelie, cart thingies. We were pretty close to the back, if we'd been closer to the front I would have flashed Shingo, but it would have been wasted so didn't bother.

So I leave you from part I with a few snaps, I didn't take any of the actual show, because there were sniper security dudes everywhere, not that they were that scary, but sometimes I feel I should stick by the rules if for nothing else than to break the 'rule-breaking, rebel gaijin' mold...

Notice the beer (I had 4 before we left) I had to down to get through a lunch AND a concert with SIL!