Yamamoto Sayaka at Japan Night 2025
What’s a Yamamoto Sayaka fan in the United States supposed to do when they find out she is performing at a gig in New York City? Bite the bullet on an expensive Times Square hotel and go check it out, of course!
Sayaka was invited to perform at Japan Night, a new event to go with Japan Day, a long-running, daylong street festival featuring traditional and contemporary Japanese culture and food that takes place on the second Saturday of May. The event took place May 9 at the Edison Ballroom, which is next to the historic Hotel Edison and across 47th Street from the Barrymore Theater, where “Othello,” starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, was being performed. It’s about three blocks from Times Square.
The event also featured an intro by a group playing and singing a traditional song and wearing traditional outfits while processing into the room followed by cast members from the stage musical version of “Attack on Titan,” which was on Broadway last fall, and the Miyabi Koto Shamisen Ensemble, led by Ishigure Masayo, a well-known koto player.
The koto is a really cool, harp-like instrument. I first saw a koto performance in a Vietnamese restaurant in Kyoto. I thought it was impressive when the performer, Watanabe Kasumi, tuned her koto with a socket wrench.
The Miyabi Koto Shamisen Ensemble included a couple of white guys who introduced the pieces.
Each of the main musical groups after the intro performed 15-20 minutes of music. There also was a lengthy presentation from the event’s main sponsor, ASP Group, about their cruise ships, an onsen resort and some master artists in Japan. It was basically a “COME TO JAPAN” pitch. The videos they played were narrated in Japanese with English subtitles. Unfortunately, the subtitles were at the bottom of the screen and unless you were at the very front of the audience they were blocked from view by the people in front of you. The narrator was a well-known Japanese filmmaker who couldn’t be there in person because he was going to the Cannes Film Festival.
There were remarks by some other dignitaries, too.
Before the concert, there was a reception from 5:30 to 7 p.m. that featured samples of Mio sparkling sake, a white wine from CoCo Farm and Winery in Tochigi Prefecture, samples from the Times Square location of I’m Donut?, and roving waiters serving various hors d'oeuvres. My favorite were bite-sized salmon onigiri “sliders.” They were triangle-shaped sandwiches with salmon between two layers of rice that you could dip into soy sauce. The chocolate-dipped strawberries were delicious but messy. I probably should have grabbed a napkin to hold the strawberry with because the juice got all over my hand.
The bar serving the Mio sake was at the top of the stairway to the venue’s second floor, and there was a woman directing us to take one of the small, plastic cups “for kampai.” I waited several minutes before trying the sake because I was waiting for someone to do a toast. If someone did a toast, I didn’t hear it.
When the guy at the CoCo table told me the winery is in Tochigi Prefecture, I told him that I have a friend who used to live there. I did not tell him Matt was not a fan of Tochigi.
The winery sounds like a pretty cool place, particularly because they work with people with intellectual disabilities.
The reception took place in two rooms and a lobby-like area on the second floor of the venue. I just kind of wandered between the two main rooms, people watching and killing time before the concert. There were two bars, and along with the usual drinks they had two special cocktails: one with blue curacao and a sparkling wine, I think, served in a champagne flute. I didn’t have that. I had the cherry sake cocktail, which was very good. It was sake with something giving it a cherry flavor topped with some ginger ale served over ice in a rocks glass.
I’m Donut? had two kinds of doughnuts (Associated Press spelling): a standard ring glazed and their original, brioche-based powdered sugar doughnut. Both were delicious. They apparently have long lines at the bakery, so it was nice to not have to wait.
A couple of days before the event, the organizers sent an email to the ticket-holders recommending that we dress festively and suggested suits and dresses. I don’t have a suit that fits very well — and I don't own any dresses — so I wore a light blue sport coat, light khaki pants, brown dress shoes, a white dress shirt, and a pink tie that I bought to wear to my sister’s wedding. The lighter colors seemed festive to me.
Most everybody there seemed to be of Japanese or Asian descent. The women mostly wore party dresses — there were some wearing yukatas or kimonos — and most of the guys wore dark suits with white dress shirts and dark ties — the standard uniform you see most office workers wear in Japanese cities. It was on a Friday evening right after work, so I imagine most of the Japanese guys who work in New York came straight from their offices. I did see a 30-something guy and a 20-something woman wearing T-shirts from Sayaka’s “I’m Ready” concert tour. The guy was completely casual in the T-shirt and shorts, while the girl was wearing a skirt and a blazer over the T-shirt. There were some photographers milling about taking pictures.
In the room where the concert took place, two Sayaka fangirls were seated to my left. They cheered loudly for her when she was introduced. They were about 30 years old. The girl next to me produced a Canon DSLR with a long lens, maybe a 70-300 mm, from a large, cloth tote bag. I’m sure she got some good shots. We were in row D on the left side facing the stage, which was about 20 feet from the stage. I had a tall guy between me and Sayaka, so I didn’t bother trying to take any photos with my phone. There were two premium rows up front, then an aisle, then the regular seats with a center aisle dividing them left and right.
The woman in charge of the event did ask us not to take photos or videos after the “Attack on Titan” performance. I wish I had at least recorded audio of Sayaka’s performance. She sounded great, as expected. She introduced herself in English, but then got to playing her four songs:
1. “Yasashisa ni Tsutsumareta Nara” by Arai Yumi.
2. “365 Nichi no Kamihikouki” by AKB48.
3. “Nando Demo” by Dreams Come True.
4. “Blue Star” by Yamamoto Sayaka.
Here's a clip of "Nando Demo" posted by a fan: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kVDCT6k3Jto
Here's another video with clips of the first three songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs7bYYPs5B8
Sayaka posted on Instagram that she wanted to showcase some different Japanese songs. The first song apparently is associated with Studio Ghibli, so it probably was familiar to anime fans. I was not familiar with it. Sayaka centered “365,” which was a B-side for AKB but was the theme song for a morning TV drama in Japan and gained wide popularity. Sayaka covered “Nando Demo” on her “identity” album. “Blue Star” is one of Sayaka’s more recent songs, which she released in April 2024. It allowed her to show off her vocal range.
She played solo with just a guitar. She changed guitars between “Nando Demo” and “Blue Star.” It seemed like she might have regretted her choice of blouse, because it had these large, sparkly decorations on the sleeves and she had to pull her right sleeve way up to keep the decorations from rubbing up against the guitar.
One mildly annoying thing about the concert was the emcee, NBC News correspondent Emilie Ikeda, mispronounced Sayaka’s name by emphasizing the middle syllable: sigh-YAK-ah.
One kinda cool thing about the show was that Sayaka entered from a side door to the right of the seating instead of from backstage like the other acts. She looked a little nervous or unsure what to expect, but once she got up on stage and started playing and singing, she was locked in.
I really hope she gets to come back with her band and play some shows, but I also want to go back to Japan to catch one of her concerts there.
Here's an article in Japanese about the event: https://www.excite.co.jp/news/article/E1746850024995/
If you use Chrome and have it translate the page, it'll read well in English.
Here are some photos: https://thenaturalaristocrat.com/2025/05/10/exclusive-photos-sayaka-yamamoto-at-japan-night-2025-nyc-concert/
And here's a video that shows some of the venue and the "Attack on Titan" performance: https://www.tiktok.com/@adventurous_anders/video/7503379136585501982
