Make Believe Bonus: A Ranking Of All Zepp Venues In The Tokyo Area
You Aren't Getting Out Of This One Unscathed, Zepp Haneda
It’s about 30 minutes into standing in a line outside Zepp Shinjuku amidst skin-biting wind in order to buy a t-shirt that I realize I’m about to experience a show in every Zepp livehouse in the greater Tokyo region after tonight.
One will turn to ridiculous thoughts while doing something silly — I’ve rushed out of my house at 2:05 pm on a Wednesday afternoon and actually abandoned work because I had discovered the venue-exclusive merch for that evening’s dream bill of group_inou, Peanuts-kun and PAS TASTA went on sale way earlier than I expected. I got what I wanted after an hour out in the cold and under the judging gaze of tourists in Kabukicho (“ohhhh a line, maybe we should get in it too!” yeah if you want a cool towel, Australian lady), and after killing a few hours actually hitting those deadlines, I entered Zepp Shinjuku, located in the basement of the still-shiny Kabukicho Tower building, crossing the final Zepp location in Kanto off my personal list.
All my merch purchases featured this special logo, I might be buried with them.
The Zepp family of live venues in Japan represent one of — if not the — biggest group of music-centric spaces spanning the country. They boast 11 in total — nine in Japan, with two foreign outposts in Taipei and Kuala Lumpur — and they are pretty much a staple of any music fans life in the country. The series of venues exist as tweeners, not arenas but all of them quite spacious and existing as a goal for many bands to aim for…and a starting place for acts with bigger backings and ambitions (Ado’s first live show, for example, was held at one of the Tokyo Zepps).
Yet it’s also clearly cozier in the context of other acts — when the rock group RADWIMPS held a “return to the livehouse” tour, they pegged the Zepps as being a throwback to their early days…not exactly the squashed livehouses I know.
The Kanto region boasts four Zepp locations at time of writing, the majority of which are actually quite new (the oldest Zepp used to be Zepp Tokyo in Odaiba, opened in 1999 but closed in 2022). Last week’s live show at Zepp Shinjuku finally allowed me to say I’ve seen a proper show at each one — I’ve been to Zepp Shinjuku’s late-night version ZEROTOKYO plenty of times now, and I technically watched a virtual artist perform here last December BUT I was invited as a guest and got to sit in the VIP second-deck which seems like cheating. I was right on the floor this time, which felt right.
Now with that experience safely had…I can rank the four Kanto area Zepps, from “please god never again” to “hey, pretty neat place you got here!”