Evan Nicholl-Johnson and me with giant ice cream. Photo by Claire. Full-size on Flickr.

The Japanese tour journal treks on! As the days went by, we got more and more into the groove of touring in Japan together. Each day we liked our tourmates more and more. Jokes were born. Everyone's songs, especially Montag's, started sticking around in our heads and we were singing them in the car rides "home" after the shows. I got really used to the routine of waking up around 10 am in a hotel, watching Japanese kids' television for a second, getting in a cab to the train station, taking a really fast train to a new city, and hanging around the venue until the show started.

I COULD TOUR HERE FOREVER. Well, I could tour here for a couple more weeks. I want to hit all the towns that I can. There's talk of future days. December? October We'll see.

Okayama: Apparently Okayama's city dish is Udon. We played in a cafe called Cafe Signe and they made us some really delicious fried yakisoba and udon foods. Finding vegan food hasn't been as rough as I had expected it to be. We're eating a lot of onigiri, or "triangles" as we call them, but we're also finding awesome cafes and more vegetarian stuff that I thought we would. Back to the show, the crowd was more vocal and unreserved than the crowds we had become accustomed to. Okayama likes to party! They even asked us to party in chalk on their wall before the show. Happy 2nd anniversary, Cafe Signe!

Kyoto: Sometimes you have the golden stride. Sometimes everything just falls into place. Kyoto was that time. The show was packed, hot as fuck inside, and full of totally excited and rad people. After the show we put on our "suits," drank some celebratory Shochu and Sake, and this is what it looked like. + Here's a video from the show.

Kanazawa: Last stop on the tour. Rallye Label! Rallye is a record label and "zakka" shop, which means knick-knacks, or stuff to improve your home. Rallye is a nice man named Fumi. He put out our (YACHT, Au Revoir Simone, Montag) records and set this whole tour up. He also put out my friend Panther on the freak-out wing of Rallye, the Klee label.

Kanazawa is a pretty small city, around 455,000 people live there as of last year. It's super old, too: apparently it's an old Samurai town! Fumi's Rallye shop is SO nice. They just moved into a new space. You should check it out if you ever make it to Kanazawa! Before the show we ate an amazing meal at Fumi's house, cooked by Fumi's mother. Here's Kris' traditional Japanese eating face. At dinner Fumi revealed that he had been secretly shopping for presents for us the entire tour and gave us each really nice gifts. He gave Erika a dress that she's going wear at her wedding. There were tears. Fumi is a great man. After the show, we all went to a public bath in Kanazawa, one of the best ones in Japan. We tried Sake baths, electric baths, hot-tub jets and this amazing thing where you lie down on a slab of granite under the stars while hot water runs underneath you.

Here's the first of a couple, maybe three, tour videos I've put together. Enjoy!

Again, thanks so much to Koji for driving so much, and of course, to Fumi for taking care of everything and making such a rad tour for us! Domo arigato gozaimashita!

PS - I added two YouTube videos from Kyoto and Tokyo in the last post!

PPS - What the fuck am I doing on MTV.com? My Mom just sent me that link!

Truly,
Jona

Matthew @ July 12, 2007 1:23 PM

kris @ July 13, 2007 1:42 PM