Party Time!

August was looking like being one of the busiest months so far here in Tokyo. We had numerous parties, festivals and events lined up for the hottest part of the year.

First up was Kumi’s farewell, she was packing up shop and heading for Sydney on a working holiday visa to spend some quality time with Dave, and improve her English some more.

Kumi organised a small get together at a cool little restaurant in Shibuya. There was quite an interesting crew there; some of her old Japanese friends, us, some guys from her English school, and other foreigners that have been met along the way.

Sophi shipped herself home at a reasonable hour and Cam, Andrew, Stefan and Kumi stayed until first train.

As we walked towards the train Kumi suddenly decided that she was going to meet another friend, and Cam looked around and Andrew had disappeared. So being left on his own proceeded to jump on the train and head home. Almost 1 hour at about 6.30am later Cam woke up somewhere in Kanazawa (not even in Tokyo anymore) and quickly jumped off the train to head back the way he just came. After about another hour, the same thing had happened and Cam found himself back past where he had started. When he finally walked through the door at about 9.30, Sophi was just waking up and Andrew still wasn’t home. Andrew stumbled in the door about an hour later and we found out that his story was almost identical to Cam’s, except he was on a different train going back and forth.

The day kicked on with Andrew and Cam drinking beers until about 4.30pm and then finally passing out.

During the month of August in Japan there is a national holiday period called O-bon. O-bon is the celebration of deceased ancestors. Most Japanese head back to their respective hometowns to get together with their entire families in one place. There are loads of festivals around Tokyo, and we visited one in Jiyugaoka. There is loads of people dancing around a temple looking thing for a couple of hours, all wearing the summer yukatas.

The following weekend we had organised to go to Summer Sonic, a 2 day music festival in Chiba. Since Chiba is on the east side of Tokyo, it takes a little over an hour to get there from our place. This being the case, we booked a night at the Sheraton Hotel at Disneyland, which is about a 10 minute trip from where the festival was being held.

The first day of Summer Sonic, we took it pretty easy to start with and found our bearings. The area was huge, and had about 5 or 6 stages, one of which was a beach stage. We checked out some bands and got stuck into some drinks.
Highlights from the first day were The Verve, Hot Chip, and Zebrahead. But the day was owned by The Prodigy. None of us had seen them before, and they totally blew the place apart. It was awesome hearing all the old tunes and some of the new ones too. Those guys are pretty old now, but they can still put on an amazing show.

We got back to the hotel pretty late as last train was about midnight, and we checked in and had a few drinks back at the room before passing out from exhaustion.

The second morning started with a swim in the pool and a spa to get refreshed and ready for the next day of onslaught. Beers were cracked just after breakfast and we scooted over to the festival again. We also booked an extra night at the hotel, so we could relax after the 2^nd day of partying.

The festival had 2 main areas, which was separated by a huge highway. The pathway to get from one side to the other was stupidly long, so we decided to jump the fence and run across the highway. Once getting the other side though we realised that we had to then jump over a tall fence and get through some bushes to be inside again. After doing this a few times back and forth, we realised that the area we were jumping over the fence from, wasn’t even inside the festival, and we could’ve just gone to the festival without tickets……trusting Japanese again!

The 2^nd day was loaded with a lot more music than the first and stand-out performances by Junkie XL, Justice, Fatboy Slim, Polysics, and Xavier Rudd made it an excellent overall festival.

Cam was in good form all day, sinking an uncountable number of beers. When we were heading back to the station, he was trying to get pictures with Japanese people, but nobody was interested. Once he started telling them that we worked for a magazine it was a different story. They all became keen to jump in the photos, even though we clearly didn’t look like we belonged to any form of mag. This went on for a few hours, before we returned to the hotel and died once again.

Day 3:

We woke up gingerly and got ready to check out and we decided that we should finish the weekend by going to DisneySea (again!!)

We though being a Monday that it would be reasonably quite, but we forgot that it was O-bon week. It was really, really, really busy!

We had heard from Dave that they put Webster in a wheelchair when they came and that stopped you from having to wait in lines, they were right. We put Stefan in the wheelchair which only cost $3 for the day, and he played the part like a champion.

Every time we went to go on a ride, they escorted down special pathways and back door entrances and we jumped straight to the front of the queue. The wheelchair probably saved us about 4-5 hours over the course of the whole day. DisneySea is great because you are allowed to drink booze there, so we continued the trend of the weekend and drank constantly the whole day, which really enhanced the whole Disney experience. On one of the rides which takes your photo as it drops down about 20 floors, Andrew took his shirt off, and this was the photo that they gave of us!

It was probably the most fun we’ve had at Disneyland and we probably remember the least from it!

On the way home we thought it would be smart to go somewhere for a few drinks, so we stopped at an izakaya and kicked on there till about 1am before hobbling home and crashing out hard. It was the end of a top weekend; we haven’t let loose like that for some time now, and boy did it feel good!

A couple of days later, still feeling pretty out of it, we set out for Kumi’s hometown to spend a couple of days with her family for O-bon. We arrived and had a late lunch, and then went to meet her relatives. Her family don’t speak any English so there was a lot of gesturing going on.

Their house was decorated beautifully as Kumi’s grandmother had died this year, so they were having quite a large celebration. We were treated to some traditional Japanese cooking (some of which we couldn’t eat!) and the beer glasses kept being re-filled, despite our hang over from Summer Sonic still gnawing at our heels. We joined in some rituals with Kumi; lighting incense at her grandmother’s grave, saying a prayer at the vigil, and trying to smash a watermelon with a blindfold on.

It was really great to experience all this in a true and authentic Japanese environment. Some of their traditions are quite strange to us, but it was a cool thing to do. Thanks so much Kumi and your family.