So around 2pm i'm set to meet up with 'Kane (japanese pronunciation!),
who's in Tokyo for 20 days to overdose on j-rock. She's one of this
site's regulars readers and we email each other sometimes, so it was
cool to
finally get to meet her.
We
met up at Shinjuku. The original plan was to go to the Hide Museum,
but it's FAAAR away -- about two hours and three trains away, plus
a taxi or a bus ride at the end because the museum is on the edge
of nowhere. Convenient!
Instead,
we decide to hit Shibuya, because On Air East and On Air West are
having some very excellent shows in the next few days, and getting
tickets ahead of time would be wise.
Unfortunately,
the On Air East ticket booth girl is like "SOLD OUT!" And
suggests Lawson Ticket. Which launches us on our first adventure!
Lawson is a very very very popular convenience store chain -- there's
thousands and thousands of them in Tokyo -- and "Lawson Ticket"
is selling tickets for our show (Syndrome/Despairs Ray/etc). But the
ticket machine (kinda like a mini ATM machine, lodged in the corner
of the nearest Lawsons) is, like, dead. And weekly-ly updated book
hanging beside the machine doesn't have our show listed. Bad sign.
So off
we go to a bookstore to find a Ticket Pia magazine, and the first
bookstore we come to is a Book First shop on the ground floor of a
department store kinda building. We go in, search for usually-very-easy-to-find
magazine for 10 minutes, finally ask for help, and bam, we find it,
and we look up our show. We get the six-digit code. We're all set.
Now we just need to find a Ticket Pia office. And voila, there's one
upstairs! (Unbelievable luck!) And guess what? They don't have any
tickets to our show either. And they were our last hope. Short of
showing up on the day of the show and going into "Ah, help, we're
stupid but friendly gaijin, we're leaving Tokyo tomorrow, we really
wanna see Syndrome, please let us in!" It works sometimes, I
hear. Personally I'm not a big fan of it, unless of course you really
ARE stupid (!) and leaving tomorrow. But for me, I've got at least
18 months left to see Syndrome, so no hurry -- better not to abuse
the lie until I really need it.
We do
get some shopping done, though -- at Recofan, and at Disk Union (I
tap a guy with a Disk Union bag on the shoulder, ask him for directions,
and he guides us to the store like out own personal CD sherpa!) All
i get, though, is a crappy Sinergy album, which I think has The
Fourth World on it, but really, the song is Return to the Fourth
World, which is about as good as Return to Hangar or Return
to Hangar 18 or whatever that shit song is on the most recent
Megadeth release that I still haven't bought and probably never will.
In other words, The Fourth World, which I've heard before,
is a great tune, while Return to the Fourth World pales in
comparison. Just my luck. At least there's a few good riffs on the
disc. And a bonus track for Japan, so many I can recoup the Y1400
I spent if I Ebay it.
Although,
I just put on Return to the Fourth World to listen to again, and the
intro is pretty cool. Two young, proper British girls are talking
matter-of-factly about life after death: "Well, we all go to
heaven, don't we." "I'm not. I'm going to the fourth world.
It's sort of like heaven... only better... there aren't any Christians."
After
Shibuya got dull, we walked to Harajuku, on some very crowded streets.
'Kane needed to find Dir en grey's Osaka-jo Hall live DVD, so after
a brief stop at Book Off (which had X Japan's new Clips II DVD
-- for Y2500! Instant buy for me!) we strolled up Takeshita Dori,
to go to Rock Love, the only place I've ever seen the Osaka-jo DVD.
New, of course, selling at a brutal Y6800, but hey, it's the last
one anywhere!
But
on the way there, who should we see but Audra and Kimberly, standing
by Rock Love's staircase looking at their CD purchases and deciding
where to go for dinner. "Wah! Hi!" they yell just as my
brain is saying, "Hey, you know those two!" So everyone
gets introduced, and we all decide to meet up for dinner in ten minutes,
right here by the stairs. They check out Mari's, 'Kane and I head
up to Rock Love. She sees the Osaka-jo Hall DVD, deliberates for a
few seconds, then buys it, along with a couple CDs. She pays, the
guy hands her some flyer and ticket thing with a map, we head downstairs.
The
ticket/flyer thing turns out to be for an El Dorado in-store appearance,
which is at Rock Love at 6pm... thirty minutes from now! So the plan
becomes A) Get food, B) Meet El Dorado, C) There is no "C"!
Simple plan!
But
we get sidetracked because I MUST stop in at Yellow House to say Hi
to Baba, which takes five minutes (she drew a map to some Japanese
restaurant that I asked about -- a detailed map, compete with the
place's entire history). We take a few photos, we talk about bands,
we leave for food. Halfway there, we get sidetracked again by this
dude handing out flyers for some ethnic restaurant. We go there instead.
Two hours and $150 later, we get to Rock Love, but it's closed. I
pull on the door -- closed, but not locked! The sales guy tells 'Kane,
in Japanese: "Oh, the in-store appearance isn't IN the STORE,
it's at some other location 20 minutes away." Duh! Why would
an in-store appearance be IN the STORE?!
We walk
a little bit, over the cosplay bridge (now inhabited by breakdancers
-- ew!) And pretty soon it becomes apparent that our map sucks. Plus
it's late. Let's call it a night. Who's going to the Kaggra one-man
on Monday?
We take
our trains back to our stations, and once I'm halfway home (well,
one-tenth of the way anyway) I remember, oh wait, YOU can't go home
yet, you have to go to that Goth night Nariki organized! Nariki and
Zin are performing, Maya's performing, Nao's hosting, Ron's gonna
be there, you really HAVE to stop by. Even if it starts at 10pm and
you have to leave at 11:25 to catch your last train home. Because
everyone's gonna be there!
So I
cool my heels in Shinjuku for a couple hours, then head to Roppongi,
wander around for thirty minutes trying to find the place, ask directions,
call people, walk blindly... I just DON'T see the place. Maybe I need
special goth-vision to see the door or something, but fuck all, I
can't find it, I'm tired, I've got this annoying drippy nose which
means a cold is coming on, and it's 10:30, so even if i found it,
it'd be like, "Hi! <look at watch, slam back drink> Bye!"
That's no fun.
So I
head home, completely pissed off (mainly at myself for not being able
to find it), and wake up the next morning for work feeling horribly
ill... my brain and lungs are filled with white Elmer's Glue, my eyeballs
are being squeezed my giant fists, and i'm drowning in my own snot.
And fuck, I -have- to go in to work because I'm so new I don't even
have a phone number to call in sick to! (On Sundays the office is
closed, so I'd need my boss's home number.) Fucking great.
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