it’s funny, one minute you step off a plane in this new place with nothing but a suitcase, and the next, you look around and find yourself surrounded by people you love enough to call them your family.
I’ve got nostalgic pavements, I’ve got familiar faces, I’ve got mixed-up memories and i’ve got favourite places August 8, 2008
music: kate nash- mouthwash
So fujirock was by far my most memorable experience in japan. It was completely surreal and euphoric. My overnight busride there was more pleasant than expected. I had a blanket, pillow, hello kitty eye mask and sigur ros on my ipod, i was set. I slept most of the way, a light constant waking up sleep, but sleep nontheless, so i was decently bright eyed and excited when i arrived in shinagawa, tokyo at 6am. I caught the proper connections of trains to yuzawa flawlessly and i was pretty impressed with myself. The shinkansen from ueno to yuzawa was a double decker, i had never seen that before, and it was completely packed to the point where even the stairwells to each level was packed. i stood in front of the bathroom walkway for the hour and a half ride, which made for an uncomfortable trip to say the least. But my spirits were high and i was running on pure excitement. I brushed my teeth and changed into fresh clothes in the shinkansen bathroom, and i was good to go.
I arrived at Yuzawa about a half hour before lindzy and leah arrived. Ashleigh had come the night before for the preparty events. Lindzy and Leah met up with me at the convini where we had a little delay, waiting for our paycheque’s to go through to take out money for the weekend as there were no ATMS on site of the festival and then trudged to the massive lineup for the free shuttle bus provided for festival atendees from yuzawa station to naeba ski resort. The buses were plenty but not plenty enough, which had me cursing japan’s usual extreme efficiency which seemed to be lacking here (although there’s really not much more they could do to make it move any faster, i know). Anyways, we finally reached the front of the line and boarded the bus and made the 45 minute trek to the festival site. Along the way were banners over the road alerting us to how much longer we had until we were at fujirock, which just added to the excitement. We arrived at the park and got our 3-day festival and camping wristbands and then we were off to the campsite to find a spot for our tents.
Lukily, leah and lindzy were able to score me a one person tent to go along with their 2-person, so we were golden. But alas, not so much in location. All the level-grounded spots on the “campsite”… basically, a gold course where we were to set up our tents on any patch of grass available, were taken, and so we were forced to set up camp on a small hill where we were angled like this: /. we were to sleep in the position of backslashes, yes. BUT we were there and we were happy. Ashleigh found us and we set out to begin our weekend of awesome.
First up was the Presidents of the United States of America, I mean, who even know they still existed, but they did, and rocking out to them singing Peaches, with lyrics changed from peaches to momo’s which is peaches in japanese, was absolutely the most perfect way to kick off the weekend. After the presidents we journeyed over to another stage area to see Jamie Lidell who was so incredible and we danced at 2pm like we’ve never danced at 2pm before. After that we headed to see Spoon, we caught out favorite songs and then went to check out Kate Nash. Now i personally had never heard here before but ashleigh insisted that we’d love her, so we went along and i was blown away. She’s this great little english girl who plays the piano and has a fantastic voice and looks like someone we probably would have hung out with at guelph, and she totally stole our hearts. The clouds opened and a bit of rain spat through during her set, but we were hot and we were dancing, and the music was fantastic, and it was just so perfect.
After Kate Nash, we were ready to hit the big ones and we prepared ourselves to go watch bloc party. Bloc party was great, as expected and we sang and danced our hearts out in the light rain, which stopped during their set. After bloc party, i split from the three girls to go see the vines who were pretty terrible i must say, and then i checked out kasabian who really impressed me. The crowd was REALLY into them which made it more fun. After kasabian was my bloody valentine, which was as epic and i expected it to be. they were so… LOUD. apparently they are one of the loudest rock bands in history and are banned from playing certain places because of how loud they are. They hadnt played a show in 14 years, and this massive wall of sound, enclosed in the mountains with millions of people watching, in this huge field in japan… it was breathtaking. somehow, between songs, the girls were able to find me and we watched more of the set together.
We then grabbed some dinner and got ready for our allnight dance-a-thon, first checking out DJ Mehdi. We fought our way to the front of the venue to absolutely dance like it was going out of style. great DJ and amazing times, and after was another epic performance, grandmaster flash, who DJ’d well over two hours into the morning. I mean, really, dancing to grandmaster flash spinning nirvana’s smells like teen spirit at 3:30am. How can anything top that?
We managed to drag ourselves to our tents in the wee hours of the morning and caught a couple hours of sleep until our tents transformed into stifling hot ovens of death, when we pulled our blankets out, found shade beneath trees and caught another few hours of sleep outside. We got up and got ourselves some breakfast and flipped the bird to showering because we were camping at a festival, and dammit we were roughing it. There weren’t a ton of bands we really needed to catch that day so we were able to focus on just walking around and enjoying the festival. Really, japan goes all out with these things. The walkway to my one favorite stage area, the field of heaven, is this boardwalk through the woods, at one point you come to a bunch of disco balls hanging from trees, and then finally you reach an entire road made of discoballs leading through the woods, it’s so magical and incredible and i dont know who the hell came up with that idea, but it was brilliant. There were trees with giant blowup eyeballs perched inside them, and a walkway from one stage to another through a path through the forest had enormous white inflatable stars that floated up in the trees along the way. The field of heaven stage was covered in vines. There are little mini stages in the middle of the woods where you sit between trees and bushes to catch bands. It was just so surreal.
Anywho, we hung out by the river a bit and band wise we caught the courteeners, who we had never heard and caught by chance, but weren’t too bad, tricky who was pretty cool, underworld who may take the cake as my favourite act of the weekend. Underworld sure can put on a show. The crowd was SO into it, and they had these giant inflatable tube things that lit up and moved, and then during Born Slippy, their hit from train spotting they released hundreds of huge inflatable white balls into the audience. It was by far, the coolest thing i had ever seen. THe balls bounced around the audience for the remainder of the set, and it never got old. i mean, we’ve all seen beach balls tossed around at concerts, but there were HUNDREDS of these, and they were Huge and all white. it was magical.
After underworld we danced around to princess superstar and when the crystal palace venue was too packed to get in to see gogol bordello at 3am we called it a night. again, a few hours of sleep until suffocating in our sweltering heat buckets, we slept outside a bit again and then woke up and hosed ourselves off in good old fashion camping style showering. May i also make a note of the fact that pretty much all drinks at this festival were 500 yen, which is like 5 bucks. Wine, sangria, margharitas, mimosas, vodka redbulls, pints of beer, it was fantastic. anyways. On this day, our last, we caught jakob dylan, which made me happy because he sounds so much like his dad, and it kind of went with the presidents of the united states of america throwback at the beginning of the festival, and it was chilled out and we sat in the grass and ashleigh made bracelets and it was sweet. It started to rain. hard. very hard. and cold. we ran to our tents to find mine absolutely soaked through and all my things lying in a puddle, but i salvaged my rain poncho and we headed back out to make the most of the situation. We caught ben folds who was obviously great and catchy and talented, and then went to see the go team who were absolutely fantastic and full of energy and stage presence and even though the venue was flooded to our ankles, we had a damn good time. on our way to the breeders on a stop to get some whiskey to warm up our insides were advised by a sweet englishman that this particular bar served up a tasty mix of rum and hot chai tea that he recommended to beat the cold, and so we did. we talked to him and his group of friends for a while as we huddled around sipping our hot drinks and they bought us another few rounds and then we went to watch the breeders who were obviously great. We were by now in mud up to our knees and my black flip flops were no longer and looked more like i was wearing brown boots, but we trudged on to catch CSS who were fun. We then caught a late set by rodrigo y gabriela who were another show stealer for me. They are a guy and a girl duo, on only acoustic guitars who make the most incredible latin instrumental music and she plays the drums with her guitar and its just outstanding. They were seriously so amazing. it had stopped raining but we were muddy as all hell and cold. The other girls headed to an ensen and i had to turn around when i saw the sign for no tattoos, which is usual for ensens. I sat outside grumpy and cold, and when the other girls came out they convinced me that i could at least just go into the showers and wash off as long as i didnt go into the actual ensen, so i did so, and was very happy i did because i was able to scrape off the layers of mud that had encrusted my skin and warm up a little. my tent was still flooded so the four of us huddled together in lindzy and leah’s 2 person tent, but i was lacking a pillow and blanket because they were enjoying the giant puddle on my tent’s floor, so it really made for a comfortable and warm sleep :/
We awoke at 6am to more rain pounding on our tents and convinced ourselves to just get up and take down our tents in the rain and get it over with and head home. So we did and caught the shuttle back to the station. We were all muddy and wet again and tired but we were happy and still high from the amazing weekend we had. We went out separate ways home and i was so happy but so sad to arrive at my apartment. Although the last night was somewhat miserable, the entire weekend was one of the most amazing memories i’ve ever made. Dancing in the middle of the mountains with thousands and thousands of people to some amazing bands. it was something so uniquely japan, something i could only experience here. I’m so in love with this country.
