Zepp Osaka Bayside — Attraction in Osaka

Great concert venue with one exception: there are basically barricades every 3 meters that the audience can use to lean on during the show, but what it really does is prevent any sort of movement by the crowd.

We travelled to Osaka to see Weezer and we were not disappointed. The sound engineers and the venue were great, the walls are covered on a sound-dampening material to make sure there is no bad feedback or reverberations.

I was concerned about ticket pick-up because I was an English speaker who purchased through E+. Come to find out of you don't have tickets in-hand, you have to go the will-call line and then to the back of the line.

Tickets for this venue are numbered, and they allow entry based on number groupings. 1-100, 101-200, etc., so will call tickets are the back of the line and last to get access to the venue. This coupled with the barricades throughout the venue floor means that there is no opportunity for you to move closer to the stage to get photos, and if you're stuck behind a tall person, you might not have any visibility of the stage at all. Highly recommend purchasing tickets early to get the reserved seating on the balcony, but there are...

While the venue itself is okay, there are a few problems with how the staff manages the fans.

Firstly the fans are broken up into several sections based on their ticket number. However, people join these sections in no particular order, so there is a lot of queue-jumping. This is annoying as there are no section/seat reservations, so it’s very much first come first served. So even if you turn up three hours before the show starts, you could still end up at the back of the hall.

Secondly, there is an extra charge of 6 00円 when you get to the door for a drink. While this is common at most small gigs in Japan, I really didn’t expect it from a venue this size. So this is clearly at the discretion of the venue management. On top of that, you’re not allowed to take that drink into the main hall (unless you order a bottle of soft drink) This drink token policy should be scrapped.

Also, can the venue enforce people sitting down if they’re on the second floor in the SEATED section? Not only is it dangerous for people to stand up, but it defeats the point of buying a...

Small arena venue. The arena is composed of two floors. The first floor is segregated standing, the second floor is seated. The way it is set up ensures a good view of the stage for the whole audience. There is a bar on the first floor. There are also lockers inside. The arena is a five minute walk from Sakurajima station. It has a 10pm curfew so very easy to make the last train. You can stay...