First, a little quibbling: Why do they call the latest concert of Arashi as “Arashi-fes” instead of “Arashi-fest”?

I hope it’s just a translation mistake because when you shorten festival (matsuri) in English, it is “FEST” and not “FES”. It looks baka (stupid) to say “Arashi-fes”. I mean, do you say… “film FES”??? Perhaps it’s done for convenience to the Japanese tongue since if it’s Arashi-fest, they’d end up saying “ArashI-festO”? Regardless, this latest concert tour should be very interesting, if not, the most interesting so far.

This year’s concert dates have been announced to be on September 20 and 21 at the Kokuritsu. The 2013 dates have yet to be announced but it will be before Tokyo’s famed national stadium is closed for renovation. Japan is bidding for the 2020 Olympics, reports say.

What makes this latest tour interesting? Well, fans have a say on the song list by voting the songs they want the five boys to sing. The news here and here and how to vote (instructions for non-Japanese speaking fans) here.

And what more, the boys will perform on their own. No back-up dancers this time. While this is great news–because who needs lame back-up dancing as if those Johnny’s Juniors are in a jamboree rather than a full-scale concert at Tokyo’s largest venue–it makes me curious as to how they’re going to do it. Dancers do serve a purpose especially when the venue is too large for five people to spread out to. But then, the boys should know what they’re doing. Aiba, Ohno and Jun went to New York recently with Julie Kitagawa to watch Broadway musicals and Cirque du Soleil and get ideas for the new tour. This makes me even more curious how they’re going to bring what they’ve learned to the Arashi-fest (sorry, I will insist to call it that, this is my blog after all).

I’ve seen some of the preferences of the fans when it comes to the songs they want the boys to perform. I prefer voting for those songs they seldom sing like Thank You For My Days, Right Back To You, Natsu No Namae, Yes? No?, Runaway Train, Eyes With Delight, Subarashiki Sekai (imho, they don’t sing this enough)… But of course there are staples like Arashi (though for some concerts in the past they have stopped performing this but why not, it’s their signature song, not to mention their debut song and if I remember it correctly, still their biggest selling single) and Furusato. They totally own Furusato though I think the reason why it’s not been released as part of any album is because NHK holds the copyright to the song.

So let’s see what songs the fans will vote for and the boys will eventually sing at their matsuri. Arashi Matsuri let’s go!!!

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