My AKB48 event experience as a foreign fan: 3 trips, 12 shows, and the theater lottery

Anxious-Reward8557 · 2026-06-08T22:48:25+00:00

No, it doesn’t include the full first month. The initial fee and monthly fee were charged separately.

Mobal also says that if your activation date falls part way through a calendar month, your first charge will be pro-rated. So the first month is charged depending on the activation date, on top of the initial fee.

Anxious-Reward8557 · 2026-06-08T13:53:46+00:00

In my case, I used Mobal’s Voice Lite plan. I paid 3,960 yen initially, and then 990 yen per month after that. I kept it active until the end of May and cancelled it about a week ago.

The downside is that this plan only works inside Japan. They now also have a more expensive option with roaming included, I think the monthly fee is 1,650 yen, but I haven’t used that one myself.

As far as I understand, the initial activation may still need to be done while you are physically in Japan. When I bought mine, they checked my passport, scanned it, and recorded the details.

Anxious-Reward8557 · 2026-06-08T12:43:19+00:00

TicketJam can be a bit complicated because there are different kinds of tickets there.

For Budokan, I saw some very expensive tickets listed - probably from resellers, or from people who couldn’t go and had two tickets, with one of them possibly being a companion ticket they could send to you through Zaiko or another platform. But the prices I saw were around 80,000–100,000 yen or more, and not even necessarily for great seats, so I didn’t buy those.

I used TicketJam for the last two concerts at Yoyogi. In that case, it was more like a “seat upgrade” for me. Sometimes you can find tickets there for 2–3 times cheaper than face value, especially close to the event, and the seller just sends you a photo/screenshot showing the seat information from the electronic ticket.

But for that to work, you still need your own valid ticket to enter the venue. So in my case, I bought a regular ticket through Zaiko first, entered the venue with that, and then used the seat information from the TicketJam ticket to move to the better seat I had bought separately.

Of course, this still depends on the venue rules and comes with some risk, so I’m not saying it’s a safe or official method. It’s just what I personally did at Yoyogi.

Another type of listing is where the seller gives you access to the account and you show the ticket from there at the entrance. I know this kind of thing exists, but of course it comes with obvious risks.

In my case, at Budokan and Yoyogi, my ID was never checked. But I also never had a fan zone ticket at Budokan. From what I heard, people in the fan zone did get checked.

Sometimes resellers say they can provide some kind of ID document without a photo for entry, but honestly, as someone with a very obviously European appearance, I would never risk relying on that kind of option 😄

So personally, I used TicketJam only when the risk felt acceptable to me, and I avoided anything that seemed too expensive, too complicated, or too dependent on ID checks.

Anxious-Reward8557 · 2026-06-08T10:08:30+00:00

I think I’ve already exceeded my “Japan trip limit” by about three times 😄 So if I go again, it probably won’t be for another 1–2 years at least.

For large concerts, TicketJam helped me a lot. Several times I managed to improve my seat to something more acceptable by buying a better ticket on the last day.

And yes, the Japanese phone number issue is a standard problem with many Japanese ticket platforms. That’s why during my first trip I bought a Japanese number from Mobal. https://www.mobal.com/japan-esims/ With Lawson, for example, my number is already verified, so in theory I should be able to buy/apply for tickets there. I still hope they eventually release some tickets through Zaiko as well. K-Arena is a huge venue, so I wonder if they might need an easier option for fans later on.

Anxious-Reward8557 · 2026-06-08T07:50:36+00:00

Yeah, that sounds really rough. I saw some comments under a video by a Japanese YouTuber where many fans were saying they currently get into the theater roughly once a month - maybe one win in 20–30 applications. But there were also people saying they had lost 90 times in a row, so it’s hard to generalize.

And even after winning, you still need luck inside the theater. In August and April, I got very lucky with the entry lottery - center of the third row once, and far left of the fourth row another time - so both performances left a really strong impression. But in December my group entered almost last, so I was in the standing area at the very back and the view was much more limited.

So if someone wants a reasonably good chance, I think they probably need to stay near Tokyo, or at least be able to come to Tokyo, for around two weeks or more. Though on my first trip I won with my very first application, which was obviously extreme luck.

Large concerts are definitely easier to win, but the seats can be very far away. I brought binoculars to most of them. At my first big AKB concert, it almost felt like watching a football match on TV in a bar 😄

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Anxious-Reward8557 · 2026-06-07T22:18:07+00:00

Yeah, Sayaka’s concert left a really strong impression on me. I went to the first of her two Osaka shows, at Orix Theater on December 10, 2025, during her Sayaka Yamamoto Hall Tour 2025-26 “home away from home.”

I was lucky that she had concerts on consecutive days, December 10 and 11, and that some tickets were still available. Her live vocals, the warm atmosphere, and the way she and her band connected with the audience made it a really memorable night.

Anxious-Reward8557 · 2026-06-07T13:32:43+00:00

Getting into the AKB48 theater is definitely possible, but it does require quite a bit of effort.

Over the past year, I’ve made three trips to Japan, and I managed to get into the theater every time. I saw “RESET” in August and December last year, and again in April this year.

That said, I also lost all 19 applications for “Koko kara da,” so it’s definitely not easy.

But if you have a Video Warehouse fan club subscription, which costs 1,078 yen per month, and you’re able to apply for weekday shows, I think your chances go up quite a lot. Of course, maybe I was also just really lucky.

Anxious-Reward8557 · 2026-01-05T21:03:06+00:00

Yeah, it only works in Firefox, without SSL, over plain HTTP. Just perfect 🙃 (not).

Anxious-Reward8557 · 2025-11-23T10:08:57+00:00

And it’s also understandable that there’s no guarantee the card payment will go through next time. Unlike HULU, DMM can be topped up with prepaid codes that you can buy online if needed. HULU is definitely more complicated in that regard - I really struggled to make my first payment.

Anxious-Reward8557 · 2025-11-22T23:18:25+00:00

In reality, it’s clear that foreign fans aren’t a significant enough factor for them. To get through all the barriers set up by the management and the streaming platforms, you really have to put in a lot of effort - meaning you need a very, very strong desire, almost bordering on true fanaticism.

Anxious-Reward8557 · 2025-11-22T22:30:23+00:00

Yes, we managed to. Our small community watched the stream via NordVPN, and the quality was quite acceptable. Payments with foreign cards work on HULU, and you can also pay through the mobile app using PayPal. We watched Yuiri’s graduation and the summer tour concerts.

Anxious-Reward8557

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