Razorcake Issue #19

Ummm, no thanks. The ferry pulled in and we drove a bit morebefore finally reaching Tokushima, a little city tucked into themountains. It sort of reminded me of Roanoke, Virginia. Weloaded into the cool little club called Tokushima Jitterbug. After aquick soundcheck of the club’s incredible sound system (what’sthe deal? All the clubs in Japan have these incredible PAs, withkickass sound engineers), we headed out for a little shopping andwrestling with more alien food. David and Chris are both vegan,so they had an extra hard time finding stuff to eat. Back at the clubwe saw Hushpuppy, Hamk, Practice, and Minority Blues Band.Hanging out in the backstage room, Tosh and I drank some beerstogether and talked in very basic English about our favorite bands.“I love J Church!” he said as he played the bassline to one of oursongs. Shit, he knew it better than me. That night, when we playedthat song, I handed the bass to Tosh and let him rock out on it. Wehad a great time and the show was a huge success. After the show,we drove to the crash pad where we drank sake and listened tobadass Japanese grindcore bands. We drank and partied long intothe night, and I passed out on the floor with a bunch of coolJapanese punk rockers.DAY FOURUp and at ‘em! We hit the road early for Kyoto, hangoversslowly fading. The twisty, windy mountain roads didn’t help mystomach much as I struggled to keep down some weird deep friedmashed potatoes and rice wrapped in seaweed. We made it toKyoto pretty early so we could check out the incredible Buddhisttemple perched on top of a snowy mountain with a breathtakingview of the city. The temple was one of the most beautiful places Ihave ever seen. Kyoto, as a whole, is an older city, with more traditionalJapanese architecture and less western influence. Wedrove up to the club, a little bar called East, tucked into the basementof the “Hotel Sexus,” which is exactly what you think it is.The show was great, with a fun little mosh pit and everything. As Iwatched the extremely badass I Excuse, Practice, and MinorityBlues Band, I chatted it up with my friend Bianca, an East Baytransplant who speaks fluent English and Japanese. She explaineda few Japanese customs to me (for instance, Christmas in Japan ismore like Valentine’s day; you eat a cake with your boyfriend/girlfriend)and translated the captions for that day’s Snakepit comicinto Japanese for me. After the show and a tearful farewell to ournew friends in Practice, who had to drive back to Fukuoka (30,000yen in tolls, that’s roughly three hundred dollars!), we grabbedsome food and headed to I Excuse’s house to sleep. It was reallycold, and for some reason most Japanese houses don’t have centralheat. Bianca said they do it to stay tough. That’s weird. A housewith a heated electronic toilet seat and a space age kitchen doesn’thave heat. We shivered ourselves to sleep.DAY FIVEAs we began our relatively short drive to Nagoya, it wasalready snowing. By the time we reached the city, it was comingdown in flurries and everything was covered in a few inches ofsnow. Having lived in Texas the past few years, I’d forgotten whatsnow was like, how pretty it was, and also how much it sucked todrive in. The traffic was at a dead standstill for a while, but wemade it to Nagoya safe and sound. We headed to a really awesomelittle record store called Answer. It was very well stocked with lotsof collectable punk records – at pretty fair prices – from all overthe world. I scored an S.O.B. record for 2000 yen. The record storewas a part of a cool little record store mall in the basement of aparking deck. There was a more trendy pop style store, the hardcoreparadise, Answer, and a small reggae dub store. We all foundcool records and headed over to he show. The club, KD Japon, wasa teeny, tiny, little place built underneath an elevated train track.As we rocked out to the sweet sounds of I Excuse, Minority BluesBand, and Navel, the tiny club got more and more packed. By thetime we played it was almost impossible to move, until a cool, oldguy started drunkenly half slam-dancing, half falling down drunk,rocking out. He fell on the PA head and broke it. He fell onJ. CHURCH IN TOKYOTHE URCHIN IN TOKYOJ. CHURH BACKSTAGE IN TOKYO