TOKYO JAPAN TOUR 2006
DAY TWO

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Wednesday, Feb 8th, 2006

Up around 10…slept pretty good, but if you keep me awake for 34 hours I’ll sleep pretty good on anything. Had a hellova headache, took some Ibepukin or something Dave gave me. Sat on the floor watching Japanese TV for a while…wondering why we wanted to do this. Have to admit, I was kinda miserable this morning, felt better after a shower. The shower here rocks! They have a deep bathtub your just supposed to soak in, but I never tried it. Folded up what they use for beds here and put the table back in the living room. I thought American TV was awfully stupid, but Japan here refuses to be outdone. Their daytime TV is like…taking the active ingredient out of sleeping on a garage floor. Talking and food. They film a lot of people eating food and then saying “ Ooooohhh!!”

Dave returned from walking around. He found a store nearby and brought back these little strawberry and blueberry pastry things and a killer box of macadamien nuts…which really aren’t just crazy people in macadamia, like I thought. Ate a granola bar and checked out the rest of the apartment. The toilet seat is heated, all the sinks have little small baskets in the drains, everything is so small. The balcony has a mini fire escape for escaping from minature fires. There is a dresser in the living room that should have Barbie decals on it.

Tomo was by at noon to pick us up..so we did’nt have a lot of time. He would call from the lobby everyday to our intercom phone thing..to which BassAmp would usually pick it up and say “ Mishy-Moshy, Dude!” BassAmp was often trying to invent new words into the Japanese vocabulary while we were here. It was amazing that no one really cared for any of them! We carried our guitars down and loaded up into the van…the backseat is MINE!!!!

Drove for quite a while. There are always tons of people out on the street, riding bikes and motorcycles. They have a car here called a “ smart car” which is so small it could have a head-on collision with a dog and lose. I would love to have one! Matt wanted to buy a phone card, so Tomo stopped at a 7-11. Felt like an Alien walking around in here..I mean, you would think I could find ONE thing I felt like eating in a 7-11. Matt got some kind of international phone card thing, and we walked down to a pay phone so he could call someone. Dave used a few minutes on it, and I got to call Steph real quick. Walking back we passed a couple of kids wearing Metallica shirts, think we scared them or something.

Back in the van and drove to Inage...a somewhat more rural part of town for Tokyo. Pulled up to a streetside club called K’s Dream. Once inside, we learned it was dedicated to Curt Kobain…Kobain’s Dream. I just thought that was…I dunno…unhealthy somehow. The guy put out a few cd’s and blew his brains out, and you’ve got his fuggin pictures all over the walls. Ah well…brought our guitars to the stage area which was down two flights of stairs. Nice to see flyers and decals covering the stairwells. I don’t remember anyone else soundchecking when we walked in...I think we went straight up. Matt has a Marshall…but I’m stuck with a Fender Twin….egad! Thanks, Mr. Kobain! Matt messed around with it a bit and tried to get it to sound okay…but it’s a Fender Twin. Checked with Year is One…could hear myself fine, and carried our stuff up into dressing room…up more stairs behind the stage. BassAmp had to sign his name on the wall first ( he writes on most anything ) on the club’s logo behind the stage right next to Marky Ramone, which the club objected to…Tomo as well. I kinda felt like they did’nt care for us much there after that. That’s okay, I don’t care for us either. BassAmp sort of apologized, saying that if they wanted to they could punch him, but he gets at least one punch back. We met outside…the club’s logo says “K’s Dream – Vandalism: Beautiful as a rock in a cop’s face.” Ahh….so cute.

Walked a few blocks down to what looked like a miniature Denny’s called Jonathan’s. Since the currey thing last night, Tomo is worried about where to take me, but this place looked fine. I mean, I’ll try anything but seafood when I’m hungry. Got a table and Tomo ordered stuff for us. Had Free Range Chicken Teriyaki..which was…okay. Green fried pumpkin slices and yams I thought were potatoes. Ordered something to drink but it never came, so I had to choke this stuff down with the 3 oz’s of water you get. Then found out your supposed to get your own drinks, so I went up and pushed what looked like Coke and it was freakin’ tea. This place hates me. As we were paying at the counter, we noticed they were selling spray cans of helium. Like some joke thing for kids. Kinda funny picturing junior in the back seat passed out with a can of helium. I looked for fruit flavored crystal-methies but I guess they were out. Walked back to K’s Dream. People always look at you on the street…but never too long.

Sat upstairs for a while next to the grafetti wall in these rigid little square chairs and talked a while. Show was still about an hour off. Felt like I would start falling alseep if I stayed in these chairs too long, so I got up and looked at flyers for a while. They have cd’s on the wall for sale of local bands and stuff, and lots of free little pamphlet type stuff on the local scene. People began showing up, and I needed a new place to hide. Went downstairs and waited for the first band called Unite. They were good, around 16 or 17 year old guys playing energetic but precise stuff. Came to realize bands here could play their asses off, with tons of processed sound stuff…but it was what they even called “ Japanese Rock” and lacking a lot of the guts and energy rock and punk have. They are very into kick drum and base, and usually one guitarist has a Roland jazz amp. Very talented guys, but it just needs guts or something. Almost too disciplined..I kept thinking. Unite handed out questionaires when they were finished, asking questions in which you were to rate them from 1 to 5. Of course, I had no freakin’ clue what it said, so Tomo helped us out and we filled them out. I thought this was a bit cheesy, but the crowd seemed to be taking it seriously. I mean, back home this would be an obvious invite to write all sorts of insults and vulgar pictures…so you had to respect that.

Only a ten minute break before the next band, Crazy Hitman. I wish I would of bought their cd. They were a mix of punk and Jamaican ska kind of stuff. Base player had dreadlocks and a really weird singing voice that sounded 7 years old, guitarist had a stocking cap pulled down over his eyes and smiled a lot. I did’nt realize they were singing English till their po-go breaks would come up and they shouted “ Here we go!” I thought they were great...even though I don’t care much for ska.

Next band was called Alice’s Tea Party. Yep…no kidding. These guys were a step above Unite, still Japanese Rock but very good. Began to realize...none of these guitarist ever screw up. Like they were taught in military school or something. Could’nt figure out if the guitarist was a guy or a girl. Don’t laugh…not the only time I had to do that here.

Went up to the dressing room for a while, Bass and Matt were in there trying to talk to the guys in Surge. Base player was a girl...maybe that’s why. Dave had fallen asleep in there earlier, much to the delight of the other bands with their cell phone cameras. Went back down to catch a few of Surge’s set. Caught the first couple of songs, they came on to a sea of chemical fog…which is still considered cool here. Thought they were okay…went back up and talked with my fellow buggers till we went on. We had to go down the stairs from the dressing room to the stage, to which Tomo declared, “ So you look like Rock Stars!” He honestly said that with a straight face.

We got set up. They use a curtain here in between bands. More rock star bullshit, I guess. We went on and played much better than last night, but the crowd was’nt too enthused…more of a hardcore bunch, I guess. Or maybe it was just a Wednesday and no one was into anything tonight…I’d like to think in my own special way that we just sucked. There was one guy throughout the whole set that was headbanging up a storm out front. I did’nt notice him till we saw the house vid later on, he was a freakin’ maniac. Only thing I really remember is at one point, I knelt down by my TWIN to get some feedback, and on the way back up I picked up a guitar stand with the SG. It was like…stuck on the tuning pegs and I could’nt get rid of it without having to stop and retune real quick. I had to laugh…I mean, that has NEVER happened before. Despite that and learning what Japanese crickets sound like, we did a pretty good set and went back up to the dressing room and put the guitars away.

Went back down to catch the last band…Zero. These guys were one of my favorite bands on the tour. Very heavy and the singer was a great screamer! I really liked them, thought they deserved to be the headliner. They seemed like jerks.

After it was over, I hung out by the merch table with Tomo and Dave. Matt and BassAmp were busy drinking and howling like tourist. Tomo asked Dave how his jet-rug was doing. He even wrote it down… j-e-t r-u-g. Dave said his jet-rug was fine. Then realized later he meant jet-lag. The base player from Zero came over and talked to me for a while, or we tried to talk. We traded buttons and stickers, and talked with him and the guitarist about our favorite bands...one conversation that always seemed to work when others failed ( pointing and yelling GOODYEAR BLIMP does nothing)…they mentioned Black Sabbath and Motorhead. They were cool, and not at all like the jerks I thought they would be. BaseAmp has learned how to say “party” in Japanese and is saying it every 2 minutes now. Don’t know if the other bands are amused or sympathetic when they answer him back. We did’nt sell anything again tonight...but none of these bands are. Learned it’s like…almost 20 bucks to get into some of these shows with 5 or 6 bands on the bill, and no one seems to be spending much else. Can’t blame them, really. We hung around till about midnight, then loaded up the van and took off.

Stopped at some convenience mart on the way home…called Family Mart. Only thing I could find to eat was a funky carton of orange juice. Base gave me ten bucks to buy him some cigs and some sort of microwave noodle soup. Long drive back to the apartment, and pretty cold with Base opening up the window to smoke every ten minutes. Still massive amounts of people out on the streets. Do they work all freakin’ night? Where the hell are they going? This just bugged the hell out of me. I could look at this city at night forever, though…really cool!!! Iggy Pop “Passenger” gets in my head at times like this.

Tomo dropped us off around 1, and we drug our 50 pound cases up to the room. Made my bed and tried to drink that orange juice I bought. God, how can you screw up orange juice?? Dumped it down the sink…turned out to be mandarin and white grape juice and buffalo or something. Base declared his cup noodle soup was the worst thing he’s ever put in his mouth…which must be pretty damn bad, I’m guessing.

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