Heading North For The Winter Tour - Japan

Long smooth flight over night into Narita airport in Tokyo. After waiting around 30 mins we’re met by Koyo from Thistime Records and it’s great to him see him again as it’s been a few years since we we’re last in Japan! He apologises for his “time mistake” and proceeds to crash tackle hug me!

We walk out of the airport to high 20’s weather ( a nice change from the cold of Melbourne in early Sept) and all jump on the airport “limousine” bus service and head to Hamon Studio’s, an underground rehearsal and recording studio run by Kenji from Toto’s (our support band for most of the Japanese tour) We load in then head upstairs to re-acquaint ourselves with the Lawson “combini” (Japanese word for convenience store) next door. They’re everywhere in Japan and contain many weird and wonderful food “items” which usually means anytime we go in for food we’re looking around for about 30 mins in wonder, delight and distraction before we all decide what we want. We also have to ask Koji what the hell everything is as the writing on the packets is 90% Japanese so sometimes we have no idea what we’re actually eating. After we eat, we start checking emails waiting for Koji to show up. (koji had already been in Japan one week on business so he was travelling separately to us. Koji shows up about an hour later and we set up and rock in the cleanest rehearsal studio environment you can imagine it also has a full length wall to wall mirror on one wall so we can practice our rock moves (please understand I’m joking) . After rehearsal I do a radio interview on the phone with a cool station from Osaka. The host is Australian and translates live in real time to his listeners!!

We then check into our hotel in the bright neon excitement of Shinjuku. We later find out our hotel is situated right in the middle of what you would loosely describe as the red light district but this time there’s a twist. The streets and filled with Japanese men dressed predominately in shinny, silky pants and shirts, with shinny shoes and real “pretty pretty” stylized long bleached hair! Basically from what Koji tells us they’re “hosts” and they get paid to hang out and drink with women, the ladies can ‘order’ which guy they want from large colour signage on the front of these places or you can just pick up some fresh man meat from the street, these guys are everywhere!!! Gustav decided to get his haircut across the street from our hotel and he got a stylized cut similar to all these male escorts because that was all the rage, quite funny!

The next few days we get all touristy and go to Harajuku, Shibuya, and all around Shinjuku, we go ten pin bowling, I get smashed at table tennis by Gustav ( I previously held delusions that I was pretty good at it) eat at Moss Burger and Freshness Burger and check out some traditional Japanese shrines and stuff.

Thistime Records through us a welcoming party and heaps of friends we made from the first tour show up. It’s so great to see everyone again. We eat heaps of traditional Japanese food, none of which I recall the names of but we eat some weird kind of soup that has animal intestines in it we think (very chewy) and tofu and spring onion, we eat green salty beans, caviar dip, all kinds chicken, and sausage type stuff, so much stuff.

This tour we learnt a lot more about the different kinds of alcohol Japan has to offer. Like last time we enjoyed numerous cocktail in a can style drinks and Asahi beer but this time Amy and I fell in love with a drink called Cassis orange. The cassis part is a black/red currant type liquor and it’s mixed with orange juice or soft drink truly very tasty. I also enjoyed Dita orange which is kinda simular and also very tasty if you like your drinks sweet as I do. Towards the end of dinner party they bring out the big guns and we start drinking this stuff which tastes pretty much like straight vodka and tequila but slightly watered down. I don’t recall the name of the drink but it’s a hangover recipe pretty much as we drink it from regular sized glasses.

Anyhoo after dinner and many drinks (this type of restaurant is called a Izakaya meaning all you can eat and drink we take full advantage) we go out and sing karaoke including the click five, ben folds, sugarcult, fountains of wayne, the cars, weezer. Fuji one of our record labels guys has some kind of fever so much to our amusement he starts wearing these funnily white medicinal patches on his face to cool himself down. He looks kinda like a very intoxicated mummy. He he. (I’m pretty sure we have photo’s to prove it!

Show 1 Shimokitazawa Shelter Tokyo

Great little venue, maybe 200 capacity, with an enormous clock hanging down from the backwall/roof and as we have come to expect from Japanese venues there’s awesome lights and P.A. In house sound folks are friendly and welcoming, We soundcheck then walk to down town Shimokitazawa for pre-show dinner at place called “Saizeriya” our favourite cheap and convenient Italian pizza, pasta and salad place.

We head back and catch great sets from Urchin Farm and Calanders, our support bands tonight, and our main tour support Toto’s who are also awesome! Then we do our thing! The show goes well, the venues full and we encore with Survival Car by Fountains of Wayne. Everyone’s having a great time, lots of smiles, singing along and hand claps exactly what we LOVE about Japanese audiences!

We hang around after the show and receive some really great gifts from the folks that came down. We get cup cakes, biscuits with our band name written on them in chocolate, (spelt willingtons - he he ) and various other foods ( thank you so much to everyone who bought us gifts, and specially made food boxes with colour cut out pictures of us, its all really over whelming and lovely).

We also catch up wit the guys from Minxzone who you may recall toured with us here in Australia earlier this year. We also get loads of free cds from people in the audience and support bands! The venue then turns to party mode as we get popcorn, chips and we begin to drink! Good times. About two hours latter it’s late and we get into the van and begin to drive to Osaka. We drive over night getting some sleep with the assistance of our super large “king of banana” pillows that we bought from the biggest, craziest convince store in Tokyo called Don Quixote.

We arrive at around 9:30am in sunny Osaka and go to a big “onsen” place to freshen up. Onsen is a big traditional Japanese day spa kinda vibe. So the lady’s and gents split, the guys get naked and we walk through a series of showers, baths, saunas, massage beds and the places is all big, old and ornate - it’s really pretty amazing and fun! It perhaps makes up for our lack of sleep or low quality tour van sleep from the night before.

Show 2
Osaka, Clapper
Cool little venue, similar size to last night, with a yellow drum set in house! We load in for soundcheck and right above the venue there’s a radio station broadcasting live from a clothes store – Diesel FM. They play tracks from our album as we load in right past them and Koji does an interview with them. We meet the show promoters then get a little chace to walk around and stick our heads into some music and cloths places as the temperature sits around a sultry 30 degree celsius.
Again the show goes really well, there’s some Australians in the crowd and we get a great response again! After the show we meet up with our friend Rie who we met last tour and she takes us to Club Wonder a great tiny power pop club run by a big power pop fan Kazu. We order some Casis Orange and Kazu askes me to dj some songs, the walls of the place are covered with signed posters by our favourite artists like Matthew Sweet, Jason Falkner, Fountains of Wayne, and many others. He’s even selling great power pop cds in the bar, Amy buys some Candy Butchers and other stuff.

After that we go to the Flake Records (a great Osaka record store who presented and dj’d our show earlier that night) 2nd anniversary party. They have bands playing and food stalls and the whole venue is full of smoke! We hang out in the salubrious backstage surrounds and talk and drink until things get way late and we pile back into the van and drive again overnight to Fukuoka.

Show 3 Fukuoka, Decadent Delux
Again we arrive sometime after sun up and we get a little more sleep at the house of Marz from Parallel Stripes (label mates and one of the bands we’re playing with later that night) This is our first time here and we’re on a new southern island we never even been on before! We get to the venue for soundcheck, it is like 5 floors up in this gothic, spooky esque cathedral type venue (I’m hoping we have a picture to support this description) Fukuoka (actually pronounced hookuoka) is famous for Ramen noodles which is Koji’s favourite food. So after soundcheck one of the dj’s for our show takes us out for my first Ramen noodle experience and it’s tastes real nice, Oishi (Japanese for delicious)!

Parallel stripes do a great show, as do our other support Holidays of Seventeen (who had just supported Weezer a few nights before) they are very sweet and complimentary of out set, saying we were better than Weezer he he. I suspect that they’re being a little generous but take the compliment none the less. The show is super fun and we could tell the crowd were appreciative of us making the effort to come to their town for the first time!

After the show we go out for dinner with all the bands and promoters for some traditional and local Japanese and have an awesome party. They bring the beer out in these little kegs which sit on the table, they’re so cute! We continue to drink and eat into the night, we teach them more English and we learn some more Japanese from them! Thanks to Marz and his family for having us stay over too!!

Show 4 Hiroshima Club 4.14
Another long drive…
Nice venue, awesome P.A and lights and big stage! Loved Hiroshima last time we were here and had a great time again!

Another fun show with lots of smiling faces, caught up with some of the people who came to the show last time who proceeded to show us the photos they took of us together last time we were there he he. Also met many new comers which was great. I eat okomoniaki (Japanese vegetarian pancake) twice cause the Hiroshima style is super tasty/ oishy- the first time from a huge upstairs food court type place selling only okomonaki, the second time after the show with all the bands and gig promoters!

Show 5 Nagoya K.D Japon
We played here last tour. Small two story venue directly under a train line, it’s basically a cool, psychedelic, Spanish garage with a tiny P.A!!

We eat Salad Pizza before the show, the same Pizza we got last time that Amy loved!
That’s right Salad on Pizza.

Toto’s do an especially good show and again everything goes well- Kate finally got her favourite song dedicated to her after singing it at them all tour. We cover “I want you to want me” by Cheap Trick with Kate singing lead vocals.

After 5 days on the road with very little sleep we are all pretty exhausted but make an effort to have a party after the show as Totos are leaving the tour at this point. The bar we go to seems to be the Japanese equivalent of Hooters so it’s pretty funny. After a few beers and some strange “erection juice” (that Zac tries) we head back to our Japanese style ( ie. thin mattresses on the floor) hotel in search of a decent amount of sleep.

(Kate takes over writing)
Show 6 Ibaraki Park Diner
Another long day in the car today as we head back into Tokyo to drop off Totos then head on to our show in Ibaraki’s Park Diner, about 2 hours north of Tokyo. We stop off at the base of Mt Fuji but as is usually the case, it is mostly covered in cloud and we can’t see the top- but from what we can see it looks to be huge!

It’s sad to say goodbye to Totos again, they’re such a fun band to tour with but Koyo (Toto’s singer) is staying on as our tour manager and driver for the next three shows.

We arrive later than expected to Park Diner and don’t get a chance to sound check- we don’t have huge expectations for the show as pre-sales have been slow, so we are very happy to discover an awesome venue with a huge stage, great backstage and a big crowd of predominantly over excited young men! Tonight with a huge drum riser, we feel this is as good a time as any to break out our power jumps and attitude. This is quite possibly the only gig I have ever been to, let alone played where there was an average of 5 people stage diving per song in the set- hilarious!

This is probably the most fun show of the tour thus far – the crowd is so excited and appreciative – we have a ball! Fuji from Thistime Records (our label) surprises us by attending the show and is very generous with the buying drinks post show!!!

On the way back to our accommodation for the night we are pulled over by an undercover police car for speeding but get away pretty lightly with a fine – lucky because we still have 2 shows left.

Show 7 Niigata Club Junkbox
An absolutely beautiful day of driving awaits us today. Niigata is situated on the west coast of Japan towards the top of the main island. It’s very popular for skiing in the winter but it is just as fascinating this time of year.

When we arrive at the venue we catch the end of our support band (a traditional drums ensemble)’s sound check. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before – very loud and confronting but interesting. We sound check and things sound great, very cool venue.

We are treated to a nice hotel tonight and after we check in we decide pizza and pasta is in order. This turns out to be the best decision- delicious!
As we wait backstage, just about to go on, people from the crowd start calling out various band members names which is weird, but we’re super excited to know that people are so keen to see us play!

Great, noisy, crowd buts things get a little ugly as my bass starts making some awful crackly sounds and starts to cut out completely! We soldier on, and because we’re the only band with a bass guitar playing that night, there’s no chance of borrowing a bass from another band. The show is still fun and we hang out and chat with the crowd, sign cds, pose for photos etc and then watch the traditional Japanese drumming band who are very aggressive, intense and loud! Our weirdest support band EVER!

SHOW 8 ( back to Zac writing)
Kooriyama , Hip-Shot
We get up early-ish to find a music shop to get some tools and parts to fix the input on Kate’s bass (the noisy culprit from last nights show) We find a cool guitar store real close to the venue (they have posters up advertising our gig from last night) and Gustav (our drummer who can fix pretty much everything) gets right to work. They set up a work space upstairs in the drum department for us to use!
Tonight’s gig is organised by a good friend of ours, Kaori, who used to live in Melbourne! The venue is awesome, maybe the biggest room of the tour, great P.A stage etc. Tonight’s bill is five bands long including The Bawdies, and The Have Nots two bands that have toured recently in Australia. Tonight’s gig is a “mixed balloon party” and there’s hundreds of balloons being held up in a huge net tied to the roof waiting to be released onto the crowd later that night! All the bands are great, and the audience builds up nicely for our last show of the tour.

During our last song of the main set the balloons are released and fall all over the crowd, people go nuts and heaps of balloons end up on stage too. I find the urge to kick them back at the crowd too great, and start kicking them back between singing!

Again in the encore we play I want you to want me by Cheap Trick with Kate singing. Tonight’s crowds has a lot of Australians and Americans in it, we hang out at the venue for a while meeting folks, taking photo’s etc then we head off for the “end of the tour” party at a tradition Japanese restaurant called “Izakaya” which is huge and very dark and super cool. Gustav eats raw horse and I drink numerous cassis orange. A few hours later we stumble out drive to our accommodation, pack our suitcases then head to the airport to fly to the U.K! Sayonara Japan You have been Metcha Saiko (awesome in Japanese)