SHINee Concert in Fukuoka
I went to Marine Messe on November 20th to see SHINee perform. The tour this year is called I'm Your Boy and they only came to Fukuoka for one night, so it was extra special. I've been to one SHINee concert before, but it was in Osaka and our seats were way up top in the back, so we could hardly see or really enjoy the show. This time, my friend and I sat in the stands, not too far back, and in the middle of the center stage and the main stage.
We first arrived and looked at the goods table. At SHINee concerts, the penlights are included and given to you as you walk into the concert hall. It takes the stress of buying one before hand out of the equation and makes sure that everyone has one. At Big Bang last year, I wasn't able to buy a penlight and stood in the crowd feeling lost without one. My friend and I both bought the black tour jacket. It has stars and a galaxy design, with SHINee written all over it. It's really versatile and fashionable so I'm excited to wear it around.
When we walked in, there were two lines, one for those with a QR code, and one for those who downloaded their tickets. It was a strange experience because we walked in an scanned our phones on a white electronic pad, and it lit up green if we were admitted.
A lot of us were nervous that ours would be the one that wouldn't work, so I breathed a big sigh of relief when the pad lit up green for me.I usually only listen to SHINee's songs in Korean, but lately they have been putting out a lot more songs in Japanese, and at karaoke it was always easier for me to learn the Japanese versions of their songs since I'm fluent in Japanese. My Korean is getting better, but randomly picking a song at karaoke and trying to sing it in Korean is still a little out of my range of abilities.
I was happy that I learned the lyrics to more of their Japanese songs, because I felt more engaged with the line up. They even sang a few songs in Korean, so that was nice.
The stage was really hi-tech, and all of their dances were really powerful and dynamic, as usual. They shook it up with cute performances, one where they drove around in a little car that was made to look like children made it out of cardboard and crayons. They also had similar looking houses and would go behind them to change, once emerging with the Fukuoka Hawks baseball uniforms on! (This was a nice touch because the Hawks won the championship this year.)
The boys looked amazing and did a great job of going around to all the fans. They stammered when trying to speak Japanese, but it was adorable and they laughed with us when they made mistakes. For the song Hello, the intro was done by having the audience first say greetings in about ten other languages, before getting around to English. It was really fun to shout with them in Korean, Japanese, English, French, etc.
There were so many costume changes, and during all of them, the TVs played cute or sexy videos of the boys. The concept was technology, so at one point, the concert caught a "virus" and the stage turned red, forcing the SHINee members on the screen to knock out all the bugs. It was a really cool concept that kept us entertained while we were waiting for the members to come back out.
My jaw was on the floor most of the concert. They killed the dances, they waved to us a lot, and the member love was overflowing. My cheeks hurt from smiling and I was really happy to get to go to the live this year because it made up for the first concert I went to where I could barely see anything.
SHINee is gearing up for Tokyo Dome next year and I'm really proud of them and excited to see where they will go from here. They have done an excellent job reaching out to Japanese fans, and even though they are an SM Entertainment group, they have been untouched by the controversy and member loss of other SM groups. I hope it stays that way.Next time I see SHINee, I hope it will be in Korea! I'd love to compare their tours in Japan with those in South Korea.