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Well, This is the Japan diary I did not keep. I was there, I know that, and one thing is clear.....JAPAN=GOOD. Remembering the day to day stuff isn't my skill. I don't know where we've been or where we're going while we're on tour. Most days I know where we are at the moment. JAPAN=GOOD, however so I held on to a few little memories....... We played four shows.....two in Tokyo...one in Nagoya...one in Osaka...all three for the most enthusiastic, kind hearted, smiling spunky young folks I ever did see...the Americans stood a few inches above the crowd and yelled "ROCK ON!!" and YEA...KICK ASS!!" desperatly as if it were thier only means of communicating.....the japanese crowds listened and laughed as if they understood our jokes...and flashed the peace sign... We stayed in the part of Tokyo that inspired the sets of Blade Runner.....neon signs for 800miles from the tops of the buildings into the dark seedy basements.....above ground kids and adults ran around playing video games and paccinco...below ground you could pay money to look up a girls skirtwhile she plays with a gun....the streets were scrubbed by hand in the morning...... We bowled on the 4th floor of the building where we played on the 10th floor and slept on the 15th floor and shopped at the music store on the 8th floor and had dinner on the 7th floor.....I walked around late at night and felt safe in the danger zone..... This is a country of cuteness.....every opportunity to put a little cartoon character on anything is taken with glee.....the massive engineering triumph that is the Osaka airport had a big balloning pic eyed, smiling puffy airplane on the controll tower.....melting anyones fear of flying.....all the advertising looks like it was made by Salvador Disney working under an intense deadline to draw as fast and as cute as possible.....selling cars with kitty heads and cameras with monkeys... In the middle of Tokyo in a garden in a pond I saw a fish that put its entire head out of the water to accept food from admirers standing on little bridges.....the little bridges were never straight because bad devils could only follow you across water if they walk in a straight line.....so feed the ambitious fish and lose them devils..... In a restaurant I was brought a noodle dish that was alive and waving at me.....they had shaved fish paper thin with a razor and the heat from the noodles made the shavings wave like 100 little arms.....the rock shows also had hundreds of waving arms..... The amazing deep fried only rock of Southern Culture on the Skids turned the stage into a slippery mess o the point where we could barely stand on it when they were through..... The only other band experience I had there shook me to my harmonious roots...it was an ALL JAPANESE BEATLES COVER BAND called the Parrots playing in a bar called the Cavern Club.....and they didn't just play the songs, they rocked them with love....Ringo was a drum bustin......and John had the act down to hallucinatory perfection.....had many beers.... We got plopped down on Japanese T.V. one day and there was no host or anything just us on this show sitting there saying "Hi...We love japan"....we grabbed an acoustic guitar and sang a little song about how much we love Japan....."Everything is rocking out of controll....WHEN WE HT JAPAN!!".....they made us wear headphones and do interpretive dances of sappy-assed songs we had never heard while callers tried to guess what we were listening to......it was mission impossible.....we did funky snail disco floppy breakdances on the floor and nobody won the prize.....happily out of controll..... I traded rooms with our A&R guy Josh in Osaka because he had the small one.....tiny rooms.....cozy.....a bed.....a space to walk and a modular bathroom in the corner.....when we got to the hotel in Tokyo all the Sony employees were there wearing huge gold boots like mine with big grins on thier faces and we felt at home..... Five story high T.V. screens and golf megastore..... Some small cartoon on the last day summed it up perfectly....."Hi, I am Monkey Jr. I want to live at on mountain......Good Luck!!!" |