I’d like to report Countdown Japan festival which was presented by a Japanese music magazine Rockin’ on.
On Dec. 30th 2005, We left home at 9:45 a.m. by car. We stopped at Nara to pick Etsuko up then we drove and drove toward to Tokyo. Traffic of Tomei highway was very bad especially between Kanagawa and Tokyo. The traffic sign said that we have to take more than 4 hours to arrive Tokyo from Hadano, Kanagawa pref. Usually it takes 40 minutes. We made a detour but the road we tried go through was very crowded, too. Anyway, we arrived in Tokyo at 8:30 p.m. We spent almost 11 hours from Osaka to Tokyo. I was exhauted. Then we went dinner. I refreshed and went to bed.
I was at a hotel room until 2:00p.m. and drove to the venue, Makuhari Messe. The venue was huge and so many people were working. At the catering room, there was a lot of delicious foods. Curry and rice, Chinese bum, salmon saute, salads, turkey sandwitch, baked prawn and more. I ate a little of hushed beef. I don’t eat much before the show.
At 7:30, we started our show. Our set time was 30 min. Here is our set list.
1. Riding On the Rocket
2. S＊P＊A＊M
3. Concrete Animals
4. Sushi Bar Song
5. A Map Master
6. Orange-no Taiyo (Orange Sun)
7. Explosion!
8. I wanna be sadated
9. Antonio Baka Guy
So many people, around 2000 people gathered to our stage. I enjoyed the show a lot. On 8th and 9th songs, Toru Hidaka from Beatcrusaders joined our stage as a guitarist and we jammed. It was so fun, too.
I stayed the venue until 10 p.m. then went to a certain place where we would stay. We’ve heard that there was 5 sets of Futon there but there wasn’t. So, we couldn’t stay there. We had to carry back our equipments and heavy bags to the van and reserved hotel rooms. I was very exhauted again. After we arrived to the hotel, we had a little party at my room. There were a happning but finally I could sleep.
The next day, we went back to Osaka. It took only 8 hours including dropped Etsuko off at Nara. At night, I ate special festive food for the New Year at home.
I was happy that our show went safely and I could enjoy the festival.
