Went out to the mountains yesterday. Drove through the sticks with Rafa and these two others, the guitarist in his band and his girlfriend (Rafa plays bass in a couple metal bands, awesome Brazilian guy Jacob introduced me to). Their band was playing this Cosmos music show at a live house (Japanese term for rock venue) up there.
So Jacob and I take the train up towards Nagoya to meet the three of them, so we can start the day’s journey. We get in around 11:20, then head down the block to a little café, where we get some coffee and pastries (they don’t sell real breakfast-type foods, just cakes and other delicious treats). I got a little circular bread thing and a crème puff, and Jacob’s got a slice of chocolate cake. He’s also got a bursting backpack full of God knows what, and—as its Halloween—an old triangular farmer’s hat and a couple masks of the Japanese god Kamesama, one with a white face and rosy cheeks and the other a devil with a big nose. As we sit there drinking coffee with these crazy masks beside us, I realize it’s going to be one of those days that could be chapters in a novel.
So we meet up with Rafa and his crew, and start the beautiful hour or so drive. We pull in around 1:00, meet the staff, who are there, and help set some stuff up—Darge plays first. Then Rafa has me take some pictures of the band, both in and out of Jacob’s ridiculous masks. Then we decide to take the trail up through the mountain. Big plaques of a famous Japanese samurai (his name begins with an M—what the hell, I’m blanking on it now) are placed throughout, so the place must have been somewhat associated with his life. The trail is all beautiful stone walkways and narrow staircases, rivers pierced by occasional bright red bridges. Each waterfall is more amazing than the last (Amazing, or the Japanese equivalent, “sugoi,” will end up being my most-used phrase of the day). My camera is sadly filled with pictures, and my laptop’s USB ports are busted, so I can’t upload and delete them—thus, I had to make do with my phone camera, which got full use on this trip.
The trail up to the top is not very long, but the rest of the crew decides they’d rather do other things than finish the trail to the top, so I break off and make my way up alone. As I near the top, I can hardly breathe, excited like a kid on Christmas morning, a little drunk from the couple beers I’ve already had and riding a natural high of being in such an exciting, beautiful place. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever been on a mountain before. The top of the trail comes up somewhat unexpectedly, and despite the nice views, is a little underwhelming—but I can see a way to climb up further, so I hoist myself up to a higher ledge (in my traction-less boots, no less) and sit down on a jag of rock, absorbing the scene unencumbered by foliage. It’s amazing, being equal with the heights of red and burnt orange and green, great mounds rising up all around me. I start to get a little nervous—I’m not afraid of heights, but I’m not dressed for the occasion and my head’s fuzzy and all helium-like. I lower myself back down and continue down the other side of the mountain, a little faster than I went up it but still stopping to take plenty of pictures.
Back at the live house, they’ve got a bonfire cooking in back (it’s cold out there!) and some DJs spinning; some Japanese dudes are already pretty hammered, and the weed smell is blatant and pervasive. One guy keeps kicking the fire angrily, like it burned up his grandmother or something. He gets to be Baka Nihonjin for the night (Crazy Japanese person, as opposed to Baka Gaijin—Crazy Jacob).
We get some food inside; I lay down ten bucks for an onigiri (rice ball wrapped in seaweed) and a bottle of hemp seed beer. “No THC,” the guy informs me. Obviously. Tastes good though. About an hour or later, we decide to get some real dinner; me and Shinosuke, Darge’s drummer, get chili rice, which is pretty good (though could be spicier) and comes with soup. The guitarist gets some spinach curry with rice, which looks so good, I end up getting some later. I don’t remember what Rafa got, but he got a pizza after it that he split with me. And Jacob got a fish on a stick with the last of his yen. He’d end up spending “the last of his yen” about six times that night, and milk it for plenty of drinks from others later on.
Darge doesn’t go on for forever; I curl up in a chair near the fire, freezing and sleepy. I go inside, where Jacob is learning how to play the didgeridoo from one of the employees. After a little of that and a little bit of Jacob dancing madcap to the Al Green stereoing throughout the cabin (he keeps insisting on how great it is, and I have to agree, the musical selection was top notch), Darge finally takes the stage.
I’m somehow chosen to be Rafa’s personal cameraman, and I take photos and video with his cameras during the show (much to Jacob’s dismay—he’s the “photographer”). I get lots of good pics and a great video, complete with more Baka Gaijin dancing, and afterwards Rafa gives me the setlist. Another DJ takes the table afterwards, and we hang out for the next two bands to play.
The next band, Order, is good, tight with a killer guitarist, playing some good old-fashioned ‘77 punk, though the lead singer looks like a vampire with ashen black eye makeup and his hair cut way out around one of his ears, giving him an asymmetrical helmet-like look. We can’t tell if it’s for Halloween or not, but it looks pretty stupid. Still, the music was good.
Can’t say the same for the next band though. Whatever their name is, they end up being one of the worst band’s I’ve ever seen. The first song they play isn’t bad, has a nice classic ‘70s guitar pop feel to it and is, you know, actually a song. Can’t say the same for anything else that followed. Every song is just a repetitive build of the same riff, over and over, in a Fuckin’ Cops kinda style, only much much worse. The only starts or endings of these “songs” are when they start fucking around, playing sparsely and discordantly and not at all cohesively. Worse, the guitarist is, in Rafa’s words, a fucking asshole—ironic he’d say that, since apparently in Japan you’re not supposed to shit-talk bands, during or after the show. But this guy keeps playing out in the audience, staring back at the stage and inadvertently kicking his guitar wire out, then stopping and searching in the dark for five-ten minutes to fix his setup. At first I felt bad for him—the Butts were no strangers to technical difficulties—but really, the band sucked and the guy was a dumbass, so fuck that.
That’s what our band would sound like if we played a set at this point” I whisper to Jacob after the show. I think I notice a flash of realization across his eyes, but it’s hard to tell—he keeps saying we should play a show ASAP, and it’s hard to convince him that nobody would want to hear us go up there and fuck around. Besides, they’d hear plenty of that throughout the night already, as Jacob and Shinosuke spent a good hour sitting outside playing djembe drums by the entrance, joined occasionally by my own tribal caterwauls—we got bored between sets. After the last band, Jacob and I are kind of itching to get out of here, so we head up to the parking lot with Rafa and everyone, where he and the guitarist and his girlfriend get in the van and take off. We’re riding back with Shinosuke, who lives near Ogaki and can drop us off at the station. We thought we’d leave at the same time they were, but apparently not. Shinosuke’s still got the drum he took from the cabin, and apparently just wants to bang on the stupid thing all day. And Jacob gets quickly distracted by an attractive, older Japanese woman in a furry black shawl and a formal floral dress. I thought she was an employee, but apparently she’s a DJ, and we run into her in the parking lot. Jacob wastes no time going over to her, insisting she try on his Kamesama—or as I like to refer to it, country gentleman—mask. She does, but to do so for some reason she must remove her shawl, exposing a bare shoulder, which lights up Jacob’s substance-abused body like a pinball machine—he quickly goes over and puts his hand on her, “helping to put it back on.” She backs away, awkwardly laughing while Shinosuke and I tell him in plain English to stop putting his hands on her. Jacob’s a persistent and not particularly observant fellow, though, and so this spectacle carries on for some time, until Shinosuke disappears with his drum and the girl disappears into her own van. Jacob and I stand around, confused, wondering where Shinosuke went and why we weren’t leaving. Meanwhile, the girl re-emerges from her van with the remains of a small bottle of sake, which she offers to Jacob. Maybe he asked for a drink? I wouldn’t be surprised—he’s been asking people to buy him drinks all night. He accepts her kind offer, but I politely decline and head back towards the cabin to find our ride.
Shino’s still sitting outside with his drum. Does he maybe want to go? I ask. No, he’s looking for some whiskey. That’s reassuring, it’s not like you need to be sober to drive back along these narrow mountain roads I think to myself. I could buy another drink, but I’m post-intoxicated and adding any more fuel to that fire would only make me sleepy. Instead, I get the curry and take a seat next to Jacob, who’s talking Baka to Baka with the crazy Nihonjin.
Big mistake. First question to me: “Do you like marijuana? I love marijuana” he confesses in very rough English. He goes on about that for awhile, then starts talking about LSD and microtablets and Mount Fuji. “Microtablets, where!” Jacob keeps pressing him. I try to eat my food and let them talk, but the guy’s English is so bad, Jacob gives up and trots off. I can’t ignore the man across the table from me—he keeps asking me questions, but I can’t understand anything that he’s saying. Something about Mount Fuji, and meters. Finally, he lets out a scream for a good twenty seconds, as I cower and everyone else in the room stares. Jacob comes calling for me from across the room—“Dude, we gotta go.” I scarf down the rest of my meal and run off.
I call shotgun for the second time this evening on the way to the car. Jacob doesn’t hear me though, and calls it two seconds later. “You’re kidding right? I just called it” I inform him. No I didn’t, he says. He fights me for the door, but I easily hold the crazy drunk off. He keeps shouting at me and telling me that he called it twice this evening—that earlier time he’d actually called it, he said, not me. He has the amazing ability to manipulate his memory and truly believe things that never happened, happened. They’re usually the diametric opposites of the truth, too. I’m tired of having to explain reality to this psycho, and Shino keeps telling me not to bother, Jacob’s just a crazy man and he doesn’t want any shouting in his car. He’s a nice guy, doesn’t deserve this kind of shit. Eventually the issue dies down, and I give Jacob Rafa’s setlist later as a peace offering. The ride home is filled with the new Sonic Youth, Afrirampo (who Shino asks if I’ve heard before, and I reply “Yes, I have”—thanks Dugan!) and this band Asa something who sound like, in the words of Jacob, mechanical shouting over the game of Plinko. It’s true, they do. Somehow we don’t fall asleep or get in an accident or anything the ride home, though it is filled with plenty of “Thank you very much—fuck you very much!”es, which is for some reason very funny to us all. As the car pulls up to Ogaki station, our great adventure comes to an end.
Oh yeah, and happy birthday Dad!
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