so it's been quite a sushi grade romance that we've had with the land of the rising sun :) yes indeed a raw adventure every time... and this being our 4th jaunt through the green lush misty mountains and tall mirrored riddle high rise skylines of Japan, well we sort of think we're getting the hang of it... i guess it's because we know how to say really important things like Utay (shoot!) or Magiday (oh really?) or moto popocon kudesai (more popcorn please!) that is giving us a new sense of confidence as we remember the glories and laughs of this tour... yea, we're almost locals...
so the first few days of our tour were spent at the surf, skate, and snow convention called Interstyle where we played and hung out with our sponsors (Jedidiah, Cobian, Keen, Surftech, Christian Surfers) and ogle over all the up and coming gear for riding the waves, mountains, and sidewalks... life is truly a ride :) and then after that we headed right out to the countryside beach town Ichinomiya where we bunked up with our buddies at the Surf Garden for a few days... just chilling, sleeping through our jetlag, and surfing was such a great restful break for us... and then we headed to Kanazawa where we played an incredible show at a really viby place called Cajon! yea, a place in Japan named after rey's favorite piece of percussion?? it was too cool... surf shop up front, amazing restaurant inside, and a beautiful all wood listening room w a stage... so we played there to about 90 people who bought tickets to come? we had no idea that it was a ticketed event, and we also didn't know that anyone knew our music... so it was really cool when everyone showed up and man were they stoked? we were fired up because of it and we'll be going back there every time now from here on in to reconnect w Yuki, Miho, and the rest of our Cajon family!
next was a show outside Bros Surf shop in a parking lot where these 2 pit bulls were running all over the place... sort of fliiped me out at first, but then i realized that they were lovers... i guess not all pits are scary :) anyway, the Cobian guys sponsored this show for us and it was a blast... grassroots parking lot rock and roll! an the beach was super close and a huge harvest moon rose as we played... Five For Rose was really fun and furious and Fare thee Well made us smile too... (Fare thee Well really seems to be a japanese hit for some reason??? everyone sang along at nearly all the shows we played?)
then we headed for the Navy base and hung out with our good friends the Rhineharts and their 2 little groms Gavin and Taylor... such a sweet family and they always take such amazing care of us that it's brutal to leave... tatami floors, endless royal milk tea, and Nashi???? oh my gosh it's my new favorite fruti in the world FOR SURE... Japanese pears?? who out there knows what i'm talking about? amen. unbelievable. our shows at the navy base were really cool, met a bunch of dispatch fans, played with marc broussard, and it's always great to be able to hang and bless the sailors that are over there serving...
last stop Okinawa... paradise for sure! mr mayagi's home in karate kid? yea you know it... it's really the hawaii of japan... it's about 3 hours south of tokyo by plane and man is the water amazing- it's just super laid back, the island is lush and the reefs make the water look turquoise. we went there to play our first Japanese Festival, the Blue Lagoon Fest... it was a really good experience for us to roll into a place where no one knew us and to just play to try to win new fans one at a time! we only had 25 minutes to play but we loved the challenge, and that there were palm trees everywhere, and a gorgeous sandy beach right behind us :) made some great friends, had some hilarious lost in translation moments, and managed to get ourselves really lost driving on the wrong side of the road a few times... yea i'm a japanese driver now. it was crazy trying to rewire my head that the turn signal and wiper blades were backwards and that the stick was on the left side... but we survived the adventure with a couple "watch out, watch out, WATCH OUT! WRONG SIDE!" or with me getting perturbed that i always turned on the windshield wipers whenever we wanted to turn...
anyway, clearly Okinawa is going to be a new home for us as the entire culture there seems to love our style of music, and the place is as restful as they come... God spent a little extra time there lingering over the sunset paintings and clouds... i absolutely promise you i saw a perfect little bear staring down on us, eyes, nose, ears and all in the clouds there... i mean every night it was the cloud show? amazing...
so thank you to names like Momo, Youichi, Yuki, and Tomi... and still dreams of meeting a girl named Koyuki over there :) and many mmany sushi and sake memories until next time...
oh and i broke my first board ever over there. yea! "nice attack" said Youichi with a smile...
Labels: concert, japan, tour
