You say Bono, I say Vertigo!

"Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhhh! In the name of loooooveeeeee....!!!"

Thanks to Deenster's impromptu invitation, I finally got a U2 experience. Deenster and I met up at Tokyo station to catch a train that would take us to Saitama Super Arena, where U2 had their Vertigo tour. Our festival area tickets said BL 2000 something. We were wondering why we were advised to get to the concert place at 6 PM when the ticket said that concert time was 7:30 PM, only to understand as we got there.
We had to line up, along with about 4,000 other people (strictly for the festival area, others are already with seating arrangement), so that latter on we could fight for the furthest front area as possible. Gathering the fact that our number is 2000 something, there were literally 2000 more people in front of us. The whole line looks like a labyrinth. We could not make the head nor tail of it.

The huge arena was packed with U2 fans, hardcore and mediocre.
Bono and the gang finally came out at 8 PM. They were late, but it was well worth it. Very energetic performance. Very communicative attitude were displayed. You must applaud Bono's persistent attempt to say some thing Japanese. Owing to his non-existent sense of Japanese pronunciation, we had no idea what he was saying, but of course just the fact that he was saying something was enough to make Deenster, me and about 10,000 other people cheered in unison.

I have to be honest that I didn't (and still don't) know that many U2 songs. I shamelessly admit to Deenster that my knowledge of U2 stretched as far as "With or Without You"; but I was more than happy to be there with Deenster and in my sister's spirit. Both Deenster and my sister are hardcore U2 fans, so it was very important for them to be there.
Once the band started playing I quickly recognized the songs in their collection which made it a whole lot easier to mingle with the jumping crowd. Everybody tranced in unison, dancing, singing, jumping about and generally were having a great time. The coolest thing of all was that we were allowed to bring our camera and since I always have a camera in my bag, I started taking pictures like a mad photographer.

U2 means Bono and Bono means Amnesty International. The concert was heavily promoting the "No More War" slogan, human right and other world peace related spirit. Nearing the end, Bono had everybody from the audience pulled out their cell phone and waved it around. That was really neat, it felt like you're in those vigilant times with 1,000 candles lit up, except that they're all lights from the many cell phones.

All in all, it was a super fun time. The only catch was that the fact that Deenster and myself are females of average height; and the same comment applied to Bono and his band members. So, of the 2 hours we were there, we could see very little of them physically, the rest was from the giant screen above the stage.
It was a very expensive TV experience. haha.... But, Deenster, don't you worry - I had a FANTASTIC TIME!

We ARE women of average height!


Our view was mostly restricted to the large screen


But, what is most important is that we had a FANTASTIC time!