So we get to Echigo-Yuzawa, finally, and its pouring rain. Not only that, we don't have any rain gear. Not only that, we have no idea how to get to the actual concert... all the knowledge I came with amounted to 'Its at Naeba ski resort' and 'its about a 40 minute car ride from the station.' Walking didn't seem feasible in good weather, and much less in this monsoon. After a long day of travelling, getting lost, and whatnot, I'm, while not in a bad mood, all about getting shit DONE, so having considered our situation for all of 30 seconds, I think that its about time I should be asking a Fuji-Rock-looking person how the hell to actually get there. Fortunately enough, there are 2 brits hustling around the station, and so I let the question fly... 'Yo, you know how to get to Fuji?' And he's like, 'yeahhhh. See this bus? It goes there. You going? We're headed there ourselves.' Thus, our luck slowly but surely begins to change...
Before heading out with these guys, Isaac and Charles(?) (Akio could remember the other guys name and not Isaac's), I head to an ATM and take out 40k or so, and head to a convenience store for something to eat and a beer, because we dont know where were going to sleep, we only have tickets for the event in 2 days, its pouring rain, and its going to be a long goddamn night. Isaac's down there too, doing what foreigners do best - breezing past all the Japanese people and demanding stuff in English. I help him out real quick, pay for my stuff, and we head to the bus.
I get on and notice a whole lot of equipment, and then Akio mentions he just found out they're with a band. **CLICK** 'Start talking all friendly like, these guys might be our ticket to something good.' We chat and eventually I ask about their band, and its turns out they aren't members per se, but rather managers of Isaac's Dad's band. I ask again, 'what band?' and Isaac casually says, 'Oh, Roxy Music.' WHAAAAAAT. I exhibit my lack of knowledge concerning the band members by asking about Eno, and Isaac informs me he stayed with the band for an album, and had very little input, which, he said, was strange considering his output and career following his stint in Roxy.
So we get on well enough with these guys, and, having mentioned our ticket situation, suggest that we follow them for a bit and they'll see what they can do. We head into the hotel on grounds, and are immediately surrounded by instruments, musicians, and not much else - its a bit hectic, but I've got to say the hotel employees did a seemingly good job at managing the whole ordeal. We're waiting on the sidelines, Akio and I, and eventually Isaac comes over and says he's got to call their Tokyo contact about passes, but it looks good. Hopes are up now, but I'm not one to believe in something until its actually infront of me, so I'm more than anything nervous now. But, as luck would have it, Isaac comes back again, after about an hour total, and hands us 2 red badges with 'Roxy Music' written on them. Free backstage pass for the night. Killer.
Akio and I head off to the festival, and this shit is magical, psychedelic, astounding, and everything in between. 8 stages total, set across the entirety of the ski resort, there are long passages through woods on raised wooden platforms with all kinds of crazy light shows set in the woods themselves. Theres a cliff face that is, in its entirety, covered with falling stars... it literally looked like the cliff was melting. Outside movie theaters, carnival grounds, all kinds of food, clubs, gondolla rides, and all other kinds of things, and with our backstage passes we routinely got free beer, could avoid the lines at pretty much everything, and never had to wait for a bathroom. Fuji Rock is, in 2 words, extremely intense. And that doesn't even take into account the totally killer line-up.
The first day I saw only 2 bands because we got there kind of late: Muse and !!! (that's ChkChkChk). But that the bands stopped at midnight doesn't mean that the fun stopped, no, it just meant that's when the DJ sets started. Outside and inside, there were lights flashing, and bass thumping. Akio and I stopped at a bar before we headed to the Orange Stage, had a few while talking to some girls from Taiwan, and then headed to the mud pit... oh that's right - it always seems to rain during Fuji Rock.
The Orange Stage was an outside venue, so we were all dancing and slipping around in a huge mud bath. Sometime during this, we randomly met up with the Roxy Guys, who had another present for us... 3-day video crew backstage passes. Immediately upon receiving those we lost sight of the guys as they were washed away in a storm of mud, rain, and people. Again, in the midst of dancing, I spot Akio coming towards me with a pretty shitty look on his face, and sure enough, when he approaches me he says 'I lost the big money.' Took me a second to realize he meant his wallet, and then he made a phone gesture too, so I realized hes lost both. FUCK, I think. I look around, he looks around, we don't find anything just as one would expect when looking for something in a giant mud pit at 3 am with 3 or 4000 people dancing around you. Akio says hes gonna take a quick look around, and I figure its not a bad, though hopeless, idea. He leaves and just like that, 2 or so minutes later he returns with a huge grin on his face bearing both in hand. Unfuckingbelievable, our luck.
Here's my first favorite memory: I've been dancing with a girl for a while, things are going well I suppose. Its around 4 or so in the morning at this point, and the sun is just peaking over the tall mountains which happen to be shrouded in fog. Sun light is exploding through said fog onto the audience, all the while there are huge pillars of flames shooting up behind me in front of the stage as the DJ is playing. Eyes lock, and the most explosive kiss ensues. Killlllller.
This is taking too long. Part 4 will follow.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Homeless At Fuji Rock Part 2
So we stayed in a hotel that night in Niigata City and headed out the next morning around 8 or 9 am. We took a train to the service area that was marked on our map only to find that... it totally wasn't a service area despite the map saying so. See, service areas are big, theyve go stores, places to eat, places to hang out, and as I said earlier this is a very important quality because it gives potential drivers time to mull over what they think about you. This service area had a bathroom, 2 vending machines, and an ashtray. Probably no more than 20 parking spaces. So, we hiked there from the train station, saw this and tried our best despite knowing we probably wouldn't be getting anywhere anytime soon. And we didn't. 3 or so hours later we said to hell with this and walked to the train station to take a train to Echigo Yuzawa, the town where Naeba Ski Resort is, the town where the ultimate rock festival in the history of rock festivals is held...
About an hour into our trip, I notice that the ocean is on our left.... this is odd because we're on the west coast and if we're heading south like we should be then the ocean should be on our right.... FUCK WE'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY. Turns out there's another Yuzawa in Akita prefecture, just north of Niigata prefecture, and that is where the search engine on my phone told us to go. So we get off at the next stop, Kuwagawa, and check the time table. 2 hours to kill in the middle of this world's most inaka town - the hell are we going to do?, we think. Well, there was a sushi restaurant right across the street and we hadn't yet eaten, so we dropped in. Turns out to be a pretty rad spot, with the owner/head chef fishing/diving for the fish and shellfish he serves on a daily basis. Lucky for us, he had just gathered some Awabi (abalone) and so we started our meal with a plate of that. Unluckily, he was out of Uni (Sea Urchin), but our meal was quite good - ordered a simple sushi set meal, what's contents were decided by the chef daily, and had some tea. This was all done sitting on tatami over looking the ocean out a window. Good stuff.
We paid after finishing and saw we still had some time left, so we went for a walk down the boardwalk. Ultimately, we discovered a very small shrine situated on a very large rock that was very close to the shore but not actually on the shore. Per the usual, this means there was a red gate marking the opening of a path that ends with the actual shrine. These things are located all over Japan and most are in the most unlikely, or out-of-the-way spots. Really cool, and I'd love to go on an adventure seeking these things out some day. So we climb the rock, take some pictures, head back down, wash our feet off, and get to the station just in time to catch the train. Finally, after a small but not at all unappreciated detour, we are on the last leg of our trip to Naeba...
END PART 2
About an hour into our trip, I notice that the ocean is on our left.... this is odd because we're on the west coast and if we're heading south like we should be then the ocean should be on our right.... FUCK WE'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY. Turns out there's another Yuzawa in Akita prefecture, just north of Niigata prefecture, and that is where the search engine on my phone told us to go. So we get off at the next stop, Kuwagawa, and check the time table. 2 hours to kill in the middle of this world's most inaka town - the hell are we going to do?, we think. Well, there was a sushi restaurant right across the street and we hadn't yet eaten, so we dropped in. Turns out to be a pretty rad spot, with the owner/head chef fishing/diving for the fish and shellfish he serves on a daily basis. Lucky for us, he had just gathered some Awabi (abalone) and so we started our meal with a plate of that. Unluckily, he was out of Uni (Sea Urchin), but our meal was quite good - ordered a simple sushi set meal, what's contents were decided by the chef daily, and had some tea. This was all done sitting on tatami over looking the ocean out a window. Good stuff.
We paid after finishing and saw we still had some time left, so we went for a walk down the boardwalk. Ultimately, we discovered a very small shrine situated on a very large rock that was very close to the shore but not actually on the shore. Per the usual, this means there was a red gate marking the opening of a path that ends with the actual shrine. These things are located all over Japan and most are in the most unlikely, or out-of-the-way spots. Really cool, and I'd love to go on an adventure seeking these things out some day. So we climb the rock, take some pictures, head back down, wash our feet off, and get to the station just in time to catch the train. Finally, after a small but not at all unappreciated detour, we are on the last leg of our trip to Naeba...
END PART 2
Monday, August 2, 2010
Homeless At Fuji Rock
Holy Hell. This week has been absolutely incredible, culminating with me turning 24. So I took a train down to Fukushima City in Fukushima Prefecture to meet my friend Aaron/Akio whom I worked with at Mori no Ike in 2006. Smallllll city with not much to do, so we booked a hotel room (not homeless yet) and went out to a restaurant for dinner. As is very common in Japan, this was an all-you-can-eat/drink type deal, so we spent 2 hours catching up between glasses of beer/whiskey/shochu and what turned out to be a whole lot of Kimchi... shit is real tasty. Afterwards, we went to another restaurant and tried out the "I Don't Speak Japanese" thing on a few girls there, but in the end English proved to burdensome and we reverted back to Japanese, to their surprise/pleasure. Good night, bad hangover.
Somehow we managed to get out of the hotel by 930 and took a train to a very small station nearby (I forget exactly which) that was located near a Service Area. A note first: service areas are the place to hitch in Japan for a number of reasons, first and foremost being that its illegal to be on the freeway outside of a car, or even to stop if in a car. Of course, a lot of people also stop at service areas, and are in greater numbers than rest areas. They also have a lot of time to consider your own circumstances versus theirs, i.e. "So he's Hitchhiking... looks like a nice guy... I wonder where he's going..."These things all make service areas the most logical place to try and catch a ride.
We managed to catch a lift from a couple with their father (wife's side, from Inner Mongolia) who dropped us off close to the shores of Lake Inawashiro. According to our map, we were wicked close to the lake, so we started walking in that direction, but either the map was wrong or we just weren't right and we ended up in this hidden valley of rice after hiking approximately 3 Km through a woodsy backroad. Fukushima and Niigata prefectures both have a staggering number of rice fields, and this was the first time I had ever been in one. It was dark by this time, and this village we were in was way cut off from everything else (and the houses were very nice/HUGE, surprisingly) so the night sky looked extra big while standing in the middle of many acres of low-rising rice plants.
This village turned out to be just off of the shore, so once we left it and got back on the main road we almost immediately discovered the lake. Unfortunately, we also discovered that this pitch black road had no sidewalks or anywhere whatsoever to walk, so we spent probably another 3 kilometers running along this road avoiding the very few cars barreling towards us. I guess I don't have much in the way of a safety sensor, but it was pretty fun playing Frogger like this.
We found a convenience store and a hotel in a small outlet off the road that was more or less a camping zone, and considered staying there/eating, but for some reason or another we thought it a good idea to keep pushing onwards and didn't do either. Mistake. Maybe an hour and a half later we still hadn't eaten all day and definitely didn't know where we were going to set up camp due to all of the rice fields taking up space. We ducked into a gas station and asked where a good spot to eat was, of which there was only 1 in the area still open, and got a cab there. Typical chain ramen store, but it was pretty tasty and definitely filled our stomachs so I can't say either of us were very angry at that. After eating, we walked around for a while looking for a spot to set up camp, and finally decided on a cemetery by the freeway where we planned on hitching the next day... buuuuuut that didn't happen.
We woke up/decided to start moving again around 8 and first wanted to find an onsen where we could clean up. In a bit of a rain, we walked to the train station and took a train to I-Forget-Where, close by anyway. The Onsen we found was pretty awesome, like the owners somehow collected a bunch of buildings and squished them all together. This "complex" wasn't the best of spots, but it totally sufficed after having spent the previous day hitching, hiking, and sweating all along. We retraced our steps, in a bit of a heavier rain, and had to wait about an hour for the train to come back and return us to where we started. It started raining pretty hard by this time, and we didn't really have sufficient rain gear, so we didn't get off and took the train all the way to Niigata City, in Niigata prefecture.
Despite EVERYTHING around Niigata City being rice fields, the city itself is pretty big and was a hell of a lot of fun while we were there. Went to a small restaurant to start the night off and had a beer with our Whale Sashimi (!!!). Good stuff, but it was getting kind of packed so we headed to another spot that served local nihonshu (Niigata is famous for its booze, supposedly) and we drank some really great stuff while eating Natto Pizza and Cow Liver Sashimi. The whole night was basically focused on culinary exploration and we were pretty successful in finding some great items; I totally want to go back some day and see what else I can find.
END PART 1
Somehow we managed to get out of the hotel by 930 and took a train to a very small station nearby (I forget exactly which) that was located near a Service Area. A note first: service areas are the place to hitch in Japan for a number of reasons, first and foremost being that its illegal to be on the freeway outside of a car, or even to stop if in a car. Of course, a lot of people also stop at service areas, and are in greater numbers than rest areas. They also have a lot of time to consider your own circumstances versus theirs, i.e. "So he's Hitchhiking... looks like a nice guy... I wonder where he's going..."These things all make service areas the most logical place to try and catch a ride.
We managed to catch a lift from a couple with their father (wife's side, from Inner Mongolia) who dropped us off close to the shores of Lake Inawashiro. According to our map, we were wicked close to the lake, so we started walking in that direction, but either the map was wrong or we just weren't right and we ended up in this hidden valley of rice after hiking approximately 3 Km through a woodsy backroad. Fukushima and Niigata prefectures both have a staggering number of rice fields, and this was the first time I had ever been in one. It was dark by this time, and this village we were in was way cut off from everything else (and the houses were very nice/HUGE, surprisingly) so the night sky looked extra big while standing in the middle of many acres of low-rising rice plants.
This village turned out to be just off of the shore, so once we left it and got back on the main road we almost immediately discovered the lake. Unfortunately, we also discovered that this pitch black road had no sidewalks or anywhere whatsoever to walk, so we spent probably another 3 kilometers running along this road avoiding the very few cars barreling towards us. I guess I don't have much in the way of a safety sensor, but it was pretty fun playing Frogger like this.
We found a convenience store and a hotel in a small outlet off the road that was more or less a camping zone, and considered staying there/eating, but for some reason or another we thought it a good idea to keep pushing onwards and didn't do either. Mistake. Maybe an hour and a half later we still hadn't eaten all day and definitely didn't know where we were going to set up camp due to all of the rice fields taking up space. We ducked into a gas station and asked where a good spot to eat was, of which there was only 1 in the area still open, and got a cab there. Typical chain ramen store, but it was pretty tasty and definitely filled our stomachs so I can't say either of us were very angry at that. After eating, we walked around for a while looking for a spot to set up camp, and finally decided on a cemetery by the freeway where we planned on hitching the next day... buuuuuut that didn't happen.
We woke up/decided to start moving again around 8 and first wanted to find an onsen where we could clean up. In a bit of a rain, we walked to the train station and took a train to I-Forget-Where, close by anyway. The Onsen we found was pretty awesome, like the owners somehow collected a bunch of buildings and squished them all together. This "complex" wasn't the best of spots, but it totally sufficed after having spent the previous day hitching, hiking, and sweating all along. We retraced our steps, in a bit of a heavier rain, and had to wait about an hour for the train to come back and return us to where we started. It started raining pretty hard by this time, and we didn't really have sufficient rain gear, so we didn't get off and took the train all the way to Niigata City, in Niigata prefecture.
Despite EVERYTHING around Niigata City being rice fields, the city itself is pretty big and was a hell of a lot of fun while we were there. Went to a small restaurant to start the night off and had a beer with our Whale Sashimi (!!!). Good stuff, but it was getting kind of packed so we headed to another spot that served local nihonshu (Niigata is famous for its booze, supposedly) and we drank some really great stuff while eating Natto Pizza and Cow Liver Sashimi. The whole night was basically focused on culinary exploration and we were pretty successful in finding some great items; I totally want to go back some day and see what else I can find.
END PART 1
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