It's been A WEEK, y'all. I attended 3 (THREE?!) concerts. Let's start from the top.
On Saturday (May 27) I headed up to Seoul to see one of Jonghyun's solo concerts - he's doing a series of 20 shows, I got tickets for 4 of them. I had heard that the merch lines were insane, so I got there super early... and waited in line for 3 hours. Exciting stuff. I made friends with a Japanese fan who was near me in line and spoke English really well. She flew in for the weekend to go to the show. While we waited in line, they handed out papers with all the merch items listed on it and we were supposed to check the items we wanted to buy so we could just hand the paper to the person when we got to the register. My Japanese friend was laughing at me because I kept asking to borrow her pen to add to the list of items I was buying. They were sold out of the kazoo by the time I got to the front of the line ;~;
After the merch line, I only had time to go downstairs and buy a coffee before it was time to go in for the show. There were no camera or phones allowed during the show, but it was 2 and a half hours of perfection.
Jonghyun spent 3 years as a radio DJ and he had a segment on his show where he would read letters sent in by viewers and give them advice or comforting words. He did a segment like this during the concert - fans in attendance were able to submit letters before the show and he read a few of them on stage, found the fan who submitted the letter in the audience, and talked to them about what they wrote to him. He also asked if there were any couples in the audience. There was one couple up on the second floor, so he interviewed them and then dedicated the next song to them - and it was what's known as the Cockroach Song. It's essentially a song about how everyone has someone they're dating but he's totally single and bitter about it. During the song the couple in the audience were on camera / on the screens and the production crew gave them cockroach heads - it was really cute.
He sang Love is so Nice and I cried? It's not even a sad song? I don't know what happened. Jonghyun sang Just Chill while laying on a sofa, wearing a robe, acting cute, and you bet the crowd was going wild. He had a remote and was pretending to change channels on an imaginary tv. The remote fell off the sofa and he had to pick it up to use it again later in the song. He also put an eye mask on for part of the song. The crowd was not okay.
Handbells and kazoos were sold as merch items because there were songs where he had the audience play along. He has us play the handbells for Gloomy Clock and kept changing the pace to tease us, then during the last song, Beautiful Tonight, Jonghyun had different sections of the crowd play different melodies on their kazoos while he did this insane kazoo solo. I was kazoo-less ;~;
I had Shake Shack for dinner! It was exactly like in the US and honestly more than 3 months was far too long to go without a burger. Ate dinner and caught a bus back home.
Sunday I woke up super early and was at the bus stop at 8:30 to go back into Seoul. One of my students was ALSO at the bus stop... and I literally hid behind a pole so he didn't see me in my street clothes carrying a lightstick. (It worked - he never saw me.) This time I was going over to Jamsil to see EXO at Jamsil Olympic Stadium. I was there by 10am and got right in the merch line which thankfully only took about 45 minutes to get through. They didn't have the shirt I wanted, so I went back to COEX to get a different EXO shirt and walked around COEX mall for a bit to kill time. I was allowed into the venue at 3, then just hung out until the show started at 6. For future reference: they don't have concessions inside the venue. So if you don't want to drink sink water... like I did... buy a water bottle outside and bring it in.
The next show I went to was on a Thursday night. Jonghyun again. I get home from work around 5:45 and the show started at 8. Traffic getting into Seoul was bad, and I actually hopped off the bus a few stops early and speed-walked the rest of the way to the venue, but I was in my seat at 7:57 so I'd consider that a success.
I think this show was even better than Saturday's - partially because I was in the very last row in the theater so I could dance without having to worry about blocking someone behind me. AND there was an empty seat next to me so I had even more dancing room.
Jonghyun changed the setlist a bit for this show. We played the handbells for 2:34 and the kazoos were used for an extra song. There was another couple in the audience but they didn't want to be interviewed, so instead Jonghyun found a girl who was single and interviewed her, then she was a cockroach for the Cockroach Song. When he performed Just Chill he dropped the remote /again/ and he also had dropped his eye mask on the floor so when it came to that part of the song he couldn't find it and he covered his face with his blanket instead. He found the eye mask after the song was over and put it on anyway just to be cute.
There's a set in the middle where he performs Let Me Out / Elevator / End of a Day back-to-back and it's the most incredible vocal performance. During Elevator there's a break in the song and he extended that pause for what felt like forever and I was so swept up in it I think I forgot to breathe.
And I get to see this show TWO MORE TIMES ! And my seats for both of those shows are closer to the stage !