From past events, does anyone know how much time Scandal is likely to have on stage?

If someone went before, what was your impression of the Countdown event overall (besides Scandal)? Was it fun? Is it worth 15000 yen?

Will this really be a live concert with spectators?

It was supposed to be (tickets distributed via a lottery).

Sadly, it looks more and more likely that it will be cancelled. Japan is experiencing a huge third wave of the pandemic that significantly exceeds the records reached during the second wave in August. (And far exceeds the first wave in April which was the only time the state of emergency was declared.)

Yes this is a live with audience, depends what you are after, I've been a few times, its held in a very large convention hall, there are multiple stages and areas of various sizes.

This year will be seats and half capacity.

So if you want to get up front of the crowd, you will probably be waiting and slowly making your way up to the front and while you are up there, you probably have a while to wait until they perform.

Scandal has done the new year countdown once, and that time I waited many hours before they played, listening to various artists for hours :p That year Radwimps (that year they were really popular with the Your name anime soundtrack) was also doing the countdown to midnight too, so they pulled a large crowd out before Scandal came on.

The organisers always release the schedule and timetable slowly in order to entice people to buy tickets, as basically the later you buy the harder it tends to be to get tickets.

Also with covid19 many festival started allocating front areas for lottery so fans can apply to try and get a chance to get to the front, (which is also prevent non fans from waiting up front and make space for social distance.)

So is it worth the money, well that depends on your schedule on who you can catch and if you watch enough acts to get your monies worth. I usually try to get up front for Scandal and then casually popping around the other stages way before/afterwards to catch other acts.

Yes the last couple of days, covid19 has been getting worse in Tokyo, Osaka and other areas, so there is a chance there will be a shutdown of events etc. its also a high risk event as the venue is huge, you are talking capacity of over 40,000 for the big 3 stages, even if its half its 20,000 people and there are still some smaller stages and food/drink/rest areas.

Official trailer for this year:

Scandal is confirmed for 12:00-12:40 (Dec 29). The rest of the schedule is at http://countdownjapan.jp/2021/lineup/timetable/.

mmoroz wrote:Scandal is confirmed for 12:00-12:40 (Dec 29). The rest of the schedule is at http://countdownjapan.jp/2021/lineup/timetable/.

Still yet to hear of any "fan sections" at the front, but it its anything like the previous years, then you will have to get there extremely early and dash to get to the front. My previous post about slowing positioning yourself to the front won't work this time. The previous years that I went there were 1000s of people in front of me before opening..... yikes.

This years info is up: 
http://img2.countdownjapan.jp.s3.amazonaws.com/2021/CDJ2021_covid19_guideline.pdf

Basically temp check, id check, half capacity and they will empty the audience for each stage after each act.

COUNTDOWN JAPAN 20/21 has been canceled due to the recent surges of COVID cases in Japan.

https://www.scandal-4.com/news/countdown-japan-20-21-3/

Sucks about the cancelation, but it seemed kind of obvious from the start in my opinion.