Japan Tour 2007
Nov 1st
Arrived in Japan with Drum Spyder, immediately felt the shift to a new place, population density in the airport, the pace of people’s gate quicker, very stylish young men and women.
We found our way onto the train to Shinjuku and we are here in Japan. Makyo (Gio) met us at the train station and began our first navigation of the labyrinth of the Tokyo subway. Several floors below ground we wound our way upward through dozens of escalators and elevators finally emerging on the street into the din of the 21st century futurist Tokyo, packed with people, a hard bebop quartet was pounding away in a nearby square. We grabbed some green aloe vera juice at a small stand and walked into Makyo's neighborhood-Ekoda in the North West of Tokyo.
After checking into our super small hotel we ventured out to get our first meal, a cozy BBQ place, appointed in blonde wood and low tables that seemed to be a meeting place for young sumos. The owner of the place came to our table and gave me a fantastic piece of paper that had the names in Konji of all the sumo wrestlers in Japan beginning at the bottom with very small text and climbs up until the most famous sumo is listed in giant bold type. Great looking graphic.
Slept practically in the same bed with Spyder, need a bigger room.
Nov 2
Finding coffee the next morning was challenging as although there were lots of folks up and about they were all heading off to work or school and no businesses in neighborhood were open, a bit later Gio made some good coffee as we got ready to head out of town for the first part of the tour, to Nagoya, Osaka and a few days in Kyoto.
We got onto the bullet train to Nagoya and we were off at 150 miles an hour. Our arrival in Nagoya was an hour or so later and we went directly to the club for sound check. The club was smallish, a rock venue with an art gallery upstairs. Everyone was very nice, especially Heinz, the Swiss owner. Sound check was a bit dodgy as the venue is used to having rock bands that don't have the frequency range of electronic music. We headed off to the hotel, which was quite nice, tall glass building, and dropped our stuff. After a fine meal of Japanese take out noodles together in the room, back to the club for show #1. We arrived to the din of a crazy Japanese punk band at the club and headed upstairs to the gallery for refuge till we went on. I am not totally sure why the promoter booked Makyo and us with an ironic punk band but it all worked out. Everyone was all boozed up by the time we went on and the sound system made all of our songs sound like Led Zeppelin, which was fun. Nothing like a fuzzy oud! Nice dance performances by local belly dance companies followed. After our set we settled in at the bar and discovered Japan serves absinthe, which made everyone very happy. So the evening was spent indulging in the green fairy, they like to mix it with champagne in Japan. Spyder found this concoction delectable.
We wandered back to the hotel and crashed, one down four to go.
photos up @
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jefstott/
Japanese Tour part 1
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