TUESDAY, AUGUST 19th
Arriving in Japan
We arrived at the Narita airport sometime around 2pm. After clearing customs into Japan with (I think) six 50lb. bags of merchandise we were met by our good friends, Koba and Shinya. Koba plays bass for Loyal to the Grave (safely Japan's biggest current hardcore band) and Birthplace. Shinya is one of the guitarists for another well-known Japanese band called Crystal Lake. Shortly after meeting Koba and Shinya a sensation took over my body forcing me to face one of my greatest fears; I had to use the bathroom.
At a glance the public restroom at the airport looked pretty much like an American bathroom. Sinks, soap dispensers, urinals, hand dryers, and a neat row of toilet stalls. I quickly found that the men's restroom at the Narita airport differed from it's American counterpart at SFO. First of all, I couldn't slyly peek a bit under the stall door looking for shoes to see if it was occupied. The door goes all the way to the floor and all the doors were closed! Was somebody inside? I certainly didn't want to disturb a fellow traveler. As I was nervously pondering what I should do next a stall door opened up and I invited myself inside. What I saw shocked me. No, that's not completely true. I had heard about the possibility of "the hole" but I was kind of hoping that was just lore. I'll just say that I guess it's somewhat common in Japanese public restrooms to find aluminum railing conveniently poised in front of a porcelain "hole in the ground" instead of "sit-down" accommodations. I wish I had a photo.
We loaded the van in the humid Japanese air. Then Shinya and Koba drove us about an hour to Shibuya which is one of the 23 special wards of Tokyo. The drive gave us some time to crack some jokes and snap a few candids of the band.
Risen - looking pretty in the van.
One of the first things that Koba showed us was the intersection in front of Shibuya Station. I think it's known as being one of the busiest intersections in the world. Boasting about 6 crosswalks operating at once it certainly seemed like it!
A less than impressive photo of the Shibuya Intersection and two random foreigners.
A video that will give you a much better perspective on how many people are crossing at once.
After experiencing the madness at the intersection Koba and Shinya assumed that we wanted to do some record shopping. We walked a few blocks to a 5-story music store called Disk Union. The 5th floor is all punk music where I found some good Japanese hardcore CDs, Risen tour posters, and some Catalyst Records releases on display. Risen was surprisingly more well-known in Japan than I had thought. It seems like much fewer people in the US think about Risen as highly as some people in Japan do.
feat. Anchor, Cast from Eden, Open the Cages compilation CD, and the Risen demo CD.
After our short record shop excursion we walked to a tattoo shop where Dustin eventually got a hummingbird tattooed on his arm.
Being vegan in Japan isn't as challenging as many people might think it would be. I know of at least one travel guide for Japan which exclusively features vegan spots. One of those spots is a place called Vegan Healing in Shibuya where we had our first meal. Vegan Healing is a small restaurant servicing the vegan/health-conscious/organic folks of Tokyo. I had an iced soy latte and tempeh sausage with brown rice. The food fell way short of being great, but it was tasty enough after an 11 hour flight. I wish the food had been as good as this group shot we got after the meal.
Dustin, Me, Shinya, Kurt, Koba, Brian, Aaron, waitress.
After dinner Koba took us to his apartment in a place called Sugamo where we all fell asleep pretty much right away. Dustin and I shared a bed. Kurt and Brian shared the floor. Koba stayed up late with the lights on. We all slept anyway.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20th
Tokyo, Shimokitazawa @ ERA
Our American sleep schedule woke us up early. It was either that or the shrill siren of the thousands of Cicadas that infested each tree in the neighborhood. It was hot outside, the bugs were the size of birds, and apparently once Koba woke up he felt no need for breakfast. Instead of nourishing our travel-sick bodies we took a short bus ride to a Japanese garden. In the middle of the garden was a huge pond that was fed by a small brook. I don't know if Koi, pigeons, and turtles count as wildlife, but we saw tons of them!
Hanging out in the garden. Dustin throwin' the V-gun.
A spiritual experience in the Japanese Garden.
Shinya picked us up from the garden and drove us to another veggie spot called Govinda's. It must have been some sort of Krishna restaurant. Govinda's is all Indian cuisine but with a seemingly heavy Japanese influence. After eating we ended up wandering around a big mall where we took some Purikura photos. Purikura is basically a huge photobooth in which a group of friends can take nearly a dozen photos, edit the photos by drawing on them, and collect a sheet of photos that can be cut up and posted like stickers. I wonder if all Purikura booths blast Avril Lavigne.
(Purikura photos will be posted soon)
Crowding around the purikura booth.
The first venue we played was called ERA and we showed up early for soundcheck. The first thing that struck me when we got to the venue was the high level of quality and professionalism of the club. The place had all pro equipment, sound, and lighting. One of the first things I was asked was what kind of amplifier that I wanted to play. I chose two seperate amps for myself and the soundguy kindly set them both up for me. I don't know any venue in the US that would do that for a hardcore band. The merch tables were at a bar upstairs where a video of the stage was always playing on a flat screen TV next to where we were set up. One of the coolest things about the show at ERA was that we got to meet a few of the guys from Umbrage (Satoshi and Takashi) and Takayuki and Yoshi from xShiverx. At the show Yoshi was wearing the "Total Liberation" shirt that Gather made for the Total Liberation Tour, summer 2004. He also brought Risen some bread, cookies, and a stew that he made. We were so lucky to play with Umbrage, Celt, Eric, and Loyal to the Grave.
After the show we were pretty tired and most of us ended up falling asleep in the van on the way back to Koba's apartment.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 21st
Chiba, Kashiwa @ ALIVE
When we finally woke up Koba was gone but Die and Takayuki were with us. There was almost no vegan food at Koba's place so we pretty much just ate cookies all morning until Kurt and Takayuki went out to get some breakfast for us. They came back with rice balls and nato. For those who don't know, nato is basically fermented soy beans. Imagine rat poop covered in mucus. Oh, and also, it smells (and tastes) like dirty socks. Ok, maybe I'm not being completely fair, but nato is definitely not my cup of tea and apparently it's pretty popular in Japan.
Kurt claims that nato doesn't taste bad at all. I disagree.
The drive to Chiba was longer than our previous day's drive to Shimokitazawa. We arrived at the venue too early for sound check so we killed some time at a local shopping mall. We pretty much just wandered around until it was time to go back to the venue.
Mallrats.
Alive was a pretty smokey club and definitely not the best show of tour. It wasn't bad at all but Risen seemed a bit misplaced with the other bands. Most of the bands played a style of hardcore somewhere between Comeback Kid and Thursday. Let's just say that at the end of the night I was happy to get out of the smoke and get into bed.
That night we stayed with Satoshi, the singer of Umbrage. Their guitar player, Takashi, stayed with us too and when we woke up in the morning they had prepared an amazing breakfast for all of us.
Friday, August 22nd
Kanagawa, Yokohama @ CLUB LIZARD
It made sense for us to stay with Satoshi and Takashi because Umbrage and Risen would be playing together in Yokohama. The breakfast that they prepared for us was probably one of the best things I ate in Japan. They made miso soup, brown rice, buckwheat tea, tofu and edamame. While we ate we also looked at Satoshi's music collection and talked about dozens of our favorite 90s hardcore bands - Sevin, Unbroken, Canon, Day of Suffering, Culture, Green Rage, etc.
Dustin and Takashi showing off our breakfast, and their beautiful faces!
We had a great time when we arrived in Yokohama. When we first stepped out of the van Dustin found an authentic Japanese porta potty. It looked like a tall cylindrical outhouse with, well, take a look...
Low flow?
Following our porta potty exploration we walked down to an oceanside park where we gazed out across the Pacific.
The Yokohama oceanside.
It seems hard to walk around any big city in Japan without running into a "Lawson" convenience store. Lawson is like a combination of Rite Aid and AmPm. It's an excellent place to grab a beverage and bag of potato chips or to pick up necessities such as tissues and batteries. There was a Lawson store next to the park in Yokohama but this Lawson was special because it was "Happy Lawson;" a place not only for snacks and toiletries but for children's books, birthday cards, and apparel. After exploring the wonders of Happy Lawson we had to get to the club to load in.
Since we loaded in early that gave us time to walk from the club to the Yokohama Chinatown and see the sights. Apparently Yokohama Chinatown is the largest Chinatown not only in Japan but also in Asian Oddly enough it turns out that very few Chinese people actually live in Chinatown. Two experiences made the trip to Chinatown especially enjoyable: (1) We got to visit an awesome Chinese temple and (2) we found some really good deep fried mochi balls covered with sesame seeds - Chinese doughnut? Delicious!
Visiting a Chinese temple in Yokohama.
The show in Yokohama may have been my favorite of the whole tour. The venue wasn't too big and the sound was really good. We got to play with Umbrage again which was exciting for me. Kids were dancing pretty hard and sang along quite a bit. Once again we returned to Koba's house after the show. It made sense for us to be there because it's not too far from Shibuya where Blood Axe Fest was to take place the next afternoon.
Saturday, August 23rd
Tokyo, Shibuya @ CLUB ASIA
Saturday had one purpose; BloodAxe Fest. Shinya drove us from Koba's house to the show which started at 2pm.
Apparently Mr. Big is big in Japan.
When we arrived at the club Shibuya was slightly overcast which was a nice feeling because during our previous visit Tokyo felt more warm and humid than I prefer. It was challenging setting up the merch table because we felt almost mobbed by people wanting t-shirts and CDs. That was the first time I had ever seen Risen experience something like that.
The first band, Doggy Hoods, started right on time and boy were they bad! I don't even know how to describe their sound, nor do I think it's worth trying. The rest of the day was filled with several really good bands. Just about every hardcore band we played with in Japan was really polished; I guess even Doggy Hoods (imagine polishing a turd). The most noteable bands from the fest were Crystal Lake, Birthplace, and Loyal to the Grave. To be honest, I didn't watch many of the bands because the fest was so long and I wanted to see more of Shibuya.
Brian, Dustin, and I left the venue sometime in the afternoon and strolled through the rain to find the Shibuya intersection again so that Brian could get a video of the intersection in action. On our walk the three of us stopped off at a small hip-hop clothing boutique. Brian started chatting with a guy who worked at the store and when he found out that the three of us were in Risen he ran to get some paper and his camera. It turns out that he knew of Risen from his little brother who is into hardcore so he took a picture with us and asked for our autographs. Little did he know, none of us actually play in Risen! Oh well, it was a fun experience anyway.
By around 9pm Risen was scheduled to go on. We played every song that we had ever learned or practiced together including covers by Birthright, Gather, and Unbroken. I attempted only one stage dive while I was playing and unfortunately sank straight to the bottom almost immediately. Fortunately, though, the Japanese are pretty stage dive savvy and lifted me up right away just in time for the chorus of Blanket by Unbroken.
Caliban was pretty terrible. They were the only other non-Japanese band that we played with. I would have been more stoked to see them during their Vent and their split with Heaven Shall Burn days. Now they play boring metal and wear white collared shirts with blood stains over the hearts. Straight edge? Yeah, I think one of them.
After the show we went out with my new friend, Dobek (a Polish dude with an English accent living in Tokyo), and a bunch of friends to a terrible Italian restaurant. After a long festival like Blood Axe Fest, food is food.
Sunday, August 24th
A day off in Shibuya!
Sunday was my last full day in Japan and also a day off with no shows and nothing to worry about. After the show we had stayed with the singer of Birthplace and his girlfriend. They didn't speak very much English and we spoke almost no Japanese so it make things a little frustrating and confusing for everybody. They did, however, treat us really well and made us an amazing vegetable tempura and udon soup breakfast before going to Shibuya. They also had the cutest cat I've ever seen in my life. No joke. I wish I had a picture!
We came back to Shibuya to do some shopping and to visit the tattoo shop. Brian and Dustin were both really excited about getting tattooed in Japan. I didn't think it was a bad idea but when it came down to it I was more interested in spending my last day in Japan seeing Shibuya, Harajuku, and a good family friend, Hiromi.
When we arrived in Shibuya Brian and Dustin started with their tattoos right away. Kurt and I met up with Hiromi who went with us to visit the statue for Hachiko. Hachiko was a dog remembered by the Japanese for his loyalty for his master. It's kind of a long story but I was really excited and determined to visit Hachiko!After visiting Hachiko our big mission was souvenir shopping. We wandered Shibuya and made our way toward Harajuku. Harajuku is another ward in Tokyo but it's a bit more mature and upscale in comparison to Shibuya. Souvenir shopping didn't really begin until we reached Kittyland (pronounced Keeteerando). Kittyland is a 4 or 5 story building, each level boasting it's own theme. The first floor is a big mix of toys, clothing, trinkets, and Japanese pop culture. Upstairs you find entire floors dedicated to Hello Kitty, Disney, Snoopy, and Naruto. This is where I did most of my souvenir shopping.
After shopping I took the train to the outskirts of Chiba where Hiromi lives. I may have fallen asleep on the train. I don't remember it very much.
One last crew pic before I left for Chiba!
Monday, August 25th
My final hours in Japan
Hiromi lives with her mom in a cedar wood home (looks and feels like the inside of a sauna). Her dad passed away many years ago. In their homes the Mexicans create ofrendas for the dead. The Japanese pretty much have the same thing for the deceased only with a few stylistically different qualities. It was an honor to be introduced to her father.
Hiromi and her mom took great care of me during my final hours in Japan. They fed me, drove me to the airport, and sent me off with gifts of sake and udon for the family. It was a sweet ending to tour and to my summer!
