Japan 2: J-Rock

Dan has this ambition to meet real Japanese people, which may be slightly difficult as our Japanese is so shaky that we can't even remember what the name of our Subway station is. But we figured that going to a gig might be a good way to see some real local culture, so we found one on the internet at a place called Roots, and even managed to navigate our way there. The cover charge was pretty steep, as everywhere, but we did get 5 bands for our money so it was fairly good value.


One featured a female singer/guitarist in school uniform, which is quite possibly the coolest look in the world. Dan took a picture which i may add later. My favourite of the evening was Praha Depart. Later things got pretty rowdy as the music got more dancey and a group of very large scandinavian blokes decided to take over the joint by forming a testosterone-heavy moshpit. We ended up talking to a few expat blokes including a guy called Ian who had put on the night and who invited us to come to another event the next day. It was hard to tell where any of them were from as they had assumed a sort of uniform expat accent, but possibly Canada and Britain.

Saturday night we explored Shibuya, which has one of the most famous pedestrian crossings in the world, as well as a wealth of Bars, Karaoke venues, shops and restaurants. After a few detours we managed to find Home which turned out to be a tiny little place that was about to close, but we managed to catch the tailend of the last band (called Candles, we think) who were an the more electro-poppy side and got the audience joining in a little choreography/clapping routine. It was every cliche about Japanese music confirmed in the best possible way.

Hopefully we'll get Ian to recommend us some more venues and people in Fukuoka - this is a pretty fun way to feel like you're connecting with Japan, and it's not such a big deal if you can'tunderstand the lyrics.