Updates on EXO Planet #5 tickets can be found here link

I’ve been a big K-Pop fan for more than 10 years now and my newest, latest obsession now is the ever so popular, EXO. Greatest thing about having a job is obviously the available funds to finally do all the things I would love to do as a fan 10 years ago. One of it being, attending my favourite band’s overseas concert and since I couldn’t/don’t know how to get tickets for Seoul, I went for the next best thing, Japan!

Before I went on with how to get the tickets, below are some overviews of Japan concert ticketing process. It is very different compared to most concert ticketing we are used to so make sure you read through and understand this.

Similar to concert in Seoul, all seats in the stadium are officially priced the same. For EXO Planet #4 Elyxion in both Tokyo/Osaka it was ¥10,800 per ticket. Since it’s a flat price, the ticketing process would usually go in the below order;

In all the above official sales, you will not be able to choose the zone, seats and most of the time would not even know what you will be getting until you have paid for it.

Japan ticketing are popular for being restricted for only those with Japanese phone number/address and does not accept foreign credit card. This is still true but below are some of the possible methods to obtain your hands on those Japan concert tickets without any of those so please don’t give up yet. ^^

First of all, you have to know when the general sales/lottery are open and how much is the actual ticket price. Obviously, if you were trying to search for tickets before sale actually opens you’ll get no result or if you don’t know what is the ticket price, you won’t be able to make a good purchase decision.

Part 2 is here

If you need help finding information for your dream concert in Japan for other bands, contact me on Twitter here. I’ll try to help out if I can 😁

Searching for tickets via Japan ticket services

There are currently 3 most popular Japan ticketing website: E-Plus, Ticket-pia, L-tike

All 3 portals should be showing the same details in terms of availability/pricing of the ticket. If you can’t find the concert you are looking for, check all 3 portal just in case. I’ve noted some events are not released on all sites.

Also as expected, all 3 website requires a Japanese phone number before you can proceed to buy ticket (sign up is possible but buying tickets is not possible).

The link for EXO page for E-plus are as below (the other two website does not have a dedicated page for each artist). There is a page for each member of EXO as well, for tickets sold for individual activities.

E-plus: EXO | EXO-CBX

Moving forward I will be using e-plus as an example (with auto translation by google chrome)

1. Enter the E-plus website via Chrome (important! because chrome have an auto translator) : Eplus website
2. Search for the band/singer name and click the red button next to the search bar
3. Click the date you would like to see availability for (I’m using red velvet as an example here as when I took the screenshot EXO Elyxion listing was already taken down – since the concert already ended)
4. All the ticketing dates and method are as detailed in the next page as below;

As you can see from the above, the Red Velvet 28 and 29 March concert opened lottery reception a total of 3 times. With general sales being currently opened from 24 Feb to 25 March 2018.

1st reception: 20 to 21 Jan 2018

2nd reception: 5 to 13 Feb 2018

3rd reception: 17 to 21 Feb 2018

The organizer might not release all the ticketing details upon creating the concert page, so you do need to either check it out from time to time, or sign up on eplus and create an alert for your stan.

After the date of sale have passed, no purchase can be made. During general sales, the indicator for ticket availability are as follows;

“o” Many tickets available

“triangle” Limited seats available

“x” no seats available (sold out)

Added 4 April 2018: Noted for EXO-CBX Magical Circus not all lottery were done through these 3 websites and there were lottery open for Yahoo! Updates on ticket will be posted on the news section in EXO-JP website and via EXO-JP Line Account.

Ticket availability on General Sales

I have only recently ventured myself in the Japan ticketing hobby(?), starting from EXO Planet #3 in Tokyo Dome for December 2016.

Based on my “analysis” of the two concerts, tickets are sometimes not sold out in official channels and below are the status of the tickets as per my memory.

Dec 2016 : EXO Planet #3 – Exordium in Tokyo Dome – Both days ticket are not sold out until the concert day and at “O – Available” level

Jan 2018 : EXO Planet #4 – Elyxion in Saitama Super Arena – Both days ticket are sold out by concert day

Feb 2018 : EXO Planet #4 – Elyxion in Kyocera Dome Osaka – First day tickets are not sold out at “O – Available” | Second day tickets are sold out

• It seems that Japan EXO-L’s prefer to attend 2nd day of a concert.
• I presume main reason for Elyxion Saitama being completely sold out was because the capacity reduction from Tokyo Dome. Tokyo Dome (55,000 capacity) and Saitama Super Arena (37,000 capacity).
• First day Elyxion in Osaka was not sold out to the point the last 3 rows of each zone was not sold and remained empty. Second day Elyxion in Osaka, the whole stadium was full and all rows were filled.

Possibility of winning lottery tickets

There is always a possibility of you winning a ticket on open lottery and it could be really good seats or it could be a bad seat. There really is no telling and winning the lottery ticket does not mean you are getting a good seat.

In the end, it’s a gamble but the general rumour of it is the really really good seats would be released to the lottery winners (or at least we think).

Well, if anybody really do win one really great seat you can start belting out this line from Lotto “I just hit the lotto (Lalalala)”.

Stadium seat maps and zones

This part always stresses me out because unlike other countries, the Japan concert seat map are not released beforehand. There are two general type of seating that is : Arena (Floor level seating) and Normal Seating (Elevated seating zone). Usually, the concert would be a fully specified seating concert unless stated otherwise.

Although there are chairs, during the duration of the concert everyone would stand up during the actual performance (but running around is not allowed).

If you were to buy Normal Seating ticket, it is possible to estimate where you’ll be as the seat numbering in the stadium will not change. However, which zone the stage extends to will remain a mystery until concert day. With Arena seats, since the organizer will set up the zone differently each time, it won’t be possible to know for sure where your seats will be.

Below are the general seat map for the usual Japan Stadium;

• Kyocera Dome Osaka: General seatmap
• Kyocera Dome Osaka: Elyxion Arena Actual Seating chart
• Saitama Super Arena: General seat map
• Marine Messe Fukuoka: Elyxion Estimated Seating Chart
• Tokyo Dome: Exordium Tokyo Seating Map

Follow @EXO_ZASEKI for estimates of seating chart

OK, since we have maybe understood the ticketing process, we can get on to how to actually get your hands on the ticket in the part 2 of this tutorial. Please follow the blog or my twitter for updates~

Thanks for reading and please like or comment if this helps you in some ways.

Part 2 is here~~