JRock is good for the soul

I am late in my report, as usual, but before too much more time passes, I wanted to tell you what a did the weekend before last.

On Saturday, Chingyi and I headed into Tokyo. As usual, it was right after payday, so I was guaranteed to be poor for the rest of the month. However, I'd been looking forward to this weekend for a month, so I was sure it would be worth it.
First we went to a somewhat last-minute concert for a band that Chingyi likes and that I have never heard of, Monkey Majik. What was funny about them was that the band was made up of two Japanese guys and two Canadian guys. The Canadian guys sang all the songs in Japanese though, and, as it turns out, were former ALTs. It was a pretty small concert, held at the Canadian Embassy, and I think we might have been the only foreigners there. What really cracked me up was that, if the band members wanted to confer privately (say, about the next song) all they had to do was switch briefly to English and they were instantly alone.

We puttered around Tokyo for the rest of the day, primarily Harajuku (my heaven/haven). Unfortunately, as soon as we left the concert, it started to rain! Rain! I was so unhappy about this. Raining on my Tokyo day. Not to mention, raining on my nice dress!! Irk. We hid in Laforet for a while, looking around at all the nice clothes and trying desperately not to buy anything. I did end up getting a coat, a nice long white one that Chingyi says makes me look like a Russian princess. I was sure happy to have it though, because the rain did not let up for the rest of the weekend. We were even forced to buy an umbrella, a super stylish $6 one that I would end up losing later that weekend.

As a weekend of many firsts, it was, firstly, the first time we ever got lost in Tokyo. We had been good little girls and left Harajuku with plenty of time to get some rest at our hotel before the evenings activities, however, we did not anticipate how much difficulty we would have finding it. We probably walked for 1/2 hour before I determined we were definitely lost. We caught a cab in effort to save time and energy, but the cabby ended up being an idiot who could not even find a MAJOR department store, letting us off in the WRONG place, and forcing us to go down into the subway before we could find the correct route to the hotel. $9 just to get us more lost. thanks a ton.

That night we went to a party in Tokyo, called Tokyo Decadance. This is a party where every crazy Tokyo fashion you have ever seen or heard about, come together. It was quite amazing to see. I didn't get any pictures, because I didn't want to be rude, but it was fun. We saw the first couple performers, really unusual performers, but had to leave at 2am. I was really sad to leave... one of my favorite artists was supposed to perform later that, er, morning, probably closer to 5am. However, I had to wake up at 5am so... I've never had that kind of stamina, unfortunately. 3 hours of sleep already had me feeling like death the next morning.

So, yes, the next morning I went to Chiba, the next prefecture over, for the 2nd day of the V-Rock Festival, a huge event held at Makuhari Messe, where about 50 visual rock artists came together to perform. Snow told me later that she had seen on TV that 30,000 people went to this festival over 2 days. Amazing! I saw 3 of my favorite artists, including Versailles. It was so nice to see Versailles. They are absolutely my most favorite band to see live. They had some random fellow wearing all black, standing towards the back of the stage playing bass in place of Jasmine You (I wrote earlier about how he died recently), which was sad to see... They had Jasmine You's guitar there though, and held it up during introductions, as if to say "He's still a part of us." It made me happy to see them together.

So, a pretty busy weekend! I took the next day off, which was good, because I needed it just to recover. Already, though, I am buying tickets to other concerts soon, and even planning to see Versailles again in January. Not soon enough, I think.

Cheers,

VK Baer