Travel Journal – Saturday 19/4 – 08
So, here I am again. If anyone wonders why I haven’t been online on MSN it’s due to the fact that I’ve barely been around any internet access points today. It feels like I’ve done a lot today when we actually haven’t done much at all. We’ve run around a lot doing nothing in particular but time has just flown by like water. I’m not really sure to why, but it feels like it anyway.
It cleared up today, it’s very windy and there is clouds hanging over Tokyo but it’s actually really nice weather. It’s not too hot1 and it didn’t rain so much2, so for the most part the weather was quite fine.
In the morning I went to the girls place around 10 like we decided the night before, they were almost finished preparing for the day. The three Swedish girls were going to Akiba to shop and try to find some cheap electronics in the labyrinths with second-hand stuff. The tallest one of them3 named Sara said that she would like to go with us to the concert. So we decided that we would meet at Hachiko around 15:30. Hachiko by the way is a very famous meeting place in Shibuya4. It has a great story behind it, which is true and sad in some ways.
A long time ago, I don’t really know how long or when, a stray dog used to accompany a man on his walks along Shibuya. I’m not really sure if the dog really was a stray dog or why it followed the man in the first place but that’s not the point of the story actually. However, the dog walked with the man on his daily walks and one day the man died but the dog continued to go on the walks and wait for the master or whatever he was at the Shibuya Square where they usually met. And the dog did this every day until it got old and died. This story is about love, trust and respect which many Japanese find very beautiful. I actually can understand this, and the story in itself is actually a little sad but in a way it shows of a great bond between the dog and the master.
Due to the story behind it, when the dog died they made a statue of the dog on this place and wrote down the story so people wouldn’t forget about the loyalty and love that this dog had showed the man. In later days it’s become a symbol for good luck when dating and making friends. If you meet a person and become friends at Hachiko they think that the relationship will last and that it will be filled with loyalty and mutual respect (and love in those relationships where it’s needed). So well, it’s a meeting place, and needless to say it’s often very crowded, especially on a Saturday when everybody just have quit school5.
Well, we all went around 12 from the apartment to the train together. The girls were going to Akiba which was one more station, we were getting of at Ueno to go to the Ueno shrine at the park to relax before we go to Ginza to eat at an Indian place. Like I may have previously mentioned Danielle was a vegetarian and she thinks that Indian food has the greatest vegetarian dishes plus that this restaurant had a buffet for only 1000 yen6.
The park in Ueno were very big, and had great trees and amongst the threes and in some clearings and crossings they had some animal figures made in a steel net or something. And the shrine was fabulous. Outside you were supposed to purify yourself with the holy water and after doing this you were allowed to enter the Shrine, I took some photos but actually it was forbidden, I think… it’s usually like that amongst things like that. However, we looked around and walked in the park a while then we got back to the train station to get to Ginza. Actually I’m not sure it’s Ginza, but it’s the greatest shopping district with lots of expensive stores, which according to us in Sweden isn’t expensive at all. I mean, shoes for 120 SEK? In Sweden shoes like that would have cost at least 500 SEK, if that’s even enough. I mean shoes like mine cost about 50-70 SEK here, and I paid 190 SEK for mine.
Well, we didn’t go here to shop, cause obviously the prices in Japan are almost equivalent the prices in the US and Danielle wasn’t much into shopping, she’s a geek, haha. So we went straight to the restaurant only to find out that the buffet wasn’t served during Saturday and Sunday. This made Danielle a little bit disappointed I think, but well and then she remembered that we were going to a concert and got something to eat at 7-11 instead. I don’t remember if I had anything, but most likely I didn’t but I can’t remember.
I’ve almost been here a week, but it’s seemed like only a few days. I’ve had so much to do so I don’t really know what day it is either, if it wouldn’t been dark during the night I would probably be confused over the time as well. Things are fun here, even thou it’s sometimes slow and tiresome (like on the trains or while waiting for the girls), and I think that’s why things seem like they are just passing by in the speed of light. Well, let’s go on about the days event.
Well, we met at Hachiko as planned, even thou it’s a lot of people here it’s pretty easy to find a long Swedish girl with red dyed hair. She was with her two other friends even thou the weren’t following us to the show, so we talked for a while, showed them the dog and told them the story of the dog and then the other girls went and we were left waiting for one of Danielle’s Japanese friends named Ayaha. We were supposed to meet her at four but when she didn’t arrive at four we called her about twenty past four and got to know that she was on her way at least. When she arrived we just introduced ourselves and talked about this and that before we decided to go to the show, that started at 18:00 but they let people in at 17:00.
Well, one thing that’s funny is that the concert hall was on the Love Hill. Which is a hill filled with Love Hotels. A love hotel is a hotel with extra sound proofed walls and with a cozy thematic style where couples can either just spend the night together or just pay for three hours for… other stuff. And this hill was filled with this kind of hotels amongst vending machines with sex-toys and other dirty stores and stuff. But it also had different clubs and bars7, and in the outskirts of the hill there was two big buildings for concerts and musical events. In one of those, named Shibuya O-East, was our concert. While outside I found a vending machine with soft drinks that had Pepsi Twist! I liked Pepsi Twist very much when it was available over here, and I really missed it so I couldn’t do much more than to buy it8.
Well, anyhow let’s tell you about the show instead. Some of you already know what Visual Kei is. It’s a sort of Cosplay on stage, but not really. They do dress themselves up yes, but they often do their own costumes and the most common thing9 is to dress them selves like girls, and knowing Japanese, they are already very pretty looking so the males don’t have to much problem looking like a girl. I bet that if I show a picture of some of them many back home wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. However the music they play don’t necessarily need to be in the same genre, but I think that it’s common to have some kind of darker J-Rock in the borderline of Metal and Death Metal or emotional J-Rock. I’m not completely certain but I get that impression at least.
However, to begin with it was seven bands, not five, and the star of the night was “Girugamesh” I think their name was spelled, I don’t have the ticket or the book in front of me right now but whatever, it’s something like that anyway. Actually I liked some of the bands, even thou my ear was hurting all night and that I lost my hearing completely in my right ear. Lately it’s been hurting yes when the music goes to high. It’s some tones that makes it hurt anyway, but I’ve never ever lost my hearing for that long10.
Inside you weren’t allowed to take pictures or film, they had a camera team that took pictures and filmed the whole concert from at least six different angels (as far as I could see the cameramen). But I enjoyed my time anyway; the only thing I didn’t really like was that I had to have my bag in front of me the whole time. I didn’t put it in a locker cause it seemed like a bad investment, and well, it worked this way too. One thing that is a huge difference in the Japanese way and the European way of having a concert is that people aren’t drunk and that they don’t scream other than after they’ve plaid the song and then they just shout the name of the one in the band they think are the prettiest. One other thing is that they don’t applaud either. Instead in the end of the song they put up their hands in the air and sometimes scream the name of the person they think are the prettiest. During the songs they do hand movements with an amazing grace and precision. These movements aren’t always hard but some of them are hard to mimic. Some of the movements are given to the audience by the artist on stage while others I have no idea where they’ve actually came from to begin with. Most likely they’ve just been mimicking each other during concerts and things just have grown forth in one way or another.
Anyway it was great and really fun if you just could drop your guard a little. I mean, I was in the middle of maybe a thousand Japanese kids and youths jumping and mimicking their moves. Me, Sara and Ayaha had never been to this kind of concert before so we just tried to mimic what seemed appropriate and to have so much fun as possible. Which went pretty well, I think. A couple of times we left our places to go to have a drink upstairs, where it was less crowded but still to much crowd to be able to see the band from here, or to go to the toilet. By the way, believe it or not, they actually had a bar/restaurant in the concert hall, so I believe they sometimes have discos and stuff here too do to that fact. But well, me and Ayaha shared some fried chicken and onion rings while the others were satisfied with only a drink.
After the concert, which lasted from 18:00 to 21:30, we went outside11 and to a Starbucks outside the Love Hill, we weren’t pretty found of that place and Ayaha said that it was not a good place to hang out if you were just standing there. Well, the plan was actually to go to a bar or something but I think that all the heat and the crowd made the girls tired so after a cup or two of coffee and some craps we went home. We were back in Kita-Urawa around one, and strangely enough… Oliver didn’t return that evening. I know why know, but I didn’t back then.
Best regards,
Herid Fel
Around twenty degrees, with refreshing winds that aren’t cold ↩
Some brief showers, but nothing much ↩
Almost 190cm ↩
Which obviously lies in Tokyo for those who didn’t figure that out… ↩
Japanese work and go to school all days except for Sunday ↩
66 SEK ↩
Heh, I wonder which kind, haha ↩
It was about 150 yen, or 10 SEK, for about 50cl so it was even cheaper than it would had been in Sweden. ↩
Almost every band do this ↩
It was about ten hours before it returned to me ↩
Duh! ↩
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