Day 1. Was difficult. Wednesday night, The Love Guns played Commune in Daegu. I ended up hanging out in Daegu that until to catch my 5:30 am train from Daegu to Seoul. 4 hours later I was on a plane to Tokyo. 2 hours later I landed, then a 1 hour train ride on the Keisei Skyliner to Ueno station in Tokyo, where we went to, what would be comarable to, a net cafe, or ‘pc-rooms’ in Korea. Except each station was blocked off, elevated, equipped with a computer, PS2, television, and bean bag chair. Oddly, no computer games were on the computer. After that it was a 90 minute ride on the Shinkansen bullet train to Euchigo Yuzawa, and another 30 minute ride on the shuttle bus. Needless to say, the first day was tiring. By the end of it, we had a slanted campsite, a tiny tent, and tired bodies. I was depressed and in a place where I was totally illiterate.
Being illiterate was interesting. And frustrating, because unlike in Korea, I couldn’t even understand the language. Funny thing is, even if you’ve established that you can’t speak japanese, the ticket seller, waiter, or random person will continue to speak to you in Japanese, which I found frustrating. But you think about it, what would you had to communicate with someone who couldn’t speak your language? You do that thing where you speak slower and louder, because, you know, then they’ll understand you. I managed to get by with simple english and body language though.
This was the 1st time I actually felt like a foreigner. In Korea, I get by most of the time. Even in the beginninger, at the very least, I could understand what people were saying. Now, I knew nothing.
After I got over all that stuff, we finally got to the festival, and started seeing music. The first day got me a little depressed and homesick for Korea, but as as soon as the music started, all that melted away.
The Festival as a whole, was most impressive. Besides all the great acts, operations of the whole thing ran so smoothly. In their tenth year now, they had everything figured out.
Recycling and environmental awareness was a huge thing at this festival. Everyone was given plastic bags and I saw people picking up garbage. There was almost no litter on the ground, and everyone used portable ashtrays.
All the garbage/recycling stations had different bins for plastic bottles, plastic bottle caps, paper dishes, utensils, organics, cigarette butts, and other garbage. There were also people standing there helping you divide your shit up. All food was served on thick paper dishes. I was most impressed with the effort they put into this. They even had this little arts and crafts area. There was all these plastic bottle art, and there was a kid with a plastic bottle belt.
Pocari Sweat is a hydrating drink, common in Korea and Japan. It’s kinda like Gatorade. They had really hot spokespersons at the festival.
Food was one of the best parts of the whole. They had a wide range of international cuisine to choose from, all moderately priced at about 500-800 Yen, (5-8 bucks). For the lats 2 months, I’ve gotten into many conversations about how much I miss certain foods I could get in Toronto. This weekend, I had them ALL. Kebab on a pita, tacos, pizza (…good pizza), Thai green curry, tandoory chicken, naan with chicken and cheese curry, samosas, as well some new things like some French style chicken, and a thin crust ostrich meat pizza. This was millions better than your usual festival fare.
Dragonflies. There were lots of dragonflies.
Music. My favourite act easily were The Hives. I just love their style. I was impressed with Red Hot Chili Peppers. John Frusciante sounded great. Both the Strokes and RHCP are bands I wouldn’t really pay to see by themselves, at their own headlining show, so having them both at the festival was great. I loved it when The Raconteurs played Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang, (which you’d recognize in the opening sequence of Kill Bill). I loved it when Broken Social Scene got the only real encore I saw all weekend. Headliners had planned encores, but when BSS finished, about 20 people in Staff t-shirts ran on stage to clear it, but they all stopped, confused, as if they were never trained for such a halting in their work. They hesitantly cleared the stage as BSS came on for one final song. I’ve seen them twice before, but alway had mixed feelings about their live performance. It seemed to chaotic, usually. But they had less members this time, and it sounded way tighter. Asian Kung-Fu Generation, and Eastern Youth were both great Japanese bands that I got to see. Acts that the rain and my exhaustion didn’t permit me to see but wish I did: Sonic Youth, Gnarls Barkley, and The Zutons.
Camping was ok. But a lot of things could’ve made it better. Namely, a bigger tent and a flat ground. Who’s idea was it to set up the campground area on the ski hill? The last night, we got back to a collapsed tent. One of the rods broke. Which would explain the value-priced 45 dollars I paid. So we packed up early, and headed down near the entrance, fell asleep on the concrete ground in the parking lot, woke up to a cold breeze and some bastard whistling really loudly, and headed inside where we met some cool folks.
Alex and Shin are two first-year students from London, England. What was weird is they both remind of combinations of existing friends. We all warmed up to eachother and had a great laugh. We ended up riding down to Tokyo together, I learned a bit of Japanese from their friend Inaba, and had some decent conversation.
Dumb and dumber were these two guys who were sitting next to us in the lobby, where I had met Alex and Shin. They were high on something and were just having a laugh. I tried talking to them , but man, they were just goofy. Just thinking about’em makes me laugh.
Video. I took a bunch of video all weekend, including short clips of every band I saw. At the end you’ll also see an interview I did with Dumb.
Download the Video (85ish Megs) | View the Photo set
August 2nd, 2006 | Life, Music, Panoramic, Photos, Videos | 3 comments
