Japan Tour Diary, Part 4

We each crawl out of bed around 7am to find Kazuto and his parents already up and about. Kazuto’s mum has another amazing spread of Japanese food ready for us including a soup that reminds us of coddle. “OM-NOM-NOM!” No time to waste so we all jump into the van (Spooks, Keita and Kazuto) and hit the road. I have brought along an iTrip so we are able to listen to tunes via the radio. It’s a beautiful sunny morning and despite being tired we’re in good form and pretty excited about hitting the road.

We meet up at the edge of the motorway with LITE and Marvins who are in the second van and a “People Carrier” and after stopping to let Kazuto swap vehicles, Keita takes the wheel. We all hit the motorway to Nagoya heading west. Along the way Brian regales us with stories of shouting “OM-NOM-NOM” during Jaws any time the shark eats someone. This has me in stitches. Yes, I am delirious with tiredness!

All three vehicles stop off at a service station en route for food and a toilet break. These truck-stop restaurants are amazing. I have a noodle dish that is very tasty and a far cry from a jumbo breakfast roll at a Statoil in Laois! Also, in a Lost in Translation moment we notice the vending machines for Boss coffee seem to all have this ad featuring a bleary eyed Tommy Lee Jones. Cheer up Tommy, the house extension must be paid for at this stage!

Later we pass Mount Fuji which is unfortunately covered in cloud. Ah well, hopefully we’ll see it on the way back.

After a second pit-stop we arrive in Nagoya. We pass the Arc de Triumph style archway building called the Midland Square building but never get close enough to take a picture. Here is a picture from someone who did:

We finally arrive at the venue, Club Rock’n’roll. It’s a small 100 capacity venue with a decent sound system and the crew seem to know their stuff. The full lineup tonight is Marvin’s Revolt, The Spook, LITE and local Nagoya band Akutagawa. We run off to buy batteries while Marvin’s soundcheck and have a quick stroll around Nagoya. It’s a major city by Irish standards but is definitely smaller than Tokyo! We arrive back to do our own soundcheck. I use LITE’s Roland Jazz chorus amp which sounds great! Overall the sound is pretty cool at this venue and we are feeling good about tonight. We watch LITE soundcheck. However, Brian is watching me watching LITE soundcheck:

Ourselves and LITE head off to a restaurant round the corner. The weather is turning and it’s now drizzling. No danger of getting homesick here so! We have a great (and cheap) dinner of miso soup, rice and tonkatsu. We watch in awe as Keita and the LITE guys show us how roll strips of seaweed round rice with chopsticks to make tasty treats. “NOM!” We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do this.

Ourselves and LITE head off to a restaurant round the corner. The weather is turning and it’s now drizzling. No danger of getting homesick here so! We have a great (and cheap) dinner of miso soup, rice and tonkatsu. We watch in awe as Keita and the LITE guys show us how roll strips of seaweed round rice with chopsticks to make tasty treats. “NOM!” We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do this.

No time for digestion – we leg it back to Club Rock’n’Roll in time to see Akutagawa take to the stage. There is already a decent crowd of 40-50 punters at the venue. The lads are very young and very talented. Their songs are slow building post-rock inspired rockouts building with impassioned vocals to full on riffing rock-outs. After each song the audience enthusiastically applaud but soon after they quieten down and listen intently as the singer gives a very long speech. The words “Thin Lizzy” are mentioned. Nice one! We will come to realise that this respectful audience behaviour is typical in Japan. Audiences almost always expect a band to have a dedicated spokesperson to make at least one speech and will listen respectfully. This would never happen in Ireland!

LITE take to the stage. They are well liked in Nagoya and the audience swarm up to the stage. LITE don’t disappoint and effortlessly pile through the tunes. It’s no wonder they go down so well in Ireland. “Ef” and “Past Three Days” sound as amazing as ever. Akinori is a powerhouse drummer and it’s a wonder to watch him play. Definitely a hard act to follow, but follow them we must!

We have a 40 minute set which gives us a bit of time to warm into it. Inspired by the energy of LITE and Akutagawa we put more and more energy into our performance. We have some issues with bass early on during “The Ragged Rock”, but Enda is well able to wing it and it doesn’t affect the overall performance. The audience is into it and we do good versions of “Black Diaries” and “Down Comes The Bridge” in particular. We only muster a few words of Japanese and after observing the manner in which bands talk to the audience we feel we ought to make more of an effort. Our job is done for the night and overall this was a big improvement on the previous night in Chiba. We kick back with a few beers and watch Marvin’s Revolt play another excellent set. We chat to a few people including Scott from Australia, who’s over in Japan teaching English and who spent a lot of time in Dublin and is familiar with the Dublin music scene. We chat about The Redneck Manifesto and gigs at the Lower Deck. Also I chat to the two Yukis about Japanese kanji characters.

There’s time for a chat with the singer from Akutagawa about Thin Lizzy and to finish our beers and then we’re off to the hotel which will be our base for tonight and tomorrow night. As per usual we take off our shoes and place them in lockers near the door of the hotel and head on upstairs. All three bands are split between two dorm rooms with futon style mattresses laid upon straw floor mats. Frugal but very comfortable.

We think we’re alone in the hotel so a party ensues, fuelled on beer and sake! Between jet lag and post-gig tiredness we get almost immediately locked! I bow out around 4am but Donnchadh and Laurids stay up boozing til 6 (mad bastards!).