Our first full day in Tokyo was completely devoted to them:

Friday morning we got up bright and early and headed towards Tokyo Dome to join the line up for concert goods. The ride towards Suidobashi was surprisingly nice. We got there fairly early and joined the line up. Since it was a weekday morning, there weren’t as many people in line as I had thought. Last year in Sapporo it took more than two hours to make it to the front of the line (and it was raining too). This year, we were at the front in about an hour. It took another half an hour or so to make it through all the booths to buy our con goods.

Afterwards we took a moment to join the crowd of girls in front of the stadium to take photos. Then we took the train back to our hotel to drop off our purchases, and went back out in search of food. We walked along Omotesando for the remainder of the morning and made it to the FrancFranc store in Aoyama to look for Christmas goodies. After a quick recharge with some oden out front, we shopped for a bit at Takeshita Dori and did an enormous loop back to Omotesando for lunch at Jonathan’s. After grabbing dessert at one of the crepe stands in Takeshita Dori, we went back to the hotel to rest before the concert.

Towards the afternoon we took the train back to Suidobashi. We still had some time before the concert was to start, but we took our seats early since there were so many people crowding out front by the gates. Tokyo Dome is by far the biggest concert venue I’ve been to. We had seats in the stands again this year, but we still managed to get a decent view of the stage.

I was starting to get excited as it neared 6pm, but at the same time I was also a little sleepy from being on the go since early morning. However, the moment Arashi step on stage, it was like having a whole box of fireworks light off. I have never seen 50,000 fans so in sync cheering them on! I don’t think words can describe how awesome their performance was.

They picked lots of great songs for their set list. I really enjoyed the solo performances from all the members. Matsujun did a Nintendo-esque sequence right before his solo where he ‘flew’ directly into the game. Any video game that lets you level up by scoring a floating Ninomiya definitely makes it to the top of my list! Costumes for the show were pretty decent, except for their Circus performance, which included these hideous pink feathers sticking out the sides of their suits. The thank you speeches at the end were really sweet. At the end of ‘My Girl’, Sho even blew a kiss out to the crowd.

My tiredness crept up on me slowly during the concert. I think my energy came and went in spurts, which was totally not cool since those tickets cost a small fortune! I think I could only blame jet lag for part of it, because I know for sure I packed in way too much. Hehe. I’ve learned my lesson. =P

After the show ended on the second encore, it took half an hour to make it out of the stadium, which was pretty quick considering the amount of people that had to empty out. I was famished by the time we made it back to Shinjuku, so we went for udon outside the station.

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I’m so glad we were able to fit in a show this time around! I wonder when I will have another chance to see these dorks in concert again? Three shows in three years. I will cherish these memories forever. =)