FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL

On Saturday, July 30, 2005, we embarked on a journey to the town of Naeba, in northern Honshu, Japan, to participate in the Fuji Rock Festival - the festival was a three day festival but we just had the Saturday ticket due to work restrictions. The day wasn't exactly the fun in the sun with the Japanese summer festival atmosphere that I had anticipated - being that it pissed down rain for most of the time, and the festival was held up in the mountains at a Ski field - these two combined to make it a little chilly. So after traipsed through the mud through a monsoonal downpour and discovering that my raincoat is only really good in light showers - we found shelter under the marquee and attempted to dry off - to no avail really. That was the worst of the day over with - the rain did clear up to light showers during the afternoon, so after checking out some pretty cool japanese bands and some not so cool western bands - we headed out of the marquee to explore the grounds.

The food at the place was awesome - there was Jamacian Jerk Chicken, Russian food (qacalash & crab juice - j/k), hot dogs, kebabs, meat pies!!!, fish and chips and loads more that I can't think of right now. Okay, you know your in a foreign land when you are standing next a whole bunch of people eating fish and chips with chopsticks. Anyways after a good dose of western food (meat pies and chili dogs) we checked the main stage. The stage area was excellent - surrounded by the mountains. Breathtaking.

It was here we would see the feature acts that we had paid to see - BECK and FATBOY SLIM. We managed to get to the front for Beck so we had an awesome view but unfortunately security wouldn't let us take photos. Beck was great he played songs that he didn't play last time I saw him, like Sexx Laws and Beercan, which I really wanted to see live. On stage, there was some weird dude in 80's tennis gear who just danced and bashed the drums occasionally. Also, late in the set the backing band did this cool percussion piece on plates and glasses at a "dinner table" that they were sitting at during Beck's solo acoustic songs - which led straight into Where it's at (Two turntables and a Microphone). Anyway it was great, I could go on for ages. If you want more details email me!

About half an hour after Beck, Fatboy Slim started with the star wars imperial march and a dazzling light/animation show. The Fatboy ripped it up on stage mixing up everything from Sunshine of you love to Billie Jean, and of course favourites such as Praise you, Rockerfeller Skank, Right Here Right Now, and Fatboy Slim is ___ing in Heaven. My personal favourite was when we mixed Public Enemy's Bring the noise with Seven Nation Army - tre cool. He played for two hours and it was one hell of a party, the climax of which reached as the storms returned and the sky began to emulate the dazzling light show onstage.

After Fatboy Slim ended the party continued, we caught a Japanese blues band, and an electronica band from the states - before going to the british council marquee and watching screenings of such british comedies as The Office and The Sketch Show. After this, at 2:00 (or 26:00 as the shuttle bus schedules would have it) it was time to catch the bus down the mountain and wait for our 6:00 train back to Tokyo. Sleeping on the concrete outside the train station with about 100 of the local punters is something I'll most certainly be able to chalk up to experience. I didn't manage to get much sleep as I seemed to chose the snoring section of the pavement.

We got our train at 6:00 and flew back to Busan at 2:00pm. Back to the reality (well the Korean version of it anyway)...