How to enjoy Visual-kei live gigs in Japan
1. Get an advance ticket.
2. On the gig date, line up at the entrance of venue in order of reference number.
3. When you enter the venue, pass the ticket to a ticket-collector and tell him/her which band you came to see.
4. Pay a charge of beverage, which costs normally 500JPY or 600JPY. (*1) You are given a paper ticket or a guitar pick as a drink ticket.
5. Put your baggage to a coin locker or cloakroom. Mostly, lockers are inside of venue, but sometimes outside, depending on venues.
6. Gig starts around 5PM (depends on events), and finishes around 9-10PM.
7. If many bands perform in the event, one band has 25 – 35 minutes to perform. Between the shows, there are time for preparing the stage for about 10 minutes.
8. Staff (or sometimes a member of band) sells merchandise after the band’s show. The booth are sometimes closed in short time, so please be careful at the opening hours. Depends on bands, sometimes they sells merchandise before the show. When they do so, they’ll announce the opening hours via Twitter or site.
9. Exchanging drink ticket and beverage is available anytime during the event. However, some venue closes drink counter before the end of the event, so please be careful at the opening hours.
(*1)
Why do you need to pay for a drink charge?
– Not all venues, but many small venues run their business as eating places in Japan. So they need to sell drink to customers (audience in this case). Thank you for your understanding.
Guitar picks as drink ticket
Drink ticket (paper)
Some venues don’t give you a physical drink ticket. If so, your gig ticket is treated as a drink ticket. After receiving the beverage, your ticket will be stamped.
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