I’m not sure if any other writer does this, but I have certain music I associate with certain stories I write. There are many times where a song will inspire a story, but sometimes (and especially if I’m working on something longer than a short story) I’ll hear a song and think it fits in nicely with a story.

That’s the case with The Chainsmokers. At first I thought their music was fine – I liked a couple of the songs they did – but then I started writing a series I hope to publish one day, and the vast majority of the songs I listened to while writing it came from this group.

I was actually going through the first book of the series two weeks ago while listening to a song on The Chainsmoker’s Youtube channel that I can’t find elsewhere at the moment but that I needed for the book, when I saw a notice below the video that said something like: Upcoming concerts near you.

My jaw nearly hit the floor when I saw it say “Japan.” Not only that, close to Tokyo.

I went to their official website to confirm and saw that yes, for one night only, they would be near Tokyo performing at something called the World DJ Festival as part of a lineup. After that, they were back to being nowhere near Japan.

There were a thousand reasons not to go – Sunday night is not ideal for work on Monday morning, paying a ton of money basically just for one group is a waste of money, it’s still pretty far away and I’d be getting home crazy late – but I am working at this moment on polishing up this one series whose main background music was The Chainsmokers.

I had to go.

It’s an incredible waste of money, but I ended up arriving in the evening. After looking around the venue (it made me think of an airplane hangar or maybe Dulles International Airport), I noted the two stages available. Like many train stations in Japan, you usually go up to get through the ticketing gates, then go down to the platform. This was the case here where I went up, got my wristband sorted out, then went down into the giant venue.

There were two stages on opposite ends of the venue separated by what I can only assume was a soundproof wall because even though the music was so loud I could hear it vibrating in my ribcage, as soon as I went from one stage to the next, I couldn’t hear the other stage’s music at all.

The stage to the far right was the smaller Dream Stage, which I think hosted domestic DJs. It sounded amazing, but I was there for a reason, and I wanted to get as close to the World Stage as I could considering my dismal ticket level.

There were no chairs I could see (except in the VIP areas), meaning just one large area with barricades separating us minions from the higher-paying crowds. It was a sea of people, many of them quite drunk by the time I had arrived. I managed to weave my way through the crowds until I was surrounded, at times squeezed from all sides, by a mass of sweaty people all throwing their hands up and jumping around. It had the feel of a train in Tokyo during rush hour.

The staggering differences, however, were the music and the mood. While a train is oppressively silent, this was an assault on your hearing with music I mostly liked. People on those trains are also usually hollowed-out versions of human beings thanks to work, but the people at the festival were positively excited to be alive and to be there.

While there were people like me who jabbed their phones up in the air to catch videos of their favorite songs or take photos, I was surprised that we were the minority rather than the majority (except for a few times) as people seemed to just be there to enjoy the music. It was nice to notice.

The crowd ebbed and flowed like the sea, dragging me along from standing behind a tall person who perfectly blocked my view when The Chainsmokers took the stage to being in front of a crowd of slightly smaller people.

I realized that this wasn’t at all like concerts I’ve been to in the past where you stand there and you watch your favorite musician do all kinds of crazy stunts and such while singing and dancing – this was The Chainsmokers playing music we could all dance to.

There were a thousand reasons not to go, but I’m really glad I did. I came out of it exhuasted but invigorated at the same time.