Popular group Arashi announced on July 20 that they will be holding concerts in Tokyo National Olympic Stadium (Kokuritsu) on September 20 and 21 for five consecutive years since 2008. The concert will mobilize a total of 140k audiences on two days. At the same time it is also determined that they will be holding concerts at Kokuritsu in 2013 before the stadium enters into large-scale renovation after next year.
Entitled 「Ara-fes」 "Arashi Festival" for this year and next year's live, the requests from fans will be recruited on their homepage and songs voted as according to ranking will eventually become the main configuration of the concert's concept. This is a first time attempt for Johnny's to seek requests from fans and it is a proposal by Arashi members themselves.
Aiba Masaki (29) "As there are only two years remaining before the stadium enters renovation, we are thinking of making this live different from what we usually does. I want to make a «Best of the Best» Arashi Live." Usually for Johnny's concerts, large numbers of Johnny's juniors will be mobilized and it is revealed that "This time it will be performed by the 5 of us only. We wanted to make a new challenge, and honestly it is kind of scary but we talked about having a performance with only the 5 of us. 70k audience + 5 of us. We want to make it gaudy as it is the festival of Arashi."
In addition Aiba, Ohno Satoshi (31) and Matsumoto Jun (28) visited New York at the end of June for site observation in reference to concert productions, and has been to Broadway musicals, Cirque du Soleil's show 「Zarkana」 and so forth. "We want to make the best of what we have studied and create a stage that is different from what we have done so far".
The list of songs is subjected to a total of 240 songs including singles, couplings and album tracks. Approximately the top 30 songs in ranking will be selected and performed. Voting will be accepted from July 21 afternoon until July 31 6pm on Johnny's official mobile site http://www.johnnys-web.com/.