Live in Saitama (October 2008)

six nights in Japan

The In Rainbows tour had been on the road since May, and the year ended with six nights in Japan, two each in Osaka, Saitama and Tokyo. This is the second of the two at the Saitama Super Arena, and the band swapped 11 songs from the night before.

Mikiko Morita, reviewing it for rockin'on, had the lights going down at 6.07pm on a full arena, and Thom Yorke, in red trousers and a black Fred Perry shirt, greeted it with “konbanwa”, good evening. He said little more all night than thank you, in English and in Japanese, and Morita thought the sound far better than at the band's shows near Tokyo in 2004. Thin poles of light hung from the roof, a bamboo grove to her eye, and the wide screen behind the band was cut into five, each panel fed by a camera on one of them and washed green or red. Early in the set Colin and Jonny Greenwood played timpani through “There There”.

The film keeps 17 of the night's 25 songs. It went up on the band's YouTube channel in June 2020.

the flag on the Rhodes

At the end of the first encore Yorke sat at his Rhodes piano for “Everything in Its Right Place” with a Tibetan flag hung on the front of it. Morita found the song moving, and the flag more so. The second encore ended on “How to Disappear Completely”, which left her dazed.

The band had two nights left, at the Tokyo International Forum, and the first of them was Yorke's 40th birthday.