TIS THE SEASON FOR CONCERTS...

With Halloween firmly over and Christmas season officially upon us, my wife and I thought it would be a good idea to search for some concerts for December.

Halloween decorations have given way to a grand Christmas tree at the Futako-Tamagawa Rise Shopping Mall.

And with the pandemic (more or less) confined to the history books, foreign artists - who, along with pretty much everyone else, were banned from entering the country for the best part of two years - have started to come back to the Land of the Rising Sun to give live performances. And what could be nicer than spending an evening with a fabulous meal followed by a concert? If you can actually find a concert that takes place in the evening hours, that is...

Let me explain and indulge you in some interesting and surprising facts about concert-going in Japan.

The first step, of course, is to purchase a ticket. Sounds simple enough in this digital age, but isn't necessarily so, especially not for someone who doesn't have the necessary Japanese reading skills (which, I'm ashamed to say, I don't).

A Japanese wife then comes in very handy, of course. Because for her, it should be a breeze, right?

Again, not necessarily so!

In general, completing any kind of electronic form in Japan, can be a nightmare if you have a foreign name with sounds that simply don't exist in the Japanese language, because the Website developers never seem to have considered the possibility that - heaven forbid - someone with a non-Japanese name might want to fill in a form...

Because you see, the Roman alphabet is not used in the Japanese language. The only time you will see it is basically for advertising purposes and printed on various goods.

Instead, Japan has three separate writing systems: The so-called 'kanji' (logographic characters borrowed from Chinese, and two syllabic sets of scripts, the 'hiragana' for those Japanese words without a 'kanji', and the 'katakana', used for loan words and foreign names, whereby each of the two syllabic sets comprise 46 characters or sounds.

For official purposes, such as filling in forms, foreign names need to be written in Japanese 'katakana' characters, rather than the Latin alphabet.

The first syllable of my surname is pronounced similar to the letter 'v' in English, though even the English language doesn't have a sound that matches the German pronunciation. Neither of the two sounds exist in the Japanese language and therefore have no corresponding character. That said, in order to produce the English sound in Japanese, there is a workaround, by adding an additional sign to an existing character. The trouble is that this doesn't exist in the official character set. So on a frequent basis, when trying to complete an electronic form, entering it will return an error. And so, with both Roman letters as well as the Japanese workaround a no go, the only option is to butcher my name into something that would actually sound quite different if pronounced out loud.

So last weekend, my wife wanted to book seats for a particular concert, but tickets for our preferred venue were only available from a ticket agency that she hadn't used before. So she proceeded to create an account, and sure enough, she soon ran into trouble:

First she was struggling with the site itself, because pressing the 'Next' button to proceed to the next page just wouldn't work. And when she was just about to give up, it suddenly did.

But then she ran into the usual problem described above, unable to enter my name properly.

Once she had cleared that hurdle, had - after about an hour! - finally succeeded in creating an account, placing the desired tickets into the shopping cart and entering the credit card details at the check-out, and we thought that we were finally there, she got the so-called CAPTCHA (the screen with oddly shaped letters and numbers, to prove that you're not a robot). But the characters were literally illegible, so that time after time, and despite both of us agreeing on what the right combination would be, it turned out to be incorrect. And then eventually, after all the efforts, she was catapulted back to the initial screen, to start from scratch again...

It almost felt as if they deliberately wanted to prevent people from buying tickets from their site...

By that time my dear wife was fuming, and so she suggested that we should simply settle for a different venue (in Yokohama instead of Tokyo), for which tickets were available on the site she regularly uses.

Ironically, the Yokohama venue then actually turned out to be more conveniently located for us than the one in Tokyo, which meant we needn't have gone through the whole ordeal in the first place. But we're always wiser afterwards, right?

Now, there was a time, of course, when concert tickets were always physically issued and either sent in the post, or kept for collection at the box office. But times have changed. Strangely, though, the solutions available nowadays differ quite a bit depending on the country you're in.

Take the United Kingdom, for instance. When I buy tickets for a show in the UK online, then a pdf-version of the ticket is usually e-mailed to me, which I can then choose to either print out and bring with me, or keep on my smartphone. It doesn't really matter, because the nowadays commonplace QR code can be scanned from paper as well as from a digital device.

It seems to work a bit differently in Switzerland, though, as I found out recently, when I bought tickets for two different concerts and was very surprised when I opened up the pdf file and saw strict instructions, which, if not followed, would bar me from entering the venue:

- Ticket is only valid if printed on A4 white paper (what?)

- Ensure that the ticket is folded in accordance with the instructions

- Only tickets printed in good print quality will grant you access

- Please protect the ticket from dampness and dirt

- Handle the ticket as if it were cash

- The ticket may not be printed more than once and may not be photocopied

And this was then followed by detailed 3-step instructions on how to correctly fold the paper...

Hmmm, and I always thought that Japan was the country where things were complicated...

Here meanwhile, you have several options:

You can go digital and ask for an e-ticket on your smartphone. But beware: This is not in the form of a pdf attachment, but an e-ticket inside a specific App, which I tend to avoid because - as you may have guessed - this being Japan, it's usually only in Japanese language.

Or you can get it printed at a dedicated machine at a specified convenience store. Which doesn't seem so convenient at all, because you have to go there first...

Or as a last option, you can request to have it sent to you via registered mail, for an additional charge, of course. But since this doesn't require any Japanese Apps, nor visits to a convenience store, this is the option we usually choose, especially with the postal service in Japan being efficient as it is.

My surname (Wietlisbach) on the envelope, with the contentious first syllable ('ヴぃー' in Japanese characters).

So we end up with a paper ticket like in the good old days... I must admit, though, it does feel somewhat comforting to have a 'real-life' ticket that you can hold on to, even if it doesn't help the environment...

'Christmas Ave Maria' with the Vienna Mozart Solists.

Now, once the ticket is sorted, we get to the topic of concert schedules. Both in the UK and in Switzerland, the most common pattern is for a concert to start at 7:30 p.m., with the doors opening either one hour or 30 minutes beforehand, usually depending on the size of the venue.

This gives the concertgoers sufficient time to have a nice meal beforehand. Because nobody would want to go to a concert on an empty stomach, right?

If you have been reading my previous posts, you probably will already have guessed that in Japan it's - of course - different.

Here, shows generally start very early, usually around 6 p.m.. For all those coming by public transport from afar, this is good news, because it means they don't have to sneak out during the encore, for fear of missing the last train home - because, contrary to what one might expect from a city the size of Tokyo, train services stop surprisingly early. This is not 'the city that never sleeps'...

The obvious downside of concerts starting so early is that if you want to have dinner before the show, you will have difficulty finding a restaurant that is open, or which serves dinner at such an hour. And if you opt for a meal after the concert, you may find yourself in an eatery where they announce last orders the moment you have arrived...

And when looking for concerts for next month, we noticed that the vast majority actually takes place during the day!

We bought tickets for 3 shows, one starting at 1 p.m., one at 3 p.m., and the third one at 5:15 p.m.

My initial reaction was to dismiss them outright, because I thought it just doesn't feel right to go to a concert in the middle of the day. But this would have meant that we would have ended up without any shows to go to at all...

And then it dawned on me that in a sense, this is actually a preferable option to a 6 o'clock start, because it will allow us to have a nice relaxing meal after the show without any rush, and with plenty of time for a nightcap in a pub or bar on our way home, without having to rely on the last train.

There is (almost) always a silver lining if you care to look for it!

One of the things to note is that Japanese concert crowds definitely have manners. It is a Japanese virtue not to inconvenience others. So you're expected to sit politely in your allocated seat and enjoy the concert. No stomping of feet, obnoxious whooping or getting up to dance, bumping into other people or blocking their view! I have been to concerts where standing up during the performance was explicitly forbidden - and strictly enforced by the staff.

Over the years I have sometimes felt that Japanese concerts are devoid of 'atmosphere' because the audience seemed too quiet and inactive. Things may have changed a bit in recent years, but overall, Japanese audiences still tend to be much more polite and less expressive than those in other countries.

Ironically, I often feel that in classical concerts, audiences seem more engaged than in pop or rock concerts. They also always seem to know the right moment to applaud (which can be tricky in a classical performance - and so embarrassing if you get it wrong!), or to shout an emphatic 'Bravo'. Perhaps that's because you may found more 'connoisseurs' in a classical concert.

But I have also been fortunate enough to witness pop/rock concerts in Japan that completely rocked and had the crowds on their feet (though they needed some time to 'warm up' first). Performances by Elton John, Paul McCartney or Bryan Adams come to mind.

And I feel it can also depend a lot on what rapport the performers establish with the audience. The language barrier can often be a challenge. But those acts who make an effort and learn a few Japanese expressions will be rewarded with a more receptive reaction from the crowd.

The biggest no-no is to take pictures or - gasp! - record video during a concert! In the vast majority of venues it is strictly forbidden, and you're being reminded of that by staff patrolling before the start of the concert with big signs. It doesn't stop people from trying, of course (even in well-behaved Japan!), but security that is stationed throughout the concert hall will be quick to approach you if they spot you trying to grab a shot or two.

I hear that copyright infringement is apparently one reason, though I'm not sure how valid that argument really is. The other is the desire to keep order, and again, to prevent inconvenience to others, because fans holding handheld cameras or phones above their heads will block the field of vision of concertgoers behind them. Fair enough, though I still feel that such draconian rules wouldn't really be necessary. But it's the rules. And so, as a law-abiding foreigner, I follow them - at least most of the time...