Went to the Chage and Aska concert over the weekend. S'pore is the second stop on their Asian Tour 1994 which consists of three locations: Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei. For those of you who are not familiar with Chage and Aska. Their song "Say Yes" was made famous outside of Japan by the Japanese TV series "101 Proposals." The series was shown both in S'pore and New York. Though in NY, it was shown on a less wider scale on, an obscure UFH channel, WNYC-31. Sad to say, I might have been one of the few people who actually caught the show in NY. But it seems to be much more popular in S'pore since it was shown on SBC. If you lived near a Yaohan in the States, you can easily rent out the tapes. It's quite an interesting series.
Chage and Aska are also quite popular in the Asian region for another reason. There are quite a few Chinese adaptations of their songs, both Cantonese and Mandarin. I went to the concert because two people in my Japanese class wanted to go. One is a classmate who keeps pushing for the S$80 tickets. The tickets range from S$40 to S$160 for this particular concert. The other person is my Japanese teacher who have lived in S'pore for the past 10 months. Her name is Namani. She told me that Japanese lessons used to be very popular in S'pore. But after the bubble burst in Japan, less and less S'porans are taking the classes. I, on the other hand, am currently having problem with NOT tagging along with anything that anyone would suggest 8-) Mamani also brought along another Japanese friend, Kumi, to the concert. Kumi is also a teacher. She has been in S'pore for 2 years now and has no urge of going back to Japan.
We started the evening in this Japanese restaurant on the 3rd floor of Raffle City. It's called Hisatomo and it's one of the most popular Japanese restaurants among my friends. Mainly because of its relatively low price-to-taste ratio 8-) A Sushi set is about S$10 which consists of 6 maguro roll, 6 sushi and a bowl of udon. After the meal we went to the S'pore Indoor Stadium which is near Kallang. It's smaller than the Meadowland Arena in NJ and there is no hockey or basketball games held there 8-( BTW, can you believe that there is no ice-skating rink in S'pore?
One of the first comments by Mamani was that she felt like being in Japan again. Most of the people around us spoke Japanese. You see Japanese family with children everywhere. The stadium was about 80% full. I was surprised that you don't see any stands selling food or beer in the stadium (no, no bud light here.)
They started the concert with a short film with Chage and Aska. The setting of the film is 50 years in the future. The basic plot is two old men, Chage and Aska, reminiscing about the good old days with guest appearances by many Japanese notables. The movie was in Japanese with Chinese subtitle. If you only speak English, you then will be totally in the dark. But since you are in the concert, you will be in the dark anyway 8-) Anyway, in the film, when they start to reminiscing about their Asian Tour 1994, they flashback to the performance which is the actually performance. I thought that was quite clever.
The were few sections occupied by the Japanese Chage and Aska fan club. You can really tell the difference between the S'porean and the Japanese fan. The Japanese are already up and dancing away at the second song while S'pore didn't stand up until the climax of the show. Mamani and Fumi went crazy during the climax of the show which totally blew their normal nice mannered image out of the water. When they let go, they really let go 8-)
Both Chage and Aska have great voice and their songs are sensational. But I do think Aska is the more talented one. Chage try to please the audience with Mandarin. After he spoke a few incomprehensible Mandarin sentences, he ask in Mandarin if the audience understood what he was saying. The audience replied with a resounding NO. I thought it was a very interesting way to work a crowd with foreign audience. Personally, I didn't understand any of the Japanese. And it was funny to note that because of the language barrier, most of the time when a joke was cracked, either the Japanese side felt silent and the S'porean side was laugh, or vice versa. I guess you can't please everyone 8-)
At one point during the concert, they had a direct link to New York. They were singing with their backup band in New York, at least that's what they claim. I found out from someone later that the newspapers had reported that it is a fake and not a real direct link to NY. I was kind of disappointed by the ending. They closed with a song unfamiliar to me and there was no encore. It finished like a Broadway show with everyone taking a bow. Then they went back to the film for a few minutes and the whole thing was concluded by rolling the credit. I didn't leave the stadium feeling satisfied, unlike leaving the local hawker center 8-)
Now comes the worst part of it. The stadium was easy to get to, but getting out was another matter all together. Since we didn't have a car, the only choice was either a taxi or a bus. There were full of people on the bus stand. So we decided to go to a shop for a drink. We came out later and it was still the same so we decided to look for a taxi. After waiting for half an hour, we decided to squeeze into the bus. By the time I got the MRT station, it was around midnight. As the fate would have it, I just miss the last train going westbound.
The public transportation system in S'pore grinds to a halt around midnight. Also at midnight the taxis tag on another half in addition to the normal fare. So, around 11:45pm, most of the taxis will disappear or refuse to stop. Then after midnight, they will try to reduce queue by charging the higher fare. I met this person at the taxi stop and he has been trying to get a cab for the past 2 hours! Saturday night in the downtown area is a real difficult place to get a taxi. I finally got one about 12:30am. The rule of thumb is, if you need a cab, there will never be one around. But if don't need a cab, there will be plenty 8-)
All in all, I thought it was a great concert and only the ending was a little let down. But it was mainly from my expectation that everyone gives an encore in a concert. It was definitely a memorable experience. I am looking forward to my next concert in S'pore 8-)
11/05/94
