The Last Day

The last day of our trip found us almost totally out of energy. Certainly not enough energy to take the 3 hour round trip back into Tokyo. And given the difficulty we had actually purchasing anything with our “international” credit card, that’s probably a good thing. Far too many interesting little things that a cashed-up nerd could spend the rest of the holiday money on.

Instead, we decided to explore Narita itself. This was looking to be a very bad decision originally, because apart from the convenience store, and a pretty decent restaurant from which we had some lunch, there was nothing else to see. Eventually, however, we wandered around some back streets, and stumbled, quite accidentally, onto a sprawling temple compound.

The best part of being an atheist is that you can take religious iconography and architecture at face value, rather than having any part of your belief structure embedded in your view of it. Actually, the best part of being an atheist is the ability eat meat AND being able to worship graven images without risking going to hell, or coming back as a snail. But that does not progress the story as well.

The temple at Narita was not the greatest of all temples that I’ve ever seen. But it was an extremely peaceful, pleasant undertaking, strolling around the immaculately groomed lawns and paths, watching the people more in tune with themselves than I will ever be, and generally go about their day. There were quite fewer tourists than one might expect at something like this, but then again there seemed to be fewer tourists in the whole of Japan than one might expect. Maybe it was the time of year that was keeping them away, but I was grateful for the break.

The utter highlight of the temple grounds, and perhaps the entire trip was my adventures at the vending machine. Being thirsty, I figured that a nice chilled green tea drink would go down a treat. I looked at all of them drinks in the machine, picked a likely candidate, and away I went.

Rather than green tea, what I had managed to procure was best described as tasting like a sour, chilled, weak beef cordial. I never managed to find out what it actually was, but I was incredibly thirsty, and incredibly out of change to replace said beef cordial with something palatable. So down it went. Those who know me know that I will pretty much put anything in my mouth…at least once. This progresses even to the point of spraying anti-perspirant in there on a dare one time.

This “drink” was, without a doubt, the single worst thing I have ever put in my mouth. It made me hungry for the stinky cheese I could not choke down on our train trip from Paris to Amsterdam, simply so I could get rid of the taste of it. Awful.

Having fully explored the temple, given our somewhat lacking spirituality a slight boost (from nothing, to just a sliver above nothing, really), and having successfully killed several hours, we headed back up to the hotel, grabbed the shuttle to the airport, and took our final road journey of the holiday.

The Loud!

Last night we went to see Korn, Disturbed and Hatebreed. 10 Years was also playing, but we did not show up for them, because, frankly, who cares about 10 years? I hope you appreciate that guys, I’ve just about guaranteed your future success, just so the universe can smack me about the head with my bad choices

We also caught the tail end of Hatebreed, and while their music on CD is not particularly memorable, they actually sound really good live. The vocals are not as tortured, and the music appears to have some melody. Things noticeably lacking from their recorded material.



Disturbed were next, and I have to say, probably sounded better than Korn. The volume was not ridiculous, you could hear each part clearly, and the vocalist was absolutely on the target with his singing. I’d not listened to much Disturbed in the past, in fact only having heard the one song (you all know which one). We had put their CD on at home before the concert, so I was not totally out of my depth, but I think not listening to Disturbed is something I will have to remedy very shortly. It was also quite refreshing to hear the lead singer say that he did not care how you obtained his music (CD, download, theft) as long as you listened to it. It’s nice to get permission sometimes.



Then came Korn. Now, don’t get me wrong. I really like Korn. They were, until a couple of years ago, one of my favourite bands. They really hit their stride with the Follow the Leader album. The concert last night however, was extremely disappointing. Granted, I had not actually listened to their new album (the reviews were not good however, and even Kristie said it took her 10-15 listens to get in to it), so a lot of the material they played I did not know. That makes it a bit hard to judge, but I will say that I had not heard that much Tool before seeing them live, but it did nothing to lessen my enjoyment of the show at all. The volume of the parts was all so loud that everything drowned everything else out, to the point where it was actually difficult to recognize the songs of theirs that I really liked!

I am sure that from the POV of the mixing desk guys, the sound was awesome, and I understand the need to make it audible at the far reaches of the auditorium, but come on guys. Even the slow parts of the songs I knew really well sounded distorted. The only parts you could understand clearly were when Jonathon was making his random noises in Freak on a Leash!

On the extremely good side, I finally got a chance to wear my one and only band shirt. Technically the second band shirt I have owned, but I have disowned the C+C Music Factory shirt many moons ago.

Zombies in Toyland

Our plan was simple, take an overnight plane, sleep on the flight, and then enjoy a full day in Tokyo.

Funny how things never work out the way you planned, isn’t it? Our of all the flights we were taking on the holiday, the one where we absolutely needed to sleep was the one on which we could not get an exit aisle seat. For those who aren’t aware, I’m quite big, and don’t fit particularly well in the normal cattle-class seats. As an aside, I don’t see how anyone could fit well in those seats, but being both long, and wide, I fit less well than other people.

So we arrive in Japan at about 8 in the morning, having left Germany at 1pm the previous afternoon. It was only a 12 hour flight, but in “real time” it was quite a bit more than that. Of course, against our planning, we’d managed to get maybe 2 hours sleep. So not a good start.

We could not check in when we got to the hotel, so we decided to head off into Tokyo, and look around. Being a nerd, the place I really wanted to go was Akihabara, the place to buy all your nerdly items, from electronics, to toys, to videogames. Of course, by the time we got there, we were in no condition to wander around and spend lots of money. Money, by the way we did not have. We’d changed all our remaining Euros at the hotel, but that was hardly enough money to buy our train tickets. It’s damnably hard to get international money from an ATM in Japan. We asked several people, and in the end found that only Post Office controlled ATMs allow international cards.

Cash in hand, we started to stumble around the shops, looking at cool things that we will never see in Australia. But I was too tired to actually consider the purchase of anything. After a couple of hours of aimless wandering, we decided that the best idea we could think of was to go back to the hotel, and try and sleep, and start fresh the next morning.

Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan, does it…