Big Adventures, Little World

Another early morning, this time to see a Japanese punk band called Mongol800, which was an interesting experience, and proved to me that Japanese people aren’t as civil as they seem to be. We were fairly close to the front and there was enough room around everyone. That was until they came out, which then had everyone storm the front of the stage and cram about 3 times as many people into the same amount of space! With everyone pushing, screaming, bouncing around and crowd surfing it was truly a fun experience. Even though I couldn’t understand the music, I still really enjoyed it!

Hard-Fi was next up in the afternoon, followed by Asian Dub Foundation, before a break in time for another long night. That began with Underworld at the Green Stage, which had an amazing light show and graphics, but unfortunately didn’t play Born Slippy, well at least not that we saw, as we left a bit before the end to go to the White Stage and see Simple Plan. While neither me nor Belinda are big fans, Belinda in fact saying she “would rather slit her wrists than listen to Simple Plan”, they put on an awesome show, speaking in Japanese, interacting with the crowd, and even doing a cover of T-Pain’s, Get Low, which they should actually release because it was that good.

After Simple Plan me and Bel went back to the Red Marquee and saw the end of Princess Superstar, who as usual was a lot of fun and worked the crowd, before we went to try and see Rodrigo Y Gabriela again. But after waiting for nearly an hour, it turned out that they had been canceled, so we trudged back to the campsite pissed off, and walking up the mountain seemed so much harder than ever before.

It was an early morning wakeup at 8.30am with the sun beaming into the tent and the noise from neighboring tents, and the many security and staff on megaphones directing the crowds. After having some breakfast, we headed down for what would turn out to be a huge day.

First stop was the Green Stage, which was the main stage and could cater for 40000 people, to catch some of Rodrigo Y Gabriela, a guitar duo. It was amazing, the speed they played and the movements of their hands and fingers was great to watch. I highly recommend seeing them if you ever have a chance.

Next we headed for the Red Marquee, which was called a marquee but was more like a giant shed. We were there to see one of the Australian acts, the Midnight Juggernauts, who didn’t disappoint. As usual they were great, but was more on the rock side playing here and to a much larger audience.

Next up was an old favourite, The Presidents of the United States of America, which turned out to be even better than expected. They played some new songs, but best of all they played their old songs which we all knew and sung along too. They even spoke in Japanese and exchanged some words in songs with Japanese words which was good fun.

We grabbed some food and headed back to the tent for a half hour nap before making the long trek out to the Orange Court, which took close to an hour from the campsite! We were there to see Ozomatli, which all I can say is ‘sugoi’ (or ‘wow’ for those of you playing at home). Belinda and I got close to the front and danced away, with the music playing, and for half of the show, rain coming down, which was a nice relief.

Next we started back to the Red Marquee to catch the end of The Vines, then on to Green Stage to see the first half of Kasabian before heading to the White Stage, halfway between Green & Orange, to see the end of Galactic. After this it was back to Red Marquee to see Feeder, who blew us away, then back to White Stage to see some of Bootsy Collins – A Tribute to the Godfather of Soul, which turned out to be a bit to mellow after seeing what we had already seen through the day, so we headed back to ‘The Hilton’ to get some sleep before All Night Fuji!

We woke at 2 in the morning and started our way down to the Red Marquee, as many other people were making their way back to their tents to sleep. We caught some of Grand Master Flash, which was a lot of fun, and mixed up different kinds of music, then headed out to Orange again, down the boardwalk. The boardwalk had some amazing lighting throughout it, with disco balls and giant light up stars hanging from trees. We got to Orange in time to see the second half of Paul Van Dyk, who unlike last time I saw him, didn’t disappoint. Once he had finished, we started our long and tired walk to the tent in the wee hours of the morning as the sun was just coming up.

The first day was over but the festival had just begun, we had much more music to see. There was no doubt this was the most amazing music festival I had ever been to, and nothing in Australia even came close in comparison.

I had no idea how much walking was going to be involved during the weekend of the Fuji Rock Festival, but it quickly became evident as we scaled the mountain looking for a nice place to pitch our tent.

From the car park, each of us loaded up with all we could carry, we walked and walked through “Tent City” and after going high up the mountain and scouting a few sites, we found a flatish spot. This took us about half an hour, just to get to the site from the car park, including going up inclines of 40 degrees, maybe more.

“Tent City” as it is known:

The journey up the mountain was amazing, but hard. Thousands of people had already set there tents up, and it was really bizarre seeing so many tents in the one place, hence the nickname, “Tent City.” We set up the tent, put what we had inside, and began the journey of heading back to the car to get the rest of the gear and bring it back to the tent, known as “The Hilton of Tents.” We eventually made it back to the tent, set everything up before laying down at 3.30am for some much needed rest before the big days ahead.

The trek to Fuji Rock Festival was an amazing experience, while at the same time being one of the most terrifying! After picking up supplies, we headed out into the mountains, where the roads wound in and out, left and right, up and down, and in some places were barely wide enough to fit 2 of the smallest cars side by side! This wasn’t too much of a problem as that is how many, or should I say most, of the roads are in Japan. With mountains straight up 100 metres or more in places, it was a sight to be seen.

It got worse though as we climbed the mountain an started to hit the fog and clouds. It wasn’t too bad to being with, nothing the high beams didn’t fix, but as we progressed, the high beams did nothing but reflect off the clubs and blind us, which wasn’t the best for us strangely. We soldiered on, and it got worse and worse, being able to reach out the windows and touch the clouds. It got to the point of only being able to see no more than a few metres in front of the car, and barely seeing the sides of the road, or corners coming up! After travelling for close to an hour, we covered 30 kilometres, but thankfully had gotten through to fog, and were powering on to Fuji Rock!

Our journey continued on, and quick stop for dinner was in order before again driving on. Eventually, some 4 hours later, (of what Belinda said would take 2) we’d arrived! The sheer size of the festival was evident, with alread thousands of people streaming in! I was so excited, it was going to an awesome 3 days, never to forget, I couldn’t wait!

Today was Belinda’s last day of school so I was spending the day at home by myself. Deciding some food was in order I headed out to the local supermarket to get something to eat, and possibly visit a few other shops in the area. After the 5 minute walk though it was just too damn hot to be out and about so headed straight to the supermarket.

Now, a Japanese supermarket is much like any other supermarket, apart from the fact I couldn’t read any of the labels so didn’t really know what anything was. This didn’t really aid me at all in choosing what to eat. So I wandered up and down the aisles for a bit, to see if there was anything that took my fancy. While there was many delicious looking products, I still didn’t know if they needed cooking or heating, or what needed to be done to them, if anything. I found some pre-packaged meals and sandwiches, from which I chose something with a bit of meat, salad, egg, noodles and some kind of seafood, which turned out to be decent enough.

All in all it was much the same as any supermarket shopping experience, but not knowing what things were or how they were to be served made it much too difficult to decide. Luckily Belinda didn’t give me a shopping list!