Taiwan Calling

Around 1000 Taiwanese may be hiding among us!

By late April of this year, overseas music fans Taiwanese had already bought more than 500 tickets to Fuji Rock, and it was projected that overseas Taiwanese attendance could top 1000. Taiwan was the largest source of overseas ticket purchases, with an estimated 400 to 500 traveling from Taiwan to attend Fuji Rock in 2015. [UPDATED 8/11/2015. See full info below.]

Around 5:30pm on Thursday, this group of Taiwanese was waiting at the gates to open — the gates opened at 6pm. When I asked what bands they were eager to see, they reeled off a list including Clammbon and several Japanese bands — definitely not the picks of a bunch of rock n roll rookies.

From left to right, they are: Vita, Bibo, Wu Mil, Lu Tien-hao

Welcome to Fuji Rock! 歡迎光臨!

[UPDATE 8/11/2015] Now that final attendance statistics are available, we can confirm around 350 Taiwanese bought tickets through Taiwan’s Lion Travel for this year’s fest, while others bought tickets through regular means. Based on this, we can estimate Taiwanese attendance at 400 to 500 for 2015, which is still the most ever Taiwanese at the festival as well as the largest national group to ever attend from outside of Japan. The total number of 2015 Fuji Rock tickets purchased from overseas was around 1000, according to the event’s promoter, Smash Japan. The earlier estimate of 1000 Taiwanese was based on total sales of overseas ticket buyers. This was an error we would now like to correct. [Updated on Aug. 11, 2015]