Chihara Minori’s zomg concert at DaiCon 2009

First of all, this is going to be picture-less, until the DaiCon committee sees fit to release some to us.

Lets be frank: this is the main event of DaiCon. I know people who came from East Malaysia just to catch her concert, and there were even some fans who travelled all the way from Japan. They were so dedicated to Minorin they prepared flags and lightsticks for concert goers, and had the DaiCon committee teach the people gathered in the hall how to wave them. Slow motions for slow songs, fast motions for fast songs… ok, nothing too hard – until you see them waving the sticks non stop for an hour and a half. They must be weight lifters one and all.

I missed the start of the concert, but I can tell you that from beyond the barrier, the cheers and whoops as the first beats of Contact ~ 詩人の旅 started playing, was amazingly loud. Contact is the title track of Minorin’s 2nd album, and one of my favorites, so you can imagine how hurriedly I made my way into the concert area. I found Minorin on stage, in a shirt and a silver knee length dress, singing her heart outs, while the fans waved the lightsticks to the beat of the song, jumping up an down all the while. It was awesome – I’ve been to concerts by big name bands where the crowds were far less enthusiastic, and trust me when I say the crowd plays a huge part in a concert’s success. Already Minorin’s ‘mini concert’ looked to be not so mini in spirit.

In between songs, Minorin too the chance to talk to the crowd. Unfortunately most of what she said was lost to me, but she did ask us if we were having fun (tanoshi?), to which the crowd replied with an enthusiastic yes. I think having the Japanese fans around helped a lot – they were there to bail out the Malaysian fans on one or two occasions when the Japanese got too complex for most to understand.

The songs that really got the crowd going were the expected few: Nagato Yuki’s character song 雪、無音、窓辺にて, 純白サンクチュアリィ(Junpaku Sanctuary, my favorite Minorin song!) and Paradise Lost. She also performed her newest single, Tomorrow’s Chance – I believe she said it was the first time she would be performing it live and she was nervous? Someone tell her she performed the song perfectly.

Throughout the 10 song set, Minorin kept up the rapport with the fans, and said ‘arigato’ so many times I started feeling embarrassed. If anyone should be saying ‘thank you’, it should be us in the hall, because Minorin was seriously performing for us. The crowd was probably far from her biggest, but she was so friendly and made the concert so personal that I seriously regretted not paying for AWSM tickets.

In almost no time at all we were at the last track, everlasting…, also the final track off Minorin’s latest album. Before she had even had the chance to sing that song, there were already cries of ‘en-co-ru’, which she laughed off. When she finally finished the song and left the stage, the chanting of ‘en-co-ru’ started in earnest. I’m not sure how long this went on for, but it felt like ages to me. I was half expecting no encore but the fog machine started up, and pretty soon we had Minorin back on stage, dressed in a Kebaya (and looking stunning!).

For her encore, Minorin performed 3 more songs. The crowd lapped up every minute of it, and when she finally left for real, I think everyone was satisfied and happy. Dear miss Chihara Minori, you said the best part of working abroad was the fan’s smiles? Then you’ll be glad to know that we enjoyed your concert so much we were smiling right from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you so much!