We arrived at the Dome and there were quite a few people making their way inside. On walking through the door I had to surrender my water bottle lid...what the? So I had to carry an open bottle around for a while! Once we found our seats and sat down the concert started straight away. The stadium was incredible and we had a great view from the nose-bleed section! I even felt a short burst of giddiness from being up so high! Jess and Liam scored great seats near ground level while Karen, Julian, Marie, Tina, Lauren, Jono and I had seats with a walkway in front of us so we had heaps of room. The only bad thing about that was you had to be a bit sneaky about taking photos!!! I got caught! Whoopsy!
The Chilli Peppers sounded awesome and there were heaps of Japanese people dancing crazily in their seats! I was impressed with the stage set up, certainly the most high-tech set I have seen at any concert. There was a gigantic pixilated screen that spanned the width of the stage and just as tall that served as a giant TV as well as a projection screen. On the front of the giant screen were 4 smaller TVs. I loved watching the base player do his snake-like head whips,and his finger work on his guitar was something else! The band members clearly have a lot of fun performing and love jumping around the stage. They played a lot of their new stuff as well as some favourites, "Californication", "Give it Away", "Scar Tissue" and "By the Way". The lead guitarist sang a rendition of "SOS" and the base guitar did a trumpet solo (just for something a bit different!). They played for a total of 80 minutes and we all had a great time.VISITORS COMMENTS:
Well Friday was certainly a day to remember! Liam and I had spent the afternoon traipsing around the Himeji Castle (we thought it would be a leisurely afternoon... oh so wrong...) so we were exhausted already by the time that we met up with "the others" to go to Osaka to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Liam, Jodi and I agreed it was hard to get excited as the whole experience of seeing such a huge band in another country was quite surreal. The pic on the left is quite fitting as this is when I really started getting excited (my little bit of a dance of excitement drawing a bit of a ribbing from Liam and Jodi!) Backtracking, the train ride to Osaka was fine, then it was our induction to the subway system in Osaka (the blanks between can be filled in in Jodi's blogging above). This was Liam and my first real experience of being crammed into trains. In Australia, we think there can't possible be any more room, and the Japanese somehow find enough room for 10-20 more people AT EACH STATION! It's remarkable. Anyway, the Chilli Peppers were full of much more energy than those of us in the crowd in the steamy heat of the Dome, but it was absolutely worth the time and effort. I was even more excited as I could see perfectly. even when everyone was standing :) I love Japan!