Jin Akanishi - Japonicana Tour

On March 10th, I went to see Jin Akanishi in Vancouver for his Japonicana Tour, it was held at the center for performing arts.

I've always been a big fan of Jin (in both KAT-TUN and his solo works) so I really wanted to go.  My friend Kathy offered to go with me and help purchase the tickets.  In February the presale tickets went on sale and we waited until exactly 3 PM on the dot to buy them, and she quickly got us the VIP Meet and Greet ticket bundle which totalled to about $190 each.  Expensive!  And a second later everything was ALL sold out.

Anyways, so the big day eventually came and we met up and headed to the venue.    I've never been to this venue and I was surprised of how posh it was.   By the grand staircase the wall was made of massive collections of mirrors and it would be the perfect place to snap outfits, but we just wanted to get our seats.

The view of the stage from our seats

Me and Kathy, I look really strange but who cares lol

Anyways, the concert eventually started with the opening acts.  The first opening act was the singer Emmalyn Estrada, who's also originally from BC.   She's the sister of Elise Estrada who's pretty famous.  Personally I found Emmalyn to be prettier and a better singer than her sister.   She had this song I really liked that I recorded a bit!

After Emmalyn performed next up was the youtube singer Joseph Vincent.  I'm a pretty good fan of him because besides him being really hot (lol) he is really talented, funny, and down to Earth.  Kathy thought he should be a comedian!  There was this one girl a couple rows behind us who was basically having a one on one conversation with him.   He also brought up a girl from the first row where he explained that every girl deserves to be serenaded to once in their life, so he did a cover of "I want it that way" by the backstreet boys. Sooo jealous!

My failed pic of Joseph Vincent.

There was a longer intermission until the lights dimmed and Jin Akanishi entered the stage and performed Sun Burns Down.  I didn't get any recordings or pictures ( didn't want to risk it), but Kathy did , so you can check them out at her blog.  He played other songs from his Japonicana album, so basically that was it.   I got realy into Oowah , Yellow Gold, and Aphrodisiac though, considering they're my favourite songs.

Both Kathy and I agreed on that he looked really high during the concert.. there was even a 15 minute intermission in the middle which totally sucked.  After the concert the security people went up to all the people they remembered/caught taking footage and made them delete everything!  The staff told that the VIP people had to stay and line up to meet Jin and we would only get to pose for a picture and get him to sign our poster because he was very tired and didn't have a lot of time.  Which is a bummer, because I heard the concert the day before in LA people got to hug him.

What shocked us was there there was probably only about 20 people with the VIP passes, and we were 3rd in line and it wasn't in alphabetical order.. so basically we were one of the first people to get the tickets?? Super lucky, lol.

So when I met him he was really quiet and didn't really say anything, and it only confirmed that he was probably high on something just by how 'off' he was. But hey, whatever helps them perform better on stage.  He seemed really aloof and had an aura of arrogance, but I don't think it takes away from his talent.  All in all I had an awesome time and I hope he comes to Vancouver again some day. :P 

My signed poster, VIP laminate, and ticket.