If you are on this website, it means you are a fan of (or at least you quite like) Koda Kumi’s music. In summer 2014, Koda Kumi opened the global fanclub, for fans living outside Japan. As you may already know, she has 2 Japanese fanclubs, 倖田組 (Koda Gumi) and playroom. However, it is impossible for people living outside of Japan to subscribe to these fanclubs, so that’s the reason why the GFC is there.

It is actually a mix of playroom and 倖田組. You will be able to see pictures of Kumi during her daily life, or when rehearsing, recording a new album, etc. You will be able to watch her monthly short videos where she introduces what is going to happen in the month (subtitled in English!). The content is available in English, Chinese and Korean. The most interesting part of the fanclub is that you can purchase exclusive goods or CD/DVD, like all her tour merchandises, the limited edition of albums or live DVDs, etc. If you are lucky enough to go to Japan and want to see one of her concerts, you can also purchase a concert ticket very easily, and have the guarantee of quite a good seating!

However… I must also go over the drawbacks of this fanclub. If you want to join for the pictures, the Q&A, exclusive news and so on, I have to warn you: you may be disappointed. The content is not very often updated. Sometimes we have to wait months before seeing the pictures. Some contents (like exclusive previews of songs) will even never be available.

Despite all that, if your objective is to buy exclusive FC merch/albums and to go to her concerts, you should join the fanclub. You most likely won’t be disappointed regarding this.

One final point, is to support the artist and let avex know that she has international fans. Koda Kumi is not the top artist in Japan anymore, her sales have decreased and she can’t get unlimited budget from avex for her projects. So every efforts count! 😊
The annual fee is 2500 JPY, which depending on the conversion rate, roughly corresponds to 19 € / 22USD / £17 (source: xe.com, accessed on 2018/8/8).

On the GFC, you are able to buy official goods, albums and live DVDs directly from the FC store. This store is part of the mu-mo shop, and they don’t ship directly overseas, so you will have to use a middleman called Tenso.

• Official store
  
  1. On the Website, under the Member Menu, click on Koda Gumi Shop.
     
     
  2. Click on “Koda Gumi Official Shop”. You will get redirected to the mu-mo website. You need to login with your membership number and password. You will arrive on the shop, select what you want to buy and then go to your cart.
     
     
  3. You can either order as a guest, or you can create a mu-mo account, which will save you from entering the same details each time, and you can even get some membership points. In the shipping address, you need to copy paste your tenso address (in Japanese characters), not your own address. However, you have to put your own family name and first name.
     
     TIP ! Some people experienced issues when copy pasting in Japanese. One recommendation is to copy paste the example showed by mu-mo in brackets below the case, and replace the XXXXX by the numbers in your tenso address.
     For example: 千住曙町42-4-TSXXXXX  千住曙町42-4-TS159999
     
     
     
  4. Pay attention at this step, this is usually why it doesn’t work and you get error messages.
     After that, confirm your order, validate and you’re done!
     


• Tenso
  Tenso is a reliable website which allows you to buy products in Japan and ship them to your country. It’s available in English, with a complete user guide . They can deliver to these countries:
  
  
  
  Usually, their policy is restricting shipping products like perfume, fireworks or other dangerous products like this. Please check
  
  
  1. First please create an account, click on “Sign Up”.
     
     
     
  2. You will have to enter your email address, then you will receive an email with a link to verify your email address, and finally you will have to enter your personal information.
     
  3. When your account is finalized, you will receive a Japanese address and phone number. You will use this address when ordering on the FC store or mu-mo shop. In fact, they will receive first your order, and then they will ship it to you.
     
     
     
  4. The first time, they have to verify your information. You will have to submit documents (like ID with same address as the one you registered in tenso, after that you will be able to ship your orders to other addresses). It usually takes 2 business days.
     
     
     
  5. When they receive your order, they will send you an email. You will be able to choose the delivery method (EMS, Air, SAL, Surface), pay for the shipping fee, and they will send it to you in the next business day usually. Below you can find an example of the shipping methods and fees available for a 2kg parcel to France. The fastest way is EMS. Shipping calculator is available.
     
     
  TIP ! If the customs in your country is checking often your parcels and charging you for the custom fees and you want to avoid that, you can customize the declared value on your package. Be careful, tenso won’t allow you to put 0 JPY, and if your package is big and you enter a very low value, it is very likely that they will investigate and find the real value (which is in the receipt inside the parcel). My recommendation (from personal experience) is to put a value that is not too low, but won’t also exceed 2000 JPY (which is in general the limit to start applying customs fees). For an album, I would recommend 1500 JPY for example. Please note that this is only based from my own experience in France and in the UK, but I cannot give you any guarantee that it will work in your country.
  
  
  

• The lottery
  In Japan, you usually have to participate to a lottery to be able to purchase a ticket. You cannot choose the seating, it is randomly attributed. For Koda Kumi, the different fanclubs take turns to do their lottery for concert tickets. Usually, the Japanese fanclub 倖田組 comes first. Then it depends, it can be the GFC or playroom. You will have several days to apply for the lottery via the FC website, then you will have to wait several weeks before the results. Usually, they require a login to access the page where you can apply for your desired date. This login is your 10 digit ID numbers and your birth date as your password (Ex. If your birth date is January 30th, 2001, enter 20010130 as your password).
  The GFC has some specificities. The seating is usually the same, quite close to the stage. In previous hall tours like Best Single Collection and W Face, global fans were seated on 1st floor, between 11th and 13th rows. For information, for example the Japanese fanclub 倖田組 can give a very random seating, sometimes very far from the stage, sometimes very close. Secondly, you won’t receive a ticket before the performance, you will have to obtain it on the day of the performance, at the FC booth (see next section).
  The payment has to be by credit or debit card. The website managing the tickets is called LivePocket ticket and is in English.
  
  You won a ticket, congratulations! What’s next ?
  You will find the details of your ticket on Livepocket website. You will need to print out the page with the QR code, and bring it along with your ID (passport is recommended) to the 倖田組 FC booth on the day of the performance. Please see below an example of a ticket receipt from Livepocket.
  
  
  At the booth, you usually don’t have to queue with the other Japanese fans (but it may be recommended to queue, especially if there is a lot of people to not upset the Japanese fans), you can ask one member of the staff by saying simply “Global Fanclub ticket”. The staff usually can’t speak English, but they know the system. They will then give you your ticket, yes, it’s that simple!
  If you won several performances, you will have to get your ticket each time, you cannot obtain all tickets at once. This is to avoid re-sale most probably.
  
• You didn’t win a ticket, what are your options ?
  If you didn’t win a ticket, it may become difficult if the date you chose is a popular one. General sale takes place, but it requires a Japanese address, or credit card, or payment in convenience store, so the best option is to ask a Japanese friend. Otherwise, you can buy a ticket on websites like viagogo.com. However, the price can become quite high compared to the original one. Another website where you can buy last minute tickets is Ticket Pia . Yahoo Auctions can also be a way, and you could even choose the seating as sellers usually disclose the rows. This can happen around 2 weeks before the performance, as people usually receives their tickets (especially fanclub tickets) 2 weeks before.
  

Have you experiences yourself buying an album with tenso? Going to a concert with a GFC ticket? If so, and if you have any tips or any personal experience that you would like to share with us, please do so! The objective of this section is to help international fans to enjoy Koda Kumi’s music and performance, so if there is anything you think is missing in this thread, please contact us and we will add your feedback or comments here.


Thank you very much!