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H!P News | 2004 April 28

Guide to buying H!P tickets.

So finally, I got around to typing up some information for you which may be helpful when you want to buy concert tickets for Hello!Project concerts in Japan.

Preperations

You have probably been able to find the official concert announcement website. This site lists the dates and the times when the H!P concerts will be held. If your japanese is not so great a clever thing to do is to print out the page (in japanese) and take it with you so you can refer to it when you are confronted with the terrible english ability of the clerk helping you get your ticket. (You may want to take a translated copy as well for your personal use).

At the actual concert you may find these items usefull. Glowsticks, these are plastic sticks that come in a number of colours. They are activated by "breaking them" this will cause the two fluids inside to mix so the glowing starts. You may want to buy these at some place cheap before the concert, they do sell them near concerts of course but there they are more expensive. There are also all kinds of more advanced reusable glowing devices, I'll leave the use of those to your own discretion.

You may want to bring some binoculars especially for the bigger venues. Especially if you end up on the balconies or at the back you might not see a lot of what is going on on stage without any. You also may want to bring a towel and a clean shirt if you plan to do a lot of jumping around. Image and Audio recording devices are not allowed of course. You can easily smuggle in a camera because they don't search you very carefully at the enterance but you will not be able to use it inside with the numerous security people present.

Types of tickets.

Often there will be two types of tickets SS and S seats. SS seats are the best places, they are nearest to the stage and mostly only sold through the fan club. The fan club allows members to sign up for SS seat tickets and then distrubutes them by means of a lottery. Those that sign up for tickets therefore never know if they will get a ticket and what place they will get. They can sign up for 2 or 4 tickets depending on the importance of the particular concert.

As far as I know there are no official sales channels for H!P concert tickets that will let you order them from abroad. So you will either have to find someone who is in Japan to sort things out for you or you will need to obtain tickets after you have arrived yourself. There are many ways to obtain tickets in Japan, I will mention a few on them divided in two categories, the official way and the not so offical way.

The official way.

By this I mean buying a regular concert ticket at the actual price shown on the ticket. You can buy these tickets at all kinds of sales points. Most convenience stores (e.g. Lawson) have ticket vending machines. Of course these machines are japanese only and speaking good english is not a prerequisite for people to work at a convenience store.

If you know little japanese the best option to get an official ticket before a concert is to find a place where you can buy a ticket from a ticket counter. In Tokyo there is an easy to find PIA counter at the 109 store (not the 109-2 store where the official H!P store is at) in Shibuya. It's easy to find, near the Shibuya central station and on the 2nd level on the outside of the 109 store, there are stairs leading up to it on the right side of the store.

Finally, official tickets can be bought at the door of the concert hall. Just before the concert begins a ticket window will open and the last tickets will be sold. For some reason even when concerts are listed as sold out tickets will often still be sold at the hall. These days H!P concerts rarely sell out though, so there's usually little risk involved.

Often the places allocated like this will not be the best. You will be way at the back of the concert hall or on some balcony. If you buy at a ticket counter you may have some choice about your seat though. Ticket shops almost always have books containing blueprints of all japanese concert halls so you know where you will end up. If you want to get your hands on better tickets you may need to resort to "not so official" ways to obtain a ticket.

The not so official way.

Japan is full of ticket resell shops. These are little shops filled with a number of display cases containing tickets for concert, sport venues, theatre shows etc. etc. The difference with a regular ticket shop is that these tickets have been bought, sold to the store and now the store is selling them to make a profit on them. The prices for the tickets at these stores are what you might expect them to be. Good seat tickets will have a premium on the ticket price, bad seat tickets will often be sold below the price shown on the ticket. Of course this means someone needed to get rid of a bad ticket and sold it at an even worse price to the shop.

Another factor on the ticket price is the demand for it. A ticket resell shop owner may not have a clue what a morning musume graduation is about except for the fact that those otaku fanboys are willing to shell out huge sums of money. Therefore the more important the concert the more expensive the tickets will be.

For the brave amongst you there is the option of waiting until the last moment to buy a ticket. Prices for tickets start at a high point weeks before the concert because there is plenty of time for an idiot to come into the store and pay too much for the ticket. As the concert date draws near though, prices will start to fall, and hours before the concert starts they will go at dump prices. So if you leave just enough time to race from the ticket shop to the concert hall you could be way in the front for very little money.

Tickets will show the floor and the row number, the most expensive tickets will be SS tickets near to the stage. Again ticket resell shops will have books containing concert hall blueprints so you can ask them to show you where this specific seat is. These days the best tickets will often have their seat number blanked out when they are on display. This is because the ticket reseller is trying to protect the fanclub member that sold the ticket. If H!P finds out someone is reselling their ordered tickets they will be ousted from the fanclub. The sticker that blanks out the seat number does normally show the row number and floor section but sometimes just in kanji.

Also take care that the ticket you are going to buy is actually in a place where you will be able to be at. Ticket shops will sell tickets for venues all over the country but of course mostly for local events. A great way to get a cheap good seat is if you can find a ticket for a place that would cost a japanese person a lot of money to travel to. This is taken into account in the pricing of the ticket but if you have a JR railpass you won't need to worry about that cost factor.

The best ticket reseller shop for H!P tickets in Japan is on Takashita Dori in Harajuku. This colourful street is the center of Japanese youth culture and many people who have spare tickets hand them into this shop. The high demand and supply of H!P tickets ensures that the prices are fair and that there is a good selection of seats available. The store also resells all kinds of H!P related goods. Other reseller shops can be found outside of major railway stations.


(The best ticket reseller. Tokyo, Harajuku, Takashita Dori)

In my experience ticket reseller shop are the best way to find a good seat ticket for a fair price. I have never bought a ticket online yet, but I suspect the pricing mechanics are similar to those you can expect at a ticket reseller shop. You may of course be in a situation where a ticket reseller is not an option and decide to take your chances on getting a ticket at the actual concert.

Outside of concerts, usually on the way between the parking lot/railway station and the concert hall, you will notice shady figures hanging around. These guys are doing something which is actually illegal in Japan. Selling concert tickets at a profit outside of a concert. They won't be too obvious that they are selling tickets and you may need to approach them yourself to ask for tickets. Of course there is little chance that you will be able to negotiate the price and they will ask for a lot of money, unless you are really really brave and willing to wait till the actual concert has started and they will be willing to part with their leftover tickets at discount prices.

There will of course also be normal fans wanting to get rid of tickets for whatever reason, friends that canceled at the last minute etc. They will often have their ticket sale prearranged on the internet but sometimes you could be lucky and run into someone with that great seat he wants to get rid of and being willing to do so at a reasonable price. You could make yourself a sign saying that you are looking for a ticket and hold it up at a railway station exit near the concert hall.

A final word of advice, go twice! Get yourself a good seat for the afternoon show and then another cheap seat (or another good seat if you have luck) for the evening show. Get blown away by the first concert and miss half of what happened and then take a backseat and enjoy the show the second time round at your leisure. It makes sense, you will spent money to travel to the concert hall and how often are you in a position to see an H!P concert, so go twice.