Recently we see the rapid increase of request for smartphone ticket in Japan.

" Traditionally in Japan" you apply to win the ticket by telephone or website or a letter, and if you win, you pay online/offline and get the physical paper ticket with seat number printed.

This has increased the resale market. Many resalers joined the fanclub as huge group and apply to win the lottery. Then they sell the tickets at extremely high price. 

This has been big headache for the event organizers and the business related to the concert.

To tackle down the resale problem, The ticket sale platform ePlus released Sumachike and Live styles released tixeebox. 

1. you apply (chusen - lottery) only with the smartphone which must be a Japanese phone with the valid tel. Japanese number. The application page is a normal website but you can only view and press certain buttons on the smartphone and you register your tel. no. For this, you need a Japanese phone with the valid number.

2. you get the result on your phone. In fact you can also check on your PC. 

3. Once you win the ticket, you can download the special app to your phone. 

4. On the concert day, you get some SMS message with a QR code to your phone. 

Note: All this time you shall not know the seat location. 

You use this QR code to enter the venue and this is only the moment when you know the seat location

and...

5. (often) you are asked to show your valid ID with the face photo such as passport to match the name on the smartphone ticket.

(This is extremely important news for those who try to buy a resale ticket because this puts you on a high risk of the entry rejection to the venue. If you buy some digital ticket/screenshot of QR code or so from the resale market, you will be rejected at the entrance because the names do not match or faces do not match. )

Why there are more smartphone tickets in Japan today?

This measure is in place to curve down the reseller problem. 

This way, if one wants to resell the ticket, the person needs to give the SIM card with the smartphone contract subscription and maybe the smartphone itself with the SIM in it because even if you have a SIM card which won the ticket, there is a risk of non-compatibility with your smartphone.

For the paper ticket, it is normal that a person physically goes to a convenience store and pays and have a print machine there issue a paper ticket (often not at the same day as payment but on later days). For this, we support with our service. 

Recently (Sept, 2022) the seven eleven convenience store had a trouble with its paper ticket print terminal so that some people could not get the paper tickets when they wanted.

Unfortunately, we can NOT support the smartphone ticket with our service.

We still can as always offer our service to send someone to pay at convenience store in Japan or assist you to buy a ticket from the official website/eplus.

If you need to do this smartphone ticket application, you need some to help to buy a Japanese smartphone and carrier plan.

We believe in transparency and mutual trust. So we are honest with you about this. Please be aware that this will not be so safe and cheap. This is a lot just to apply. 

If you have someone you can truly trust in Japan,  the person can go to a mobile phone shop to sign in to have the SIM card with the valid Japanese number.

In Japan, there is a penalty when we cancel the contract in a certain number of month (usually, we need to go beyond a 6 month period). This increases the cost for you.

This shall be the breach of contract if we also give this SIM card to a third party so we need to keep the SIM back after you use it.

So far this is the cost only to apply to win the ticket and you often do not win!

Then you need to have a smartphone which is compatible with the SIM card. With this complicating procedure. But again, if you have someone you can trust, you can try to ask this.

We understand that this market moves to make the ticket application this complicating and super high cost, this will stop the resale people as well as with the ticket exchange place run by the official live organizer. 

We see all these good moves!! 

We explained how to buy Concert ticket in Japan in this article. You can learn how the basic rule to get a concert ticket.

Basically there are two types of tickets usually in Japan.

1) Preorder ticket ("Senko ticket")

a. Fast come fast serve style order ("Senchaku")

b. Lottery style order ("Chusen")

AND

2) Normal ticket ("Ippan ticket")

A simple rule is that 2) Normal ticket is hard to get, sometimes impossible. 

Usually 1) Preorder ticket comes before the 2) Normal ticket.

Preorder does not mean you can definately get it. There are two types of a preorder ticket: a. Fast come fast serve style order and b. Lottery style order.

a. Fast come fast serve style order means you apply to buy by website, tel. etc. The faster you can reach the ticket office, the more securely you can get the ticket. The problem is that many resellers clog the ticket website and once you can reach the website to buy, the ticket is all sold out.

We supported many clients with this. It is quite tough to beat the resellers who organize the big team.  Esp. if  the order is only by telephone, you can give up already (!). 

b. Lottery style order means you apply by website etc. during a certain period of time. It does not matter you apply early or late, the chance of winning the right to buy does not change. To reduce the reseller's problem, we see this style more.

Always failing to buy the ticket in Japan? Well, honestly there is no 100% guaranteed way to get a ticket. But there are some ways you can increase your chance to win the right to buy the ticket.

1. if the artist has a fanclub, join it. 

2. if the artist has a membership for their official website, join it.

3. if the ticket to win the right is enclosed in an item such as music CD, buy several (if allowed under the regulation of the artist) and apply several times.

4. Be a premium member of major ticket platforms such as Lawson ticket or Ticket Pia.

5. Join a free member of e-Plus

To be able to buy a ticket safely, "fanclub" plays an important role. Simply put, if you are a member of fanclub of the favorite band or so, you have a better access for the ticket.

<<Our Fanclub proxy support comes into quite useful for you>>

The usual process to buy ticket in Japan is the follow:

A. Preorder (lottery style) only for fanclub member starts. 

B. Preorder from a major ticket platform starts

and

C. Normal ticket sales start.

Based on our observation, there are many popular concerts which just do A.

Which concert is the hardest to go in Japan? There are some statistics about the amount of resale ticket circulated in Japan. This implies the demand is high for such a concert.

1) Arashi

2) Tohoshinki (Korean band)

3) SMAP (separated in 2017)

4) EXILE TRIBE

5) Kan Jani 8

6) Kis-My-Ft2

7) BIGBANG (Korean band)

8) Masaharu Fukuyama

9) Sandaime J Soul Brothers

10) Hey! Say! JUMP

11) EXO (Korean band)

12) Momoiro Clover Z

13) Dreams Come True

14) Kazumasa Oda

15) Namie Amuro ( to retire in 2018)

16 ) Kat-Tun

In these years we also noticed the growing popularity for anime voice actors/singers concerts such as Wake Up, Girls!, Idol M@ster.

There are many professional resellers which make it hard for real fans to get ticket. It is normal to see the resale ticket price 200% - 700% of its original price. Crazy... It is not good situation. We hope there shall be a strong regulation on resale business.

There have been big resale markets even for foreign big bands. The market needs to do more about the problem.

In 2018 May, the major ticket resale platform Ticket Camp was shut down. One of these companies inflated the ticket price.

The Japanese government announced to enact a new law on ticket reselling. The government is mainly worried about the resale of the Olympic ticket for 2020 Tokyo games.

It will be "some" good countermeasure for the reseller problem in Japan. The penalty shall be 1 year prison sentence or 1mil JPY or less. For details, you can find here.

A recent trend is that the artists offer special lives only for a certain group of people.

For example,  there are seats only available for fanclub members, or even a fanclub only concert takes place. In some case, you need to buy a CD which has a serial number only with which you can apply to win the right to buy a ticket.

Onegai Kaeru team can support many of these cases.

Just contact us! When you contact us, please state a much details as possible about your request. your name, what/on which date concert you want to go, your budget, birthday.

Our service fee changes depending on the urgency/difficulty of the case. 

We always ask our customers to be fast to contact. We can not deal with a super urgent case like..." we need you to go to apply physically at some venue for this ticket and the deadline is in 10 hours ".

Yes, we make impossible possible but the cost shall be quite high.

Ideally talk to us 2 weeks - 1 month in advance at least.

Many of our customers ask us to buy tickets for them. We certainly help.

Yet, it is not rare that customers can not win the rights to buy. While, many resellers get the tickets and put on the resale market for 200 - 700% or even higher price of the original price.

Well, how do the resellers get the tickets? The reseller never tells you. It is a secret of them.

Yet, what we are aware of is that the reseller for sure is the fanclub member (to be able to apply for a special deal) and the reseller does it as a "profession".

By the "profession", we mean that the reseller hires many other people (not just 2 -3 but 10 or more!) to be fanclub members of many bands and let them apply to increase the chance of winning.

Some customers of ours are not even the member of the fanclub.

This is why you can not get the ticket easily. To be honest, if you are not the fanclub member, your chance is basically quite low.  Most of the good tickets are gone for the fanclub members before you can apply. 

How could you win the war against the reseller who has 10 or more fanclub memberships to the same singer, if you do not even have one single fanclub membership.

This is why you need to join the fanclub in the first place with our proxy service. 

Many ask us to help getting concert ticket without fanclub membership. Our recommendation is that if you are not a member of your favorite one, BE a Fanclub MEMBER NOW.

There are only goodies becoming a member. There are more and more ID check etc. in Japan for the resale ticket and you have a risk of being rejected at the concert gate. We do not wish you take this risk. You should buy the ticket in a proper way.

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