The Greatest Riot

And no, that's not just a title trying to be clever. Nonetheless, my ears are still ringing.

Did you ever feel like you were in the Truman Show? By this, I don't mean to ask if you've ever thought you were Jim Carrey, or indeed if you've thought of driving to an unfinished bridge and hitting tiny white balls with great big club-things. Never mind. Waking up this morning, I was entirely positive I was in the middle of an earthquake. Not The Big One, mind, but still. Do not take this lightly, I've been awoken by earthquakes before, and while I can't really think of anything that can get you out of bed and ready for a brand new day as quickly as an earthquake, it's not really something I'd recommend.

But yeah, it turns out that there was no earthquake. Or at least nobody's willing to admit that they felt it too. Not even the ever-lovin' INTERNET seems willing to admit that there's been one. It's a cover-up of near-epic proportions. Well, there's always the slight (slight, I tell you!) chance that I dreamt the whole thing up, on the back of the actual magnitude four quake we had about a week ago. Whatever.

So I'm pretty much planning to blame the lateness of this post on earthquakes, but in reality, it's more the fault of... something. Over the weekend, I undertook a drive (by which I mean "riding shotgun and messing with the satnav so we almost got lost") to Nagoya, a place where I used to live for most of last year. It's kinda strange going back to a place you used to live, as a tourist. But I'll leave that for now.

The reason for the trip was not to see Nagoya again, but rather Toyota. The city. Yes, they renamed it after, well, I think you can see where I'm going with this. What's in Toyota, aside from Priuses? A stadium. And what can you do if you have a spare stadium? You can gather some of the GREATEST BANDS OF ALL TIME, and make an event of it. And call it The Greatest Riot.

And it really was. Well, the riot part was carried out in traditional Japanese fashion. Upon arrival at the scene, Yasu and I were greeted with a 50-minute line. For merchandise. T-shirts, towels, that sort of thing.


Goodness, gracious me. The actual concerting took place from 12:30 p.m. (no, that's not a typo, the Japanese like to get an early start to their riots) to 8:30 p.m., when the last of the eight bands left the stage. They left after another traditionally Japanese riot... thing. See, people were starting to get a little rowdy in the front (we had tickets for section A5, which will put you close enough to the right-hand speakers to make your ears ring for, and I speak of experience here, four days. And counting), so the organizer goes up on stage and... Apologises for the bad planning which has led to this, asks us all to take care, and promises to plan better next year. In Sweden, they would have told us to possibly "Back. The fuck. Off". As a former classmate and current Nagoyan would say: Only in Japan, kids.

Before that however, the following band performed gorgeous music. Triple point score to anybody who can name the band (not to mention any of the actual band members). Three words, strung together just so, starting with "Yum", and followed with another "Yum". See how close that stage is? Consider the fact that my camera has the zoom qualities of tuna fish, and you realise... something.


But yeah, the concerts ROCKED, one might say, if one were so inclined. Incidentally, I cannot imagine a warmer place on God's Green Earth than bumping (welcome back to the 1950's!) around at the very front of an open arena while the Japanese sun (which kinda refuses to acknowledge that it's actually supposed to be autumn by now) tries - and succeeds! - to bake you. Over the course of the first two concerts, I consumed 1.5 liters of water. As if that were anywhere near sufficient.

After it all ended, I used my supreme train-navigation-skillz to get me back to Tokyo on the very last Shinkansen available that night. Ok, so maybe pay ten gazillion dollars for a one-way Shinkansen-trip isn't very punk rock, but you know, too much of a good thing and all that.


And no, the above has nothing to do with... well, anything, really. At least not anything mentioned here today. I intend to keep it that way. Tune in next week as our young hero will see if his ears will ever fully recover!