Arashi Marks Arashi Around Asia Taipei Arena Oct 11-12, 2008 *capsule
This is without a doubt the best week of my life! To be able to witness not one, but two great LIVE acts in a week must surely rank high among one's life achievements. I mean, this would hardly happen in any given year, let alone a week.
Watching SMAP was amazing enough but to be able to top it off with Arashi - WOW!!! Catching 2 live shows in the same weekend - sugoi!! I came here without knowing anyone but have met some very friendly and helpful fans who have made both my stay here and the cons so memorable!
This shall be a capsule report for now as 2 cons surely deserve its own writeup. Have to mention that I am glad I caught both shows - MC part for day 2 was much longer and there was more fooling around. As usual they picked on my Shokun!! but to our benefit coz they repeated the Yes? No? Goddess of Mercy formation 3 times from different angles to show us Shokun's actions. The poor guy complained that nobody was paying any attention to him as he was standing at the back of the formation...and of coz we all enjoyed the bantering it was so good-natured. ^_~
Special mention goes to the harried interpreter Ms Ko-chan... Aibachan was rattling off so fast in his usual manner he almost didnt stop for breath...and she had to play catchup all the time LOL... You know how once Aibachan gets caught up in a topic, he hardly ever pauses? Ninokun then picked up his MC.... LOL the poor girl had to butt in all the time just to do her job.
They still have some room for improvement with their Mandarin but Jun's diction was pretty good. He kept repeating "Wo ai ni men" ("I love you all") every chance he got which thoroughly delighted all the fans kyaa~~
Third highlight was hearing Beautiful Eyes, the original soundtrack to Ninokun's new fall drama with Nishikido Ryo, for the second time tonight. Its due to be released as their new single on Nov 5. The drama will debut on Oct 17. After it ended, we refused to leave and asked for another encore which they promptly obliged. This time, they sang their hit tune from 4 years ago (another Olympic year), Hero. This was a bonus song as they ended the show on Sat with Beautiful Eyes.
To experience Arashi live ~ c'est trés magnifique. Seeing is believing is never more true here. They danced, sang and wiggled their way into our hearts. Fans both old and new were captivated by their electrifying showmanship and indescribable charisma. I felt blessed to be able to witness the awesome shows in their presence. Overheard their 'sometime' fans chatting while leaving the arena that they have been thoroughly converted - it didnt come as a surprise to me at all.
Lastly, their car entourage sped past us fans post-con. We were heading towards Nanjing East Road towards the subway when the fans screamed their lungs out. So we turned our heads to check out what had happened and lo and behold, their car with the smoked windows zoomed past in a hurry. I didnt note down the car number but what difference would that have made? It WAS the conclusion to an amazing week.
Download Beautiful Eyes here:
Megaupload: www.megaupload.com/
Length: 4 mins 43 sec
Size: 5.57MB
*capsule - full report to follow (as yet undetermined date)