As a K-pop fan that’s been to over 20+ concerts, gone to meet and greets with idols, and even been invited to shows for free by agencies, I thought I would be way more prepared when I bought a ticket to AMPERS&ONE’s fall&n angel Fan Meeting event hosted at Cool Osaka TT Hall. AMPERS&ONE is one of my favorite K-pop groups in recent memory, and I was devastated when they first announced their 2026 Japan fan meeting… in Tokyo.
Japan’s concert scene is notorious for being strict, dedicated, and frighteningly rule-following. Some fan meetings won’t even let you buy a ticket without having a Japanese address or phone number! This makes it super hard for foreigners or even visa holders to get access to tickets.
Shinkansen tickets are 177 USD round-trip and are wildly inconvenient for the average college student. I had resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to miss seeing one of my favorite artists for the third time, the most times I had ever seen one group. So, I was beyond excited when, weeks after their Tokyo fan meeting on January 21st, they announced an Osaka fan meeting hosted on a national holiday!
A friend and I decided to get tickets together, which was easier than normal since the website didn’t require a Japanese phone number and enabled us to use digital tickets to get into the venue. Now that the worst was over, there was the question of getting to the venue. The advantage of living in Kyoto is the proximity to Osaka. Osaka is the third-largest major city in Japan, after Tokyo and Yokohama. Many artists who do Japanese promotions often stop in Osaka after Tokyo, especially Asian artists. Osaka has many incredible concert venues, both big and small. KYOCERA Dome is the premier venue for concerts in Osaka that has hosted many huge K-pop artists this year, like aespa, TXT, and IVE.
There are a myriad of things that make going to a Japanese concert different from going to an American concert. For starters, fan meetings often happen in the middle of the day. The fan meeting ran from 14:00 to about 16:00 (2-4 PM) and doors opened at 13:30 (1:30 PM). There were also two sessions and, in addition to the aforementioned, they also hosted one later in the day from 18:00 to 19:00 and opened doors at 17:30.
When buying a Japanese concert ticket (if you can from overseas), you may be shocked to see the lack of a certain blue-themed ticket aggregator site that makes millions of dollars hawking tickets to desperate fans: Ticket Master. Japan does not really use it or its companion, Live Nation, to sell tickets. If you want to buy a ticket, you go through a site like Lawson Ticket (ローチケ), which I previously used. Yes, the convenience store chain Lawson also has their hands in selling concert tickets. I found this website easy to use because it walked me through all the steps, and the English translation was pretty standout.
By far, the biggest cultural shock in trying to buy a concert ticket in Japan was not being able to choose your seat. In Japan, when you buy a concert ticket, you pay a flat rate based on the type of ticket you want to buy. For example, a general admission ticket was around ¥13580, which goes for about 86 USD. A VIP ticket went for around 120 USD and came with benefits including sound check and a section closer to the front of the stage.
When you arrive at the venue, you can view your digital ticket and see where your seat is. It’s similar to being on an airplane and not being able to select your seat. This can be inconvenient for fans who are attending shows at bigger venues because it’s possible to get seated in a section with barely any visibility, and you have no control over it. However, we got lucky. We were seated in the last row, which was only the second row of the back section. They only seated 50% of the venue, which was great for visibility.
Similar to everything else in Japan, Japanese concerts also have unspoken cultural norms that are followed to the T. No one really cheers during the songs, unless it’s to do the fan chant. Fan chants are special fan-created (or sometimes artist-created) chanting patterns that fans say during songs at certain times in unison. I didn’t know a single one, so I took that as my chance to hoot and holler freely. Since we were seated in the dead center and they kept turning the house lights on, I felt like I was in a petri dish being observed by my favorite idols.
Knowing they could hear my support loud and proud completely removed the anxiety I felt for being one of two foreigners in the room and not really understanding most of what happened during the show. I am beyond grateful for this experience to not only see some of my favorite artists, but also have the opportunity to see them while studying abroad in such a fascinating country.
If you want to learn more about Temple University Japan and study abroad in Kyoto, check out the Temple Study Abroad website! Here on our Global Storytellers blog, you can also read more stories from students abroad across the globe just like me!