For Halloween, my son and I took the train down to Kawasaki for probably the biggest Halloween event in Japan. I think I heard someone say 2009 was the 8th year they have been doing the Kawasaki Halloween Parade. Signs said that Kawasaki is Japan’s Halloween city. Kawasaki was smart to grab up this holiday as the Japanese seem to really be getting into Halloween.

I read somewhere that sales of Halloween goods were up between 20 and 40% this year in Japan. Somewhere else I read that items sitting on shelves quickly flew off the shelf once the packaging was changed to a Halloween theme.

The stores were packed and the crowds were large on Halloween in Kawasaki. The parade could probably be even bigger if they had the space. As it is now they limit the number of participants to 3,000 (3 groups of 1,000 with traffic let through in between the groups). Probably 20,000 – 30,000 spectators pour into Kawasaki, like us, to watch.

The above photo is of a small piece of the crowd. The main reason I took this picture is because of the sign in the upper right corner though. Mizonokuchi (溝口) is a place in Kawasaki that I lived back in late 1988 and early 1989. New Year’s Eve 1988 was the last time I was at the Kawasaki Station. Nearly 21 years later I came back for a different holiday. I’ve gone through Kawasaki on the train many times since, but this was my first time setting foot down in the place since the 80s.

I have loads of pictures and two more videos. You’ll get to see a few of the pictures and the other two videos if you check back over the next few days.

Posted on October 31st, 2009 under Japan. Tags: halloween, kawasaki, people, video. Comments: 4

Slayer was the headliner for day two (Sunday) of Loud Park.

Tom Araya, Slayer’s bassist and vocalist, didn’t speak very much, which made sense given that most of the crowd wouldn’t understand him anyway. Some others (Rob Zombie for instance) seemed completely clueless to the fact that everyone in the world can’t understand English.

The above photo was taken at the moment when Tom said oyasuminasai (お休みなさい) at the end of the show. He, and the Children of Bodom keyboardist Janne Wirman, were the only non-Japanese artists to go beyond arigato in Japanese.

I have seen Jeff Hanneman live in the 80s, 90s, and now at Loud Park in 2009. He is not aging well (unlike Megadeth members who look better now than they did twenty years ago). As someone appearing on a stage in front of thousands, more than a hundred nights a year, he should really take better care of himself. He can barely waddle from one side of the stage to the other. If I ever see Slayer again I won’t be surprised to see him come out in a muumuu next time, instead of an XXXL jersey, at the rate he is going.

My favorite part of the above photo is the guy’s foot in the air. When I was in the front row for Outrage it was fun to see the crowd surfers once they made it to the stage. They would bow to security before heading to the side and back into the crowd. Within a few minutes the same guys would be bowing once again to the security guards.

Slayer bids farewell to the Tokyo crowd in the above photo. Hanneman appears to have already made a quick exit to get first dibs on the post-show buffet.

I believe the only song Tom gave any kind of description of before playing was “Mandatory Suicide”.

Posted on October 20th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: loudpark, metal, slayer, video. Comments Off on Slayer @ Loud Park

On the day before Loud Park was to begin, Ace Frehley backed out. To fill in for his spot Loudness was added to the bill. I was so happy. I saw Ace before, and have seen Kiss with him. I’m not a fan of either his solo act or Kiss. Loudness, on the other hand, was one of my favorite bands in the 1980s. “Disillusion” and “Thunder in the East” are their best two CDs, IMO, and they played a few songs off of them.

Before a band hit the stage the giant screen between the two main stages flashed their name as seen in the above picture.

This was the scene a moment later before Loudness made their first public appearance in quite a while.

Loudness’s long-time drummer, Munetaka Higuchi, died in 2008. Their new drummer is Masayuki Suzuki. Minoru Niihara is the vocalist.

Akira Takasaki is the brilliant guitarist of Loudness. One of his guitars had glowing frets. You can see the glowing frets better in the video at the bottom.

These pics aren’t great, but given that I was more than 100 yards from the stage and the lighting was poor, they aren’t that bad.

The setlist (set list?) was something like this:
Fire Of Spirit
Hellrider
Crazy Nights
Heavy Chains
Crazy Doctor
In The Mirror
Are’s Lament
Like Hell
S.D.I.
Hit The Rails

There is another image of Loudness in this entry.

Finally, a video showing what the small, Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7 (ZS3 in some countries) can do. The audio is very good given the size of the arena (absolutely HUGE) and the fact that it is indoors. The sound bounces around quite a bit, but the TZ7 captures the audio pretty well. When in focus (which the TZ7 sometimes had problems with given the low lighting and hands occasionally thrusting into view) the zoom on the TZ7 sometimes provides a clearer picture with video than stills shot with the same camera.

Posted on October 19th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: loudpark, metal, people, tz7 zs3, video. Comments: 2

Loud Park was the first time in 19 years that I witnessed Megadeth live. Before that was 1987 at The Stone in San Francisco on the “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?” tour. Dave Mustaine has really mellowed over the years. He was positively happy and in a good mood throughout the set.

Both Dave and Chris Broderick, Megadeth’s recent guitar addition, are in really good shape for their ages–for any age really. Maybe they have hired a band chef and personal trainer or something.

Dave, and the band, came out for an encore at the time they were supposed to be done. (All other bands, both days, stuck exactly to the schedule.) He said they would let him squeeze in another song. Then he said, in a way that is totally Dave Mustaineish, he doesn’t like to follow the rules. He did technically play only one more song (Holy Wars), but in the middle he threw in an extra song (Mechanix) so Megadeth ended up going way over time. Everyone loved it. Judas Priest, to stay on schedule, had to start their set just a few minutes later.

The setlist (or set list) was something like this:
Set The World Afire
Wake Up Dead
Hangar 18
Skin O’ My Teeth
Headcrusher
She-Wolf
In My Darkest Hour
Tornado of Souls
1,320
Devil’s Island
Kick The Chair
Sweating Bullets
Rattlehead
Symphony Of Destruction
Peace Sells
Holy Wars Intro (Mechanix) Holy Wars Conclusion

Here is Megadeth doing Hangar 18. Crank it up. This video came out pretty good considering how crazy the crowd was around me.

Posted on October 17th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: concert photography, loudpark, megadeth, metal, video. Comments Off on Megadeth @ Loud Park 2009

If nothing else, this festival got our faces known in the neighborhood. Most Japanese are hesitant to say anything to a foreigner, in part because they don’t know if the person can speak Japanese. However, once that initial wall comes down they are the friendliest people on the planet. We made lots of friends during the day’s events.

The people in the above picture are serious festival lovers. They weren’t local. Rather, they travel around and participate in whatever weekend festival is currently taking place. We chatted for a long time and swapped numbers. I assumed that would be the last we’d hear from them, but they have already called to invite us to other matsuri.

They carried the mikoshi nearly all day and were in on the final demonstration which looked like a mosh pit. This picture was after they had freshened up about a half hour after the mikoshi had been placed. If you think they look spent and sweaty here, you should have seen them 30 minutes before!

My shoulder was seriously bruised for days and my quads were killing me the next day, yet I only carried it for about ten minutes. I can’t imagine what hours under it would have been like, let alone wanting to go at it again every weekend.

Here is a close up photo of the mikoshi (with wagasa) during one of the brief rests.

After all was said and done we went to return the Happi Coats we had borrowed on the prior day. Our neighbors insisted we join them for food and drink on the street corner. They stuffed us really good with gyoza, pizza (with toppings of squid and shrimp), and yakitori. Every time I took a sip of my drink it was immediately refilled by one of the many people sitting nearby.

Sorry about the quality on the above picture. It was taken after most people had left and the rest of us were parting. It doesn’t quite capture the mood and scene from 20 minutes before, but my son and I were pinned in and couldn’t take a photo any earlier. I enjoyed the dialogue with my neighbors. Now they know who the local foreigners are, that we’ll be here for a year, and that we can actually converse with them.

The above video is of the approach and entrance of the mikoshi back to its home after spending the prior seven hours going around town on the shoulders of its carriers. There was a men’s chorus, who you will hear and see at the beginning of the video, leading the mikoshi back through the torii gate. Hang in there until 1:40 in the video where things will pick up. The mikoshi will now rest away, out of view, for the next three years before its next journey.

Posted on October 2nd, 2009 under Japan. Tags: lanterns, matsuri, shinto, video. Comments: 4