My interest towards her sparked during Best Fiction era. I was...15 at the time, wow haha. I connect her to many important points in my early adulthood years. Baby Don't Cry always cheered me up during sad times, and when I had my first crush I used to listen to MY LOVE a lot. When I wanted to feel fierce, I listened to WHAT A FEELING, and it still works today haha. And the list goes on..
But what I wanted to write about is a little something about the two first Finally shows at Tokyo Dome I went to.
I feel regret of never seeing her live in a smaller venue before. Even though I can't complain my seats at the dome, first night I had almost arena seat on the lower level, and on the second I was in the arena not so far from her on the left side.
Why I think that I would have liked to see her on a smaller venue though? I remember KarenPang wrote that there isn't any good seat at the Tokyo Dome, because you're anyways far from the artist. That might be the case, but as it comes to an artist, I feel it might be related to that as well..
How should I explain..when watching Namie, it almost felt like watching a fish in a fishbowl. Or an athlete performing on the field. Like, you're witnessing it, watching, in the situation..but you're still quite not. Almost like there is this something between.
And in my head, that has possibly more to do with Amuro than the Dome.
Don't get me wrong, I loooooved the show. The lights, song selection, her, my luck with the seating, it was all perfect. This is just an interesting feeling I got.
What also felt funny when watching her, was to see how "calcultive" she was. With every move, every giggle, cute pose. IT WAS ALL SO PERFECTLY PLACED IT FELT SO FAKE. BUT YOU GO ALONG WITH IT. When she performed Baby Don't Cry in front of my section, did all the cute things, waved and such, even though you kinda see how everything is put in their place in such calculative way, it's too perfect not to fall in love with hahah. She is too perfect, too pretty, too cute not to fall in love with when you see her. Even though you're really not getting her fully as a person cos of the veil she has between her and the audience, do you understand what I'm saying?
That being said, the perfectly placed cuteness can at times be even too much for her to handle hahah. I don't remember at which song it was, but you could feel okay, now is the time of the mandatory waving + cute smile. And she usually was able to execute it so that it felt natural. Well, at that point, she wasn't. It wasn't shown on the big screen, but she had this moment for a couple of seconds after waving and smiling and audience going nuts, when she had this cross eyed moment where she had this "oh for fucks sake I guess I need to fake smile and you silly people go so nuts about it it's almost funny" kind of a face. It was priceless, I bursted into laughing. I think everyone can relate to that moment, at least people who have worked in customer service,pretty pony~ when you're not really feeling like smiling, but you force that clown smile on while your eyes go almost backwards hahhah.
But then again, since I went to see two shows, I could also see more spontanous things. For example, there was some point at the end of a song that normally doesn't get applause I guess, at least not on the first night. So she wasn't prepared for them, and had a genuine suprised face of "Oh, well thank you haha" and an extra bow down + wave.
Other random things:
The audience: quite dry, what I've noticed between Jpop divas is that Koda Kumi audiemce gets the most pumped up during the show. Second comes Ayu, then Namie. But this could also be about the venue. I also feel many Namie songs, for example In Two, isn't really suitable for "Japanese audience" to enjoy. Their reaction to songs like that isn't that enthusiastic, while I imagine foreign audience (me included) finds those type of songs really enjoyable. Though I had some cute Japanese people next to me copying the moves I made during those songs, since other Japanese around me were just standing still.
She cried a lot more on the second Tokyo Dome night compared to the first, and the last date that was shown in the news. She turned around couple of times and had pauses cos of crying. Which I'm sure were real emotions of the whole thing kinda getting to her head.
She had some sound issues on both nights, second night it got worse and she had a small break while singing, I guess she couldn't hear the backtrack properly. Plus there was a reeeeally weird echo during some parts of the concert. Like the backtrack went all over the place and echoed before her singing, and at one point dragged her a bit. Didn't bother me or Japanese people I feel, though it was noticable. Just interesting to see first hand the possible sound issued Dome as a venue could have.
All and all, I truly enjoyed seeing her live, the luck I had winning the tickets and the awesome seats I got. Experience like no other, and a dream of mine to see her and a show in Tokyo Dome
