Our biggest thanks go to Aurora for translations and to Windy for illustrations.
As you will notice, days doesn't follow any chronological order.
NAGOYA, DECEMBER 10th GRIND FREAKS @ HUCK FINN
---GRIND FINAL---Half a tear was spilled in Mito, the hard alcohol abuse from the last four days had replaced every emotion, but WDF we were at GRIND FREAKS! For sure everyone had hoped for this opportunity, but the way things turned out during the tour, few would have bet on our ultimate success, including myself. After 15 months of countless grueling hours in front of a PC booking 48 dates in Europe and 17 in Japan, we made it! After 2 months of touring around the old continent and 3 weeks in the country of the rising sun, we were there! Courage? Determination? Recklessness? Never mind... We were there and going out with a bang! When we had confirmed this last concert in Nagoya - the awesome festival “GRIND FREAKS” which is always organized by Mr. Takaho and Co., there were more doubts than certainties; Would we fill our day's off with other gigs? Could we sort it out so as to not cancel our last concert dates? Would we be able to finish this tour without finding ourselves in a deep negative? If we had stopped to think too much about it, it would have only generated new, bleak doubts without any possible solutions, so we gave our “OK” to Nagoya’s organizers, with no ifs or buts, or better yet we kept them all to ourselves. We were sure that this opportunity was unique a one in the life of our underground band.
The day began like the others, a journey with our beloved Shinkansen with our instruments, distro and bags on our shoulders. We got to HUCK FINN when the first band 'PUNHALADA' (Nice Giovanni's) was already playing on stage. We were slightly uneasy as nobody had given us the timetable with the bands' set-list; if we were the first band to play, we obviously wouldn't make it to the stage by 1.45pm- the scheduled time for the beginning of the dances. Maybe we could make it but we'd be a few minutes late but 1.45pm on the dot was impossible. Needless to say, not one of the 17 concerts that we had played on these Japanese lands were a single minute late. Everything was made according to the road map which was previously scheduled by the organizers, never ever had Shinkansen been a single second late, no one who had given us a date had us waiting too long on the streets. If you think Swiss are punctual, well then the Japanese walk on another planet- an almond-eyed, Hello-Kitty planet. Fortunately, we weren’t first band to play and we wouldn’t start until 3.30 pm. Shortly after the streets around the club started to fill. A multitude of noisy Brazilian-Japanese showed up and were causing enough commotion that the bystanders were doubting if they were still in Nagoya or if they had been transported to São Paulo's Rua Agusta. It was an awesome and welcomed diversion after 3 weeks of quiet streets. Even the busiest streets with people kamikaze-ly pissed off, no one ever rose their voice not even a couple of decibels! Aside from the different Asian communities e.g. Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, etc, the Brazilians are historically the biggest foreign ethnic group living in Japan, on other hand the largest Japanese population outside the homeland is in Brazil. Among our new friends, were first generation vice versa Japanese. They had grown up in Brazil and only recently moved to Japan, and could barely speak their original language.
We can assure you that it was quite impressive to see people with typical Asian looks speaking in paulistano slang. It's something I am accustomed to seeing, but witnessing this kind of scene in Japan was bizarre. Within the gang, in addition to the aforementioned Giovanni, was Big Satã - the crew’s prankster with funny stories and super loud street pantomimes. He just came for the concert from Tokyo. Later, Skasa and Neku arrived to HUCK FINN. These two lovely guys were the organizers of the past couple of excellent concerts we played. These two fellas had significantly contributed to destroying our prejudices about Japan and the Japanese which we packed along with our suitcases only 3 weeks before. It'll be difficult to forget several people, but these two will remain impressed into the synapses like a hot branding iron on living flesh. The bands scheduled to play GRIND FREAKS that day have had significant importance on the Japanese grind core scene: INTESTINE BAALISM (veteran death metal heads) with the already known Seiji at the guitar and vocals and Big Hisao behind the drum kit (an old buddy from the alcoholic nights of the previous days); the ever-grind UNHOLY GRAVE, which are in very good shape and the authors of a brief yet very intense performance. Their funny and elderly bassist Yasu, despite his low knowledge of British language, has proven to be a nice fella since the beginning and a big lover of our company; and you can't forget the Japanese Metallica - SABBAT; DEMOLITION and other smaller groups (smaller only for their international reputation, but not for the intensity of their music on stage) were on stage that day. It was a day accompanied by really strong emotions, which are hard to put in words. The night ended at Giovanni’s place, a Brazilian guy with Italian roots who emigrated to Japan. He was living in some suburb quite far from the city of Nagoya and unluckily our host wasn’t in the mood to follow the after party. Understandably so as the following day he had to begin a hard and long week work at a plant with an Asiatic work schedule.
TOKYO (UGUISUDANI), DECEMBER 7th 1.2.3.4. FUCK OFF! @ WHAT’S UP
---"BODY CHECK? OK?"---ALSO, KENNY SLEEPS AT NIGHTS---This day didn’t start in the best way, we were woken up barbarically early as the guys who hosted us for the night were engaged with demands of their jobs or studies, and to top it off the temples were sizzling in courtesy of Japanese whiskey. Fate had determined that after a quick lunch in a nice restaurant located in the Uguisudani district, that we'd show up too early at the designated club for the night. I have to be honest- I had been quite skeptical about SETE STAR SEPT's organization, because they didn’t offer us a sleeping place. But how come? They've gone halfway around the world, they should know better than anyone on the planet a touring band's needs. Luckily, we had already covered our asses with the support of Mr. Kenny Da Silva (we'll talk about this high profile shorty) and in the end, all of my fears had proved to be unfounded. This night's organization just like every night was simply - impeccable. Let’s start with a description of the place where we had to play, the venue called WHAT’S UP was embedded within a Shinto Shrine known as Motomishima, which was very suggestive of its location.
Just try to imagine: you are lost in a maze of alleyways dedicated to smack dealing and Tokyo’s wild nights and suddenly you come across this oasis of peace and tranquility. The little garden in front of the stairs of the temple had been stormed by us unloading our luggage which doubled as a time-killing operation since there would be a long wait until club opened. Secondly it seemed to be a red-light district with the continuous coming and goings from hotels surrounding the district and their unambiguous banners, full of little hearts and winking pictures with fees included which ranged from a single hour, 12 hours, to a full day. Everything suggested that we were in an area of clandestine lovers or prostitutes and their customers. Our assumptions were confirmed by that night's organizers, but in the first moments we doubted it because prostitution, just like thousands of other things in Japan, is regulated by a code of conduct. This could be difficult to understand at first sight for those without almond-shaped eyes. The conspicuous prostitutes coming in and out of the motels after completing their service and walking along the small streets of the district, made me think it was only a figment of my lecherous imagination. On a couple of occasions, I baited the hook with some of them cracking a smile which they immediately reciprocated (by the way, Japanese cordiality has shown in all circumstances to be higher than normal: if you smile at a stranger on the street, you will always receive a smile back), but nobody came to promote their business. It's always up to the customers to solicit and bargain and the passersby are never harassed with unsolicited proposals. There was a level of formality and a maintenance of appearances in every field. The third and most remarkable episode before the concert was our first close encounter with the Japanese coppers. We had some small exchange of information with the police at the train stations, but everything was confined to two – three sentences and nothing more. The Uguisudani meeting was the funniest, weirdest and longest one. We had spent many hours circling around the district looking for something interesting to do to kill time. We had become extremely well acquainted with the neighborhood surrounding WHAT’S UP and the minutes became centuries. We took thousands of pictures of the love hotels and shrine from every possible angle. In front of the parking lot where we consumed our daily dose of cheap nicotine, a granny exited a house nearby and battered us with incomprehensible Nipponese remarks. But her obvious displeasure was clear and it was due to us blocking her way to her invaluable parking space. She made herself understood and although she made everything so disagreeable, she got her way and we moved as quickly as possible. We soon found shelter in front of some permanently closed club. As luck would have it, after a matter of minutes a dumpy policewoman riding her trusty bike arrived. It was highly likely the doing of the elderly lady whom we got in the way of. In a matter of seconds some reinforcements appeared, a couple more coppers who seemed to always be riding on two wheels with the standard illuminated helmets on their heads. Picture it- You're bad boys with a guilty conscience and you get that paranoiac shiver down your spine at the sight of.... headlamps on helmets (as opposed to flashing lights). But wait the comedic scenario was yet to take place: first off, the pleasantries - the three fellas introduced themselves with reverences and several bows. When they understood our familiarity with their language was next to nothing, a sort of interrogation began with an English that calling it “broken” would be euphemistic. Just as a reminder to the readers, our instruments and our luggage were parked at the nearby temple. So, the 3 bold officers were surprised that we only had our personal defects with us. When they realized that we were simply a touring band, they went on to look through our passports and every page that had a stamp from a country they considered exotic resulted in cues of admiration. Especially from the skirted officer, “RUSSIA? OOOOHHHHH” “INDONESIA? OOOOHHHHH”, but the best part was yet to come - the search! It seemed like they had nothing against us and didn't seem to mind that we were waiting on the streets in front of the club, but they had to follow through with procedure and conduct the search. The coppers demonstrated the posture to be taken with legs spread and arms open, so far nothing extraordinarily rare. The strict observance of the procedure forced them to ask permission to check every single chunk of trash within our clothes and personal belongings. When they felt something, they always had to ask us “Body check? OK?” and we had to show them what they had previously groped. It was almost like giving them your license. Once they were sure the object was nothing dangerous or illegal, everything ended with a hilarious and smiley “Arigato gosaimas!” (Thank you so much), accompanied by the inevitable 35-degree curtsy. This ridiculous flea show was repeated countless times by the three inspective bobbies. At the fortieth “Body check? OK? Arigato gosaimas!” the whole thing was already bordering on laughable and personally I was taking it in a bit of an anthropological way. Trying to better understand the relationship with police in such a faraway land, but overall in a utilitarian pretext- the unnecessary waste of time was an amusing distraction for us which arrived after long hours doing fuck all. At the end of this mocking act disguised as a search, resulted in a “Good luck with your concert and the rest of your tour!” from the police accompanied by a myriad of bows. We returned to the place of the incident with all our instruments and baggage, hoping for another thousand “Body check? OK? Arigato gosaimas!” because the club didn’t want to open their doors still. But now their attention was no longer reserved for us. Some smiles and nothing more. Such a pity! We could have spent some more glad minutes with them. The concert, which the mighty Kiyasu and Kay organized, wouldn't begin until late in the night. Luckily Kay had been in an awesome gastronomic mood and supplied our sad jaws, which had only been watered with whisky the last three days, with tasty vegetarian sushi. This gig had the highest percentage of strangers, there were some familiar faces from the previous days.
They most probably came to see the duet; Kiyasu & Kay who played under the notorious moniker SETE STAR SEPT, aka 7S7. For those of you who don’t know them, they are a drum & bass duo which have toured to the most remote corners of the globe. They've played in China, Mongolia, Laos, Iceland, Nepal, you name it! They play a self-defined genre called “nutscore” which is nothing other than an explosive mix of a more frightful grind core with a typically pointed improvisational noisecore. The guys met our expectations with a wonderful performance during their sound check and properly messed our hair up with a borderline distortion. Kiyasu, behind the skins, has a drumming approach absolutely out of the ordinary. Thanks to this style he can fully exploit the entire drum-kit. Kay tortured her four strings all while screaming and growling as loud as she could, with her nervous ticks intentionally accentuated with a posture fit for a psychiatric clinic. Needless to say, these two guys, performance aside, are truly easygoing. I’ve chatted a lot with Kiyasu about their discography and their future projects. And I've asked Kay where they get their ideas (and contacts) to tour to such countries which are far from the conventional spots for grind core bands. She replied by asking me where we found the energy to book such long tours.
Mr. Hagamoto, a transplanted American in Japan for centuries now has started the dance. He was the guitarist, vocalist and drum machinist playing canonical death-grind. It was old school and a little touch of insanity made in Japan. Since he was playing with a metal cylinder on his head the crowd was unable to see his face, but he definitely enhanced the tone of his voice this way. Nothing especial, but Mr. Hagamoto's project HERNIOUS made an excellent impression. The night flew away very pleasantly in Mr. Ucchi 's (from NAPALM DEATH IS DEAD). We met him a few days ago when we were drunk beyond the measure. He had promised us bedrooms at his place the following day and a guided tour in Nakano (another Tokyo suburb where we were going to play two concerts), neither of the two promises came true because the poor fella got a biblical hang over and massively pissed off wife to deal with and forgot about everything. Of course, he apologized several times for that deplorable mishap. The only promise he kept was a surprising NAPALM BESTIAL VOMIT DEATH IS DEAD feature for the following Saturday in Yotsuya. But it was better not to expect anything from it. Ucchi-san also sang a couple of songs with us, but we doubt that he can remember anything about it. Unfortunately, the railway's night time closure was coming up and we had to leave early to catch the last train heading towards Yokohama. Luckily the Uguisudani station was around the corner from the club and our Yokohama house was waiting for us. Our host Mr. Kenny Da Silva knew about the absence of a roof over our heads and that we would like to come back to his place for the night. “What a stroke of good luck!” you must be thinking, “How nice that you found somebody willing to host you for the night!” That's because you don’t know Kenny. Let’s start with a short physical description of this character who is one of the main actors of this Janpanes joyride. Kenny-san is a small Portuguese-Japanese-American in his late fifties, light years away from any stereotype that you may have about the Japanese.
He's got a multicolored faux-hawk, his jackets are full of spikes and his ripped shirts all suggest a first wave, riot punk past. When actually in the early 80s Mr. Kenny Da Silva was living in California where he was a roadie to a myriad of very well-known bands. Of those that among I can remember were BLACK FLAG and CIRCLE JERKS. Kenny is a good fella and among his various occupations was a fatal collaboration with a U.S. punk web portal called P.N.X. NEWS, where our friend ,in addition to crashing several backstages at festivals around half the world, he brought his camera to his private crazy parties or he showed us with his video tutorials how to install a quad-core processor into our Macintosh in four simple moves. The first night when we came to his dojo, he was already promising to interview us for his portal, a special edition for one of our concerts, and a U.S. tour following the Japanese one. He's fulfilled the first two promises and he would have fulfilled the third one too, but we honestly didn’t feel like a star-spangled banner tour after 2 months of touring in Europe and more than 10k miles of driving on our backs. But with Kenny we could do it. We knew him by chance. During the desperate booking process when the departure to Tokyo was getting closer and we still had several holes to fill, we found a web-page where a guy from New Zealand was recommending his friend's band to some Japanese as they needed some contacts to play in Japan. Of course, we had to do likewise and we went through the trouble to contact those people one-by-one, searching for a chance to book more gigs. Mr. Kenny Da Silva immediately replied to our request for help, he was willing to host us the nights that we didn't have a sleeping place, and to help us with booking the dates we still had open. Everything in exchange for two salamis which he requested as he knew we were flying from Italy. He immediately swallowed them upon receival, casing and all without any bread. “What's the catch?” you're asking. “You've found your golden goose,” you think. You can never have too many frolickers like him when you organize tours in such far-off lands. Unfortunately, also the best coins have their other side. Kenny, despite the amazing premises described above, didn't have a simple skeleton in the closet he had a full crypt of not so secret ones. Let me tell you about his house which is divided into to two very different and separate spaces. The ground floor, aka Kenny’s world, was a jumble of open suitcases with clothes of every shape and size waiting to be washed, papers and stuff of every nature all over the floor, and a very narrow space that lead to others compartments. A bathroom in acceptable health and hygienic conditions, but less than every other Japanese bathroom we came across (we'll definitely discuss the rising sun latrines later on), and a semi abandoned kitchen. Finally, the big shot: Kenny’s cave. A pretty small room where it was possible to find everything on the floor, when I mean everything I mean empty cigarettes packets, ciggy butts, a ton of empty coffee cans and billions of computer parts waiting to be assembled or scrapped. Kenny was 24/7 on the sofa in this room, he was always in front of his trusty computer, with a split signal video onto a giant screen occupying three quarters of the space. You needed to use a scale to reach the other side of the room. This scale was semi hidden by the junk and by our stuff during the days we stayed. Kenny never set foot on the first floor, not even for tsunamis or nuclear winters. The reason behind this is very personal so it wouldn’t be correct to mention it at this point. Needless to say, this floor was officially elevated to the role of Base Camp for our Japanese adventure. We found a large room, which we immediately turned into our dormitory, and a forgotten fitness room with several disassembled, musty and rusty gym stuff. We almost forgot a small detail, Kenny was completely aware that petty crime in Japan is nearly nonexistent, and always left his house unlocked, even when he went out. If you need a place to stay in Yokohama, you can easily enter without bothering the owner much, actually you would make him happy. Kenny’s occupation to keep the trains running is still unknown, somebody swore to have heard him speaking about a car exporting firm, somebody who would bet on a Yakuza boss’ helper, this somebody still prefers to leave a touch of mystery, just to lend a more ethereal halo to his character. But the main emotional occupation was easier to catch. Kenny was searching for a sweet consort. As soon as we got there, we noticed the rampant syncretism in that place, lots of christian images coexisted with the supposed Muslim faith of the owner. The reason behind was easy to say, Kenny’s future wife must be Islamic. Because, as he said, these women would still be virgins on their wedding day and they indiscriminately believe and cultivate the virtue of fidelity. “What’s wrong with that?” you're thinking, “What’s wrong with that??? “Kenny spent whole nights nailed to Muslim dating website. His nights were filled with flirty chats with women of the Islamic world. Of course, now that he had guests, every single comment, every single chat had to be appreciated with his new friends. Everything was sustained with massive doses of nicotine & caffeine. These were his inseparable companions on these sleepless nights in front of the monitor with his Islamic ladies. Occasionally, for variety, he turned his attentions towards the Easter European women. But his main target was the Islam. After 4, at most 5 chats he would immediately propose the altar to his beloved, he was confident that the Japanese passport could be attractive to everyone. To the most reluctant he said that he would bear all the wedding expenses: flights, papers, and that he was open to a long-distance marriage. And the whole night – in his mind – his new guests should support him in his endless delirium. But not that night Kenny, we really couldn’t stay in front of the screen til 6 o’ clock in the morning with cigarettes, Islamic women and coffees. The next day we had 2 gigs waiting for us and some sleep was needed. Every minute that we got closer to the Yamate station, Yokohama’s suburb where Kenny lives, the terror increased. Heroic proposals of immolation for the fatherland were snaking among us, like the kamikazes when they know about a suicide mission, without homecoming: “Guys get some rest, I'll hang out with Kenny”. Everybody was scared to spend the night with our night owl Islamophile host. Instead, when we arrived to his doorway a sweet sound was there waiting for us. For us the noisy purr of Kenny was like a symphony of one thousand musicians which had come together for this occasion. Kenny was sleeping and furthermore very heavily! As usual we entered without a key and quickly snuck upstairs. None of us wanted to disturb our friend's sweet dreams.
YOKOHAMA, NOVEMBER 23rd YOKOHAMA EXTREME 10 @ EL PUENTE
---DEBUT WITH A BANG---We were pumped enough, our Japan debut was nearly a reality and to take place in one of Japan's underground temples, the renowned EL PUENTE in Yokohama, a small venue which was always willing to host touring bands from abroad and the more extreme groups from this rising sun land. Just entering the club and seeing the signatures that past bands left on the walls of the little concert house got us excited as never before. We were aware the dance was about to begin and we had to dance! The night was organized by Naru-san from OBLITERATION RECORDS, an old fox label. We met Naru in the first evening, the same guy who militates in the well-known BUTCHER ABC, together with Hisao who came directly after work with a very elegant blue suit. We were looking at that night’s flyer and so far, the name of the veterans FINAL EXIT stood out, they're sort of a legend to everybody who has been hanging out in the sound annihilation scene for some time, there would be some surprises too.
For example, an important name escaped me, the NOISE A GO GO’S, this name means something to the extreme sounds’ lovers. In fact, this name is the title of an album of a fundamental band called GORE BEYOND NECROPSY, authors of a vicious noisecore from the last decades. When the band split up some of their members had regrouped in this formation of noise & roll, marked by a very deep and firm sound, and even though their music wasn’t among the most extreme you couldn’t help but thrash your arms, legs and head like lunatic. At the end of their show they had the bright idea of diving head first into the amplifiers. Incredibly powerful! FINAL EXIT gave an excellent performance. They destroyed the audience’s eardrums with their paroxysmal noisecore improvisation, with samples borrowed from thousands of different musical styles and the classic acrobatic exhibition of Ryohei-san behind the skins, he never stopped wagging his hands and feet in his less than orthodox drum style. The following acts from the amazing night were AKBK and CUNTS (the latter is a drum/vocals duo with Ucchi from NAPALM DEATH IS DEAD) and smooth-faced PINWORM PUELLA, authors of a gore grind never too boring. After a request for a tapes trade, the young members of this last band totally changed their facial expression, they told us they were absolutely excited by our request and the put their brand-new CD-R to the trading table. What a great night! We were still very fresh and lucid and we took full advantage of the event; we had nice chats with almost every band and everyone there. We thought that the biggest obstacle during our Japanese weeks would have been the language barrier, but in the end we were able to be understood by everybody, even by people who didn’t speak a fucking word in English. The night continued in Pankiu’s studio apartment – somebody who didn’t know even the classic “the pen is on the table” – he was at the gig, but it wasn’t quite clear if he was a member of EL PUENTE or not. We tasted the first of countless dinners to be had at cheap food chains, they're spread out like flies all over the Japanese territory. It was the first time we had canned noodles and rice triangles with random stuffing wrapped in local seaweed. The taste doesn't change much from chain to chain, but it’s a very valid and cheap option in comparison to the restaurants which could be very cheap as well in some cases. Everything in Japan is quite expensive, except the food. Aside from these chains you could find plenty of cheap restaurants which were usually managed by the large Chinese community.
TOKYO (ASAKUSA), NOVEMBER 26th ASAKUSA EXTREME 41 @ GOLDEN SOUND
---TRIP TO SENSO-JI---We hope our friend Naru didn’t hold it against us, he organized a perfect night but this time we had nothing to do with the other bands at the gig. We were crashers then party crashers, but the promise was a free night in a hostel not so far from Tokyo downtown, we couldn’t turn down such a great opportunity.
Any concert is better than a day off. We found GOLDEN SOUND thanks to two very willing guys we passed on the street on a desolate Tokyo Sunday. The pageant included some black and death metal bands and finishing off was EVIL, there were releasing a new record on CD, tape and vinyl. The venue was nice, the acoustics and the technicians were above average, plus the EVIL guys were very cool and easygoing; but we were very mindful that we were the first band to play and we were a stone’s throw from the huge Buddhist temple Senso-ji, a trip to this couldn’t be missing from our schedule. As the hours flowed, the venue began to fill up, but hardly 20 people saw our concert, so shortly after our performance, some of us scattered in the direction of the complex Senso-ji. This temple was built in the seventh century AD, dedicated to the goddess of mercy Kwannon, and is located in one of the most commercial and touristic areas of the city, with hundreds of shopping malls and restaurants. They were shocking due to the variety of their offers and the weirdness of their settings. Near the temple the countless and omnipresent souvenir kiosks weren’t missing, but most of them were closed for Sunday. On the road to the temple, we have “Thunder Gate”, where two proud figures loomed over the street turned which headed towards the sanctuary, just to remind the visitors that they were leaving the commercial area and were heading into a more sacred and spiritual one. They were Fujin and Raijin and respectively represented the wind and lightning according to Shinto mythology. On the left of the temple, the Asakusa Shrine whose classic oriental roof had a pagoda every five floors made of finely painted wood. This kind of construction, is typically Shinto. What syncretism in this area of this religion with that of Japanese buddhism. On the patio in front of the temple there was a little loggia with an endless series of drawers, on each of them a different ideogram was painted. Basically, if you inserted 100 yen in the appropriate box, you had the right to roll a sort of dice where a different ideogram was on each face. Then you had to search the tiny drawers and open the matching one, and you'd find a small slip of paper rigorously written with Japanese characters. Who knows if they were aphorisms, suggestions, blackmails, insults or death threats? Of course, nobody was monitoring, so our offering to this little game was slightly lower than 100 yen. We can say it was almost free. When we made it back to GOLDEN SOUND, EVIL was playing, with a large group of aficionados in tow. It was good quality black thrash with a stage presence to be reckoned with. Beside the classic studs and face painting for the musicians, the stage was overrun with a hoard Japanese style tombstones. For those of you who don’t know, Japanese tombstones are shaped like concrete stakes with triangular head and a rectangular base, where you can find the deceased’s name written vertically. EVIL had a very successful evening seeing as a lot of people bought their disco-graphic labor, expertly executed by dear Naru-san's OBLITERATION REC. Before returning to our residence we chatted a bit with the crowd and we had the chance to meet Seiji from the mighty INTESTINE BAALISM. The night passed by with a pleasant atmosphere, without additional revelries, we had some freeze-dried noodles and lovely conversations with the other guests in the hostel we were staying at.
---FIRST DAY IN JAPAN---
We just arrived to the Narita airport, there was a lot of turmoil mixed with extreme curiosity, we were ready to run into this new and exciting adventure. Kenny had given us the directions we needed to reach his place in Yokohama, including his address and telephone number. We had responsibly decided not to buy a local sim card, given the exorbitant prices we were shocked with at the same Narita Airport. We survived the whole tour thanks to people’s charity and bumming WIFI from here and there, especially from the cheap supermarkets which allowed us free WIFI access without buying anything! So, when we arrived, totally lost and without being able to contact our friend, we had our first encounter with the natives, some young ladies in college uniforms. They called Kenny on their phones for us. He was home and waiting. He suggested that we took a taxi to Yamate station which would leave us in front of his place. Needless to say, the taxi driver didn’t speak English very well and there weren't any numbers on Kenny's street. We had to figure out which one was the Kenny’s house amongst the hundreds of cottages. After careful observation we had come to a conclusion quite quickly. Unlike the rest of the houses, there was one with the first floor windows patched up with cardboard and an open-air dump. It was foreshadowing of what was waiting for us inside, but amongst the trash outside you could find heavy and bulky materials like microwaves, old computers and several plastic objects. There was no way to miss it!
TAKAMATSU, DECEMBER 1st EXTREMEDIVES IN KAGAWA @ TOO NICE
---WONDER DUO---We booked a gig on another island! While we were booking the tour and looking at a map of Japan, we fantasized about having gigs on each of the four main islands and we were offered more than one opportunity, because there's a healthy scene from the far north to the remote tropical island of the south. In the end our most active contacts were based on the biggest island, Honshū, where Japan’s biggest and most populated cities are located. On the journey towards Shikoku Island we rode a train called Mariner which showed us the sea for the first and last time. We were able to reach the island by train thanks to the suspension bridge Seto Ōhashi, a superb example of Japanese architecture. On the first part of our European tour we had a day off in Prague and we found a noise night mainly composed of Japanese bands, it was a golden opportunity we couldn’t lose - we still had a lot of holes to plug at the end of October. Among one of the guys who was the most willing to help was performing that night - Kamei’s terrorist project “SPACE GRINDER”.
Although he only spoke basic English, he immediately told us that he would be able to help us with a gig in his area. We were elated to be setting sails to Shikoku Island, which was the first (and last) concert away from Honshū. Due to his European tour and prolonged absence from the land of the rising sun, Kamei passed the organizational buck to UNGODLY's Senji, a true leading figure. He managed everything perfectly. From the gig, to hotel accommodation which was very close to TOO NICE, to a record shop that hosted the night, a pre-concert dinner at a sushi restaurant, a small after party, breakfast, AND a guided tour around the park the following day. He was fucking cool, folks. Seeing him one would see a very shy, but awkward, caring man-boy, who only worried about making us happy. Well, this was only an impression, because when he's behind the skins he undergoes a diabolical transformation, truly a Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde kind. In addition to his raw yet effective technique, his imposing riot squad physique, the faces and smirks he made were entirely worthy of a Japanese horror movie. You've never seen a metamorphosis like this. We came too early to TOO NICE, far earlier than Senji and Kamei, but this time we were properly welcomed by local guys. The record shop had a wide selection of different genres from the domestic and foreign market - we traded a lot of stuff and we even bought something. Besides record selling there were small concert halls with their respective backstages. The venue was open to a lot of different musical styles; a weird duo performed before our late afternoon concert. He was a good, dumpy, vocalist in his thirties with manga glasses and an anonymous black t-shirt with some text on it; she, besides dabbling with the synth giving a musical background, was uttering hysterical squeaks with her comrade which immediately captured our attention. We never discovered their band’s name, but the madame and her young friend’s get up were really striking. We say madame and young friend because when the stage costumes came off an elderly lady in her late fifties was revealed. What were their stage costumes? They wore black opaque socks, a school girl skirt, a yellow and green shirt from an anonymous local sport club, massive sunglasses that covered half of her face, a horned headband and twenty ounces of foundation as mask. Her approximate height was no more than 55-60 inches. Our two friends were playing very bare j-pop, but their magnetic voices, their music coming from 80s video games, and their overall arrhythmic and asynchronous dances couldn’t spare to catalyze our pupils and our auricles. Two geniuses which nobody understood. On the contrary, our gig started with Kamei’s great performance. He absolutely annihilated the crowd with the belligerent, mechanical, harsh noise which radiated from his effect boxes. It was a very brief exhibition but truly savage. The initiative spirit of this young guy is laudable, he went halfway around Europe without decent English offering performances which only lasted for several minutes. Next up was Senji and Gai's UNGODLY, frightful death / black metal authors (I guess this stuff is called blackened metal or something like that). Their sound was very aggressive, and in open opposition with the generous hospitality of the guys off stage. This young band deserved real support, Takaho-san already noticed them and he wanted them in a GRIND FREAKS edition. The night already got off on the right foot, both with the technicians and the crowd. Kamei in the first place – recognized my GEROGERIGEGEGE’s shirt and I personally recognized some of the Japanese bands whose sounds were emitting from the loud speakers during transitions that night. We followed the dance to a nearby restaurant, where all the bands that played that night were there, with Kamei as the relentless beer chugger. At the end of this lovely night, Senji drove us closer to the hostel, where we had previously left our unnecessary luggage. Takamatsu was the southernmost locality we touched in Japan, but it was a huge disappointment as we expected milder temperatures compared to Honshū, but in fact, this coastal town greeted us with strong icy winds that were constantly slicing through the night.
OSAKA, NOVEMBER 29th HEADXACHE @ HOKAGE
MAIHARA, NOVEMBER 27th @ BENEHANA
ASHIKAGA, DECEMBER 6th GRIND IN ASHIKAGA VOL'2 @ GRIMM CAFE
NUMAZU, NOVEMBER 25th くだき VOL.3 @ SPEAK EZ BAR
---MY NAME IS NAGATOMO---Numazu is situated in Shizuoka prefecture, the same of his highness Mount Fuji, when we came at railways station we clearly saw in the distance the snowy peak of the sacred mountain, we crumbled ourselves with wonder and admiration choirs. The venue called SPEAK EZ, actually a language school with a bar for live concerts, but in that first Saturday in Japan we had not much teaching. Only a great desire to hit the town! The bar was a family business, with Ucchi (another Ucchi) to acting as host for the bands and his wife Yuriko worried about the bar’s fortunes. A funny family of heavy drinkers, in honor of our coming they delighted gastronomic Italian night with pizza as appetizer for us and pasta and other stuff for everybody in the end of the concerts. They committed themselves a lot to put us at our ease and they got it right away. The promoter of the night was Hisao, both he and Ucchi played with two bands involved, respectively with AWAKED and with SHADY GLIPSE. This time Hisao didn’t have to go at work the next day, as it passed in Yokohama, there were there to testify that his uniform in “civilian clothes” with a shirt of DISGUST in play view (of course the Japanese band), his inclination for the alcohol and overall the total oblivion for coming days on what happened that night in Namazu. The beginning trio of bands, AWAKED, DEVOID and EXOFORCE shook the place to the ground. Every band was more in the face than the other. Every song was a big jaw in the pit of the stomach disguised by musical track. The singer of one of the bands gave us a false hope he could speak Italian, but he knows only “buongiorno” (good morning), “grazie” (thank you) and “mi chiamo Nagatomo” (my name is Nagatomo), this last wasn’t his real name but the surname of a Japanese football player who militated in several Italian teams for a lot of years. It was his battle cry, because he repeated us this last sentence more or less one hundred times. After us the Ucchi’s band played, they were authors of a psychedelic / funky / disco performance of undoubtedly interest. In some points SHADY GLIMPSE didn’t despise heavier passages that involved everybody in a brotherly pogo. Ucchi’s fashion couldn’t go unnoticed: flashy sunglasses, long dreadlocks till his bottom, some of them fuchsia, some of them blue shock, shower shoes crocks with glow sticks included. His buddies, just a little bit more sober, had colored hair or fisherman’s cap. The night at the bar gradually disgorged in an alcoholic craziness, our firm was still stuck on the excesses, because we were a little bit scared of high prices at the exchange rate of their draft beers, but also of hard future labors waiting for us in the following week. But everybody was hardly partying and us with them. Ucchi, Yuriko, Hisao, his wife and us reached Yuriko family’s house with two taxis, where a guest room had been prepared, with a little partition for the married couple. Last bites of that nice night were accompanied by some other round of beers and a taste of manjus, a typical Japanese dessert saved by Hisao, before to definitely fall in the arms of Morpheus.
SENDAI, DECEMBER 3rd NORTHERN GENOCIDE VOL.1 @ 2B STUDIO
NAGOYA, NOVEMBER 28th @ DAYTRIVE
YOKOHAMA, NOVEMBER 24th DAY OFF
---LATRINES, MASKS & PORNO---Because in this day we’ve done nothing but loiter on the loose aimlessly in the streets of Yokohama, absolutely nothing interesting if not give the usual squeals of wonder every time we noticed some store window full of local weirdos; we are gonna tell you about three heroic and typical customs of rising sun. First, the latrines. If you have never tried this unforgettable experience, I can assure the ticket price for Tokyo-Narita is abundantly paid back by this extraordinary life experience. The most trivially different thing is the flush; in every bathroom the water before to serve as discharge comes out from a tap seated on every latrine, of course you have to use it after the evacuation of your physical needs. So far so good. But most of the latrines are automated with several little buttons on the right-hand side of Japanese crapper. Considering that all buttons are almost always indicated with ideograms, try your luck with one of them is always a double-edged sword. You can easily find a little tap approaching your perinea area, it can start to shoot a jet of warm water up your ass; as well you can start to hear a musical selection of sounds of nature or Japanese hits with the purpose of masking your indelicate sounds during defecation’s act. We would like to dedicate the second chapter to the little masks for nose and mouth, millions of Japanese wear them daily in the public transport, workplace, school and nights off. The reason behind of this object of undoubted civic value is surely the intent to don’t contaminate their neighbor with their own bacteria and don’t receive them. This is one more example of a society that has a special consideration for their counterparts and their intimate area. But we missed another point, why in the land of manga and animation in every corner of the street, everybody wears a simple and anonymous white mask? The most rule breaker we saw were two girls wearing a pair of black masks. Why nobody had a mask with Doraemon or Hello Kitty? Doubts still unresolved. Last and most licentious chapter is about the Japanese predisposition about porno in general. In a half-secluded corner of every cheap chain of supermarkets there is porno section, separated very well from other magazines, it was in turn split with picture magazines and manga of the genre. Being accessible to the youngest, this kind of merchandise is strictly sealed and you can’t open it only after the purchase. Of course for this kind of purchases, as with cigarettes and alcohol, you have to demonstrate the reaching of the age of majority, through a swipe of your chip provided ID. The most attractive for occidental attention, is for sure the wide selection offered by the section; they range from magazines with only students with college uniform to magazines with only milf. There were some magazines very curious, they deserved for sure some minutes of wait, just to look who ever could be interesting in such item, but the well-known modesty of Japanese population didn’t allow them approach the porno section if somebody else was nearby. As usual the night ended in front of Kenny’s PC till 6 of the morning, a nice distraction was the arrival of two of his punk friends of old guard. In the Kenny’s liar there wasn’t space not even for a fart. One of them called Takeshi tried unsuccessfully to plug one of our holes still present in our tour schedule with a second gig at EL PUENTE.
OSAKA, DECEMBER 2nd THERE'S RIOT @ KINGCOBRA SQUAT
TOKYO (KOENJI), DECEMBER 8th RUST CHORD VOL. 1.5 @ KOENJI STUDIO DOM
---BRUCE LEES' SELFIES---Thanks to Sano, HOKAGE's owner/manager, the first Japanese booking stereotypes fell flat, it was in the same preparatory phase. By all accounts a tour with more than 6-7 dates in Japan for a foreign band is sheer folly.
“You must start booking at least one year before”, “No venue will let you play without a local promoter”, “They give you only one beer for the whole night, then you have to pay for everything, including a sleeping place”, “A 10 date tour is impossible because people there are totally absorbed in their own work”, “You must be friend some local band, otherwise everybody will ignore you”, “Nobody who is into booking has got a European approach”, “No pay”, “If the Japanese notice that you need them, it’s the end, nobody will pay attention to you anymore”
Each advice/ warning flew away one by one during our 3 Japanese weeks, they flew away like autumnal leaves in the wind. We hope our friends who helped us during the booking won't be upset, but their affirmations were incorrect, maybe it was our luck or our audacity.
We took on the roles that local promoters would have done and we contacted all the venues that had foreign band on stage with music similar to their own. Big Sano-san immediately offered us a concert, a sleeping place and decent pay. In other words he broke down three ancestral taboos from those “who had been through this before” and their advices with trying to manage a Japanese tour. Pretty soon he sent us his flyer, where we could see ourselves, with 3 local bands, with the byline “Italian pure grind core bastards”. Not a bad presentation! And when we told Sano that we got another offer to play on Saturday (3 days later) in Osaka in a club only 2 blocks away from HOKAGE, our samurai-like friend didn’t blink an eye in surprise and expressed his sadness at not being able to come to our second gig in his city because he had work. HOKAGE is another Japanese temple of extreme music; loads of bands have passed through Sano’s claws and his post-industrial club's setting.
The elevator was very interesting, it took the guests to each floor of the club- the stage, the bar and backstage. Also, Koy tagged along with us for the entire night, we had just met him a couple of weeks ago in Tubingen, where he was engaged with his band's European tour. Koy promised us a sleeping place for the following Saturday in Osaka and a farewell party on our last night before taking off to Italy. HOKAGE is located in a district with little islets linked with bridges and thousands of bars, restaurants, and clubs. To reach our venue we got lost at the Taisho station- two of us took a train and another one missed it. There was very little time to hitch. When we arrived to HOKAGE, it looked like a typical “Asian town” with all the colored lights and the wonderful neon banners. In the near distance we could see a ferris wheel in action with phosphorescent trails, making the view even more colorful. Before we went to Sano’s place for the night, we witnessed a bizarre scene and a very important meeting for our tour. I'll start with the first one, at the end of the concert one band, who played with us, and were helped by others attacked the mirrors surrounding the concert hall. They needed them to take millions of selfies in a macho man pose. They were flashing their naked midsections and their Bruce Lee biceps, without showing a shred of self-amusement. They took themselves seriously and they stayed there for a solid half an hour, all 10 without blinking at all. The meeting which represented the turning point in our tour was with the rascal, Mr. Jukka who hails from freezing Finland. For those of you who don't know who this 6'7” hunk is - he's been playing with SOTATILA and with the veterans RIISTETYT. He had been touring Japan with KOHU 63 and was strolling around the land of the rising sun like a homeless. He entered HOKAGE with his distinguishable dish-soap green dreadlocks telling us that he just came by to say hi but that he preferred another show not too far from HOKAGE. Sincerity is the key. “I know a nice place” was then followed up with “it’s the best bar in the world” where old school punks served alcohol to thirsty party-ers, like us, all night long. He took us to a nearby cellar, where a really uncommon bar was hidden behind a door. The space was around 20-30 square feet, the color of the wall was completely invisible due to the thousands of posters on it. The bartender was easygoing and he was always ready to join in on our toasts, and readily lowered the prices when our resources began to cry. Inside the bar two Japanese customers left the room for a Canadian girl called Lindsey. After the end of his work as HOKAGE’s club manager, Sano joined us. This minute, hidden corner of the globe was completely saturated, and devoted to wild alcoholism seven days a week and quite possibly 24 hours a day. Of course, the background music was a mix of old Japanese Punk hits, the majority completely unknown to us.
TOKYO (YOTSUYA), DECEMBER 9th SATO'S BIRTHDAY PARTY 店長佐藤生誕祭 @ OUTBREAK
---THE CRAZIEST BIRTHDAY PARTY IN THE WORLD---
In the few moments of sanity experienced 2 nights earlier, Ucchi-san had been more than clear, “No grind core, no noisecore, different party.” That was transparent, but we could find anything and everything. There might well have been everything, but none of us were waiting for the apocalypse! The level of insanity when it comes to the Japanese is too much, it is really far TOO MUCH and on this occasion it really overflowed! The day began with the classic antagonistic hangover which characterized the entire last week in Japan, it was all but unavoidable. During our last Nakano mall tour (Tokyo’s suburbs) we got lost in the middle of a crowd that occupied three floors totally dedicated to animation and manga. This place would represent a real heaven for lovers of this genre, we were there getting the last presents but it turned into a never ending Dante’s Inferno. Thanks to current technology we were able to finally meet again at the venue, the same venue that Ucchi set us up with an epic gig. What happened that night was incredible! I had arrived very early and I was there during the sound-check of one of the scheduled bands, I hadn't originally realized it, until later that night when the apocalyptic gates opened. Within an hour Hiro-san and Ucchi-san from NAPALM DEATH IS DEAD came, and Ucchi immediately began to unfold his mephistophelian plan (the past two days of alcohol abuse didn't allow him to explain himself much better). His mind was conjuring an impromptu performance with all 5 members of both our bands together on stage, spewing as much noise as humanly possible. Some BESTIAL NAPALM VOMIT IS DEATH fusion. After a while other BESTIAL VOMIT members came along and were immediately informed of the sonic conspiracy in progress. All we had to do was make some fucking noise, but a little bit of coordination was necessary. And Ucchi with his fluent English fit and suitably played the role of (noise) choirmaster. Let’s begin with saying that this wasn't a “concert” but Sato’s (the club manager's) birthday party. It is not known if his crew made them for the occasion or if it was a long-standing Japanese custom, but a lot of the guests and staff were wearing shirts with the birthday boy’s funny face printed on them, and as always (and forever) in manga-style. Nope, definitely not just a concert this one. When I got to the club there was somebody grilling in the middle of the room, another was giving a silk screening workshop, another...you name it. Then there was the preposterous proposal made by the OUTBREAK crew- if you paid the first glass and you ought to keep it safe in such a night of chaos, that way you could drink anytime you wanted. Needless to say, once the alcoholic frenzy reached its apogee, you could find glasses scattered everywhere – they were made of hard plastic and virtually shatterproof – so the uninvited and last minute party crashers could recycle a glass at any given moment. But the main dish of the night were the invited bands. It would be quite redundant to simply categorize them as “eccentric”. We don’t know if the birthday boy had done a special investigation to find Tokyo's most comical characters, or if fate kindly led him to the musical selection for his party. The first band who had the honor of starting the burlesque dances answered to the name of HANDS CLAP GANG,
the same band from the sound-check which had just begun to become clear. They had a false sober attitude just a couple of hours before, but right now our bold 6 were unleashing their insanity. Wigs a-la Jimi Hendrix with some neon colored lights, which of course changed colors to the rhythm of the music. They truly were beach boys with their flashy glasses and funny caps. The only maiden in this funny brigade was one of their two saxophonists who was wearing a long skirt with a floral pattern, which was repeated with a black pencil on her face. This chick was a very talented musician, but her sanity was clearly unstable, as well as the rest of the band's. After her band got off stage she began lurking around the club with some puppet on her right hand. She spoke through her puppet which revealed that she had a special talent for ventriloquism that NO ONE would have guessed. Throughout the whole night we never heard her real voice. Either way, I DARE the most die-hard metal heads to not move their feet, not a single one to the funky beats of the HANDS CLAP GANG, even if you don’t love their music, you can’t help but recognize the immense irony, overall technique and exceptional musical taste. Then it was the time for HI-FI COFFEE, or if you prefer ideograms ハイファイコーヒーズ, another picturesque rarity made in Japan. Before their performance we met their singer Mary, who told us about her personal experiences in the USA. She's an easygoing girl with an androgynous look. At first, she looked like a sane person. No way! Her band from Osaka was the craziest among the craziest.
The drummer was at the extreme left corner of the scene, in a strange position (at least in respect to a drummer's posture) with his back to the left wall of the stage; next to him was a shy guitarist watching him. These two guys were occupying the minimum physiological space for their person and their instruments, while the 4/5 of the stage were left at the mercy of the histrionic Mary, who was interpreting the themes with a peculiar pathos, she was probably adding some parts of verse and prose. As usual, the vocal in their mother tongue didn’t allow us to fully appreciate this musical and theatrical performance, but the singer's exaggerated body language and the perfectly timed light, stressed the different moods within the songs which already spoke their very comprehensive language. It was our turn, it was possible to notice the mood of the night, although it wasn’t too late the first open-bar victims were sprawling on the ground, more casualties were expected to join them before the night's end. The audience which crowded the venue was even crazier than the bands! One could see a person in a suit and tie, another in a student’s uniform, another in a leopard pajama, etc. Once again, even though up till now we were unsuccessful, we asked if any of the concert go-ers could take some pictures of our concert with our camera. This time the chosen one was the same Sato. He could take about 270 pictures of a 15-minute show! We already had a taste of the Japanese-Camera syndrome, so it wasn't anything new, but pictures every 3 seconds non-stop is very hard to explain and understand. A quick set change and it was CUM SHOT BOY's (aka 中出し少年) turn. They cranked out an energetic metallic thrash that launched into some other musical genres. It wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary if it weren’t for their clothes- they donned Japanese manga masks! We recognized 2 DRAGON BALL characters and the unfailing SUPER MARIO BROS. Without equal. The trumpets of the apocalypse began to sound when FROZEN CAKE BAR took the stage. They're simply a band which is really hard to describe. Their music could be considered a relatively hard techno / gabber, if it weren’t for the singer's cartoon voices, but the costumes were this Sendai band’s centerpiece. There were seven of them and it seemed that everybody had white contact lens, fake dreadlocks (the guys) and platinum wigs (the gals). The main, manga-sounding singer, looked like sailor moon but was most likely emulating a more current character. They were on stage with her; a male vocalist; a classic rock trio bass, guitar & drums, with the addition of crowd animator/agitator that wore a gas mask while shaking their light saber at the sky. Then there was the band's beating heart, the one behind synth and bpms.
He was a real prodigy with his tracks and timing. What was he wearing? He was a frogman with a diving bell! Alternately the three instrument-less members swung and waved their neon light sabers and at some point the crowd began making a circle pit and everyone had their own personal light sabers. Maybe FROZEN CAKE BAR had passed them out, but we heavily suspected that the light saber slinging circle pit crew were hometown imports. Lysergic. A band called BRIDGE OVER DAWN abruptly brought us back to reality. They made us understand that the night we were experiencing wasn’t a mescaline induced dream. They were normal people with normal clothes, they played melodic hardcore, regretfully even if they could take on the world, the nights adrenaline had already been spent on the previous bands. The party was followed by some songs and dances. We noticed that a lot of alcoholic frenzied scenes were taking place, with people who couldn't stop dancing on the collapsed bodies that littered the ground. We bid our farewells to NAPALM DEATH IS DEAD (with Ucchi incapable of opening his eyes), to the rest of the bands, including Sato and all his crew because as usual our train to Yokohama was waiting for us. This time Kenny promised some form of entertainment. It turned out to be a gathering of his friends at a bar. It was just another excuse to paint the town red. Actually, it was a reunion with Kenny’s old classmates, naturally they were all the same age, and these fellas had more than well passed their self-determined party limit allowance this month. Taking everybody into an account, it was a valid argument, with the exception of Kenny. So, after a further round of beers and pouncing on the nearest supermarket – our dear friend bought coffees as if preparing for WWIII, and soon after we found ourselves once again on the sofa of horrors. We hadn't even made it inside yet and Kenny was already connected to the Muslim portal. It was our last night in our Yokohama “home” so we dutifully soldiered on. I don’t think any of us made it to bed before 5 a.m.
SENDAI, DECEMBER 4th DAY OFF 
---MANGA CITY---We have to tell you that the well-known inclination and the endemic predisposition of the Japanese for everything comics, or for that matter, animated could prepare you for witnessing it with your own eyes in their home country- it's a whole other story! You will almost always find a place or space dedicated to comics, everywhere. From the train signs which showed you what and wasn't allowed, to advertisements, restaurants, even the supermarkets are fully stocked with every kind of manga, including porno manga. Not to mention the countless human-sized puppets, representing various cartoon protagonists, that could also be found nearly everywhere! The biggest cities have entire buildings, several stores high which are completely dedicated to the accessories for this popular culture; in every town, including the medium-sized ones, we even came across museums dedicated to manga and animation. But that day, we had accidentally found an entire themed town! On one of the few days that we had off in the land of the rising sun, we decided to dedicate the morning to go on a shopping spree in the mall's in downtown Sendai. A populous agglomeration located in the north of Honshū Island. Our friends from LETHAL INCENDIARY who had been hanging out with us had to deal with a lot of their own obligations that Monday afternoon; that half a day threw us into the deep end. Inside Sendai's Central Station a map was being displayed on a massive screen for the passengers.
Where should we go? Where shouldn't we go? We could go to the temple! No, we can go here! No, we can go there! In the end we decided to go see...THE SEA. Because throughout the whole trip here, we hadn't been exposed to bathing in the waters of the Upper Pacific in Japan. The chosen destination was Onagawa, a humble town with a temple facing the open sea. With our tickets we could go on nearly any rambling Japanese train, so taking 2, 3 or 6000 of them didn’t make an economic difference to us. Unluckily, there was the situation of time. In terms of, making it back to Sendai in time to meet up with our friends meant that we'd only get to be in Onagawa for 20 minutes. We decided to reroute our trip to the town where the first train brought us: Ishinomaki. The slightest sliver of coast was visible from this town. Raise your hand if you know who created the “Manga Declaration”? We could raise our hands and answer that a certain Shitaro Ishinomori, the creator of CYBORG 009 and KAMEN RIDER wrote it. The town of Ishinomaki is dedicated to Ishinomori. We haven’t the faintest idea about which name was derived from which or if this closely resembled homonym is a fluke. Apart from the fact that the path from railway station to the manga museum was marked by life-sized Cyborg statues and other Ishinomori’s creatures, made of heavy plastic there were also tiny village where you could find items that reminded us of our manga friend. There was even food shaped like manga! It would be our luck to realize upon arriving to the museum that it wouldn't be opening until the following day. Such a pity! We made it back to Sendai a little bit disappointed at the fact that we couldn't get into MANGAttan. We spent a funny night in Seisuke’s place, LETHAL INCENDIARY's Singaporean drummer, an aspiring dentist and Oxford English owner.
MAIHARA, NOVEMBER 27th @ BENEHANA
---A FUNNY GANG---Before our departure to Japan, we evaluated the situation with a map in the hands. “Well, we have fifteen cities in Japan with over one million inhabitants, so we are gonna book fifteen gigs in fifteen different cities”. When we have arrived in rising sun lands, we had only nine gigs surely booked. When we looked at bands with similar music of us and venues where it was possible to book in our days still off, we originally rejected the idea to contact realities too much close to Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, because we have already booked 2 gigs in each of these cities. It couldn't be more wrong. In the smaller towns of Japan, you can find little but very cohesive scenes, they have craving for gigs. If you book a concert in the club area of Osaka, maybe your night will be more crowded, but you will be only one of several national and international musicians passed by there around. But in the less populated prefectures, where kids have not the chance to attend underground gigs very often, maybe only 20 people will come for your concert, but they all want to chat with you and make you comfortable.
That drinking Monday was the witness of what we said. Please don’t ask us why Baba (aka Skasa) asked us to book that Monday since from the beginning, he absolutely wanted organize a gig for us in his neighborhood, he picked immediately a Monday, and that immediately sounded weird to us. Also, the pictures that our friend was sharing on social network looked quite destabilizing, because there was a person with the face dripping blood. The journey towards Shiga prefecture was for us the first sortie far from the axis Tokyo – Yokohama and around, so coming from a megalopolis like that, we were thrown into a small town of the peaceful Japanese country side, a rural reality closed to ancient imperial capital Kyoto, facing the epic lake Biwa, the biggest freshwater lake in Japan. Skasa has asked us to inform him just arrived at railway station, shortly after our friend came with his car, the guy we saw in those pictures was like a million miles from real Skasa, an educated bespectacled boy, just shy enough to don’t turn out antisocial. The conversation followed relaxing thanks to the good English of our friend, we were taking a route accompanied both side by the green and quiet Japanese country, here and there some small field houses and a strong but not invasive smell of gasoline. In fact, our friend charged the fuel for the club’s stoves, beside the meals for the night. Finally, we came at BENEHANA, an anonymous venue without banner on the first floor of a building situated in front of a little river; we immediately attacked snacks, chips and other cocktail party delicatessen, then we decided to take a little joyride into the town. Skasa took the opportunity to give us the a4 posters of the gig, we had to use them as flyers, with a chimeric distant hope to find some possible new adepts into the village’s streets. In other words, we had to work as PR for our own concert. We immediately jumped at this opportunity, we could make some sociability with local people. If we tried our approach with a language coming from another galaxy instead of English, the result would have been the same, of course we decide for a quite young target, but despite this, only few people understood what we wanted to offer them. Also the English of some placards left much to be desired. Needless to say, none of those who received our flyer came to the concert. The language barrier in the little towns was getting more and more tall, but this handicap didn’t demoralize us at all, actually it fully encouraged us to find a different way of communication with people. It was impossible to find papers for our beloved tobacco, we had it with us from Europe, we bought them up because we were a little bit afraid of Japanese prices, but we lost them nobody knows where. And to say that we found a smokers’ articles shop in the midget Maihara, but a little old man inside the shop was looking us extremely surprised, we don’t believe he has ever been involved with other kinds of people except the local ones. The request for papers now appeared like charades, but our new friend proposed us everything except our desired cellulose strips for our tobacco. For sure when we were miming, we turned out clumsy and folkloric in the eyes of the old man; who knows if that night around the dinner table with his loved ones, our coming in his store became a topic of conversation or not. The concert was opened by SOBBED, interesting grind core act coming from not too far Kyoto. There were more than 20 people, young people in love with the musical genre, a receptive audience to our proposal and the other band’s one. Everybody was wagging like a crazy and this time the contact with the crowd was direct and full frontal, the leader was an unexpected Skasa, like a modern Clark Kent he disposed the clothes of a shy boy from a little town, he became a heavy beast of pogo. Almost everybody wanted something from our merchandise and everybody wanted to chat with us after the concert. Half of attendance came back at home but another good half stayed on-the-spot for a frenzied after party. As the alcohol level and the volume of voice increased, we got closed with everybody. When Japanese people are tipsy, all the social conventions they show when they are sober are suddenly deleted. For example, the rule to not touch the interlocutor faded away with kisses, hugs and other mushy stuff. In vino veritas, deep down inside they are true sweethearts. You have to watch them during their conversion process. Among the last survivors there was a fella called Noku (Neku for friends) with platinum blond hair, he proposed us a gig in Gifu, gripped by a drunken stupor. He carefully examined the snotted tissue we passed off as our tour schedule, then good Neku offered us to play in his neighborhood for the next Thursday, in other words only 3 days after the alcoholic night we were fully savouring. This was for the people who wanted to force us to book our Japanese tour at least one year before. This was only the first last minute concert in those lands. The night followed as well as you could possibly imagine, with a sleazy Skasa who drove us at his place located in a not too far town called Nagahama.
ASHIKAGA, DECEMBER 6th GRIND IN ASHIKAGA VOL'2 @ GRIMM CAFE
---EXCESSIVE SPEED---We snored the whole morning at Takahiro’s place, another remarkable main character we have to tell about in detail for sure, his record shop closed at 2 pm and the night before we had a great party. That morning nobody felt to put his nose outside for a walk. We waited for our host’s return because he wanted to drive us till our next destination, the not so far town of Ashikaga. The journey has been stopped by police, on the highway they placed their car in front of good Takahiro’s one and ordered him to take first exit. Before to come to the tollbooth the pigs contested him an excessive speed revealed by freeway sensors. Everything fucking automated, there is no way to get away from Japanese technology. This time they didn’t lose a lot of time with pleasantries, but before to take Takahiro in their car, we received a good dose of the usual regards with bows and smiles.
Our beanpole friend had to immediately settle a fine before to follow his race, inside screws’ car they accepted also debit and credit cards. We he came with us, he complained about overzealous cops and overall about excessive amount of the penalty. Ashikaga was a little town, but this place was suggested by Hoshi of OIDAKI, we contacted him only a couple of weeks before our departure and he worked hard to help us with booking. For the previous day, he proposed us a gig - in the end not materialized – in the famously sinister location of Fukushima. He dumped to hot potato to Hayao for the gig in Ashikaga, Hayao played with both bands involved in that night, drums with ZIKADE and bass & voice with MARVELOUS. Both bands played a remarkable fast hc / crust, the trio MARVELOUS was conspicuous for its solid sound and skillful execution. The flyer told and is still telling GRIM CAFE, but just entered with Takahiro in the venue with this name, we immediately realized it couldn’t be the place in question. Try to imagine a literary cafe where a background soft music accompanies the customers’ teas and ice-creams; there was a place for a concert, but it wasn’t suits us. In fact in the back office there was a skaters’ house called 3RD AND HOMIE, where in their basement the concert took place, in a rehearsal room fully soundproof. On the floor above there was the hobby room, they were selling products for skaters, a wide range of clothes and a good national discography. The half-bottle of whisky left-over from the night before found is end in the middle of ZIKADE concert, but as luck would have it, in the skaters’ house there was a 2.5 liters full bottle. Just for coincidence it was the same brand and the same quality we had just gulped down. Local kids didn’t even blink when we asked them if we could replenish our empty bottle. So the one-way vortex of the last week of drunk and disorderly made in Japan began. The venue closed relatively soon and we continued the party in one guy of the bands’ place, despite the multiple warnings received from locals; they remembered us (in vain) there were little children sleeping under the same roof and they had a barbarian early start for the following day. It’s possible we slept on the floor a couple of hours at most and nothing more.
NUMAZU, NOVEMBER 25th くだき VOL.3 @ SPEAK EZ BAR
---MY NAME IS NAGATOMO---Numazu is situated in Shizuoka prefecture, the same of his highness Mount Fuji, when we came at railways station we clearly saw in the distance the snowy peak of the sacred mountain, we crumbled ourselves with wonder and admiration choirs. The venue called SPEAK EZ, actually a language school with a bar for live concerts, but in that first Saturday in Japan we had not much teaching. Only a great desire to hit the town! The bar was a family business, with Ucchi (another Ucchi) to acting as host for the bands and his wife Yuriko worried about the bar’s fortunes. A funny family of heavy drinkers, in honor of our coming they delighted gastronomic Italian night with pizza as appetizer for us and pasta and other stuff for everybody in the end of the concerts. They committed themselves a lot to put us at our ease and they got it right away. The promoter of the night was Hisao, both he and Ucchi played with two bands involved, respectively with AWAKED and with SHADY GLIPSE. This time Hisao didn’t have to go at work the next day, as it passed in Yokohama, there were there to testify that his uniform in “civilian clothes” with a shirt of DISGUST in play view (of course the Japanese band), his inclination for the alcohol and overall the total oblivion for coming days on what happened that night in Namazu. The beginning trio of bands, AWAKED, DEVOID and EXOFORCE shook the place to the ground. Every band was more in the face than the other. Every song was a big jaw in the pit of the stomach disguised by musical track. The singer of one of the bands gave us a false hope he could speak Italian, but he knows only “buongiorno” (good morning), “grazie” (thank you) and “mi chiamo Nagatomo” (my name is Nagatomo), this last wasn’t his real name but the surname of a Japanese football player who militated in several Italian teams for a lot of years. It was his battle cry, because he repeated us this last sentence more or less one hundred times. After us the Ucchi’s band played, they were authors of a psychedelic / funky / disco performance of undoubtedly interest. In some points SHADY GLIMPSE didn’t despise heavier passages that involved everybody in a brotherly pogo. Ucchi’s fashion couldn’t go unnoticed: flashy sunglasses, long dreadlocks till his bottom, some of them fuchsia, some of them blue shock, shower shoes crocks with glow sticks included. His buddies, just a little bit more sober, had colored hair or fisherman’s cap. The night at the bar gradually disgorged in an alcoholic craziness, our firm was still stuck on the excesses, because we were a little bit scared of high prices at the exchange rate of their draft beers, but also of hard future labors waiting for us in the following week. But everybody was hardly partying and us with them. Ucchi, Yuriko, Hisao, his wife and us reached Yuriko family’s house with two taxis, where a guest room had been prepared, with a little partition for the married couple. Last bites of that nice night were accompanied by some other round of beers and a taste of manjus, a typical Japanese dessert saved by Hisao, before to definitely fall in the arms of Morpheus. SENDAI, DECEMBER 3rd NORTHERN GENOCIDE VOL.1 @ 2B STUDIO
---THAT TRAIN TO SENDAI---
We were pretty excited about the northernmost date of the tour; as soon as we booked this show, thinking about our other gaps to fill, we immediately began to fantasize about a possible landing on the not far Hokkaido Island. Our hopes were raised by Hiru from LETHAL INCENDIARY; in fact the promoter of this night was originally from Sapporo, the capitol of the only prefecture present on the Japanese island neighbor of Asian Russia. Once again, unluckily we didn’t leave Honshū Island. Just we got in touch with Hiru via mail, he has shown himself very willing and considerate towards our necessities, he ensured about the time of our arrival, he wanted to pick us up at the station, as well he asked several times about our eating habits because he wanted immediately feed us once in Sendai.
The entire brigade of LETHAL INCENDIARY came at Sendai station, with all the desire to make friends and with all the desire to spend a Sunday afternoon under the flag of fun. That morning began in the worst way, we didn’t sleep a lot at Tom’s place, none of us heard the alarm in Osaka, so we had to run away faster than light without stop any second, we took all the trains at the last second. Last train to Sendai was closing its door in our faces. In the first train we met a school group occupying the whole car assigned to them. Their car was just between our car and bathroom + smoking room, every time we passed in their car there was a standing ovation of cheers and high fives clapped on the left, right and center. When we left the train, we took a lot of pictures with both kids and their teachers. The Sendai crew intended to manage the night in a huge studio rented for the whole afternoon, they proposed us to rehearsal a little bit before our gig in the same studio. You can bet we politely declined the offer, we had to discover the whole Sendai and its people. They set up a quartet of bands very heterogeneous and varied proof that the scene of this city is quite cohesive and transversal as regards musical genres. The guitarist of Seisuke and Hiru was called Manchu (AKA Matthew for friends), he played with LETHAL INCENDIARY, authors of a Floridian brutal death metal, but also with SWICK, authors of a bandana thrash very portentous. So much for versatility. Another band called GEROPETORO played before us, in the process of booking of last days off, we tried to contact them for a gig in Sendai. No answer. Maybe these guys didn’t answer because they don’t speak very well English. GEROPETORO passed themselves as gore grind band, but their sound and their attitude were light years away from standards of this kind of music. Here too, a jumble of several looks and styles was the queen of the scene: leather jackets without shirts below, flower shirts, platinum-blond hair, detective movie glasses and caps made with napkins à la mason. In the end of their concert GEROPETORO turned their anger towards their own equipment and towards the studio equipment, throwing everything to the ground and jumping to the ground themselves. Only the night before Jukka reported us a fella called Punkmaster from DESPERDICIO, able to fill the blanks of our tour schedule. Our man showed himself up in our concert of Sendai. Lumberjack cap and looking early 40s, he came to us without even searching for him. He checked very well our schedule and with a single phone call he found us a contact to book a show in Mito only two days later. You got it, Mr. Punkmaster. Another last second gig. We continued the night at Hiru’s mini studio apartment, where the space was very small but the fun was huge.
NAGOYA, NOVEMBER 28th @ DAYTRIVE
---I DIDN'T FIND ANY BAND---Tetsuya from DAYTRIVE has immediately responded to our call, he gave his willingness for a gig in Nagoya at his club, offering us a dinner, some cash and sleeping places. It couldn’t have gone better. The point is that the weeks preceding our arrival in samurai’s land our Tetsuya began to don’t reply our mails anymore, which made us doubt about his good intentions. Till the last second, in other words the afternoon of the same concert, he had some doubts if book us or not because he didn’t find any band with a similar sound able to play with us. We asked him if we could help him searching for a local band, but his absence began to be suspicious. In the morning we found a way to get Tetsuya’s telephone number and thanks to Skasa’s help we finally convinced him we were able to play even alone. But once again the wind blew on our side. In case of debacle, our plan B was a trip to the epic forests surrounding Biwa Lake, already theatre of thousand legendary battles in ancient times.
This time, because musical obligations, we had to satisfy with half day of leisure and nothing more. Indeed, thanks to our guide Skasa, we spent the morning in the traditional trade streets of Nagahama (it literally means big wave), full of local craft stores and typical food products; everybody was ready to offer his own merchandise and their big smiles always for free. In the afternoon Skasa drove with his car till Nagoya, we were mindful it could be a half leap in the dark, because Tetsuya’s reluctance and the difficulties of this last to find another band for the night. That explains why this is one of few concerts without flyer. After a wonderful lunch around DAYTRIVE, we finally reached the club that hosted us – also as sleeping place – for the night. In the end Tetsuya found a band, they were nothing short of SOCIAL PORKS. Maybe this duet won’t suggest anything at the majority among you, but they are a true legend in Nagoya, especially the drummer Naito, he militates in a lot of underground formations of the city and holder of an acrobatic drum style as Ryohei from FINAL EXIT had. The guys played a surf & grind with interesting parts devoted to one or other genre. They shoved pure insanity made in Japan and they had a lot of aptitude. Just try to find their works and you won’t be disappointed at all. A fella we forgot the name showed up with a billion of different packets of papers for cigarettes. He wasn’t a salesman of this product, but a simple guy who heard us the night before in Maihara complaining about our difficulty to find them, he came till Nagoya just to bring the papers! Of course he didn’t want nothing in exchange for his trouble, he told us he was glad to be handy with that little help. None of us remember the name of this person, but with gesture for sure he gained immediately our eternal approval. We were in the beginning of our Japanese your but in that night we started to notice the madness of the locals. The club wasn’t too crowded (it was a Tuesday) but two very unsavory characters in suits were jumping around like two maniacs during the pogo. Nothing more likely they just got off work. Tetsuya and his gang offered us a delicious dinner in a typical restaurant with dishes from Okinawa, one of the southernmost island of Japan and karate fatherland, before to go to sleep on the comfortable couches of DAYTRIVE in a very warm room.
YOKOHAMA, NOVEMBER 24th DAY OFF
---LATRINES, MASKS & PORNO---Because in this day we’ve done nothing but loiter on the loose aimlessly in the streets of Yokohama, absolutely nothing interesting if not give the usual squeals of wonder every time we noticed some store window full of local weirdos; we are gonna tell you about three heroic and typical customs of rising sun. First, the latrines. If you have never tried this unforgettable experience, I can assure the ticket price for Tokyo-Narita is abundantly paid back by this extraordinary life experience. The most trivially different thing is the flush; in every bathroom the water before to serve as discharge comes out from a tap seated on every latrine, of course you have to use it after the evacuation of your physical needs. So far so good. But most of the latrines are automated with several little buttons on the right-hand side of Japanese crapper. Considering that all buttons are almost always indicated with ideograms, try your luck with one of them is always a double-edged sword. You can easily find a little tap approaching your perinea area, it can start to shoot a jet of warm water up your ass; as well you can start to hear a musical selection of sounds of nature or Japanese hits with the purpose of masking your indelicate sounds during defecation’s act. We would like to dedicate the second chapter to the little masks for nose and mouth, millions of Japanese wear them daily in the public transport, workplace, school and nights off. The reason behind of this object of undoubted civic value is surely the intent to don’t contaminate their neighbor with their own bacteria and don’t receive them. This is one more example of a society that has a special consideration for their counterparts and their intimate area. But we missed another point, why in the land of manga and animation in every corner of the street, everybody wears a simple and anonymous white mask? The most rule breaker we saw were two girls wearing a pair of black masks. Why nobody had a mask with Doraemon or Hello Kitty? Doubts still unresolved. Last and most licentious chapter is about the Japanese predisposition about porno in general. In a half-secluded corner of every cheap chain of supermarkets there is porno section, separated very well from other magazines, it was in turn split with picture magazines and manga of the genre. Being accessible to the youngest, this kind of merchandise is strictly sealed and you can’t open it only after the purchase. Of course for this kind of purchases, as with cigarettes and alcohol, you have to demonstrate the reaching of the age of majority, through a swipe of your chip provided ID. The most attractive for occidental attention, is for sure the wide selection offered by the section; they range from magazines with only students with college uniform to magazines with only milf. There were some magazines very curious, they deserved for sure some minutes of wait, just to look who ever could be interesting in such item, but the well-known modesty of Japanese population didn’t allow them approach the porno section if somebody else was nearby. As usual the night ended in front of Kenny’s PC till 6 of the morning, a nice distraction was the arrival of two of his punk friends of old guard. In the Kenny’s liar there wasn’t space not even for a fart. One of them called Takeshi tried unsuccessfully to plug one of our holes still present in our tour schedule with a second gig at EL PUENTE.
OSAKA, DECEMBER 2nd THERE'S RIOT @ KINGCOBRA SQUAT
---MACHISMO MADE IN JAPAN---The second and last concert in Osaka took place 30 yards far from the same HOKAGE, the chosen venue was KINGCOBRA SQUAT, despite the name it wasn’t an illegal occupation, on the contrary it was a club on the third floor of a building completely dedicated to concert halls. It came in all flavors and for all kind of music. We arrived there from distant Takamatsu when the band scheduled before us was playing, no time to take a little breath and we had to position our instruments. The promoter of the night was Masa, we knew him
in the previous concert in Osaka because he played with his STIR UP SHIT, also involved this night. The morning in Takamatsu was simply amazing. Senji and Kamei took us for a touristic tour at Ritsurin Park, where we met also Gai. The time in this park looks like frozen in ancient times, an ancient Japan made by cherries in blossoms, geishas and samurais like every one of us is wondering. The park has been built during the Edo period and is considered by many one of the masterpieces of Japanese gardening. Rich with nature and beautiful centuries-old trees with colorful leaves, there you could meet straw houses, typical of Japanese medieval times; crystal spring water ponds with hundreds specimens of Koi inside, with orange, grey, with and yellow gradients, there were for all sizes and some of them were above 2 feet and who knows which weight, engorged by tourists like somebody does with pigeons within occidental squares. Some paths in the wood led on the hills where the vegetation became stronger, at the feet of one of these hills there were two girls dressed in colored kimono, they did have a photo shoot under the watchful eye of their elderly maiko, who didn’t skimp some slaps on their back with the aim of improving their incorrect posture. A truly magical place, we didn’t want to leave it, not even for all the gold in the world, but the Shinkansen for Osaka was ready to whistle our calling. A restorative walk was just what we needed after that pantagruelian Japanese, belly-bursting banquet of traditionally prepared eats. This self-service restaurant was very well known, because the queue to take first empty table was beginning well beyond the entrance door. The concert in Osaka had a full house, of course because the hc bands who were crowding the night, not for us. We have to report the power of CROWN DRAGON TEA, authors of an hc played with all the trimmings, they caught everybody over there, of course including us. A halo of uncertainty and a deep sad note permeated the hours following our performance. The uncertainty was given by Tom, Koy’s friend and our accommodation for the night, he hadn’t come yet at the concert. We started to become quite suspicious, so we thought about beg a sleeping place to the crowd. We didn’t find any complacent friend, first night in a hostel paid with our hard-earned cash was waiting for us. The options were or outside or a railway station bivouac. Unfounded fears, things turned out differently, near the end of the concert Tom came, apologizing for being late. The sad note was a machismo episode committed inside the club, where a hunky character was yanking several times a girl without any reaction in kind from the latter. When we and other people started to complain his behavior, the fellow gave up his sinister intention for a while but he returned to the attack pretty soon. It wasn’t so clear, but the Neanderthal could be a guy of the same KINGCOBRA’s crew. Later the fellow came outside the club like a beaten dog, looking down and with the tail between his legs, some guys were apparently yelling at him for his violent attitude. This was the only bitter pill we had to swallow about the Japanese people-to-people dimension. Again, in the end of the night and after the end of the concert Jukka came, always because he went to another gig and always with his big smile on his face. The night has already reached a considerable alcohol level, but we followed the party anyway with a merry little band of twenty people in a restaurant not so far from KINGCOBRA. Also Tom and Jukka joined us. The Finnish guy gave us some contacts, he told us they were great to plug all our holes. Our arrival at Tom’s place in horrible conditions marked the time. Only a couple of hours of sleep was waiting us before a further train journey, in addition this time we had a lot of connections to take different trains.
TOKYO (KOENJI), DECEMBER 8th RUST CHORD VOL. 1.5 @ KOENJI STUDIO DOM
TOKYO (NAKANO), DECEMBER 8th TORNADO PARTY @ MOONSTEP
GIFU, NOVEMBER 30th KARASU KILLER INFERNO @ KING BISCUIT
---THE CUBICLE---Noku came at Gifu railway station with the classic Japanese punctuality, but a battery absence in our mobiles, of course always without local sim card, forced us to many difficulties to get in contact with him. His flaming-red hog with a 666-number plate – in Japan if you pay you can have customized car number plates – was waiting for our luggage and our instruments. We were on the way for the hostel that hosted us for the night and thanks to our friend Noku we had the great pleasure of dwelling for a night in a Japanese cubicle. An 8x10 cell with white walls and crapper, like rubber room and on the little nightstand there was an incomprehensible book with ideograms left there by management or by who knows which old inmate. The receptionist was a funny geezer who was teaching Noku about boarding house’s rules and Noku was translating his monologue to us. This oldie never has never shown him to us a second time, in fact he made a big point about in returning our cubicles keys in the dedicated box. It would have been impossible for us to distinguish the key box from the laundry one or from trash can; alas, the explanatory ideograms dominated in everywhere. We spent the morning under the sign of hospitality, we slept in Sano’s place and there we knew his wife Tomoule and little Joe. Before to travel for the not so far Gifu, we plunged into record shops of the fervent scene of the city of Osaka; only in few blocks around HOKAGE, you can find both PUNK AND DESTROY RECORDS and TIME BOMB RECORDS and not so far there is REVENGE RECORDS. The first of them was located in the same bar's basement that had hosted our after-party the night before. It was packed and pint-sized and not only was punk music it's specialty but it also had a fully stocked bar of natively brewed booze that would make so many of you greedy! The second shop was a little bit more mainstream, open to every kind of music style, but with a great punk and extreme music sections very updated. The last one was more into metal, grind and extreme stuff and it was exposing in the plain view on its window our flyer concert of the previous night. In all three shops we made big business with trades and purchases, we came back home with a lot of gems from rising sun and not only. Also the club in Gifu called KING BISCUITS had some LP exposed on their table, in fact the owner of the bar, a fifty years old punk seems one who knows, was an old member of SUICIDE TV, Gifu’s pride. That night at KING BISCUIT we were the only ones on the bill; Noku had organized a remarkably good night in a very short time. The club was tiny but cozy and everybody rushed around without saved pogo and shoving matches, it was a wonderful night. The night ended with Noku who took us in a restaurant of the KING BISCUIT district, it was quite cheap. Then we went straight on our cubicles.
TOKYO, DECEMBER 11th and 12th DAYS OFF
MITO, DECEMBER 5th @ 90 EAST
FIUMICINO, NOVEMBER 21th DEPARTURE
---ALL IN ONE NIGHT---Here we have the real demonstration concerning the phantom impossibility of booking DIY tours in Japan, at least this commonplace has failed miserably with us. Our last Friday and Saturday before our last booked gig - GRIND FREAKS - had two sad empty cells. After the suggestion of a friend we found a Japanese web portal, we found a lot of contacts both of bands (broken down by music style and geographical origin) and clubs where it was possible to book an underground show. Some remarkable characters turned out after we combed through the site with bands of the same kind of music of us in the locations we needed. Japanese people didn’t back out after our distress call and they offered us not one, not two but three concerts. Some of these concerts were already booked and we had to play the role of buzzkill crashers, it was also possible to organize special shows for us, only after our request. And it was only a couple of weeks before the days we needed! The negative point was that Japanese bands and clubs offered us two concerts in the same night! Are you telling me that in a huge Tokyo megalopolis, maybe there is a chance to book two gigs in the same night, maybe in two venues not too far each other? Just to caress the idea of killing two birds with a stone? Unluckily the concerts’ venues weren’t close. They were really close! The days before these dates, we sent a lot of mails trying to find a way to book both concerts. Without show disrespect to anyone, we asked and after a prudent discussion with the two promoters we finally booked two concerts in only one night. For the first concert, a studio gig, the promoters accepted our request to play among first bands; while for the second, a gig in club far only 3 train stops, the promoters did the opposite, in other words they put our band in the middle of their schedule. Ucchi from NAPALM DEATH IS DEAD, just one night before promised us a sleeping place in his house; but he has already sent a message to a friend of him present at first gig, with the bad news he couldn’t keep the promise. Given that we didn’t want to come back early at Kenny’s place and take the last trains to Yokohama, there we had Kenny ready to pull our chestnuts out of the fire.
A guy from his web portal P.N.X. NEWS called Neko, not only he proposed to come at MOON STEP for the second gig, not only he wanted to make an interview with us for the special Kenny was talking about, but he also wanted to drive us to HQ in the end of the night. When we heard this news, the frenzy unleashed us. The night began under favorable auspices, inside one of the several trains we took from Yokohama till Nakano (the district of two gigs!); we met a beautiful old lady, more or less one hundred years old. Start talking with strangers wasn’t uncommon, we used to the perfect mix of discretion and friendliness that Japanese know how to offer, but this Madame beat ‘em all. We made some signs offering our seat to her; but the old lady with the back already parallel to the ground due to the thousands of curtsies practiced in her life, make clear with her signs she didn’t need the desired chair because she had to get off the train shortly thereafter. But after a couple of minutes, she attacked us. “Music?” she asked while she was looking at our instruments’ cases, the ones that always accompanied us during our journeys by rail and the ones that always caused discomfort to our unlucky travelling companions. When she received an affirmative answer, she took a couple of seconds more just to scrutinize us and then she exclaimed: “Locke Lollo bando!” (Rock & Roll band!), if she raised her horns too, probably she would have received some doubtful offers of marriage. Standing ovation. When we have arrived at KOENJI STUDIO DOM, located inside a shopping arcade, we didn’t have so many times for pleasantries, because in a few minutes we had to start the dance: in fact the promoter of the night called Hirofumi accepted our request to play first. When we were checking our instruments before to play, Yukihiro from FILTHY HATE made his appearance, we got in touch with him some weeks before via mail, he didn’t book personally any show but he has successfully introduced our band’s name to several promoters in Tokyo. He cared enough to give us three copies of his mint brand-new CD When we were leaving, unluckily almost running away immediately after our gig, two police officers came, they were climbing the stairs to talk with the owners, but we had neither the time nor the desire to understand what they needed. What a huge pity we didn’t attend to the other guys’ performances that night, but we wanted fully live our Japanese experience and MOONSTEP & TORNADO PARTY were waiting for us. We found a way to reach the new club with a decent early despite the pouring rain, MALIMPLIKI were on the stage, all-female punk crust band, a little bit ordinary punk crust but played with determination and dazzle in large quantities. The drum caught the eye primarily because it was with a travel kit: a midget bass drum and toms without the classic drum but with a little support without bottom head. Right after we got there, we knew Neko, who was prowling the venue with his trusty camera to document our human misery that started to manifest in form of brain deterioration since the beginning. Both him and Naoki, other Kenny’s friend one of the main promoters of this night together with Kou of BUMPED HIS HEAD, tried in any way to make an interview with us for P.N.X. NEWS, every attempt always ended with kicks, screams, spits and shoves. We waited our turn on the stage in the company of national whisky with the smoky and obsessive notes coming from the stoner / sludge of BACARA, old school people who know how to do with down-tempos. When we started to play, we still could stand, but immediately after the gig with whisky and a taste of local grass, the lights went off. The only sore point in the Japanese trip was the absence of drugs, it was really hard to find them and when found them, they were our wallet’s enemies. But we had a great party with people over there, including a funny girl who was proposing us some gigs in Taiwan, easily accessible with a flight from Tokyo. But the memories are quite vague. Personally I remember only that Neko carried me to the car telling me to take a rest and during the journey to Kenny’s house, despite the plastic bag he gave me, too much nasty pieces jumped out from my mouth, undigested leftovers from dinner. Not a big deal, most of the vomit hit the bag, but for sure it was avoidable. When we arrived at Kenny’s place the music didn’t change at all: I retired upstairs hitting the ground, only the urgent night-time puke shook me from my ethyl numbness.
GIFU, NOVEMBER 30th KARASU KILLER INFERNO @ KING BISCUIT
TOKYO, DECEMBER 11th and 12th DAYS OFF
---SAYONARA---There’s not too much to tell about these last two Japanese days, we were mindful that we lived a great experience and we fully savored it, every ounce. But sooner or later also the infinitely gorgeous things have their epilogue. When you are living a powerful emotion, often you don’t realize very well what you are living. You have to revise it and process it. But not this time, it wasn’t like usual, we were 100% smug about our successful prowess and about THE THING done. 16 dates and one featuring, not even the most optimist among us would ever dared hope. But we got it. There was as a party at Koy’s place in Osaka on the plate, but we preferred to spend our last day around Tokyo, we had our return flight on December 12th and another drunk night with a light heart this time could be fatal. The trains of Shinkansen never delay, it would be considered in the same way as national disaster, but we sure could delay. We don’t have to report nothing worth noting about these two sleeping days, they were already provoking in us a big melancholic nostalgia for Japanese lands and its upcoming winter. It would take another rail pass for another 21 days and start everything again, it would take another night to say farewell one by one all our new friends, it would take a whole other life to know the various aspects of this splendid and age-old culture, always in eternal and extreme contrast between tradition and modernity; between the supersonic speed of actual communication and the endemic patience they have when they take care of their amazing gardens. A funny triple interview with guys of Narita airport TV channel sugarcoated this bittersweet return, before to leave for Italy. Sweet because the great experience we lived, bitter because we would have liked it never ends.
MITO, DECEMBER 5th @ 90 EAST
---WELCOME COMITEE---This is one of those days very hard to forget, one of those you can tear up even if you are an insensitive stone cold. Let’s remember that this concert didn’t exist until two days beforehand and you can only image the excitement and the curiosity when you book gigs for a tour along the way. All was well that started well. In fact, just arrived at Mito’s railways station in very good time for the beginning of the concert, we got hardly in touch with Takahiro, a name suggested by Punkmaster in Sendai only two days before, we found a to welcome us a very jovial gang. A woman and three men, mean age seventy / eighty, took the front yard square as their campfire, they were offering us cigarettes and the same beers they were drinking with cheery gestures. Their appearances were quite frumpy, but maybe only one of them was living in the streets, the others were funny pensioners who decided to spend the day together.
Our company cheered a lot their banquet and they tried by all means to make their selves understood, but unfortunately, they couldn’t, anyway their hospitality revealed huge despite the strong and brick wall that our respective languages was putting between us. Please note that smoking in the streets is not a very accepted practice in Japan. If you are in the dedicated areas, smoking in the street could cause problems, something that doesn’t happen in the closed public places, where nicotine use is widely permitted. Our friends didn’t give a fuck about the prohibitions and they were continuing to drink and smoke, aware of their great age; of respect or sympathy, nobody would have molested them. The madam, who was the most active searching a dialogue, took the trouble to go to buy us some food, she was offering everything to everyone, both to us and her friends. The alcohol content of the situation was quite considerable, but not troublesome how you would imagine. There were friendly trades of supplies between the two firms. Even without our comprehension the lady was trying to explain us some exercises or something about the breathing, in connection with some far dimension or with some of her inner ghosts. In the end Takaho came, he apologized to don’t come before but his record shop couldn’t close before the time, he took us to his place, where he told us that we had to share the same room with the other band of the night. It was the same Takahiro’s band, called LAST RIGHT BRIGADE, authors of a proud punk with a lot of chorus and coherence. Takahiro is a beanpole with a sunken face and he is 100% loyal to the underground cause - among the billions of vinyls that he owned he selected a bunch of classic Italian punk /hc LPs for the after party at his place. From time to time he asked the translation of this or that word and he got excited when he caught the meaning. What a pity we didn’t have the chance to know Takahiro-san before! He booked a lot of Japanese tours for foreign bands and he was in touch with several realities unknown among us, like the far Kyūshū island or the exotic Okinawa (“many punks there” he told us), but better late than never, like the commercial says. Maybe this was the gig less crowded of the tour, but according to the writer it was the emblem of our Japanese adventure. Takahiro made immediately the deal clear: “I can organize a show for you, I can pay you a dinner, I can host you for the night and drive you till next destination”. But sorry Takahiro, what else could you have possibly offered us? The devotion of these personalities really touched me, yes because beside Takahiro, other remarkable good fellas militated in LAST RIGHT BRIGADE, including Hiroshi-san, maybe the oldest punk in the whole Japan, but with a teenager’s dazzle and the right amount of raspy voice. We immediately elevated him to national hero, because he was the first to present us (not offer us) the long-awaited taste of local grass, the first one after two long weeks. The set of 90 EAST was internationalist in the bathroom, with a clock striking countless time zones, and Third World-er in the main room, with bags of coffee coming from Colombia, Nicaragua, Indonesia, etc. hanging on the walls. The amusing night concluded with an inebriated troubadour, whom delighted the crowd with his folk songs and ballads – which was absolutely incomprehensible for us – which he strummed on/ hammered away on his beloved six-string acoustic. We thought all well and good to offer a glass imported whisky to our storyteller, just to clear his dry and lovable uvula. A night just for few friends, but what a friends! The even more touching night followed in Takahiro’s place, where a girl called Seku let us taste her delicious vegetarian meals. Then everyone barked his own balls off with alcohol inducted chants from the rooftops, careless about the possible angry neighbors of a Tuesday late-night. The most impressive moments consumed when simultaneously the Japanese sang the manga’s themes in their native language and the same theme was sung by us in Italian. Unluckily the musical versions matched only in some cases, but we had very poignant moments.
FIUMICINO, NOVEMBER 21th DEPARTURE
---WE'RE COMING!---The sense of satisfaction was strong after the first long part of our tour in Europe, as huge as our tiredness was, with more than 10k miles of driving on our shoulders in two months. But a sense of looseness was occupying our minds, we were in the end of the project we began months before. Whatever could happen, even if the money hadn’t been enough, even if our forces hadn’t been enough, even without will to follow, we were about to go in Japan. We had to solve too many questions, too many logistical squabbles to take a full relax. When we reached our destination, every doubt and every fear melted away like snow in the sun, thanks to the cordiality of old and new friends. If we speak about the purely human side, this experience gonna blow our mind, because none of us was waiting for a reception like that. Concerning musical field, although it was desirable the day of our departure, none of us couldn’t hope in last minute concerts or in the Japanese willingness able to plug our holes up or provide us everything. We asked just one paper and they gave us packages and packages; we asked a string for a guitar and they presented us a full set. We are not telling you about a heaven on earth, of course Japanese society has got its shadows, its contradictions and its skeletons in the closet. But in the eyes of 3 chaotic, musically (in/de)clined children everything gleamed and was sugar coated - it was the huge proverbial candy shop, and met us with blinking eyes. Do you want just one word to describe the whole thing?
MEMORABLE.
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