Question 3.
How do I get tickets to a sold-out show?

If you the show you want to attend is sold out, all is not lost. I can’t guarantee you that you’ll be able to get tickets, but there are ways.

Before you start worrying about how to get tickets to a sold-out show, though, ask yourself...are there any other nearby stops on this tour that haven't sold out yet? Shows in downtown Tokyo invariably sell out faster than shows anywhere else, but oftentimes, bands will play shows in other parts of the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area that won't sell out as quickly. If you're not familiar with Japanese geography, by all means, look at a map! Cities like Yokohama, Yokosuka, Chiba, Saitama, Omiya, Urawa, Mito, Takasaki, and Utsunomiya are all within reasonable travel distance of Tokyo, in terms of both time and money. If money's no issue, remember that cities like Shizuoka, Hamamatsu, Nagoya, Kyoto, and Sendai are just a short bullet train ride away, doable as a day trip from Tokyo. When bands play shows outside of Tokyo, not only is it much easier to get tickets, but you can also look forward to a looser, more friendly concert vibe. Tokyo fans can be obsessive and vicious, but fans in rural areas don't get to see shows all that often, so they tend to be more relaxed and friendly.

But if you really, really want tickets to a sold-out show, try taking the following steps.

First: ask your online fangirl friends if any of them has an extra ticket to the show—check social networking sites and fan forums. If you have a mixi account, you can try asking around on mixi, too, though bear in mind certain mixi communities don’t allow ticket sales, so tread carefully.

If this fails, but you’re in Japan and a member on Yahoo! Japan Auctions, search for tickets there. Yahoo! Japan Auctions is like the Japanese version of eBay, and tickets to sold-out shows will invariably go on sale there. However, bear in mind that oftentimes prices on auction sites will be significantly higher than the original price of the tickets, especially for good seats or low line numbers. Also, many bands forbid the reselling of tickets through auction, and so it's possible that if you buy a ticket through auction, you'll show up at the venue only to find that your ticket has been voided at the door (this danger is particularly great for Buck-Tick). Also, unless you have a paid account with Yahoo! Japan Auctions, you’re not allowed to bid on items over 5000 yen, so you’ll have to decide where to draw the line here. Another thing to bear in mind is that most tickets are sold on auction a week or two before the show. It's hard to get tickets on auction in advance, and the closer to the date of the show, the better the prices will be. If auctions intimidate you, I am happy to help you get auction tickets via the Not Greatest Shopping Service. For more info about using the Not Greatest Shopping service for auctions, click here.

These days, a better option than auctions is Ticket Camp, a Japanese site which exist to facilitate resale of tickets among fans. Dealing with Ticket Camp is pretty difficult if you don't speak Japanese, but we're happy to help customers with Ticket Camp purchases - just email us with your request and we'll see what we can do.

However, even if auction sites or Ticket Camp don’t work out for you, the free-spirit approach can be surprisingly effective. The free-spirit approach: show up to the venue in a super-cute outfit carrying a big ol’ sign that says, “Looking for a ticket to [insert band name here]” or in Japanese, [[BAND NAME HERE] のチケットを譲って下さい]. Ideally, when using this approach, you should arrive several hours before the show starts and sit in a conspicuous place where you know lots of fans heading to the show will see you, but not so close to the venue itself that venue staff will come over to scold you. Have a lot of cash on you, and wait for a fan to come over and offer to sell you an extra ticket. Fans who have leftover tickets are just as eager to sell them as you are to buy them; if they don't sell them to you they lose money. In my experience, your chances of success, while never guaranteed, are pretty good, especially if it’s a big show on a weekday (unless it's Acchan's birthday in which case you have no chance.) Being an obvious foreign fan may help your case. Looking cute also really helps, so wear something flashy and flattering.

If the free-spirit approach fails, your only other option is to buy from the yakuza ticket scalpers, or dafuya. The dafuya are generally banned at standing venues but out in droves at seated venues…you can recognize them by their gaudy aloha shirts, gold teeth, and general aura of sketchball crustiness. No need to be afraid of them, they tend to be pretty nice guys, but they will definitely charge you at least 10,000 yen for a ticket and most likely quite a bit more, especially for any kind of remotely good seat. And, unlike that scene in Shimotsuma Monogatari, when they hold up fingers to show you their price, they are talking 10,000-yen bills. Oh yes they are. Want a pair of front row seats to Buck-Tick’s Memento Mori tour final at NHK Hall? That’ll be a cool 100,000 yen…per ticket. Plus charges for the time machine to get there. Just FYI.

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