LIVE REPORT: RADWIMPS WORLD TOUR 2024 IN JAKARTA

“THE WAY YOU YAWN, AND THE OUTCRY OF PEACE”

Ten months later after their last show in Jakarta, not even a year had passed, RADWIMPS held their show again in Jakarta this May, 2024. Jakarta was initially left out of the list. However, at the end, Jakarta was added to the list. We had mixed feelings, between happy and sad. We are happy and excited because they came back, but sad because it happened too soon. Due to the high cost of the tickets and the additional money required for our flight or train ticket to Jakarta, several of our friends were unable to attend the concert.

At first, I thought I couldn’t go to Jakarta because I had to leave my daughter again, but it was my birthday, so I went to the RADWIMPS concert again this year as a birthday present. I wasn’t wrong; it turned out that this concert was the best birthday gift for me. Thanks to my husband for helping all these dreams come true, and I appreciate my parent’s assistance in taking care of my daughter while I was away. At first, I wanted to bring my daughter to the concert, but she had to go to school.

I traveled to Jakarta by train for around 12 hours. It was quite long, but train is the most possible way. The train station is near my home, and it’s comfortable because I bought an executive tickets, which is the safest way compared to a bus or car.

I arrived in Jakarta a day before the concert. I met and hung out with some ID WIMPERS friends that I hadn’t met before. We knew each other from the ID WIMPERS WhatsApp group chat. It was so fun. But I will skip the stories and go straight to concert day.

BEFORE CONCERT

My friends and I went to the venue, Jakarta Convention Center, at around 1 p.m. The gate opened at 4 p.m., so we had so much free time. Arriving at the venue, it turned out lots of friends had arrived since early morning. We exchanged freebies or souvenirs with each other, and I got two full tote bags of souvenirs. There were some WIMPERS friends from neighboring countries such as Singapore, China, Hongkong, and Japan, CMIIW. Finally, I could meet Aya-san from Japan; we know each other from last year’s concert. It feels like RADWIMPS uniting us all into brothers and sisters.

While waiting for the gate to open, we wrote messages on the banners we had brought. Two banners were made by our friends, Haffad and Emma. There were six banners was made, but we thought it would be too many. So, we did vote in the WhatsApp ID WIMPERS group chat, and these two banners received the highest votes.

We took a lot of photos and videos while in line. Even so, we waved and called Takeshi Yao-san to take pictures of us. It turned out our faces were on Yojiro’s Instagram story, RADWIMPS tumbnail YouTube shorts, RADWIMPS reels, and Yojiro’s reels. Like, everywhere. So embarrassed but happy at the same time.

The main venue opened at 7 p.m. While waiting for the gate to open, we bought snacks from several food stalls, whose prices did not make sense. Small mineral water priced IDR 10k, we should got free water, if we didn’t get any free water, at least don’t throw away our water!

Besides eating pricey food and drink, we took photos at the photo booth, printed the photos, and bought some merchandises. The line for the photo booth and merchandise was quite long. In order to shorten the line, we took pictures of each other together. We stayed cool and avoided the sun because the waiting area was indoors and had air conditioning.

Actually, there were some dramas before this concert happened. It was about low-ticket sales, which caused this concert to move from BCIS to JCC. I don’t want to talk about that because it will just make us really disappointed, angry, and hurt our feelings. Let’s enjoy the beautiful moments only?

DURING THE SHOW

At 7 p.m., the main gate was opened. Fortunately, my friends and I were seated in the front row of the festival section, which was the fifth row from the front row of upgraded area, and we were seated in the middle of the stage. We were even more impatient when the show started an hour early.

It is finally here—the moment we have been waiting for. It’s time to sing Indonesia’s national anthem, Indonesia Raya. The last time I sang this song was last year at RADWIMPS concert too. Singing Indonesia Raya made us feeling goosebumps even more.

We heard them scream “RAD RAD RAD RADWIMPS” from backstage, which made us scream. Yes, they were so ready to hit the stage! Eno, Miki, Kuwahara, Yojiro, and Yusuke, one by one, came to the stage. We were crying and screaming at the same time. I still can’t believe they are in front of our eyes.

“Lights Go Out,” the first song, instantly got us to sing and dance. The sound and lighting were excellent. There were screens at the left and right stages as well. Compared to last year, when we didn’t screen at the venue, this year was better. It was really cool when Yojiro played his synth while dancing.

We started to jump and sing along to the second song, “Zenzenzense,” which was everybody national anthem. I’ve been listening to this song since years ago but have never gotten bored until now. Everybody was sweating and beginning to lose their voices.

The third song was “Darma Grand Prix.” I love the lighting and the on-screen background video. It was lit. Feels like in hell because the venue turned red and full of fire :D. Next song was “September-san”. We have been waiting for this song to play live here. Such an easy-listening song, perfect to dance to, and singing a long. We love both versions, RADWIMPS and Aimer, so everybody is waiting for the “Ooooo Seputanbaaaa” moment for a long time ago.

After September-san, we moved to “Nanoka”. This song was first played at the Bokunchi end-of-year party last year. I’ve never heard this song before Bokunchi. After that, this song was continuously played in almost every show on this world tour. We were slowly dancing and singing a long song. Nanoka is an easy song because it’s slow and written in English. Aside from the rap part. Haha!

Ok, let’s move to the next song. Sixth song was “Ai ni Dekiru koto wa Mada Arukai”. We waiting for this song since last year concert. Although it wasn’t the complete version, but it made us crying and melting. The next song was “Suzume,” performed by Toaka herself. Her voice is as clear as in the recorded version. Is she eating the CD or what? Her voice was amazing. She is such a cute girl, too. Even though she wore jeans inside her dress as a kid who was dressed up by her mom. I saw on her Instagram account that she was interviewed by local radio too.

While taking some rest from performing songs, it was time for Kuwa and Yusuke to speak in Indonesian. I heard Kuwa’s speech was the same as his last year’s speech; maybe he used his last year’s note: D. Compared to Yusuke, his vocabulary and sentences are improving. He could speak in long sentences without seeing his notebook. Such a smart man. Even he used slang words too!

After these two, we cheered and wanted Yojiro to speak in Indonesian too, but he refused and said, “I can’t speak at all. Gommennasai”. Yojiro, you can speak simple phrases like “apa kabar?” or “terima kasih.” These are some of the easiest words in Indonesian language. But I am surprised that Yojiro can speak Korean and can write in Hangul letters in his Korea post-concert post. Wow!

Ok next song was, “DADA”, “Setsuna Rensa”, and “Oshakasama”. These three songs make our voices run out even more. Yojiro’s voice was stable as usual. Additionally, the skill battle in Oshakasama was excellent. I adore how talented they are to watch. The background screen and lighting had such exquisite beauty. I loved how the pieces of art may shift and appear to fall apart one at a time. Its image was such a high clarity that it appeared to be in high definition pictures.

It was time to listen to some mellow music after three intense songs. It’s time for “Katawaredoki” and our other national anthem, “Sparkle.” I remembered that last year, after Katawaredoki, they played Sokkenai. It’s still in my head right now. I still cannot move on from last year’s concert. The audience sung all the way through, as usual. It was so magical supported by calm and galaxy lighting. It was beautiful.

Ok, since this post has become longer and longer, I will be more quick. The four last songs before the encore were “Yumetoru,” “NEVER EVER ENDER,” “Iin Desu Ka?” and “Kimi to Hitsuji to Ao.” These four songs make the crowd more crowded. I think although all of us were thirsty, it didn’t stop us from singing a these songs and made our throats dry and hurt.

After Kimi to Hitsuji to Ao has done, they just left us to backstage. They were changing clothes and came back to the stage with our banners. Emma, who made one of the banners, sat behind me and began to cry because Yojiro made her banner as a blanket. Lol. After that, we took some pictures together before continuing to encore songs.

Time for encore. We were united to scream and request “Seikai!! Seikai!!Seikai!!”.

As far as I remember, Yojiro said, “I heard you guys want Seikai?? Really??

We answered, “YEEEESSSSSS!!”

Yojiro, “But we will practice a little bit because we are so long not playing this”

They were practicing a minute, and then Yojiro said, “Wow, I’ve never expected that. Ok this is gonna be the very first time to perform this song outside Japan. Thanks for giving us the opportunity. Arigatou.”

Noooo, we are supposed to say thank you to you. This was such a dream come true. It’s almost impossible to hear this song live outside Japan, but you guys gave us this opportunity to witness a rare moment in our lives. My friends were crying, like, literally crying sooo hard and they faces became meme everywhere :D. Btw, so far, it turned out only in Jakarta, Seikai was performed. Even in Japan, it was last played in Anti Anti Generation Tour 2019. Wow, can we feel more special right now?

After Seikai, they performed the last national anthem, “Nandemonaiya.” My feeling when Nandemonaiya was played was still the same as the first time I heard it. I knew RADWIMPS from Nandemonaiya. Lucky for me, I could listen to this song live twice, last year and this year. The differences are that the last year’s version was midley with Kanata Haluka, and this year’s version is almost complete. We got the bridge part too. We were melted and crying again. My heart really hurts every time I listen to Yojiro sing the bridge part. I really wish I could listen to Nandemonaiya on the next RADWIMPS tour.

After two hours, it was finally time to sing the final song. Sooo sad. Time goes by so quickly. We still wanted to be with Yojiro. However, it was not possible, so as a farewell, they performed “05410-n” after making us cry with Seikai and Nandemonaiya. Even though it was our last song and we were unsure of when we would see each other again, this song got us thrilled again.

Thank you so much for your hard work that night. We really appreciated that. Arigatou gozaimashita.

AFTER CONCERT

The concert ended at 10 p.m. We are still inside the venue to take some pictures with artwork background on the screen. After taking some pictures, we moved out and took some photos and videos on the outside. Some of us were interviewed by some media and by promoters because some of us are admins of IG @radwimps_id and admins of the WhatsApp group, which has around 350 members.

We, in the group chat, work really hard to prepare everything and help Yojiro promote this concert. It really hurt us when we saw Yojiro, Yusuke, Kuwa, and overseas fans help promote this concert in order to reach a sold-out quota. But it’s even sadder that this concert didn’t sell out and even sold only 1/3 of the tickets compared to last year’s concert. I still don’t know what a promoter’s job is, actually. Isn’t this thing their job, right?

Ok let’s moving on.

It was midnight. We rode a grabcar and ended up eating street food near my hotel. Me and my friends had dined together. We were very thirsty and hungry since afternoon, and since the promoter staff robbed our drinks and foods without giving us free drinks inside the venue. Damn!

Despite all these sad things that happened to us, this concert made us really excited and happy. I saw all of us was smiling, laughing, and crying, and we’ve made a lot of new friends. We are so happy.

We hope RADWIMPS will come back to Jakarta on their next tour. I don’t know when, but we will wait patiently.

Thank you for singing Sokkenai in last year’s concert and Seikai in this concert. I know you guys love us even more. So sorry about the ticket’s sale drama that happened to us. See you and loooveee yaaaa!!

PS: It’s already been a week since the concert. But we are still not moving on from last week’s concert. Hiks.