This is for all the fans out there looking to visit Fukuoka for EXO’s concert or any other bands in the future. EXO usually commences their Japan tour with a 3 days concert in Fukuoka. For EXO Planet #5 below are the concert dates:

• October 11, 2019 (Friday) Door Open 18:00 / Start 19:00
• October 12, 2019 (Sat) Door Open 16:00 / Start 17:00
• October 13, 2019 (Sun) Door Open 15: 00 / Start 16:00

The how to buy ticket have been explained in this link. I have initially planned to attend the Tokyo/Osaka leg of the tour but ticket was so impossible to get unless I wanna spend a fortune on it.

The Venue: Marine Messe Fukuoka

This venue is on the smaller side for a Japanese venue with around 15,000 capacity. This is the second smallest venue for EXplOration in Japan tour.

List of venues and approximate capacity

• Marine Messe Fukuoka : 15,000
• Yokohama Arena (near Tokyo): 17,000
• Osaka Castle Hall: 16,000
• Miyagi Sekisui Heim Arena: 7,000

The thing with Japanese concerts is that no seatmap will be released prior to the concert. Nobody expected Japan to get a rhombus design stage. The people who got tickets for the middle zones are the real lucky ones and as usual was not me 🥺

They’ve started using live QR from this year’s EXO tour, so you will only know your seat 3 hours prior to the door open time.

QR ticket turned out to be goods news for Fukuoka, as ticket price stayed at a decent range (you can get FC tickets at original value of 11,800yen even on resale market). Since sellers don’t know the seat before they sell it, there is always a chance to get very good seats. However, due to the more than 50% capacity cut (smaller stadium was used), ticket prices for main cities like Yokohama and Osaka went crazy high that I can probably say you’re lucky if you can get a ticket at 3 times the original price. Many FC members were unable to get the tickets to Yokohama/Osaka (me included) which made the resale market situation worst.

Buying a Fanclub ticket will almost always guarantee you a seat at the arena (ground) or 1st floor of the stadium. I’ve never seen FC ticket gets worst seats than the last row of the first floor.

This is my 3 days all FC ticket Fukuoka concert seats and the price I paid for it. Please note that I bought the tickets before knowing the seats so the price does not have any correlation to the seat quality. The Day 1 and Day 2 seats are actually one of the best seats I’ve ever gotten in a Japanese venue. Especially that Day 2 arena was a flipping dream view, I was in the middle between main and extended stage so I got a good view of both.

1st day (via Twitter): ¥10,000 each

2nd day (via Twitter): ¥11,800 each

3rd day (via ticket.co.jp) : ¥16,000 each

How to get to Fukuoka

By Air

The city is accessible via Fukuoka Airport (FUK). The airport is located only 5 minutes train ride from the main station of the city, Hakata Station! If you fly from Asia countries, there should be no problem to get an airline that flies direct from your city. However from other parts of the world you might have to do a transit in Tokyo/Osaka.

If that is expensive, you might even consider doing a transit in Seoul as I have seen tickets for Seoul to Fukuoka being cheaper than Osaka/Tokyo to Fukuoka. Note however that cheap flights are from low-cost carriers so if you are flying into Seoul using a different airline, you’ll have to clear immigration and do your baggage check-in again in Seoul.

Airlines serving the Osaka/Tokyo to Fukuoka route :

• Jetstar Japan (Low-cost): https://www.jetstar.com/jp/en/home
• Peach (Low-cost): https://www.flypeach.com/en
• All Nippon Airways (Full service): https://www.ana.co.jp
• Japan Airlines (Full Service): https://www.jal.co.jp/en/
• Skymark Airlines (Free baggage without food and departure only from Haneda, Tokyo): https://www.skymark.co.jp/en/

Airlines serving the Seoul to Fukuoka route:

• T’way Air (Low cost): https://twayair.com/
• JinAir (Low cost): https://www.jinair.com/
• Eastar Jet (Low cost)
• Jeju Air (Low cost)
• Asiana Airlines (Full service)
• Korean Air (Full service)
• Japan Airlines (Full service)
• All Nippon Airway (Full service)

By Train

This is the method I have chosen for my EXplOration trip. I landed at Kansai International Airport (KIX), spent a few hours in the city and took the bullet train from Shin-Osaka Station to Hakata Station (Fukuoka). The reason I chose this was that there is a JR Rail Pass with a validity of 7 days which covered my trip from Osaka to Fukuoka as well as a side trip to Tottori where EXO-CBX shot their travel ladder!

This pass is called the JR Sanyo Sanin Area Pass and is valid for a period of 7 days from first use.

This pass is well worth the money as one-way bullet train between Osaka and Fukuoka will already set you back by ¥15,000. I purchased the pass online on KLOOK before my arrival and picked up the pass at the airport on one of their ticketing machine. The machine had problems reading my passport and several other foreigner’s. I had to seek the help of a staff that was on standby near the machine. I don’t think the pass gets sold out but the queue at JR ticketing office gets pretty long, it’s recommended you buy them online beforehand. Also it’s cheaper to purchase it in advance although not by a whole lot. Click this link to get a ¥391 discount with my referral code on KLOOK.

Best thing about the pass is that it allows you to travel on Nozomi Shinkansen which is the fastest bullet train in Japan (as at end of 2019). If you purchase the popular Japan wide JR Rail Pass it’ll not allow you to ride on this shinkansen type. I made sure to choose a timing served by Nozomi for my trip between Osaka-Hakata!

I would still recommend landing at Osaka even without the pass as the fastest Shinkansen (Nozomi) between the two cities only took 2.5hours while it’ll take at least 5 hours train ride from Tokyo. This website details all the train and other options that can be taken; https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e4802.html?aFROM=2157_2161

Overnight Bus

By Overnight bus

Well, this is an overnight option that I have never tried in Japan. If you are short on budget, this is perfect as you get a seat to sleep in and also the travel in between Osaka and Fukuoka covered. According to JapanGuide, you can get one way fare from ¥3,500 but the cheapest I’ve seen in December 2019 starts from ¥3,900 and does goes up double the price during peak seasons.

Online booking can be made at the bus provider official website “Willerexpress” in English and has to be paid in advance during booking (credit card accepted). The booking is cancellable for free up to 8 days before departure. (Note: Double check on this before booking as it may varies)

Where to stay in Fukuoka and how to get to the venue

I opted to stay at The Gate Hostel which is just 15 minutes walk from the venue since I was planning to line up for merchandise super early.

However, the hostel is not the nearest one to the venue. I passed by quite a lot of hotels along the way. The closest one is the Fukuoka Sun Palace Hotel & Hall which is right beside the entrance to Marine Messe Fukuoka.

One thing to note is that the nearest subway station to the venue is Gofukumachi Station which is a 1.2km (15mins) walk from the venue. There is however a bus station (Marine messe-mae) right in front of the venue entrance. You can use google map to find which bus to ride and the bus timing. The bus is quite frequent (at least every 10mins) and reliable. The official website also list the subways/buses to access the stadium here.

The surrounding area to the venue is pretty scenic as it’s right beside the port, however does not have much of anything else. The nice restaurants and cafes are mostly located near Hakata Station area. Hakata station is only 15mins bus ride away from the venue which is not a bad travel time too.

I would decide where to stay based on what time the concert ends. Usually Friday concerts would start and end later than the weekend concerts. This is because they would only start the concert after working hours.

EXplOration in Japan ran for around 2.5hours and thus ended at 9.30pm on Friday (concert starts 7pm). If you tire easily and not want to wait for the bus at night, you might opt to stay somewhere within a walking distance to the venue like I did. Many concert goers would walk to the subways and neighbouring accomodation after the concert so you’ll be pretty safe.

What to expect at the venue on D-Day

The location and opening time of the booths would be announced on EXO Japan official website a few days prior to the concert. Follow the official JP twitter for updates. Below is the picture for actual booth location for EXplOration (translated by myself).

There were 3 merchandises booth in 2019, however all of it can be accessed using the same line. So you don’t need to queue up again and again.

The sign for start of queue will usually be in Japanese, so if you get confused just find the sign that starts with this word “グッズ” (Translation: Goods). Early in the morning they will just paste a paper signage to indicate start of line, once queue starts building up there will be a staff member that will hold up a signboard with the word “グッズ” to indicate the end of the queue.

Merchandise (Goods) Booth: Sells official Japan tour merchandise. For EXO the merch for Japanese tour are different than Korean ones. The merch will only be sold in Japan. They will NOT sell any Korean tour merchandises here except for official lightstick.

The list of goods available for sale during EXplOration are in this link. FC members can pre-order the item before concert day but the pre-order is for such a limited quantity that more people did not get to buy them than those who were able to. So a lot of FC members ended up having to queue at the venue. Currently, the not sold out goods are open for sale online for everyone here and there is an embedded option for worldwide shipping via Worldshopping in the website.

There are quantity limitation per item and per member as listed on the official website linked previously. The limit is per queue so you can queue again to purchase more. Japan lightstick and baggage tag is a venue limited item and thus cannot be purchased online. Please also note that anything with a battery (like the Powerbank) are not shippable overseas, it’ll get stuck at customs for most countries.

FC Merchandise Booth: Since EXO-L Japan have their own official fanclub separated from ACE, they release a set of merchandises that is limited to only FC members. For EXplOration it was a trading card (PC) folder with 1 random PC.

Gacha booth: For EXplOration EXO Planet #5, they released a special collaboration with Marvel in a form of cute keyrings that is purchaseable from a gacha machine (capsule toy vending machine). There are 6 designs only for the members joining the tour, and as to encompass the gacha spirit it is totally random. This keyring are also available selected gacha outside the venue, mainly at Tower Records. You do actually play the gacha there at the venue, with the putting in coins and stuff.

There were close to maybe 12-15 gacha machines at the booth, and they do have a coin exchange machine since there’s no way anybody carry enough 100yen coins to play this. Towards the end of the day I realised due to the many technical errors of gacha getting stucked after continuous usage, the gacha counter starts being manned manually and they just gave out the keyring in the gacha capsule instead of having to play it (no fun anymore 🥺).

FC PLANET Lottery Booth: This booth have the longest line even compared to the goods booth. I was in line for at least 1 to 1.5 hours and that line is consistently moving. That just goes to show how many FC members are there.

So why do you ask, why do we line up? Because this booth is for a once a day lottery draw for each FC member in which you have a chance to win some special goods. However, even if you don’t win the draw you’ll get 1 random FC limited trading card (basically is a photocard but a bit bigger than the Korean ones) for free! Note that it’s FREE and thus the queue. Again they will check your digital membership ID and scan them so you’ll only get to participate once a day not once every queue.

Okay, so that trading card is basically lowest level consolation price and the actual winner of the lottery gets these:

• Special Price: Autographed goods
• First Price: PLANET Lottery Limited Goods
• Second Price: Trading card complete set

The prizes for the lottery changes each tour and will be announced around a month before in the official website. This year was probably one of the least exciting prizes being offered as previous tours the first prize is a fanmeeting with a few EXO members.

The trading card for EXO-L PLANET lottery looks very similar to the one being sold as the FC members goods (the folder and trading card set). There is a slight difference in posture and there is no message on the other one.

CD Sales Booth: As the name suggest, this booth sells official Japanese album CD. I have actually never paid this one a visit so I’m not sure they have other albums aside from the new one. I’ll update here once I’ve find out. There is an extra benefit of buying the album here instead of at normal store.

During EXplOration they were selling the newly released single “Bird”. Purchases made at the venue will receive an original sticker. If you are an FC member, you will receive one member FC limited trading card. This is obtainable when buying from venue and also from EXO-L Japan Official Online Shop.

At the end of all the booths, you’ll see the iconic truck for every EXO concert in Japan. They’ll always have this at every venue and it’s a great photo-op.

Some tips and important things to note

• Bring cash to buy the merchandises. Officially credit card is accepted but I have faced a situation in which their credit card machine were down and in the end had to struggle to find the last bit of cash I had on hand to buy the merch. This happened to me during EXOrdium in Tokyo Dome back in 2016.
• Bring your own bag to carry the items. They do not give you plastic bag for your purchases so you will struggle if you buy a lot.
• Random items are tradeable. One thing I love about Japan venues is that the Japanese loves holding up whatever random draw item they’ve purchases (ie PC, can badge, wrist band) to trade around the venue. So if you see a person holding up something you like, just ask them which member they are looking for. I have gotten a lot of success with this aside from probably getting Baekhyun’s item. That one is hard, he had gotten extremely popular in Japan since UNVillage.
• You can bring food and beverages into the venue, however cameras are strictly not allowed.
• This venue has only two entrance door and it’s at the same side so it gets quite packed during entry, try to enter when the door opens 1 hour before in case of any delay.

Concert manners in Japan

• In Japan for EXO, the venue have always been arranged for a fully-seated experience. However, during the concert everyone will stand up.
• Recording is strictly PROHIBITED! Yes, even with your phone camera and NO even pictures are not allowed when the performance is ongoing. You can take pictures before or after the performance though. They do check for any people recording and if you get caught they will take you out and make you delete the video/picture. In my opinion, not worth it so please just enjoy the concert.

I hope this has been helpful to anybody considering to visit Marine Messe Fukuoka for any concerts in the future! I thoroughly enjoyed myself the 3-days I’ve been there and would definitely come again for a concert!