Lucky Isle

Preface
Before I came to Japan I had a list of concerts that I wanted to see when I came here, in no particular order:

• Bump of Chicken
• Orange Range
• Anna Tsuchiya
• Gackt
• the brilliant green
• Psycho le Cemu

I’ve actually listened to all of those bands, more or less, except Gackt. Gackt just seems to have really cool concerts.

The first one to cross off my list was when Beth and I caught the brilliant green in Chiba. It was awesome to see them, and I want to see them again, albeit at a much better venue.

About a month ago I stated that I was going to be heading to both Orange Range and Bump of Chicken concerts within the near future. Unfortunately, both concerts sold out extremely quickly, with Orange Range selling out within a few hours. Well then, damn. What to do?

To begin with, the sold out Bump of Chicken concert was going to take place on March 22nd. As I had my heart set on a concert that weekend, I went about seeing what other bands would also be playing in Sendai on the 22nd. Lo and behold, Mix Speaker’s Inc. was playing that weekend.

To explain, because that list was bands I want to see, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’d be able to see them. Take the big example of that when I first arrived here, the brilliant green. They had been inactive for five years, but when I show up in this country they happen to get back together.

So then, when Psycho le Cemu broke up, two of the former members (Seek and Aya) found themselves as members of another visual kei band: Mix Speaker’s Inc. Figuring that this is about as close to seeing a Psycho le Cemu concert as I was going to get, I bought the tickets.

I was going to see a band on my pseudolist on March 22nd after all. Word.

Mix Speaker’s Inc. Concert
I showed up to the venue and immediately noticed two things that continued to be of note for the whole night: (1) everyone looked to be in their mid-teens and (2) everyone seemed to be a girl. I say seemed because some weren’t very discernible.

In short, it was a room full of about 400 teenage girls and about six guys. Luckily I was with Beth, so it didn’t feel quite so awkward, though there was one guy by himself who was older than I and looked quite out of place and uncomfortable. Outside of the unconfortableness, I one-upped him by Beth and I both being the only foreigners there, and me being at least a head taller than everyone else in the room.

Gogogo short Japanese girls.

Even though Beth and I were near the back (small venue, though), I still had a clear shot of the band and the tops of all the fans’ heads. Win for the tall foreigner.

This also came into play during the concert itself when I happened to glance over at Aya only to find that he was already looking straight at me. We locked eyes, the tall foreigner guy and one of guitarists competing in a staring contest. It eventually broke, but this happened to reoccur multiple times through the night. I’d glance at him, realized he was already looking directly at him, we’d lock eyes, the concert would continue. It was… different.

Outside of that, once I stopped feeling weird from standing out so damn much, both Beth and I really got into it. Psycho le Cemu, and with it Mix Speaker’s Inc., use a ton of parapara in their concerts, so audience participation plays just a big as roll as do their costumes and music. We didn’t really know the moves, but they were simple enough so that Beth and I were joining along with everyone else by the middle (or earlier) of each song. It was pretty damn fun.

We realized that the audience had upped the ante, though, once everyone started breaking out specific props for specific songs. At one point everyone suddenly whipped out fans, later there were handkerchiefs and glow sticks and tamberines. It most certainly increases their merchandise sales (all props available for purchase outside!), but it evenso, it was a fun added dimension to the participation.

Eventually all things came to an end, and of course the concert was no exception. Beth and I left the venue, Junk Box, with our previously purchased merchandise (a DVD, CD, and some arm warmers), and headed back to Sendai station. We went the wrong way.

That is, luckily, we went the wrong way. You see, we happened to come across none other than a Domino’s store. Hell yes! REAL DOMINO’S PIZZA! I’ve been wanting Domino’s pizza for quite some time now, and this was an excellent dinner to finish off the day.

After me lovingly eating the wonderful pepperoni pizza, we headed the correct way back to the station, hopped on the bus, and a bit over an hour later arrived back in Fukushima and went home.

It was a good day.

This past weekend I went down to Tsukuba to visit Beth, and as usual, on the way back we took the Tsukuba Express back to Tokyo so I could catch my bus back to Fukushima.

Now for the few people who don’t know, Japan tends to pride itself–and with good reason–on having reliable, always-on-time trains. If a train schedule says the train will arrive at 12:34 and depart at 12:37, then it will arrive at 12:34 and depart at 12:37. Usually.

Of course, nothing is perfect. So far during my time here the train has been more than a few minutes late twice. Once it was about ten minutes late, no biggie, and the other time was the Izaka line here in Fukushima that was a good 25 minutes late departing and ended up being 45 minutes late arriving, and don’t forget that traversing the entire length of the line should regularly take about 25 minutes.. Today I added a third notch to my list.

The Tsukuba Express train we were riding left ten minutes late and, now this is the amazing part, arrived in Tokyo (Akihabara) 50 minutes late. Ouch. This was supposed to be a rapid (something like 45 minutes for the whole line), so good job on more than doubling the time and adding a third notch to my “Late Trains of Japan” notch… thing.

To give them credit, apparently there were plenty of train delays in the Tokyo area today due to very high winds. Stupid high winds.

Ok then, on to music stuff.

With some time to kill, Beth and I hung out in Yodobashi (a huge ginormous electronics store), just looking around. We happened to come across a Brilliant Green compilation DVD that Beth decided to buy for me as a belated Christmas present. I ended up getting home started watching it, only to realize that this DVD was released a whole four days ago and actually has two songs by them that I didn’t even realize had been released. Well, yay for being surprised with new material.

Though honestly, out of their three new singles none of them have really caught my fancy. Once again to give some credit, I will say that Stand by Me was much better when performed live.

And oh, this DVD has also features a video of the brilliant green walking around Kyoto. It feels like they gave some guy who’s never touched a camera before a camera and gave the job of editing to some guy who’s never edited before. In other words, they took some poorly shot and edited vacation footage and put it as a special on the DVD.

Still in the music area, a few weeks back I went and saw a Sludgy Bunny concert, and you probably have no idea who they are because they’re a local Fukushima band. Anyway, you should check them out because they have some catchy songs.

I’m going to an Orange Range concert next month in Sendai. Fun will be had.

I may go to a Bump of Chicken concert next month, also in Sendai, if I get off my ass and see if tickets are still available.

As we’d be going through Tokyo to get to Chiba for the the brilliant green concert, Beth and I figured we might as well make a slight detour to go to the hamburger shop in Akihabara that I raved about. For the record, it’s a place called Seattle Burger that’s in a big building near the Akihabara station. They easily have the best hamburgers I’ve had in Japan and are actually pretty damn good even compared to most American hamburger restaurants. If you’re just visiting Japan it’s not that big of a deal, but when you live here and crave a damn good hamburger, it’s worth the detour.

After lunch and some wandering around we took a train to the Chiba station and from there caught a bus to Tokyo somethingsomething University. They had an English name listed as Tokyo University of Information Science. We were expecting a decently large campus and had made sure to arrive a good hour and a half before doors opened to allow us to find the venue. I mean, we figured that the brilliant green was a decently big act, and a university would have to be pretty big to attract them. We were wrong.

We got off the bus to find ourselves in a campus that consisted of maybe ten buildings. And that school festival I spoke of? It was just a few tents set up selling food. I had better school festivals when I was in middle school. Unfortunately this meant that we now had to kill the hour and a half we had planned to find the venue and enjoy the festivities. Luckily, we both keep our DSes handy at all times.

Also, this university was the first time I have gotten constant ‘gaijin wtf’ looks from people. Even when I’m the only foreigner in a crowd of people, it’s usually not very pronounced, but at this festival it seemed that almost everyone was staring at us. It wasn’t very good, especially when groups of people suddenly stop what they’re doing when you walk by and just stare. Considering we were in Chiba, I figured that having a foreigner around wouldn’t be that big of a deal (as compared to the inaka/country), but we were quite wrong.

And remember that concert that we were going to? It was being held in the school gym. When I say school gym, that’s exactly what I mean, your standard school basketball-court-sized gym. It was like a slightly-higher-budget talent show. Oh well, doors opened and we took our seats in our folding chairs on the gym floor.

Once the concert started and I got over the terrible acoustics of the place, I quiet enjoyed myself. I’ve been waiting to see the brilliant green live for quite some time, and I finally was. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for the rest of the audience.

Yes, the students at this school gave me one more reason for disliking both them and the school by the majority of them being complete zombies at the concert. Yeah, most of them stood up, but that’s all they did. Even when the concert ended, the band left the stage, and the audience called them back for the obligatory encore, Tomoko asked why the audience wanted them back despite being dead the whole concert. I don’t know. I’m glad they came back for the encore, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have blamed them if they didn’t.

When they first left I knew they had to come back because they hadn’t played Stand by Me, their new song, yet. When they did the encore they, of course, played the new song. Now from listening to the single I don’t really like this new song, but I really enjoyed it live. As Beth said, this is one of those bands that actually sounds better when they play live. They closed with one of my favorites, Angel Song, and that was it.

Overall, the concert was worth the 1,500 yen admission. I mean, that’s pretty cheap for a big-ticket name. Unfortunately all aspects of the venue blew– both the physical space and the audience that populated it. I want to see them again at a better venue.

So there, I can cross one band off of my ‘Bands to See in Japan’ list.