In August 2018, I was invited to Tokyo to record Luby Sparks’ new EP, following their debut album which I had produced a year earlier. I had first met their lead singer, Natsuki, when his band supported us in Hiroshima in 2016. I’ve always been fascinated by Japan and its culture, and I’ve been lucky enough to go on tour there many times in the past, but I always left feeling somewhat unsatisfied. You can never get a real sense of a place when you go on tour there, you only really become familiar with a few bars or restaurants within a mile radius of the venue, and your hotel of course. There was so much more of Japan I wanted to explore. I asked them to book my return flight two weeks after the recording session was due to finish so I could finally have the Japan experience I always wanted.
Two nights before I was due to leave for Japan, I was lying in bed, unable to sleep. Something was on my mind, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Perhaps it was the stress of travelling, or the unwillingness to start packing. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me — when was I leaving again? I glanced at the email when Natsuki had sent through the flight information. The flight was due to leave Heathrow at 10am on 1st August and arrive at Tokyo Narita the same evening. I checked my phone just to be sure. I was wrong. My flight was actually leaving 31st July, and arriving 1st August. I had 4 hours to pack and leave for the airport.
I immediately started having a panic attack. I slammed my suitcase down and threw my still drying clothes in, by far the fastest pack I had ever done in my life. I packed my laptop, toiletries, checked I had my passport five times. There was one big problem — my cat Whiskey. I had arranged to take her to my parents’ house the day before I was due to leave, but unfortunately that day had now vanished. Whiskey was under my bed, as she normally is. She’s a very anxious cat and getting her into her carrying case is a combination of trickery and a fast hand. I reached under the bed and tried to quickly grab her, which was met with a scratch and a sharp hiss of disapproval. It was no use. I texted my flatmate something along the lines of: ‘I’m a fucking idiot. I’ve fucked up. I need to be at the airport in 4 hours. Please will you look after my cat for 3 weeks?’ Luckily, she saw the funny side and agreed to cat-sit for me. After rushing out to get two industrial-sized bags of cat litter from my local shop, I managed to get a few hours of semi-sleep, and I was in a cab to Heathrow at 5am.
Ten hours and several episodes of The Big Bang Theory later, I was touching down at Tokyo Narita airport. Japanese airports are beautifully organised and efficient. There are certain parallels between the UK and Japan, and one of those parallels is a keen eye for social convention and extreme politeness. However, where the UK brand of politeness is often laced with passive aggression, Japan’s politeness is always genuine, good-natured and helpful. Bleary eyed, I met Natsuki in arrivals. On the highway into Tokyo, I noticed a minibus driving beside us, except instead of passengers there were human-sized stuffed animals occupying every seat. ‘That’s so Tokyo…’ Natsuki laughed.
Luby Sparks’ record label had very kindly given me a small apartment in Meguro City for the duration of the recording session, just a few minutes’ walk from the studio. This felt like quite an upmarket neighbourhood. The houses were small and compact as urban Japanese houses always are, but the hedges were neatly manicured and new, top of the range cars lay gleaming in the driveways. We arrived at the apartment. I was warned it would be small, but I wasn’t prepared for how small it really was. The whole apartment was about 3 steps in length, perhaps 2 lunges. There was a sink and a stove, but no oven, and no pots or pans. There may have been a plate. The bed was on a mezzanine, but in the intense heat of the summer it was like a sauna up there. I found myself sleeping on a roll out futon in the kitchen/living room area, exactly the width of one average-sized human. There was a hi-tech Japanese toilet though, so I knew I’d be just fine.
Not really having the capacity to cook anything, I sourced most of my meals from a local convenience store. Japanese convenience stores or ‘Konbini’ are without a doubt the best in the world. There are three main convenience stores in Japan: 7/11, Family Mart and Lawson. Everyone has their favourite — mine is Lawson, who are known for their organic range of fresh food. But that doesn’t mean I hate the others; they all have their own unique charms. The selection of fresh food is always incredible — from ramen to rice dishes, and a range of fresh sushi, onigiri and Japanese sandos. Then, there’s the vast array of bottled and canned coffee or tea, all with different flavours and enticing packaging. I wasn’t sure of the differences between them, but nevertheless I endeavoured to try them all without having a caffeine induced heart attack. And for the evenings, there is a dizzying assortment of canned cocktails known as Chūhai. There are canned highballs (whiskey and soda), bitter lemon cocktails, peach cocktails, green tea cocktails, and a wide range of refreshing Japanese beer. I felt like a child in a sweet shop, except I was a drunk adult in a Japanese supermarket.
The recording session lasted ten days. We had four tracks to record. The studio was located in a residential neighbourhood, in the basement of a very sleek and modern Japanese house. My area of expertise is home recording — almost every album I’ve ever recorded was done at my parents’ house. But now, I was sat behind a state-of-the-art SSL mixing desk with absolutely no idea what I was doing. There was an engineer at the studio, but she spoke absolutely no English. We communicated mostly through Google Translate. By the end, we had formed a good-natured relationship, mostly based on laughing at our own mistranslations. I picked up the Japanese words for ‘preamp’ and ‘microphone’ and ‘how does this work.’
We managed to get everything done without a moment to spare. We were working pretty solidly right up until the last minute. Natsuki revealed to me that he had organised a surprise to thank me for my work. We made our way through the warm summer evening towards Shibuya. At this point, he revealed that we’d be doing karaoke, as they all knew I was a huge karaoke fan. However, I wasn’t prepared for the fact they had booked the exact same room as the karaoke scene from one of my favourite films, Lost In Translation. I was completely overwhelmed. I was given the honour of performing the first song, and of course, I chose More Than This by Roxy Music. I sat in the exact same spot as Bill Murray sat in the film, and for those three minutes, I became Bill Murray in his inside-out orange camouflage top. We did karaoke until about 4am. There were some impressive performances, but by the end I was falling asleep mid-song.
I woke up at about 1pm the next day and headed to Shinjuku station to collect my Japanese rail pass. This wasn’t an easy task — I didn’t exactly pick a good day to travel. It was Obon week, which meant a lot of Japanese people would be travelling home to see their families. People brushed past me as I walked in circles trying to find the JR Pass office, which was located in one of Shinjuku Station’s many entrance halls. Eventually I found it and collected my pass. The JR Pass is a special offer only open to tourists, and it gives you unlimited access to the bullet train and the local JR lines that run through various cities — if you’re looking to travel in Japan, getting a JR Pass is the first thing you should do. My first stop was Japan’s previous capital city, Kyoto.
Japan is a very good place to go travelling on your own, particularly if it’s your first time travelling solo. If there was any moment where I felt lost or unconfident in where I was going, everyone around me would be more than happy to go out of their way to make sure I got to where I needed to go. I would describe myself as an anxious traveller. I don’t like to freestyle. I like to be on time and on schedule. Japan’s strict tradition of timekeeping suited me perfectly.
I love long journeys; plane journeys, train journeys, van journeys — it’s a very meditative time that you can use to read, listen to music, or just stare out the window and think. The Shinkansen trains are far superior to anything I had ever experienced in the UK. They’re spacious, nearly always on time, and you can get anywhere in Japan in just a few hours. I ate a bento box I purchased at the station and stared out the window, listening to music and watching the sun set behind buildings, eventually giving way to waterlogged rice fields and purple mountains.
I got to Kyoto at about 7pm. The sky was a thunderous blue-grey, and I felt droplets of rain start to fall on my head. I looked up and saw Kyoto Tower looming above me. It had a somewhat European feel, almost like Berlin. I had booked a hostel on Airbnb which was about 20 minutes away. It was one of the cheapest places I could find. There were about 25 bunks laid out in a sort of grid, and the room had a general odour of feet and manly smells. Each bunk had a curtain at the end for a semblance of privacy. The room was dimly lit, with an array of shoes gingerly shoved up against the wall, and the constant soundtrack of various noises — sniffing, coughing, snoring, etc. When I got into my little bunk it was actually quite cosy. It reminded me of being on a tour bus.
After I dumped my stuff, I decided to go for dinner at a nearby restaurant that specialised in curry noodles. I sat at the bar and got talking to a German woman. I got the idea that solo travellers might have a sixth sense for other solo travellers. She told me how she was climbing the three holy mountains in Japan. I couldn’t really offer anything as impressive in return, just the fact that I was travelling around Japan to ‘look at temples and stuff.’ After paying for my curry noodles and wishing the German woman good luck with her mountain climbing (I didn’t envy her), I went to find an Izakaya to have a drink. I found one not so far from my hotel. I ordered a double whiskey and wrote in my journal. When I ran out of things to write, I read my book — The Dog Of The South by Charles Portis. This book was a complete antithesis to my surroundings, which was probably why I was enjoying it so much. While I was recording Luby Sparks, I had been engrossed in everything Japanese, barely speaking to anyone and watching Japanese TV shows in the evening. The book was set in Southern America and follows the main character as he hunts down his wife who had run off to Belize with his friend. A hilarious, weird and wonderful journey, not unlike my own, except I wasn’t chasing down a love rival.
I woke up early the next day to get a head start on all the temples and shrines I planned to visit. A friend from London had recommended a couple of shrines to visit in Kyoto. First up was Chion-In, about a 30-minute walk away. It was located at the top of a hill in a large park which also housed many other shrines. By the time I got there I was sweating profusely in 34-degree heat. It was a bad day to wear a grey tee shirt as the sweat marks were even more pronounced. There seemed to be a Buddhist service happening. I took off my shoes and entered. There were men in flowing orange robes banging drums and chanting monotonously. I found it comforting and entrancing. I sat on the ground and listened for a while.
My next stop was Nijo Castle, which was famous for initiating the end of the Edo period, bringing Samurai rule in Japan to a close and starting imperial rule. It was where important people and those close to the Shogun’s clan would stay. The palace itself was huge and extremely ornate. As I walked along the dimly lit corridors, the hard wood floor creaked audibly underneath my feet. This, I discovered, was an intentional feature which served as a makeshift burglar alarm to alert the inhabitants to intruders. The squeaking was said to resemble nightingales. I could imagine Samurais and Geishas walking down the corridors, floorboards squeaking under their feet.
I walked back in the direction of my hostel to rest my feet. My battered converse were not designed for walking long distances. I came across Nishiki Market, an extremely busy indoor food market with hundreds of food and drink stalls, all offering free samples of whatever weird and wonderful delights they were selling. For example, I tried an incredibly rich deep-fried soybean croquette, which immediately made me feel very sick.
After a few hours of rest back at the hostel, I walked through the cool evening air to an area called Gion, Kyoto’s Geisha district. If you’re lucky enough, you can sometimes catch a Geisha in a colourful kimono weaving swiftly through lantern-lit alleyways. There were a lot of tourists dressed in kimonos, but sadly I didn’t manage to catch the real deal. It was a lovely area to walk around though, with quiet sake bars and buzzing izakayas lining pedestrianised streets lit by glowing orange lanterns. You could tell that not too much had changed here over the years.
The next day was the climax of my travels — the island of Naoshima. Naoshima is a small island in Kagawa prefecture dedicated entirely to contemporary art museums. Some of my friends who had been to Japan had told me about Naoshima and how magical it was, so I was excited to see it for myself. The journey was complicated. I left the hostel at around 10am and took the bullet train from Kyoto to Okayama. I caught a local train from Okayama to Uno Port, where I would be getting the ferry to the island. When I got to Okayama station, I asked a member of staff what time the train was leaving. She said there was a train in two minutes, and another train in an hour. I ran as fast as I could and managed to hop on the train just as the doors were closing. I sat down on the nearest seat, catching my breath. I caught eyes with a girl sitting opposite me. ‘Are you going to Naoshima too?’ She asked. ‘Uh, yeah I am,’ I replied, still catching my breath.
She said her name was Ruby and she was from San Francisco. She was on her first month of an eight-month travelling expedition. She had been travelling around Japan for 3 weeks, and after this she would be going to India. She had a job as a photo editor in San Francisco but had quit her job and immediately left. I began to notice a trend with people I met on my travels, they were all running away from something. Their parents, their relationships, or just a general dissatisfaction with their lives. I wondered if I was running away from something.
We travelled to Uno Port together and bought our tickets for the ferry. They weren’t expensive at all, just 500 Yen for a round trip. She started reading while we were waiting, so I gathered she didn’t want to talk to me anymore. That’s another thing about meeting people while you’re solo travelling — you don’t have to feel rude if you’d rather be by yourself. After a certain amount of time alone, the company of someone else can start to feel strange. The ferry was sleek and modern, which felt slightly extravagant for a 20 minute trip.
Naoshima is a relatively small island, and the easiest way to navigate around is by bicycle. I rented a bike for 2 days, which cost 600 Yen. I was staying on the other side of the island, about a 20-minute cycle away. No big deal, I thought. But in 35-degree heat, and cycling mostly uphill, it most certainly was a big deal. Naoshima was mostly rural, and I didn’t pass anywhere that looked like I could buy water. By the time I got to where I was staying, my tee shirt was drenched in sweat. My host was a nice older lady, and she spoke pretty good English. She also had several cats, which I was extremely happy about. She showed me to my room which thankfully had air conditioning. I took a cold shower and headed out to the first art gallery. As it was getting quite late in the day, most of the galleries were closed, but Benesse House was open until 9pm. Cycling on the deserted roads, I felt like I had gone back in time. There was barely a sign of modern civilisation here, it was mostly jungle and outgrowth. As I coasted downhill with the warm breeze blowing in my face, I thought about how simple life might’ve been if I grew up here.
There were maybe 20 bikes at the bus station, all unlocked. I was definitely not in London anymore. I caught the bus to the museum, which was full of Western tourists, mostly from France. I walked up a steep hill to the museum, looking out onto incredible views of the sun setting over the ocean. There were some amazing artworks in the museum including original pieces by Cy Twombly and Basquiat. My favourite piece was called ‘The World Flag Ant Farm’ by Yanagi Yukinori. It depicted all the flags of the world made out of sand encased in glass, with ants slowly burrowing their way through each flag until the whole thing collapsed.
At this point I was getting quite hungry, but a lot of the restaurants in Naoshima closed at around 5 or 6pm. While I was frantically searching the internet for somewhere nearby to eat, an old man on a scooter approached me. ‘Dinner?’ he said, gesturing to his mouth. ‘Uh, yeah sure,’ I said, unsure what to think. Every instinct told me not to trust him, but he seemed harmless. ‘Follow!’ He said. He rode slowly on his moped while I pedalled behind him. I calmed down slightly when I saw what looked like a restaurant loom into view, with a dimly lit sign which read ‘Seven Islands.’ The man on the scooter turned out to be the restaurant owner. I sat down in the back garden. A couple were sitting on a nearby table. There were only three things on the menu; prawn curry, donburi, and a noodle dish. The waitress recommended the donburi. She had an English accent, so I asked where she was from. She said she was actually from New Zealand, but her family were from the UK. I asked where, but she said her dad was in the RAF so they were never in one place for very long. The food was hearty and homemade, and tasted much better than anything I had in Tokyo or Kyoto.
I woke up at 8.30am the next day to the sound of cats fighting. Another freezing cold shower and I was stepping out the door into the blistering morning heat. My ticket for Chichu museum, the biggest and most famous museum on the island, was booked for 9.30am. The museum was made out of huge, austere looking concrete blocks. The architecture played with the light, making you feel lost in the structure of the building and disorientated by the rapid temperature changes. The most impressive exhibit was the Monet room. The paintings were incredible, but the room itself was almost as breath-taking. The paintings weren’t displayed in ornate frames as they might be in a London art gallery — they were housed in plain, white frames with no embellishments. The room was huge and pure white, lit only by natural light. You had to take your shoes off before you entered, and the floor was made of tiny mosaics which felt satisfying under my feet.
In the residential Honmura district, several artists in the late 90s took over some empty houses in the area and started what became known as the Art House Project. Looking around these old houses and walking through the old, winding alleyways made me feel like I was experiencing what real life was like for residents of Naoshima. I tried to get through all the galleries, but by the mid-afternoon I couldn’t take any more of the intense heat, so I decided to go back to the port to catch an earlier ferry.
When I got to Uno Port at Okayama, I was greeted with the unpleasant news that there was a 40 minute wait for the next train. The area was completely dead. I sat down and started to read a little bit more of The Dog Of The South. ‘Excuse me, do you speak English?’ A girl next to me asked in an American accent.
‘Uh, yeah.’
‘So… how’s it going?’
Her solo traveller radar must have gone off when I entered the station. Some people can handle talking at length to a complete stranger and then never seeing them again, but after a few days of talking to barely anyone at all, social contact felt odd and stilted. When the train came, she asked if I wouldn’t mind her sitting next to me.
We spoke about our lives while rice fields zoomed past at 200mph. She told me her name was Mai and that she was originally from Minneapolis. She said she was a sailor working on a large research vessel and had a brief layover in Japan. Ever since she was a small child, all she had wanted to do was sail. She hitchhiked to California at the age of 18 to try and get a job on a boat. After some blagging, she managed to secure a job on a boat in the South Pacific, where she learned conversational Spanish. The twist in her tale was that one of the crew members on her boat turned out to be a known fugitive and had to be imprisoned on the boat. He was swiftly kicked off at their next stop and handed over to the authorities. All of this sounded a little bit too unbelievable, and yet I had no reason to disbelieve anything she said. When we got to the station at Okayama, she gave me her number and told me to call her if I was ever in Minneapolis. Another bullet train journey and I was at my next destination: Kobe.
Kobe felt slightly different to the other cities I had been to in Japan. The streets were wider, and it was sleepier than Tokyo or Kyoto. The neighbourhood I was in reminded me of an American suburb. The guesthouse where I was staying had a self-check-in policy, and the instructions were not clear. The instructions said my room was on the third floor, but unfortunately, I didn’t realise she counted the ground floor as the first floor. I walked up to the third floor and slowly opened the door into what was very clearly a small child’s bedroom. Thankfully, the child wasn’t in there. Eventually I figured out which room mine was. The room was the width of the bed and had an extremely pungent odour of feet.
After a freezing cold shower, I decided to try and wash my damp, sweaty clothes. The instructions for the washing machine were all in Japanese, so I attempted to use the camera function on my Google Translate app to try and figure out how to use it, but the translations kept changing and made no sense. The host made an appearance, but she spoke absolutely no English. She tried speaking slower, I tried speaking slower, but ultimately that technique was never going to work. ‘Need some help?’ A man’s head appeared from a room nearby. ‘Yes please!’ I replied, grateful that his solo traveller radar had gone off at just the right time.
We spoke for a little bit while my clothes were in the washing machine. His name was Samuel, and he was from Korea. He told me his friend was supposed to be joining him but ditched him last minute, so he had a spare ticket to the Vissel Kobe vs. Sanfrecce Hiroshima football match the next day, and he asked if I would like to go with him. I haven’t been into football since I was about ten years old. I used to be a huge Manchester United fan. I religiously collected football stickers and had posters of Eric Cantona and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on my wall, but then I received a guitar for my 11th birthday, and suddenly I didn’t care about football anymore. So, when faced with the question of whether I wanted to go to a football match with a gentleman who I had only known for five minutes, my honest answer was not really. But of course, I heartily accepted.
That evening I planned to go to Nankin-machi, Kobe’s Chinatown, to try and find some Kobe beef. As I was leaving, Samuel asked if he could come with me. On the way to the market we talked a little bit about his life and his job in the cosmetics industry. We dragged our feet around the market, talking infrequently. Eventually I spotted a stall selling Kobe beef. The cheapest option was 1,000 Yen for a tiny slither, but I thought it was worth a try. People often describe Kobe beef as ‘melting in your mouth,’ and I could understand why. It was the most tender piece of meat I have ever eaten. We walked for a little while longer until we reached the port in Kobe. There was a memorial there dedicated to the huge earthquake that happened in the 90s. Some pieces of rubble from the original structure was preserved to show the devastation, a bit like the dome in Hiroshima.
The sky was overcast the next morning and there was a light rain falling. I still wasn’t used to the smell of feet. I checked the weather forecast and it looked like it would be raining all day. I immediately felt a familiar pang of anxiety. My plan for the day was to go to the famous Arima Onsen in the mountains. An Onsen is a traditional Japanese hot water spring. There are strict rules to abide by, notably that you have to be completely naked. There are separate areas for men and women, and usually there is a big communal bath in the middle surrounded by showers and stools for you to wash yourself. I’ve been to a few in the past, and it has always proved to be a memorable experience.
Kobe isn’t such a great city for tourists. None of the subway stations were displayed in Roman letters, which made it impossible for me to read. Tokyo is renowned for its complicated subway system, but the English letters at least give Westerners a fighting chance at finding their way through the labyrinth. With only Japanese letters, I was completely lost. Luckily, a member of staff personally walked me to where I needed to go. This is a good example of the way Japanese people regard foreign tourists. Rather than seeing them as an annoyance or an inconvenience like many people do in London, they see it as an honour that people would come and visit their country. They have a national pride of a different kind in Japan, one that isn’t competitive, but pure, open and generous.
I got lost a few times on the way to Arima Onsen, but finally came out high in the mountains, with dark, evergreen trees sprawling out high into the sky. I walked uphill and eventually found an Onsen. All Onsens in Japan are actually very reasonably priced, usually only about 500 Yen to enter. I went into the changing room, stripped naked and put my clothes in a locker. There is a certain freedom to being completely naked in a public place, and I do quite enjoy the feeling. I opened the glass doors and steam bellowed out. I dipped my toe in the water — it was extremely hot. I had to lower myself in slowly. I sat down with about five or six other men, most of them older. When I couldn’t take the heat anymore, I sat down on one of the stools and had a long, cold shower. One aspect of visiting an Onsen is that it’s a chance to get really, really clean. Cleaner than you’ve ever been in your life. Under your fingernails, under your toenails, deep into your soul. It’s very ritualistic — and when you leave, you feel completely reborn.
Later that evening, I met Samuel in the living room of the guest house, and we headed off to the football match. I wasn’t familiar with the popularity of either Vissel Kobe or Sanfrecce Hiroshima, but it turned out to be quite a big match with about 20,000 people in attendance. We had good seats — I bought Samuel a beer to say thank you. He was a lovely guy, but we didn’t really have much to say to each other, which wasn’t helped by the language barrier. The match was certainly a worthwhile experience. Japanese fans are rowdy, but definitely more polite than English fans. Each side scored a goal in the first ten minutes, and then the players grew too exhausted from the heat. I was also exhausted — the Onsen had relaxed me to the core, and combined with the heat of the stadium I began to feel drowsy and lethargic. The next day would be my final stop on the trip — the small town of Nara.
Nara had a much more ‘small town’ vibe compared with Kobe. Where there were once wide streets and tall, grey buildings, there were now quaint, pedestrianised streets, expansive green spaces and rolling, emerald hills. I headed towards the main temple in Nara, Todai-Ji. As I was walking, I came across a few wild deer in what looked like an enclosure, except as I kept walking it became apparent that the deer completely ruled this town.
Deer were sitting on the pavement while pedestrians nonchalantly walked around them, and some were even darting across busy roads. I walked into a local park where a lot of people were congregated. A woman was selling special packs of deer crackers for 150 Yen. I bought some and tried approaching a deer. I immediately caught the attention of one, and after bowing politely (they really do bow), the deer accepted the cracker from my hand. I fed the deer another, but I started sensing some unwelcome attention. Suddenly I was being harassed by a gang of deer, pulling at my bag and biting my tee shirt. These deer were incredibly beautiful, but they were wild animals and they weren’t afraid to bite your fingers off. It’s important to respect them and always approach with caution.
The walk up to Todai-Ji was packed with tourists and had a wide variety of street food vendors. Out of all the temples and shrines I visited in Japan, Todai-Ji was the most impressive. The structure itself was of epic proportions and housed a huge bronze buddha inside. It was extremely overwhelming, but I began to feel like it would’ve been more special if I had someone there to experience it with.
In the evening, I went to a local restaurant to try some Osaka style Okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki is a kind of messy pancake, made with eggs, cabbage, seafood or bacon, and topped with Japanese mayonnaise and special Okonomiyaki sauce. There are two styles of Okonomiyaki in Japan, Osaka style and Hiroshima style, and residents of both places will claim their version is the best. Osaka style Okonomiyaki is the simpler version. All ingredients are combined and fried into a pancake with a choice of toppings served on top. Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki uses the same ingredients but layers them instead of combining them, and also includes the addition of noodles and a fried egg. Tonight of course, I would be having Osaka style. It was the ultimate comfort food, although not the healthiest meal. The creaminess of the Japanese mayonnaise together with the sharpness of the sauce and the crunch of the cabbage was enough to send me to heaven. Okonomiyaki is a real Japanese delicacy, and no other country in the world has has anything like it.
With a heavy heart, I took the bullet train back to Tokyo the next day. I had one final activity planned before I headed back to the UK — I had booked tickets to go to Sonic Mania with Luby Sparks to see Nine Inch Nails and My Bloody Valentine. I had played Summer Sonic festival about ten years prior with my first band Cajun Dance Party, but this would be my first time going to a Japanese music festival as an attendee.
We took the train out to Chiba at about 10pm. We followed an orderly queue into the huge warehouse where the festival was taking place. Japanese music festivals are very different to UK ones. First of all, people are considerate of each other. No one litters, everyone picks up after themselves, and everyone is respectful of everyone else’s personal space. Secondly, there was no mud. The price of beer was pretty much the same.
Nine Inch Nails performed a greatest hits set, and their sound was air tight. Japanese fans are enthusiastic, but never violent. There was no pushing or shoving. Just when everyone thought their set was over, they finished with a quiet, haunting version of Hurt. The crowd fell completely silent. At about 2am, My Bloody Valentine stepped onstage. I had never seen My Bloody Valentine before, but of course I had heard rumours of people fainting from the volume of their live shows. Without ear plugs, it mostly sounded like white noise. However, with ear plugs, you could hear more definition in the music. In truth, I don’t think any band needs to be that loud, and it felt a bit like a gimmick. I had been waiting to see them for years, and luckily, they didn’t disappoint. They played all my favourite songs, from Isn’t Anything era up to their most recent record. By 3am, it was mostly DJ sets. Unfortunately, trains back to Tokyo didn’t start up again until 6am, leaving thousands of people with nothing much to do. A lot of people started sleeping on the hard concrete floor to the soundtrack of thumping EDM. By the time we took the train back to Tokyo the sun had fully risen, and trains were crowded with early morning commuters.
After an emotional goodbye at Tokyo Narita, I flew back to London the following day. I discovered a lot about myself on this trip, both positive and negative. Solo travelling comes with its benefits, but it can also get lonely at times. Feeding wild deer isn’t much fun without someone else to experience it with. I’ve always wondered if I’m an introvert or an extrovert, and as it happens, I sit somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Time on my own is very important to me, but too much time on my own can become draining. The magic of Japan hasn’t worn off for me, if anything my fascination has only increased. One day I would like to go back to Japan and explore the north of the country, only next time I’d like to take someone with me to experience the magic.