Featured Song: Believe In You, TVXQ

I love the ocean.  I love the ocean in all its moods and colours.  When the wind tosses the water up high and the waves come crashing down; when ripples of water lap at the sand and over your feet; when the clouds slowly turn turquoise waters into a dark blue grey.

But I love the ocean the best when it is red, filled with screaming fangirls of all ages (and I mean of all ages) with matching light sticks, waving them to the same beat, chanting fanchants that I chant but don’t actually know.

It felt like I was in a cult.  But let’s be real, I’ve been a Cassie the minute Mirotic dropped back in 2008.  And I regret NOTHING.

I mean, the whole point of #tokyolo was TVXQ.  And even though the TVXQ duo aren’t my favourite members, they are still DBSK, and their skills and their strength and their charisma were everything I imagined it to be.  Maybe even more than what I imagined.

Everything, from their dancing, to their singing, to their costumes, to even their awkward Japanese gags, everything made me fall in love with them again.  I never saw the two as the strongest singers in the group, and I never really cared about them as much as I did the members who are now in JYJ.  But apart from their starting song, which was so cringe I couldn’t even, every moment was as strong and as synchronised as if they had always been a duo.  Both my friend and I felt all their energy and amazingness even from where we were seated, a little bit too high to be considered close to the stage, but close enough to still see them in their all their awesome amazing sublimity.

This was still not close enough for some of the fans though, because we saw so many people holding little binoculars.  At some point during the concert, when I glanced over to my right, the entire row of people next to me had their binoculars up and staring very very intently at Yunho and Changmin.  I never thought people actually brought binoculars to concerts, but here you go.  Japanese fangirls do.

Something else that Japanese concert-goers do is wave their light sticks in unison in the air, without singing and dancing and all that.  I knew it from all the concerts I’ve watched online, but it was still bizarre to see 50,000 light sticks being waved in unison in real life.  And it still didn’t stop me from singing along and bopping around like a tween at their first music festival.

There were also moments when the concert organisers would tell us to switch off our light sticks so that our light watches could glow in a different colour (usually blue) for the ballad sections.  The effect of the colour change was profoundly beautiful, and by the end of the concert, all the feels and the things were making fans bawl their eyes out.  Including me, but instead of bawling at end of concert feels, I was bawling at my two most favourite DBSK ballads, arranged and sung by two people, but in my heart was being sung by the five in their perfect harmony.

And once Yunho announced that they were going to take an indefinite break and implying that they were enlisting for their two years of military service towards the end of the concert, the bawling turned into a sobfest that actually threatened to turn the red ocean into a real ocean.  Not that we knew what was happening at the beginning when he was speaking, since my friend can understand only basic Japanese and my brain had switched off when he launched into a lengthy speech.  But we figured it out, once the sobbing from the encore ballads turned into ugly crying all around us.

Whoever did the setlist really knew how to make everyone open their floodgates, putting ballads before and after the announcement.

Whoever did the setlist also knew how to make everyone feel happy again, since they sprung two super upbeat surprise encore songs during the credits onto all of us.

Ultimately, in the end, no matter how they felt, I don’t think people could have left the stadium feeling dissatisfied and angry and depressed about anything

I mean, we will always wait for them to come back.

Because we will Always Keep The Faith.

And once they come back, we will be waiting.  And hopefully by then, both my friend and I will have enough money to actually buy a concert varsity jacket.

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#tokyolo: impressions
#tokyolo: Lockup
#tokyolo: LaQua Spa