Category: The Tokyo Diary

The Kind Of Between Mexico City and Tokyo Diary

Have I got in the feeling of I live in Japan now while walking round Ikebukuro

Day minus 10

Wednesday December 31

OK. Here we go. Finally getting back to this again. Yep, I hear it. Where is the Mexico City Diary? We’ll get onto that. At some point. Hopefully. I’m absolutely sure. For now, call me ambitious but I’m kinda hoping I can write it concurrently with this new Japan, well, Tokyo, Diary*. We arrived two days ago at the time of writing. It’s possible we may get beyond Tokyo, but really, with this place being ranked by some surveys as the most populous city in the world at not far off the 40 million mark, I think we’ll have enough to be getting on with here. But we’re going to be here for five weeks give or take, so let’s see.

* A week or so in and yeah, looks like we ain’t going to be getting to that here. Absolutely no idea when that will happen.

A bit of a cheat here before we get started on all that because we’re not going to write too much about London between Mexico and Japan so there’s no point starting an interim Camden Diary and this entry just would not make sense if we put that into the existing one. Maja was away in Sweden for a good chunk of this period, and before that she was too busy with, well, you’ll see below very soon. But I’m writing this in here now because a day or two after we got back, Ant asked us to play his new place Jam In A Jar on Haringay Green Lanes. But not just any old date. No. He asked if we could play New Year’s Eve for our first time out there. 

His idea was that we wouldn’t be announced on the bill and would just kind of float in and out of proceedings, which perfectly fit our own concept and the way we’ve always imagined we could fit into bills. I wonder if this show tonight could set something of a precedent. The idea is that we will just fit in between bands and also spend most of our time playing out on the floor rather than on the stage, which is also just how we do things. It’s also a great way to discover and decide how we’re going to spend New Year’s Eve. We speak to soundman Ben once we get there, who sometimes does the sound at Ant’s other place Ten To One which is where we have of course played so many Ramshackle nights and a few gigs of our own. He’s fully up to speed with how we’re going to do this and we’re able to set up very easily with him and are ready to go with zero soundcheck. We kind of know our settings, he’s happy to trust us with this and is confident he can make any minor adjustments on the fly which is exactly how it plays out. So when the time comes, we’re ready to go, band finishes, and we play a few songs while the next band sets up. We were thinking we may be getting three short sets but first off we’re here a tad later than might have been ideal; we weren’t told a time to arrive. It was just a case of get here when you get here and see how you can fit yourselves in. We also miss another possible between bands set when Maja gets unfortunately caught in a bit of a queue for the toilets at just the wrong time and a band ends a bit unexpectedly. So we end up with two slots. Two songs and three songs respectively. The second set should have been four but the band before that one got a very enthusiastic encore call. But three worked great and the two for our first set was also a wonderful introduction. And with a whole five songs to represent ourselves in here we feel we have left our mark on this New Year’s Eve and that was just enough original material to put out in front of this kind of party crowd. And with that second set ending around 11:30, we know that’s that for the night which also suits us perfectly. We can now get ready for midnight and relax knowing it’s job done. All that’s left is to get right into the spirit and enjoy the amazing Blues Band tribute act which brings it all home up to midnight and a little beyond. A great New Year’s Eve night and our gig list will now read Mexico City, London, Tokyo. Cos yep. That’s where our next gig is going to be.

Day minus four

Tuesday January 6

Now onto where that Mexico City Diary is. Well, it’s there. In note form at least. A few written, a lot as recorded spoken pieces. Because when we get to it, you’ll see that we really didn’t have a whole lot of time to write anything. Not even notes. We were barely even in the apartment – which belonged to our Mexico manager Richard, of Los Ekis – apart from to get back late from a gig – or gigs as we often did two in a day, and twice did three – sleep, then up and out to the next round of whatever we had to do that day. And when there was computer time to be had it was social media-ing what we had coming up to keep up with upcoming publicity for the amazing amount of gigs we ended up getting, and also social media-ing what we had done that day. Even in the car, any writing on the phone was done to keep up with social media activity around what we were doing that day or had done the previous day. In short, thanks the amazing work of Richard, the guys in his band Los Ekis and a few other people around the city – Team Diaries if you will – we arrived with nine gigs and ended up with a total of 17 performances in 15 days. And five radio appearances including a 45 minute interview and live session with the famous Maria Letona on her show Nuevocito on Reactor 105FM. This is the most important and prestigious radio spot for both Mexican and international bands. We were told beforehand to expect a ten minute tell us about yourselves, influences and what you’ve got coming up interview. In the days to come we were met with increasing incredulity at what the whole thing had become as Maria embraced us and our energy and just ran with us for a whole segment of the show. We even had two studio recordings played. Not only that, but while we were waiting in the lobby before going in, the head of programming came out to meet us and request two of our songs for rotation.

With all that, we were also trying to fit in at least a few days out and touristy things and basically having explorations of our own wonderful local neighbourhood of Coyacan and its town centre. And the occasional (date) night out when there wasn’t a gig going on. And there was another factor at play which has been a feature of the entirety of our diary writing; typing uses pretty much the same hand and arm muscles as guitar playing. So when you’re playing guitar as much as I was, and as intensely as our songs demand, that massively impacts on how much effective keyboard time can be spent. This is even more true when also considering whatever social media-ing had to be done with that time. So no. Diary keeping up was simply not a thing.

Before we get to Japan, there’s another piece of Mexico housekeeping to get in. A major twist of events that hit us almost the minute we arrived in London. We were still in the arrivals area and not even yet near passport control when Maja took a call from her office and discovered that while we had been away her company had had to undergo a massive financial rethink leading to widespread redundancies and yes, her department was next. So we basically arrived right into a firestorm with Maja having to deal with that fallout while beginning another search for a new job. There was a decent notice period involved so not an immediate chasm, but still. Not an environment or set of circumstances conducive to any kind of creative endeavour or atmosphere, including diary writing. A little bit of excusing in there? Maybe, but all the same, catch up didn’t immediately happen, and neither did much of anything else while Maja wrestled with everything the new reality entailed. If I’m to be putting any kind of excuse in here, maybe it’s that the whole habit of diary writing had been fallen out of and with all such things of regularity or routine, once fallen out of, it can be hard to fall back in again. So yeah, I guess more could have been done in here, but it just wasn’t so here we are. And of course Christmas happened between Mexico and Japan. And just before Christmas – the very last business day before it in fact to totally Hollywoodise this thing – Maja got a new job. So breathe.

Following that, another busy element was added to hold off Diary writing for just a little bit longer. I started learning Japanese. Although yes, with a bit more will to be fair, I could have started in here again, but I didn’t. As for that Japanese thing, it wasn’t so much to be able to get by on this trip. Don’t be silly. But because we’re seeing this as the beginning of actually taking on Japan and coming back again and again to try to develop it. So yeah. I’m now learning Japanese as a long term project for long term purpose. Maja, as you may know, already speaks it fluently. Which is a big part of why we think we can come here and at least have a real attempt at doing something. At the very least, we think we can put together a solid attempt at a fact finding mission while maybe building up some kind of contact base. So here we go.

Maja is in Sweden when she books Japan and we have our dates solidly confirmed. Although we’ve been planning on going for a while we really couldn’t know dates until it was booked, or really do any forward planning with venues. 

So here we go. Flights out on January 8 with a Paris connection and a return date of February 13. All fantastic, but we’re not able to work on actually contacting any venues until she gets back from Sweden; we are definitely using our Ace card here of her speaking fluent Japanese and also being able to read and write it, and we need to be in the same room for that to happen; the way it works is that by the time she’s needed for this, research on venues has been done and initial approaches have been written in English. Then she can get on and do her thing. She gets back on December 30. We have the gig on the 31st, then after the New Year’s Day and recovery thing of the first, it’s Friday and she’s back at work. It’s then weekend and we have our own catching up and days out to do with her having been gone for a few weeks, so we don’t start to be able to get to this at all until Monday the 5th. She’s also working that day and understandably totally wiped after that, so we don’t get to it that day either, so the sixth it is. Up against it with us leaving for Japan a few days later on the 8th, but apart from possibly yesterday, we really couldn’t be doing this any earlier now than we are. But hey, we’re The Diaries. We have lots of experience of just turning up in cities, hitting the streets and being able to find places to play. But a little forward momentum here would be cool as well. We had originally hoped for quite a bit more forward momentum before heading off; we had been planning to do this in April and take some time to do some real homework beforehand, building connections, booking gigs and so on. But with the whole Maja redundancy and then getting and starting the new job in February it was suddenly do Japan now or put it off to who knows when.

We’re now ready to start sending. The thing here is that apparently English and Japanese really don’t fit well into each other so this is no quick job. Also, while Maja may have been made redundant as we saw at the top of all this, she’s still working out a notice period so isn’t massively available to this and doesn’t have a huge amount of computer time left in her when it’s time to do this. But we manage to get a few emails off. By a few I mean three. But that’s it. The first emails are out now. To be fair, we’re not expecting anything from them, especially not at this short notice, but it’s good to know you’re pushing things forward and doing what you can.

I think we can set out what our hopes are now for what we have coming up. First off, Maja’s going to be continuing to work the entire time – and with a nine hour time difference to the UK. By necessity, we’re also going at pretty much no notice, so we’re not remotely expecting any Mexico 17 shows in 15 days repeat. We also don’t have a manager – and his team – on the ground there working for us months ahead of time like we did in Mexico. Of course it would be great to get out and play a few shows but we won’t put any number on that at all. Open mics are also there and we’ll go for one or two of them as well. But really it’s about getting out and just seeing the place, being on the ground and hopefully meeting people and making contacts. Basically a fact finding mission from which we might be able to build some kind of framework for when we’re ready to return. At that point, with some advance notice and with – again hopefully – something of a contacts book so to speak, we might just be able to build some kind of itinerary to go into and develop from there. And with Tokyo alone having a population of around half of the whole of the UK, it’s going to take a bit more than five weeks to make any kind of impact from a standing start. A bit more of a long game approach is needed and here we are taking the first steps in that.

So yeah. That’s what this really is about. Development and beginning the process of that development and yep, hopefully playing one or two shows in the process but without huge expectation or pressure. Let’s just get on the ground, enjoy being in Japan, move around gently yet with purpose, and see what we can make happen.

Day minus three

Wednesday January 7

We absolutely can’t believe it when we wake and see an email notification. At first we of course think it’s an automated reply. But no. Someone has actually already seen our email, checked us out and offered us a gig. This is mad. This. Just. Does. Not. Happen. We’ve been offered a 7pm 25 minute show on Friday February 1 at Music Bar Melodia.

We get a few more out today, including one very very speculative message to a particular radio programme that I’d identified as at least mildly approachable and contactable. Again, not many but like I said above, each translation is a job in itself as each email is personalised and targeted to that venue or person so this is much slower and heavier going than usual.

Day minus two

Thursday January 8

Well this is turning into something very quickly. Last night’s emails produce another reply and another booking. Roku Demonai have offered us a slot for February 6. Wow. With that it’s time to get this thing going. We’re leaving for Tokyo early afternoon today.

A little after mid-day and we’re out of the apartment and on the road. We’re on our way.

It goes like this.

5:35pm: Flight to Paris from Heathrow. We’re there in good time and our gate has a waiting for information sign about an hour before. This turns into a delay. Not ideal as we only have a two hour connection time. The delay turns into four hours. Definitely not ideal.

10pm: Finally on our way but against hope, we arrive in Paris to discover we have indeed missed the flight to Tokyo. We had been holding out the faintest of faint hopes that the Tokyo flight might just suffer its own delay but no, or at least not a delay long enough to cover this anyway.

Midnight(ish): A bit of disconcerting airport chaos with no-one really knowing what was happening, although we’d been assured Air France would be taking care of this. Myself, Maja and a few fellow confused Japan bound passengers wander Charles De Gaulle airport being sent here then there by each progressive staff member we encounter. As this develops we get the impression they’re almost as confused as us and are just sending us somewhere, anywhere, purely to stop us being their problem. We do finally find an Air France representative who gives us a sheet. At first this feels a bit dismissive, but then we see it is indeed informative enough as it tells us we’re entitled to a generous refund based expense package covering taxi transfers, hotel stay and meal allowance. While I’m finding this while Maja is monitoring things online on her phone. By the time I return, she tells me our replacement flight has been sorted for 6pm tomorrow. Brilliant. Let’s go get that hotel. Chaos. We try a few different hotels, both online and in person through a couple of taxi rides. All full. Then we just about manage to get one of the last rooms in possibly the last local hotel within budget. OK. That’s that part of all this sorted. We can relax now and just get ourselves back on track tomorrow.

Day minus one

Friday January 9

No further mis-haps. Quite the opposite actually. A lovely breakfast at the hotel, then a chilled day before we board the flight and are delighted to discover on finding our seats that we are in Economy Premium. Which means much nicer seating with two seats of our own at the window. And seats which (almost) allow you to lie down. We can settle in here very nicely for the 12 hour flight time. Bizarrely, our section is also almost empty which gives us a very rare feeling of airplane privacy.

Day zero

Saturday January 10

With a flight that long and with Japan being nine hours ahead of UK time we’re very disoriented timewise as we arrive at 3pm local time. Friday and Saturday now feel like one single long day to us. We have no idea where one ended and the other began.

But out of the airport after a very long passport queue and this is where Maja’s local instincts suddenly kick in as she negotiates the train system and gets us a travel card each all topped up and ready to go. I doubt many other non native people – especially western – are able to arrive and get themselves on their way as quickly as us (well, Maja. I can claim to be no part of ‘us’ in this transaction at all).

First impressions of Tokyo? Well, from the air, incredible in its size and apparent organisation. Everything looks so ordered down there, even from height. It couldn’t be further from the experience of seeing Mexico City for the first time when it looked like some enormous hand had just scooped up whole fistfuls of houses and buildings, like so many grains of sand, and just thrown them randomly across the landscape until the place was fully covered and said enormous entity walked away job done. No. Everything here has been meticulously placed, tidied and organised. Down below, as busy and bustling as everything seems, and indeed is, there is also a different kind of order here. But still, I am like a little lost puppy as I just blindly and trustingly follow Maja wherever she goes. I have absolutely nothing to offer here in terms of direction or suggestion. Although I am surprised to discover how much is translated into English in the signs, and also to hear all announcements repeated in English. I have always been led to believe in media reports and anecdotal experiences that Japan was totally inaccessible to anyone not familiar with Japanese and that every sign said the same thing – squiggle. Not the case at all but all the same, wildly confusing and undecipherable in terms of trying to follow even the most rudimentary clue as to which line to head to in this seemingly indiscriminate twisting warren of trainlines and instructions that really don’t instruct me to do anything. But Maja has this, so for now at least, I totally don’t have to. As a first time visitor to Japan I feel in a very privileged position.

A few trains later and we’re in our new neighbourhood of Ikebukuro which boasts the third busiest train station in the world. So quite a significant Tokyo hub. We’re one more stop away from that main station, so away from the main bustle. Down a few more very quiet streets and we get the first look at the apartment we’re going to be staying in. We’ve seen pictures of course, but it is great to get the first real look. It’s tiny, but we knew that. The main thing is it’s our very own place for the time we have here. And it really is clean, tidy and pretty and very well appointed for all kitchen and bathroom and whatever other basic accessories you might want for a starter place. But we immediately become aware of one quite major problem that we’re probably going to be stuck with, will simply have to get used to and which couldn’t possibly have been deduced remotely. The floor wobbles. The whole place seems to be set upon some kind of floating platform. Oh this doesn’t feel comfortable at all. So nice to have landed and arrived, and now quite distressing to discover this, right in the middle of being so happy and thrilled to be in Tokyo. Come on. We’ll deal with it. We don’t plan on moving around in here so much, so as we go on during our stay, as long as we keep still enough we should be OK. We can make this work. We will make this work and we will not let this little (?!) detail set us back or tarnish arrival day at all. Let’s unpack briefly then get out and about and see where we are.

So that’s what we do as we set off in renewed high spirits towards central Ikebukuro. On the way we need to visit a shop or two just to get a few supplies, razors being top of the list as we only brought carry-on luggage and so couldn’t pack any. It’s now we discover that it’s just possible that every building in Tokyo has a little bit of wobble going on. What is this? Some kind of latest earthquake defence or mitigation technology that everyone just lives with now? Actually no. It would seem we’re experiencing what is known as disembarkation sickness. It’s not the apartment that was moving but us. A flight yesterday, or whenever that Paris thing was, 12 hours from there to here, and a fe train connections has left us with our own inner movement sensors. The first feeling is, what a relief. We don’t have a wobbly apartment. The second feeling is, please get us out of this shop. Walking down the street feels fine but as we discover a few more minutes down the street, the second we go into a building it all starts up again and it really is a horrible feeling. We know it will pass so we just get on and continue towards the centre. Which I soon discover is a city all of its own. Wow. This is where we live. Ten minutes’ or so walk away from this shining cacophony of wonderfulness. I now discover that while Ikebukuru may ‘only’ have a population of 300,000, its central area caters for a much wider Tokyo population which means it is its own city within the city. And here I discover another thing. While London is often referred to as a series of villages, Tokyo is a series of cities. 

Through these city streets we now wander looking for some kind of restaurant in which to restore ourselves before heading back. Maja has had a little websearch and has brought us to a seafood chain that she knows well and is delighted to have found. Yes. This place is very special and very lively. Raw seafood is brought to your table and you cook it yourself on your own mini table-top barbecue. And there’s a wonderful crab dish that everyone seems to be having that Maja is very excited for me to try. Yes, this really is amazing. Kind of like a sweet meaty crab soup with onions all set in a half crab shell. It’s only halfway through she tells me what it is. Crab brains. Oh. OK. Apparently I like crab brains now.

But as amazing as all this is, along with the feeling that we are now actually landed and in Tokyo, there’s something we can’t quite shift. Now and then we catch another wave of it and it’s another head in hands moment. Yep. The whole building is wobbling. Only it really isn’t. Oh dear. We really do hope this will pass before morning. 

Day one 

Sunday January 11

OK. Travel wobble gone. And when we get up we have the wonderful relief to discover that the apartment is indeed perfectly stable. And now, so are we. Well, when we eventually drag ourselves up. With Tokyo being nine hours ahead of the UK, when 9am rolls around here, our body clocks are still set at midnight. That and the disrupted travel and sleepless flight means that we’re basically forcing ourselves up so as not to just sleep the day away which would be so easy to do. But then we’d probably just stay on UK time and the whole jet lag/ time adaptation thing would just take longer and be more difficult as a result. So up and out it is. Also, there’s a whole Tokyo out there to see for the first time. Oh, but it would be so easy to just stay here.

Maja has a plan. First we go to Akihabara which she tells me is a prime destination for many people visiting Tokyo. This is the main centre for enthusiasts of anime, manga, video games and computers and also caters for many other cult interests. I just marvel and and try to take in not just the shops but the fact that multi storey buildings will often contain one shop specialising in a particular theme. If you’re looking to be immersed in detail and minutiae and everything in between, I can hardly imagine a better place to be. The options and options of options are just dizzying. Fortunately we’re not shopping for anything and can just pass through and have a wander through an odd shop here and there, stopping particularly to browse our way through a store selling a wide array and size of beloved anime characters and sci-fi figures. Oh, my younger Star Wars model collecting self would have been falling through the floor just to see this place.

We’re not trying to do everything all in one go, or spend all day in this or that given shop. We can come back here anytime, so we’re soon moving on. This time to the Asakusa Temple and the long and bustling market that precedes it. This is a first look at classic, ancient Japan in the centre of the city. When we get to the head of it all, the main temple is totally full so we don’t try to insert ourselves among the thronging crowds, choosing to hold back and admire it all from here. Besides, there’s plenty else around here to see and be photographed among, so we do that and then decide it’s time for a pitstop.

That means a nearby large sushi place complete with conveyor belt at our table. No, this is not dishes swirling around the place waiting to be picked up as they go past. Instead, the conveyor belts serve kind of as waiters. You order from a tablet on the table, then five or ten minutes later something just trundles along the conveyor belt next to us before coming to a sudden halt at our table. We arrive a little after 3pm. A bunch of sushi and a few beers in and we realise with a sudden weight that all the travel and time distance really has caught up with us. We can’t quite get our heads around the maths of it all but with this 2pm and nine hours ahead still being more like 5am for us and with sleep having been fitful at best, and even non existent at times in the past three days, we have the feeling like we’ve been up for something beyond 48 hours. During the world record breaking 100 hours non-stop blues jam at The Blues Kitchen in the summer of 2019 I stayed awake for a full 66 hours with plenty of stage time in there as well. At the risk of a tired pun, I know what the stages feel like. It’s time to call it for today and stumble our way home.

Day two

Monday January 12

Well I did not expect my first trip to Shibuya to come about because we just happened to have to go there, but that’s how it’s worked out. As with Mexico City and, before that a few years ago, Berlin for the start of our first European tour, it’s buy a guitar for the country we’re in today and we’ve identified a nearby music shop in Ikebukuru. But once there we discover they have no acoustic guitars. They direct us to a shop in Shibuya so I guess that’s where we’re going now.

Out of the underground and here we are. Right at the iconic crossroads surrounded by a forest of moving flashing billboards. A major location of so many movies, the most standout for me being one of the triumphal moments in the Anvil movie. It’s 17 years old now. I think I’m allowed to spoiler reference it.

We take our time to pass through this, one of the most famous urban features of the world. I don’t even feel self conscious about being a tourist. It’s like being at a concert but out on the street except we’re all on stage and part of the show but marvelling and being spectators of the show at the same time. So many people have cameras and phones out as we all cross the road when the green man comes on. With that green man, or men, as they’ve lit up all over the place, it’s like the football has just let out. If there were two stadiums facing each other. A wall of people moving in one mass towards each other and then melting through each other like a medieval battle scene, only the warriors forgot they were supposed to fight. And were slightly better dressed.

Onto the guitar shop and we do indeed find just the guitar for us and leave with a lovely semi acoustic Fender. Also while we’re there we get a message and it’s from the venue which had a possible gig for us on February 6. That is now confirmed. Fantastic. 

All done. Bar?

We find a chain place Maja knows well and is keen to visit again. It’s also a food place, but small bar things rather than full restaurant. Think deep fried tapas. We get asked where we’d like to be and we take the empty spot right here by the door. Which is fine until people keep coming and going and we start to get cold. So we move right down to the end to the only other empty spot which is next to a couple of older guys and we get on with our own little evening. After about half an hour Maja starts chatting with the two guys. In Japanese. This is going to happen a lot and I think it’s wonderful and will totally take it at the expense of often not being able to join in. The guys don’t speak much English but I still feel very included, even when things are totally flowing in Japanese. After a while Maja gives them our card. They’re very interested to see this and things carry on, but after a while we see one of them on the phone and repeatedly checking out on our card. As he’s doing this, Maja turns to me and says, ‘He’s trying to book us a gig.’ Wow. We have a wonderful time with these guys, including helping them with beer lottery, which they ask me to do. This entails shaking a box of straws until one protrudes and you take it out. A big cheer accompanies my innocent reaction and I discover I’ve won one of them a huge drink. That helps relations tremendously.

During all this, Maja mentions to them that I’ve started learning Japanese and can already read the Hirigana and Katakana alphabets. This elicits massive brownie points from them. Maja had told me before leaving London that my efforts in this really would make a difference in how people reacted to me and here is my first experience of that. 

A little about this, and I reserve the right to not get things totally correct here. Japanese is made up of three alphabets, or maybe two alphabets and one extra writing system. The two alphabets are Hirigana and Katakana which have 46 basic characters each. So before even beginning to get into Japanese – unless you just want a few basic phrases for form’s sake – you need to know this. But then those 46 basic characters morph into something else with 25 characters of each system subject to change with either a couple of little dashes – think inverted commas – or a tiny circle placed to the right of them. I’ve not quite got into this yet, so I’m still being tripped up when trying out my fundamental reading skills. There are also a whole bunch of combinations of two symbols – for both systems – that make yet more different sounds. While that sounds like an extra layer of scary, it’s really the equivalent of this example of the English system where an H after an S produces the sound used in squash. 

To these two systems you then have to add Kanga which is all over Japanese and can make an absolute mockery of anyone like me who thinks then can read this thing; you look at a string of the letters you know and suddenly see Kanga symbols interspersed among words making them impossible to decipher. Of course, while I can often read and form words in this way, I’m still of course right at the beginning so have no idea what they mean, but you really do have to start somewhere. Back to Kanga and there are around 50,000 of these symbols, but apparently you ‘only’ need to know 3000 to be able to comfortably read. Another apparently; even Japanese people don’t know all of them. Maja says she knows about 1000 and I’m told that to get to 100 would be a good start. So given that I’ve learned 92 with my Hirigana and Katakana combined, and am inching towards 100 with a few of those others I mentioned included, maybe 100 kanga could be within some kind of reasonable grasp. At least I can get my head around that. The basic concept – I reserve the right to be very wrong here – is that the first two writing systems are used to spell out words while Kanga is made up of symbols – Chinese style – that actually are words. However, certain combinations of symbols can also make up different words or context, or at least that’s how I currently understand it.

I should add here that the great thing about being a beginner with all this and now being in Japan at that beginner stage is that the whole place is basically one big flashcard. Everywhere I go I’m able to practice my recognition of the symbols and at times even look at a string of symbols on a building signage or whatever and be able to read out what it says. Sometimes they spell out English words like this, such as the convenience store chain known as My Basket.

Oh, and also while we’re here in our first bar, a little something on prices. Yes, it is a whole lot cheaper here than London. Depending on where you go, for restaurants and bars, food and drinks prices can be as little as a third of the price of what we’re used to, sometimes even going down to around a quarter of the price.

By the time our new friends leave, the gig they were trying to book still hasn’t quite materialised but they set up a contact with Maja and their friend. So let’s see if this follows through

When we get home we decide that yes we want to get onto the open mic at Ruby Room in Shibuya tomorrow. So we jump on and sign up for it online. Let’s see if that one follows through.

Day three

Tuesday January 13

It does. We wake to see we have a slot at tonight’s open mic at the great time of 9:45.

Although we’re on the bill so to speak, we still arrive at 7 just in case you have to show that you’re actually there. It’s right in the beating heart of Shibuya and off a side street. All confirmed and done and we leave to go and find food for the night. Practically across the street we come across a yaki niku place. We go to these in London all the time. It’s raw meat at the table and a mini table barbecue that you use yourself. The difference here is that we now go for the full wagyu which we would never do at London prices. My first experience of this and just wow. Yes. Believe the hype. Definitely believe it. This is simply the best and most tender steak I’ve ever come across. Just totally different level.

Onto the open mic and a really high consistent level and the place also caters for full bands with a great backline. The concept is you get two songs and 15 minutes. We see if we can do maybe three, as they’re all short. But no. It is two songs. As for the 15 minutes, this is your total allotted stage time including set up. Which is great because so many times you see open mic people take forever to set up and you’re thinking, they’re completely taking someone else’s slot here with all that time, and then they do their thing as well. Here, that simply wouldn’t happen. The two song thing also means that when someone finishes, rather than pull the next person on, they wait until the given time. Which means that this all becomes much more of a social event than many other open mics as there’s chance to chat and mingle between acts with music coming on in all the mini intervals. We really use this to hang with a lot of different people and find a very equal mix between tourists like us and regulars, many of both groups are English and American and the actual bar itself is very English language friendly and there’s even an English barman. But yes, also very much a generous smattering of Japanese people.

Through the night Maja runs through the cocktail list while I try the different beers, including ordering a Red Eye off the beer menu listed at the bar. The English barman asks if I know what it is. No idea. Half beer, half tomato juice. Do you still want it? Ouch. But the thing is, I’ve just cold come out and confidently ordered one. Not asked what it was, just ordered it. I don’t want to back down on this cos if he hadn’t checked he would have just gone ahead and got it anyway. So yeah. I have a beer and tomato juice. It’s not totally unpleasant and I manage it without issue. I even mildly like it. But no, I won’t be rushing to have another one.

Our turn to play and our Tokyo debut is here. And with it, Maja’s first onstage experience of commanding a room in Japanese. As usual we’re going to be doing our off stage all over the audience performing. We have very few good videos of this as it can’t be captured with a static camera and it’s not always clear who you could give a phone to when most of our shows are in places where we don’t know anybody. But we had a good chat with a guy from New York who is leaving for a few days. As well as a performing songwriter, he’s also a keen videographer so we ask if he wouldn’t mind. Oh, he goes far above and beyond and produces what is, we think, one of our very best videos, if not indeed our best. He really works with us as well as doing a lot of different framing and in and out zooming. His name is Bry and you can find him here on Instagram at @bry.paz and his art page is here: @artofbrypaz

And yes, this performance really goes down very well and we even have a lot of people clapping along to our opening song of Sand Bang. This is a slow, atmospheric theatrical song, so not at all our usual slam it down bombastic opening we often do. But wow it really hits. And a lot of the rhythmic clapping has started even before the vocals kick in. This is followed by us doing our bombastic thing with I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). Brilliant. With that, we have now broken our Japan seal.

An hour later and the last act plays and we’re hugely happy to discover that this open mic morphs into a total hang. So many finish and the people just dissolve into the night. None of that here. We leave for the last train around midnight having spent a good amount of time hanging with one of the last acts – Matt from Macclesfield who is in town for a few weeks having recently arrived just like us. We hear from him the next day. He stayed till 3am. It really is a proper after hang.

All this has meant that we’ve really been able to meet and connect with quite a few people, most through Maja mingling in Japanese to be fair. With that there are a lot of mutual follows going on. What, with the guys last night, we have Tokyo friends now. 

Day four

Wednesday January 14

We wake to see a message from the person those guys in the bar were trying to book us with. We’re on for Friday. Mad as.

It should be mentioned here that Maja is still working out her notice period while we’re in Japan so we’re not quite on holiday. Or, not really on holiday at all. Just continuing to do what we do in London but in Japan. Which means that gigs we get to do are also here, which is kind of the point. Which means we’re not pressed or always available for big nights out or whole rounds of sightseeing or getting round the place as much as tourists might. But we’re also here for five weeks so we’re confident we’ll get to stuff. There’s also the conversation that we intend to return, making it something of a semi, or quasi residence, so there really isn’t as much internal pressure to get out and about as much as there might otherwise be.

But having lived in Japan for a total of six years, there are things Maja has greatly missed and is keen to experience again and also by default, to introduce me to. We’re off to one of these tonight and I am completely befuddled as to what it could actually be. This is the concept of hot springs. I get it that you have a cold climate and a volcanic area and that hot springs emerge and could be pleasant to get into, but going out to do it as an activity as Maja is so set on doing today. OK. Let’s just go with it.

But before we do, I have to introduce what this thing is actually called. Not a bath, not hot springs, but onsen. 

Right. I feel I could very easily essay on this for a thousand words or more, and could certainly get a whole newspaper or magazine feature out of this experience but in the interests of catchup and a few other considerations I won’t. But let’s get started and see how we go. It’s like this. The first thing you discover is that you can’t go in with your shoes on. They go in a locker as soon as you enter the premises. Secondly, you’re issued with some kind of Japanese pyjamas. These are for later. I will remain confused about this until much later. Thirdly, me and Maja aren’t doing this thing together, which only increases my apprehension. Instead, she’ll enter the female section and I’ll enter the other one. Fourthly. Once in there, I’m told there will first be a changing room in which I am not to change. Instead, I’m to get totally naked. Only then will I be ready to actually enter the hotsprings experience. OK. We part at our respective entrances with an agreement to meet back here an hour and a half later. An hour and a half? What am I going to do in that time? Sit in a hot bath and stare at the walls? Oh yeah. No devices or books or anything like that goes in here either. And you’re not supposed to talk. Not much anyway, and I’m told that some places insist on total silence at all times. Fun. Seriously. What am I supposed to do in here for the next hour and a half?

Oh damn this onsen thing is an incredible experience. I will learn that there are differences but we’re in this one for now. There are a few different rooms, each with a different kind of communal bath. They kind of look like small swimming pools and are of various depths. These can range from a few inches – you’re supposed to totally lie down in these – to something like waist height. But mostly you can sit comfortably and then be immersed either up to the shoulders or up to the chest depending on depth, and of course, size of your actual self. Oh, you’re not supposed to submerge the head completely anywhere. This is a hygiene thing, so no, this is not any kind of swimming concept. One of the warm to hot pools contains individual jacuzzi ‘booths.’ But rather than the gentle bubbles of a jacuzzi, these are full on power jets coming from different angles in different booths. A booth here is demarcated by a set of railings either side rather than walls. Wow this is an amazing massage experience. Onto other pools and you have a few different temperatures to choose from including very hot; the very hot ones are individual ‘pools.’ They’re more like cauldrons really, so you sit in them and make your own little stew made from, well, yourself. A whole new spin on the phrase, ‘You sit there and stew for a while.’ Other pools are milky in colour with this effect being made up of thousands of micro bubbles which apparently get into your skin and give kind of micro massages. Or something like that. Each pond, or spring area, is slightly different in temperature so each gives a slightly different experience. And then there is the cold pool which is kind of like a light version of an ice bath. Into hot, into cold. A great way for a full body massage.

Also, a few of these pools are outside, although the way they do this makes it hard to tell. All I notice is a massive drop in temperature. At the time I put this down to having entered a refrigerated room, but no. The slatted ceiling is actually a ceiling open to the elements. It’s just that it was night time when we went, so all I looked up to was darkness which I took to be an actual ceiling. The whole thing is incredibly relaxing as the different pools make your muscles go this way then that, not to mention the actual full on massage effect of the jet jacuzzi. And within all this are a sauna and a steam room. Also, if you want to pay extra, there are actual massages available but we don’t go for that part of it.

By the time the hour and a half is up, I feel I could stay in here a whole lot longer. Which you can; the payment covers a 24 hour period. But for now we’re done. And now I discover that this place has a wonderful restaurant which is where we’re headed now. But before that we have to get dressed, but not in our own clothes. Nope. For now we wear the almost robe like pyjamas we were given on the way in. So yep. Definitely a full on Japanese experience.

Day nine

Monday January 19

If I’m not careful we’re going to end up speaking more about food in here than music. And so it is that tonight’s activity is hotpot night out, again going up one of those vertical high streets to the place Maja’s found for us to experience this. The concept here is two different flavoured pans of, I guess you would call them soup. But it’s not for drinking, or eating, or whatever it is one does with soup. Instead, you take all the raw food you want – fish, vegetables, thin slices of meat – and swirl them around in it. The great discovery here is noodles cooked in the liquid. Yes, Maja’s brought us for an experience and that’s just what we have. Complete with an all you can drink part of the concept where beers kind of pour themselves, including angling the glass just the way a bartender would, and where whiskey comes in dispensers that I at first mistake for where you would get your ice cream syrup toppings from. 

Day 10

Tuesday January 20

The trip takes a bit of a turn today as first does the weather. Seriously cold outside and with a kind of wind I’ve never heard before. Full on cliched movie wind. All howling and screaming outside. All day. Pizza and movie night it is. We are not going out in that. Although poor pizza delivery guy still has to.

As the night goes on and the wind outside increases, we start to think we might struggle to sleep tonight. That does happen but it has nothing to do with the wind.

It could be because it’s been getting increasingly colder since we’ve been here, but we decide the sound outside the apartment at night is just too much. This place is a tad louder than you would want, with trains running just a few metres away from us until late at night and then early in the morning – and the walls are very thin. We also have our wind/ air conditioner heating thing in the bedroom which we have to run all night otherwise it would just be too cold in here. And understandably, neighbours around them are also running theirs. At least that’s what we think it is as the noise outside seems like it’s getting worse and worse. It’s been happening around 4am each morning, we kinda think. And that’s been a bit non ideal with being woken up around then and then not being able to get back to sleep, especially once the trains start up again an hour or so later. But now this thing is on when we go to sleep. It makes the walls vibrate with a bass hum right next to and behind us. But even worse, the pillows themselves feel like they have little motors in them whirring away. It’s a sound and a feeling that gets right into your head, making you wonder if sleep will ever be possible again. In fact, if you turned it up a few notches, I think you might just have yourself a sleep deprivation torture device. I’m not even exaggerating for effect. 

Day 11

Wed January 21

Nope. We both feel like we just lay awake all night last night. That’s on top of a few previous nights where we’ve been woken at 4 and then unable to get back to sleep again. It’s been causing us to either sleep later and later or not quite be full versions of ourselves during the days. We’ve been putting a lot of that down to jet lag, but we’re quite deep into things now and jet lag or time difference can no longer be blamed. No. This place is just too loud and too much all night. And come on. If you can help it, you can’t come away like this for five weeks only to be miserable all the time cos it’s impossible to sleep. We had been planning a night or a weekend away with Maja having the idea of a special hotel treat she’d always wanted to try. But now we’re bringing that right forward. Not the special hotel night, but we’re getting out of here at the first opportunity and that means tomorrow with tonight suddenly being our last night here.

Maja’s cancelling our Air BnB lease on this place, we’re going to go Japan travelling and hotelling for a few days and during that she’s going to find somewhere else for us to stay.

With that, tomorrow is now moving day with Maja declaring it is now suddenly holiday and sightseeing time.

But before all that, we do have one last night in here and it’s a night of which Maja has an epic work meeting. Or rather, one of those all day affairs of one meeting after another. Given that we’re nine hours ahead, that means her day begans at 5pm and will go on into the night sometime. Tiny apartment. I really should leave Maja to it. But that works great. I have a plan. We’re only two hours behind Australia, so for the first time ever I’m in a timezone where I can actually watch the tennis Australian Open. Maja, you do what you have to do, I’ll be out watching the tennis. Except it doesn’t quite work out like that. Instead, what I discover is that Japanese people just don’t do pub sport like we do. At all. They simply don’t do it. I have the lovely idea that I can just walk into the nearby city centre and very quickly find a bar that has a TV on that will very obviously have the tennis – the Australian Open uses blue courts so it’s very easy to spot from outside a bar. Except no. Not a thing here at all. OK, I’m making an assumption, but come on. I spend the entire time I’m supposed to be chilling at a bar watching tennis being quite literally chilled out on the street in a totally futile attempt to find such a place. I get really excited when I see a place advertising itself as a sports bar. I go in and see that this is just a bad translation for a kind of machine type casino place. A little further along and having given up hope of any tennis, I see a place advertising itself as a music bar. It’s up one of those vertical high street things. Oh OK. Maybe this is the day I wander about fruitlessly and end up finding a cool live venue for us to play in. I go up to check it out and find it’s an empty bar with a bored guy who comes out and tells me it’s 1000 yen an hour – about a fiver. Yeah. Apart from buying drinks, at many bars you get charged per hour you’re there as well. No thanks. Oh, and that music bar thing. That means it’s a bar that has music playing in it. That’s it. A sound system gently playing a playlist in the background and the place can advertise itself as a music bar. OK. I get it now.

Back out on the street and I admit defeat when I check out a place advertising itself as an English sports bar. I go in and find that fine, they do have sports on. But it’s their one and only channel and right now it’s showing some random football match from the Belgium league. I quickly decide this is like saying you have an Anime bar in the UK, and then when Anime fans find you, you proudly tell them you show episodes of One Piece. OK, One Piece has been going for 26 years and has well over 1000 episodes, but even so, it would be a stretch to describe yourself as an Anime bar. But fine. I’ve been walking for something like three hours by now. I’m cold, tired, totally fed up and disappointed and have totally admitted defeat on what I thought was very much mission possible. I’m also well overdue the beer or two I thought I was going to have ages ago. So I order a beer and sit down with some relief at a warm table, all disappointment forgotten as I savour the chance to finally have stopped and set about on my first steps on my long overdue education of Belgian soccer. I’m still here when Maja’s meetings end and time is called on my failed mission.

Day 12

Thursday January 22

There has often been the sense, partially and at times totally true that The Diaries are part travelogue. Given that we’re often barely even able to keep up, to the extent that hardly anything has yet been written about Mexico due to the non-stop nature of that particular trip and that fact that it’s just so physically difficult to play guitar that much and then use those same hands and fingers to type about it all, if we really did go full travelogue, or maybe continue to try to, this thing would just never get written. So yes, a lot more could be written about all this next bit but I may just blast through some of it. 

Let’s have a go with this part of it. 

We’re heading up into the mountains around Tokyo, first up to Hakone – pronounced (roughly) Hakkon-Ne (as in Nest). A train takes us halfway before we catch a bus that takes us up a breathtaking and twisty ride going high up into the mountains. All the way up above the snowline.

When we get off, the first thing we notice is the silence. Now we realise we practically never have silence. Not just in the room we left today, but just in general. Living in central London, and just general city living. Up here we now discover the existence of actual in the wilderness silence. With that, we set off for our hotel.

There we discover a simple but wonderful and really quite large room with a mountain view. 

Once settled, we go out to the only place around here to the local restaurant and the only place up here that’s open past 5pm. Our host has nicely but firmly reminded us, this is not the city. This is the mountain. And the steepest mountain in Japan at that, she adds.

Like the room, the dinner is simple but wonderful in a homely place that comes complete with a log fire. Then we walk back down the hill freezing in the minus seven temperature and snowy winds. Yep. We’re in the mountains alright.

But once back after dinner, we’re able to enjoy the individually private his and hers onsens  – the natural hot spring baths the hotel offers.

On that natural hot spring experience, these mountains are famous and a much desired tourist location due to the very existence of the naturally volcanically heated water that is provided for the baths throughout the region.

Day 13

Friday January 23

The main local town is someway down the mountain and accessed by a cable car. For this I’m expecting one of those box type things that hangs from cables. But no. Here they’re called ropeways. Or maybe I’m just getting cable cars wrong because what we’re directed to looks more like a small railway platform. And yep, down on the tracks is a thick cable, and coming towards us is a train type vehicle. But this is a really weird thing to get on. It has a series of steps all the way through it, and when you get on you really do look up and down the thing. I’ve never been on anything this steep. And looking down, you see far down the mountain and you’re on a thing that’s literally being held back from total freefall by a cable that’s attached someway back up there. And off we go. Trundling smoothly at a deliberate pace as the cable gets paid out.

Fifteen minutes of so of this and we find ourselves in the very pretty mountain town of Hakon and go out lose ourselves for an afternoon among its mountain streams, waterfalls and artisan food stalls.

When we’ve taken it all in and start to head back we decide to stop off at the tiny town, or village, of Gora to have a look at that. It’s pretty enough, but is indeed tiny, much smaller than we thought. So it’s back for a stock up at the local village shop and back on the cable car up to the hotel. 

Day 14

Saturday January 24

Before heading out yesterday we sent out a bunch of emails to more venues. We’ve had two replies, basically saying the same thing. Please hire my venue. We ignore them.

Now we’re heading out on a day we really could go to town in travelwriter land, but really, I just want to keep up with the pace we’re setting. Let’s see how we go. We’re off for a view of Mount Fuji. 

However, today we are also traveling to the hotel Maja booked for the luxury stay. So this day trip has only been made possible because yesterday while at Hakone railway station, Maja discovered a luggage transfer service. With that it has been arranged that our luggage will be taken away from the hotel here this morning and will be waiting for us at Hakone station when we are ready to make our transfer the next hotel.

So it is, wonderfully unburdened that we take the same cable car we took yesterday, but this time up the mountain. From there it’s a cable car, sorry, ropeway going a long way down. Now this is what I was expecting from a cable car. We really are in one of those boxes suspended from high cables. But where usually these things look somewhat ramshackle and drafty inside with maybe a single bench, or not, with mostly standing, this thing looks like some kind of luxury coach type seating. And really big. Two sections of circular cushioned seating allowing for a capacity of between 20 and 30 people. We’re in there with less than half that so we’re able to get ourselves right to the front and have an incredible view all the way down. Although no Mount Fuji yet. I also discover that this is Maja’s first ever time in one of these things and she’s fascinated. 

As we’re drifting down, we get our first view of the fabled mountain. Sporadic at first through the peaks, but quickly coming more and more into view. Mount Fuji. Just every bit as majestic and enormous and totally dominating as I’d always imagined, althoug. Among this mountainous region it stands almost totally alone, almost mocking the peaks around it which have the temerity to call themselves mountains. 

By the time we reach our destination on some kind of plateau, it’s come fully into view, and we find we’re on some kind of natural viewing platform on which is situated a geology museum and large visitor centre and restaurant. But before going into any of them we need to take this whole thing in and get some amazing photographs. But oh my it’s cold, and with a vicious, freezing wind which whips up the snow around us. As much as we’ve waited for this, this is enough. We’ve seen it, we’ve got our photos, can we please get inside now? We are still at an altitude of almost a thousand metres and have proved beyond doubt that we were not built for mountain climbing. Yes we’d probably be wearing better clothes if we were having a go at that, but even so, we are pretty well wrapped up. But just no. Inside now please.

First, into the museum for a fascinating look at the history of the region to see how it was created through the millenia. Here, we also discover how the hot water originates in the mountains and is funneled to the various businesses and, I guess, private homes which use it. I don’t massively understand it so I won’t try to explain it here, but I will say that the people doing it have what looks like a really difficult and cold job, but they also seem to have a lot of pride in their work and what it means for the local community and how it drives the tourism of the area.

Afterwards it’s lunch in a huge and basic restaurant overlooking the beautiful lake we’re about to sail across. And in those things. Are those pirate ships? They sure look like it. There are two of them and they totally dominate the lake, their fluffy white classic sails soaring high above it. These things come complete with the sculptured frontage which flies across the water, leading the way and pointing in the direction you’re sailing. With great timing, just as we’re finishing lunch we see the ship has just started embarking so we casually make our way out to join in. Then we’re on the thing and ready to leave. Inside it’s full of smoothly carved benches and polished staircases. Practical, but quite luxurious looking. And once we’re out on the open lake, we just have to go upstairs to the top deck to take in the stunning 360 view. And to our left, there it is. Mount Fuji looking over us and making sure we cross safely. We also pass a small shoreline temple. Half an hour of this and we’re on the other side and there’s one more sight to take in. This is the Hakone Temple complex which we reach by walking first along the shoreline, then through a wonderful and wide forest footpath. And there it is. The ancient temple and grounds which we take in for about half an hour before retracing our steps through the forest, past the lake again and then to the local train station. Then it’s onto Hakone station which is where the plan all falls into place perfectly and we pick up our luggage. With that, we are at our next destination and walk through this now familiar town to our hotel. 

We arrive at 4pm, with check-in having been no earlier than 3:30. It’s amazing to think how much we’ve crammed into today and how much travelling we’ve done; by cable car, rope way, ship, then train, all via Mount Fuji and a forest temple complex. And it’s not even close to getting dark. And we have yet more on the agenda. Because this is no ordinary hotel. When you think about activities, this hotel we’ve booked into is the activity. I have no idea what’s coming. Maja totally does, and she is on it.

First, the room. If the last one was large, this one is absolutely enormous. Actually it’s more an apartment than a hotel room, and much bigger than our Camden apartment at that. For starters it has an entry way larger than a hotel room we stayed in in the UK a few months ago. Directly in front of that is a whole bathroom complex. Quite a big washroom, separate door for a walk-in wet room of shower and bath, and on the other side, another door behind which are two toilet areas.

Then back into the entry way and the main door – off to the right of that as you enter from the bathroom – slides open to reveal a cavernous room. There’s no bed, and Maja explains that this will be brought in and put up later by the staff. It’s also now that I discover that we will be eating in this room, waited on by staff who will bring us a set dinner. Hang on. Luxury hotel? And you don’t get to decide what to have for dinner? Oh. OK. Didn’t see that coming. Well let’s roll with it. There has to be a reason. ‘Oh,’ says Maja. ‘There is a reason.’ Oh. OK then.

But before dinner there’s the other significant aspect of this place that we have to attend to. The famous onsen. We have one outdoors and one indoors. Given that males and females remain parted, times are assigned for when which sex can use which onsen. Maja gets first chance of the outdoor one. It’s now that I discover the next part of this experience. We’re not going to be wearing our own clothes. Instead we’re going full native and dressing ourselves in yakutas – kind of like kimonos but a lot looser and less formal. With these we will walk across the complex to the onsens. Which means going outside in the zero to sub zero temperatures wearing little more than essentially a loose, mostly open dressing gown. And when we return to the room, these will be what we’re wearing for dinner. Oh. OK then.

I go and do my thing and when I come out and into the carpark, Maja is just entering the complex. She’s already done her thing, nipped out to the local shop and come back with beer. Like I said. She is on it. I should add that she did change out of the yakuta to do that.

Now it’s back to the hotel room to chill for a while and wait for dinner. Just what could this thing be?

Dinner isn’t so much served as ceremonially brought and presented. By two people. And it isn’t like you get a single meal on a plate, and maybe a starter and dessert. No. This is a whole array of items laid out before us in ten little plates and dishes. That’s ten little plates and dishes each. Including meal size portions of sashimi on ice and some kind of luxurious wagyu beef, tofu and vegetable dish.

Once this has been served, the more senior host wishes us goodbye and a pleasant evening with a bow that ends up with her on her knees and then fully head and hands to the floor. I have to say that I feel quite uncomfortable with this level of subservience and choose to see it as more performative than anything, although Maja says this is just the way it is with these kinds of things. Oh. OK then. 

Respecting the surroundings and the occasion itself, no computers or devices come out at all during our stay here. It really is the most spectacular kind of date night. And indeed, date weekend. 

Day 15

Sunday January 25

Because we get to repeat it pretty much all again the next morning as we’re woken with something of very similar size and presentation for breakfast before being able to head off to the onsen again. For breakfast, think a whole variety of fish dishes – cooked and raw, so more sashimi on ice again – and Japanese variations on eggs and meat concepts.

We’re checked out by early afternoon and on our way to our next hotel, this time on the coastal town of Atami.

On the way, our second train starts to hug the coast. With that I get my first ever look at the Pacific Ocean. We check a few map bits and see that what we’re looking at goes either to the west coast of the United States or the east coast of Australia, or through the huge gap between both of them and all the way to the Antarctic. So basically we are looking out at sea that goes all the way to the bottom of the world with just sporadic island nations in between. I’ve never seen anything so vast in my life, and the place we’re going to sits right on the edge of all this.

Out of Atami train station and we’re right into the bustling city and looking straight downhill. Our route to the hotel takes us through a busy pedestrianised area where almost every shop left and right looks like another new thing for the photo album. It’s all steep downhill. And once through this the mountainside gets even steeper and it becomes a challenge to control our wheeled luggage even though the roads have started to wind more and more. This hill goes all the way to sea level and we find ourselves on the edge of a coastal path with the blue, almost instantly deep Pacific to our left and an enormous crest of high rise hotels to our right. The whole seafront is like this. As well as the stunning view, replete with large pleasurecraft and yachts, we’re just relieved to be finally walking on level pavement and not fighting the gravity draining slopes anymore. Our hotel is at the far end of this promenade we can see, just before the shoreline rises again to a hill on which sits the dominant Japanese castle feature of Atami.

It’s too early to check in when we arrive so we just leave our luggage secure in the large reception area and head out to explore the area.

For lunch we find what looks like a ramshackle shack in a row of ramshackle shacks just before the coastal area rises again. This is the end of the commercial area and the local cafe type place we’ve singled out, just yards from the sea, serves up the the most amazing fish I think either of us has ever had. It comes barbecued and we also take our own noodle dish each for an incredible homecooked experience. 

As for Maja, she waits a lifetime to ride a ropeway – cable car to me – and two come along at once. But after the luxurious and massively long Mount Fuji ropeway car, we’re now in the more familiar territory of the smaller, draftier variety with the single bench where really, everyone just stands. And this is also apparently the shortest such ropeway in Japan. OK. I’m calling them ropeways now, alright?

This castle isn’t the ancient structure one might imagine. Instead, it’s a modern kind of re-enactment of what was imagined might have been here had plans gone ahead to build such a thing in the 1400s. The plans were actually there apparently. The ability to see through the project wasn’t. So the local council built one for them in the 1950s and here it stands as a stunning modern feature of what might have been. 

Once at the top of this hill overlooking the ocean, we have to stop for a while to take in the oceanview and the whole hotel city spread before us. Beyond that the mountain rises to take its place among the mountains all around. And somewhere in there is the city centre we rolled down earlier today. As we’re trying to take some pictures, a group of three young Japanese students – two girls and a guy – ask us to take their picture with the backdrop. We do, then they return the favour, then the three of them get very impressed and excited to hear Maja’s Japanese and the three of them get talking very animatedly. After this, Maja says to me, ‘They’re our castle friends now. We’re all going up there together.’ 

And into the castle we go to see the whole series of museums and art galleries in there including whole sets of Samurai outfits and weapons. This includes a Samurai sword in a see-through perspex box that you can actually lift from the handle. It’s much heavier than you might think from the way you see them casually and expertly wielded and swung around in the movies. Through the castle we go, all the way to the top – six stories up and now 120 metres above sea level. From there we have the place all to ourselves and can walk all around the place from the outside. Through all this we get to know each other a bit and I can introduce the girls Lucy and Tama and their friend Dai. They’re all from Yokohama. Lucy speaks great English, Tama is a singer/songwriter, and Dai is a student teacher. Tama and Dai do also have some English so I’m able to communicate a little with them, but for me, it’s mostly with Lucy.

Once outside again, we all decide to continue the evening on together and head into the city. But first we have to go and check into the hotel. They come with us and wait in the lobby while we go and discover we’ve been upgraded to a seaview room, but not just that. Again we find ourselves in what is more like an apartment than a hotel room. Bedroom, living room, small kind of kitchen area and a really quite nice bathroom. And that living room – the whole front wall is a glass patio door leading out onto a balcony and, as promised, looking right over into the bay and out to the Pacific. This is just incredible.

Now we go back down to meet our new friends and head out to find a wonderful fish restaurant and a whole bunch of drinks. During this the girls tell us they have gone online and bought tickets for our show in Sunday in Music Bar Melodia in Nakana. As conversation develops, there’s talk of us going to Yokohama to hang out with them sometime, and when it’s time to leave, we all decide to continue the party deeper into the town. This sees us walk all the way up the hill we battled earlier in the day and right up the train station area again. We’re in search of a karaoke box for the party finale to the evening and to a day that saw us with that luxurious breakfast all the way back in the mountains of Hakone.

Our friends really don’t want this evening to end and stay with us almost till the very last available minute as we all join together to belt out what must the most joyous and emphatic rendition of Don’t Look Back In Anger I’ve ever been part of as we all stand in front of the big karaoke screen, arms around each other and just sing like we’re trying to rip the very sound out of our throats. Oh wow. This is the kind of thing this song was made for.

When it’s over, we go downstairs for a very emotional but quick goodbye because they really have pushed it to the last minute. I actually couldn’t believe it when I discovered how little time they had till their train went but that they also wanted to do one last song. They have to run – run – for the last train to Yokohama. When we get back to the hotel after a much more leisurely end to the evening, we receive a text from them to say the doors closed almost the second they entered the train.

Day 16

Monday January 26

Once again another…‘we wake to.’ This time it’s a reply from Rokudemonai. In this message we discover we are listed as special guests to the headliners and will be on fourth in a six band bill. We now have a full timetable for the event, including our soundcheck time.

Our activity today is very little. We want to enjoy the room and the view. Maja has to work and I can catch up on some writing. Later in the afternoon we take a walk out on the seafront and then it’s a simple dinner in a place called Jonathan’s, a Japanese chain family restaurant. A comfort food type of place.

Also during today Maja gets our new apartment sorted which is an Air BnB in a place called Katama which she knows a little, as she lived not too far from there when she was in Tokyo.

With that, we also get onto Ruby Room to organise our open mic slot tomorrow. That comes back as confirmed, so we’re all set for another moving day and night out and performance for tomorrow. Oh we really hope this place doesn’t come with any hidden issues.

Day 17

Tuesday January 27

Right. We’re now in the new place and the relief is just huge. We love it love it love it. A quite solid modern apartment with no noise issues at all and in the middle of its own city centre. This is Kamata and just walking through it felt so different to the out of the way neighbourhood we were in before. We loved that neighbourhood and its proximity to its own city, but here we are actually right among it all. Kamata is in Ota City, in the south of the main city. We’re on the second floor – that’s ground, first, second – and have a balcony overlooking the length of a narrow river with our place just off to the side of the bridge across it which goes immediately into our local area part of Kamata City. To the right of us on the balcony we can actually see all the way down to the Sky Tree. I think it would be cool to have a walk there sometime. But when I look at the map, I see the view is somewhat misleading. That thing is 20 kilometres away.

And yes, this moving day began with us on the coastal city of Atamy where we took our time with check in for the new place not available until mid afternoon. So why rush away? The hotel allowed us to keep our luggage in the lobby so we were free to have a final full morning walking out and along the seafront and off to find another new seafood restaurant. This one kept a large amount of live shellfish and a few fish in tanks right there as you walked in, meaning the shellfish platter was as fresh as it was possible to be. A really special last experience in our coastal city stay.

Now we’re settled into our next apartment we get ready for another visit to Ruby Room in Shibuya. wWhen we arrive we’re very much welcomed back after missing last week. We’ve only been here once and already we’re being made to feel like semi regulars. Well, we’ve certainly made some kind of impact because after we play tonight, a guy called Brandon, one of the main organisers and promoters round here, tells us that he has an event on next week for which one of the acts is looking a bit doubtful. Would be able to fill in if they pull out? Wow. OK. In the event, the band doesn’t pull out, but I think we can now put that down as the first Tokyo promoter who’s on board with us.

Towards the end of the night another familiar face turns up. Matt who we met the last time we were here. We have to get last trains so we don’t have too much time to hang, but we do arrange to get together away from here sometime for a proper hangout. We pencil in Friday.

Day 18

Wednesday January 28

Just a total chill day today. Although we do finally say, oh go on then to the ridiculously cheap whiskey prices in the supermarkets – routinely seven or eight quid for something that would be from 25 to even 30 something in the UK. We buy an ‘expensive’ one for a tenner. When we get back home and look this one up we see it goes for over 100 quid in the UK if you’re lucky enough to find a place that has it. That’ll do. Bizarrely it’s only whiskey, or at least spirits, that are so cheap they’re almost free. Bottles of wine are about the same price as bottles of whiskey, so only marginally cheaper than UK prices while beer prices in supermarkets really aren’t much cheaper than you’d find in the UK. Yes I’m sure there are tax and ABV formulas that explain all this, but to the layperson’s eye it’s all quite confusing and fascinating. However, it at least explains why highballs are hugely popular here. This is a tall refreshing drink of whiskey and soda water which gives that nice feeling of a cold beer – whiskey flavoured instead of course – but at a fraction of the price of a beer.

Day 20

Friday January 30

You know, I’ve just come in here and have absolutely no idea what happened to Day 19. There were no notes, nothing. So no. I didn’t forget to put it in. I just totally forgot to even write about it, and at some unknown point in the recent past, I completely forgot about what we did that day. I’ve also just done what I often do when I’m not sure what happened on a given day and gone and had a look at my timeline on maps. This serves a similar function to going through any kind of Whatsapps for a certain day. But no. Nothing. We really did probably just stay in all day and then have an uneventful wander out in the local area later on. 

Back to today, and it just so happens that today is men’s semi final day of the Australian Open. To avoid a repeat of my comically aborted attempt to go out and see the tennis we do some research this time and find one bar that is showing it. Footnik in Ebisu, Shibuya. Advertising itself as a British football and sport pub, this one really is the real deal as opposed to the shallow shadow of a pale imitation that I found on my odyssey. The game is somewhat underway when we have the idea to check this out so we quickly come up with a plan. We’re going to head over there right now, and Matt can come and meet us when he’s able to get away from his own work. Then we’ll head off to a yakiniku place where Matt can experience Japan with someone who really knows their way around the language and the menus.

Into Footnik and yes, it really does do what we were hoping a place like this would do. They have a bunch of TVs and also just about any sports channel you can get and yes, of course they have the tennis. Not only that, they have a wonderful selection of beers we’ve not seen anywhere else in Japan, and they’ve augmented this with their very own creation. A half and half guinness. Yep. the bottom half lager and the top half guinness. And the two halves remain separate throughout. Although there really is a unique taste and texture sensation when you get to the mid section and they’ve very mildly mixed.

While ordering at the bar we get chatting to an English guy who soon introduces himself to us as Ben. Discovering we’re here to play and basically get to know venues, he suggests we check out a place called What The Dickens just down the road. He’s a regular in there and adds that the place is run by a Scottish guy called John. He’s had the place around 20 years apparently. And while we’re here we discover that although Ben himself has been in Tokyo for a good 15 years or so, he’s actually from Kentish Town. Oh wow. Yep. Lived about five minutes walk away from The Carrol, where I lived for six years, and where me and Maja started before heading off for the Irish adventure at the beginning of all this.

Matt joins us when we’re about an hour or so into a thrilling Zverev Alcaraz match, with us having missed the first hour ourselves. So we’re now deep into it. We all settle down for a while, not least because he simply cannot leave without at least trying the half and half. But the match looks like it’s going to go on quite a long time so we decide to be grateful we caught at least some of the tennis and head out. The next day we will discover it is the longest ever AO semi final at just under five and a half hours. So yeah, we really did have a yakiniku date to get to and staying for the conclusion would have totally banjaxed that.

Yakiniku is as spectacular as ever and, being a particularly posh one is a great introduction to Matt of the concept. This done, it’s time to go check out What The Dickens. I had come across the name in my Japanese venue research but hadn’t approached them as it struck me as a blues bar so not appropriate to us. But on seeing the place, we see that it really could be. Yes there is a blues band playing but there is very much a general rock’n’roll vibe and we fit right into that. It’s also very busy – well it is a Friday night – so we don’t get much more than a quick hello with John and a lady called Hiromi who Ben told us is in charge of the music here. Yes, we will definitely try to get ourselves in here again before we leave and have a bit of a better chat and introduction with them. All that’s left now is to get right into the vibe of the place and enjoy the wonderful band they have on tonight.

Day 21

Saturday January 31

We’ve made plans to meet Matt today in a place called Harajiki, one of the special areas. Something of a fashion mecca and with a quite wonderful central street that’s home to all kinds of sweet and cake and ice cream shops. And, as we discover, the long, longer, longest spirally fried potato kebab type things. Yep. The Longest Potato. And yep, we have to try it and it really is quite the experience. Like a superlong chip, but presented in a superlong spiral.

But before all this we’ve decided, with our first full length show coming up tomorrow, to book another karaoke box for a rehearsal. We could probably have rehearsed in our wonderful new apartment but we’re not yet aware that not only is it fantastically sound insulated, but we also have hardly any neighbours. But let’s continue with the karaoke box concept anyway. But oh wow. This one really is a box. Tiny tiny tiny. Like rehearsing in a cupboard with a TV screen in it. But in here today Maja tells me that people rent these for so many other reasons than karaoke, basically because of the cardboard walls and the preference in apartment living for virtual silence. So if people want to have a hang out, maybe do some work, or even sleep for a while, this is where they come. It’s a whole social structure in here, for which we’ve decided our thing is to use them for rehearsal.

This one is very nearby home, so afterwards, guitar gets returned and then it’s off to Harajiki and a date with a very long potato. And a wander round with Matt when he comes to join us. Among all this as we just take in the sights and sounds of the place, we come across a totally new concept for us. Yes we’re aware of animal cafes. Cat cafes and the like where loads of cats roam around. But what we find now isn’t a cafe so much, as just a whole animal hang out. The animals in question – miniature pigs. Yep. Pigs. Maja is completely overtaken by the possibility and we have to go in. All three of us. The whole bright lit and coloured room is its own advert from the street as people crowd round the window and take pictures of the people and the pigs inside. And soon it’s going to be our turn. In we go and take our place on the floor, leaning against the wall and with blankets individually around us, although as we will learn, these can slip all the way down and become all but nothing. So it’s you, your clothes and however many miniature pigs have decided to come and make you their cosy place. When I say miniature, I mean that the smallest pigs are the size of a shoe. And the biggest, not quite even quite being as big as a decent sized housecat – Maine Coons not included in this simile.

Day 22

Sunday February 1

OK. Here we go. We’ve done our thing at a few bars and played a couple of open mics. Now we’re ready to take on our first full show in Tokyo which will be at Music Bar Melodia. This is to be a five band bill with us on third in a five band lineup. It’s a 13th anniversary show for the venue and will be headlined by a solo act going by the name of King. Coming on dressed as an English king, this guy had quite a moment in the sun of Japanese fame, winning a Japanese Grammy or two along the way and being courted by LA producers and record companies. This was a decade or so back, but recent enough that when we mention this to some older guys in a bar a week or so later, they are hugely impressed that we played with him. He’s a bit more than a one hit wonder, but his (top)shelf life was by design limited, but groundbreaking in its era. He took famous rock and pop songs, translated them into Japanese, then brought them to Japanese audiences as a one man rock cover band. But not just translating them to Japanese. He adapted them lyrically to make them totally work for Japanese audiences where direct translations wouldn’t have done. He basically made his own market and cornered it. But with that market being somewhat open, cos it was in the end just covers and not his own material, I guess all the other corners remained available and got taken by everyone else.

But that still doesn’t take away from the fact that he got there first, remains the original, and retains the cachet of chart fame and success and Grammy and LA glitter. So it’s with some joy that we see him bouncing along approvingly at our soundcheck, out of his royal regalia and just looking like a regular punter. 

It’s also today that I get a look at what it can be like playing a Japanese bill as the venue owner pulls everyone in after soundcheck and we all stand in a circle, introduce ourselves and all bow to each other in a mark of respect and support. Even more, one of the organisers has gone out of their way for us and invited his Swedish girlfriend – and Japanese speaker – along to be introduced to Maja and to make Maja feel a little more at home. This girlfriend, who of course also speaks English, also happens to be called Maja and is a great support for us in this new environment. We are even more delighted when, also here to support us come our friends we met at Amaty. The Yokohama girls Susy and Tama. How great it is to see them walk through the door, and then to have them front and centre when we take to the stage.

Soundcheck has been great, and showtime is a fantastic success. Afterwards, while everyone was perfectly polite and proper to us beforehand, there now feels like an extra level of respect and acceptance as we’re welcomed as peers having proved ourselves in our first real Japanese arena. First Mexico, now Japan. We’re proving, maybe only to ourselves at this stage, that these songs work internationally to people who, in many cases, don’t speak any English at all. It’s also worth mentioning here that many of these songs have also been played across Europe. 

So while we do think we have really good lyrics with interesting and funny subject matters, hopefully with a hint of cleverness and intelligence in there as well, even when you take all that away, something about the songs and their rhythms, melodies and dynamics, and of course our actual performance, is proving to be universal. And I will also add here that this is among audiences, all over the world at this stage, who have never heard us or any of our songs before.

With our bit done we’re able to rejoin and become part of the audience, and yes, the highlight is indeed the star of the show, King. A quite wonderfully entertaining performance even though I can understand absolutely nothing of what he sings. He performs with a (really quite loud) guitar amp blasting from directly behind him, and backing tracks. And just a really great fun energy, not least on the cover of Van Halen’s jump, for which he Japaneses up by getting us all to ‘Pyong!’ instead. And within all that fun, he proves to be a quite wonderful technical guitarist, nailing all the rock solos, including the amazing genre defining solo of Jump. Or Pyong as we will surely now forever know it.

It’s also lovely that when we’re done here and all packed up, our Yokohama friends are still around so we head out into the relatively young night to go and have dinner with them.

Day 23

Monday February 2

It’s with some excitement that we receive the venue’s video of our show last night and I download it and prepare for first listen. Oh no. It’s absolutely terrible. Not our performance or the audience or anything. But through the sound desk, something very strange has happened to our guitar. While we didn’t notice this in the room sound at all, the overwhelming thing we can hear is just a totally dominant low string, like it’s chugging away with barely any chordal playing evident at all. Oh no. This is totally unusable as any kind of representative video of us playing in Japan. We will learn later that this is not actually the fault of any soundman or anyone else, which is what we’re thinking right now. But we’ll get to that.