How NOT to stay hydrated in a moshpit (Summersonic, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Gaijin Law of Kumiyama)
13th Aug, 2006
Yesterday I attended Summersonic, the Japanese equivalent to Big Day Out. [Just to make my poor sister cry: in order to see the All American Rejects, Fallout Boy, The Kooks, The Arctic Monkeys, MUSE, Fort Minor and Linkin Park (some of these were my companion's choice, not mine, but we divided our schedule as best as possible to allow us both to see our favourites) I had to miss out on My Chemical Romance, Tool, AFI, The Cat Empire, Massive Attack and so on and so forth... not to mention the Sunday lineup, including Hoobastank, the Deftones, Taking Back Sunday, Metallica,MetallicadZebrahead, The Cardigans, The Flaming Lips, Ugly Duckling... you get the idea]. Anyway, it was a music festival, and I can't deny it felt good to be back in that setting.
Japanese music festivals seem to involve a lot less alcohol and a lot more queueing than their Australian counterpart, but the atmosphere was still the same. One thing I have to say about the Japanese – they know how to control human traffic. The thousands of people waiting to get in were arranged into an unbelievably complicated system of lines that marched them up and down pavements, around a courtyard in a whirlpool, between trees and up and down stairs – it seemed like a waste of time to do so much walking, but by continually moving the time seemed to pass much more quickly. A similar system was put into place for the merchandise hall (which sold out of the t-shirts I wanted by the time I got there... 35 minutes after the hall opened. Not just one either, like... 8 designs! STUPID JAPAN, GO HOME!), the stadiums, the walkways – and always directed by dozens of uniformed staff with megaphones. That's something you should know about the Japanese – even if their audience is only 3 feet away, they still need to use a megaphone or a microphone to feel comfortable addressing them. But they're good at what they do. At one point I was on a pedestrian crossing, being directed by no less than 12 staff. In a straight line. Across a regular-sized street. JUST TO MAKE SURE I DIDN'T GET LOST. God Bless Japan.
Our first stop after the merchandise stand was the food hall, which had the usual assortment of overpriced crap. That and alcohol. I've only been here two weeks, so I'm still not over the fact that Japan has no alcohol tax, therefore booze is incredibly cheap here. So when I saw two Japanese girls in bikinis selling Smirnoff Ice and Doubleblacks for 300yen each, I had to grab a couple. Of course, my brain soon caught up with my excitement and recalled that at festivals, they open your drinks for you so you can't hoard it. Whoops. OK, well, I'd just be walking around with a few drinks for a while. No biggie. It of course then came to light that the alcohol had to be consumed IN THE FOOD HALL. Watch A-chan go from 0-tipsy in 8.6 seconds.
NOTE: drinking significant amounts of alcohol with no food and no water, then entering a moshpit for 6 hours on a 35 degree day is not a good idea. DEHYDRATION TO THE EXTREME. Don't worry mumsie, I came out and downed about 5 bottles of water once I realised I was an idiot.
Summersonic also awarded me my first encounter with a species well known to us westerners – the Gaijin Asshole (sorry mumsie, I don't like it either, that's just what they're called). This is a gaijin who, back home, would be easily recognised for the complete tool he is, but being in Japan, he is able to use his Gaijin Charm to further his assholery in new and exciting ways.
This particular GA was, I'm sad to say, Australian. He'd stolen a soccerball-sized block of ice from a vendor (Gaijin Smash) which he was proudly carting around and using to impress Japanese girls, given it was 3million degrees Celsius. Two sugarsweet Japanese girls had asked for some of the green and gold zinc he was wearing, so of course he agreed, and proceeded to draw something incredibly immature on the girls' arms, claiming it was Fuji-san. The girls then offered to write the kanji for Australia on his back, and at my whispering request, returned the Fuji-san favour. I can't really express how adorable it is seeing two Japanese girls consulting an image on their arms so as to accurately draw a penis on a stupid gaijin's back. I didn't spend much longer near this guy, as being Western Woman, I'm immune to the Gaijin Asshole's charm.
It would be hypocritical of me if I didn't admit I'd used the Gaijin Smash myself on occasion. My companion for the day, an English teacher from my school, is quite small, but holds up remarkably well in moshpits. I'd been intermittently using my power to push us ever closer to the front as we waited for her favourite band to start. I apologised for pushing through, concerned she might be embarrassed by my attempts to forge a path to the stage, but she was more than comfortable with it, exclaiming happily 'I think you have gaijin power!'. I raised my eyebrows in return. 'Oh? Would you like me to Gaijin Smash?' 'Yes, please!'. With all the might and power of superman, I grabbed her arm and forced us through the crowd, immune to the native stares and sending small Japanese women flying in the wake of my smash. The result was some pretty nifty viewing space for the next band. I wasn't a fan, so agreed to meet her outside afterwards – passing on the way out, a line of easily a thousand people hoping to get into the same stage area I'd just left.
As after any good concert, I stumbled home at 2am smelling like someone else's feet and collapsed on my futon, sleeping soundly in the knowledge that I had no commitments the following day. Things never work out that simple though, do they?
My slumber was rudely interrupted at 9am by that all too familiar Japanese chyme: PimPom! Who on earth would be ringing my doorbell at 9am on a Sunday morning? I dragged my corpse to the door and poked my bedhead through the crack. My groggy appearance did not deter the well-dressed family assembled on my doorstep. Surely, they couldn't be...
'Hello. We are Japanese Jehovah's Witnesses. Do you know Jehovah's Witnesses?'
You've gotta be kidding me.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm a Christian. I have no problem with people of faith. But I do have a problem with being woken at 9am after a day-long moshfest. I'd only been there a week, how could they have possibly found me so fast? That wretched Gaijin-Law-of-Kumiyama had done me in again.
I should probably explain. The Gaijin Law of Kumiyama states that anything a gaijin does, says, wears or eats, will be known by the entire community within 24 hours. Let me illustrate with an example: My first day in town, I arrived in the afternoon and was taken directly to the Board of Education. We came home briefly, then went out to dinner, returning home after midnight. Overall, we outside in the public eye for less than half an hour the entire day. Yet by the following morning, we found not one, but two paper fans in our mailbox advertising an upcoming festival. The junkmail lady already knew there was a second gaijin in the apartment. This is what I call the Gaijin Law of Kumiyama.
Yesterday I attended Summersonic, the Japanese equivalent to Big Day Out. [Just to make my poor sister cry: in order to see the All American Rejects, Fallout Boy, The Kooks, The Arctic Monkeys, MUSE, Fort Minor and Linkin Park (some of these were my companion's choice, not mine, but we divided our schedule as best as possible to allow us both to see our favourites) I had to miss out on My Chemical Romance, Tool, AFI, The Cat Empire, Massive Attack and so on and so forth... not to mention the Sunday lineup, including Hoobastank, the Deftones, Taking Back Sunday, Metallica,MetallicadZebrahead, The Cardigans, The Flaming Lips, Ugly Duckling... you get the idea]. Anyway, it was a music festival, and I can't deny it felt good to be back in that setting.
Japanese music festivals seem to involve a lot less alcohol and a lot more queueing than their Australian counterpart, but the atmosphere was still the same. One thing I have to say about the Japanese – they know how to control human traffic. The thousands of people waiting to get in were arranged into an unbelievably complicated system of lines that marched them up and down pavements, around a courtyard in a whirlpool, between trees and up and down stairs – it seemed like a waste of time to do so much walking, but by continually moving the time seemed to pass much more quickly. A similar system was put into place for the merchandise hall (which sold out of the t-shirts I wanted by the time I got there... 35 minutes after the hall opened. Not just one either, like... 8 designs! STUPID JAPAN, GO HOME!), the stadiums, the walkways – and always directed by dozens of uniformed staff with megaphones. That's something you should know about the Japanese – even if their audience is only 3 feet away, they still need to use a megaphone or a microphone to feel comfortable addressing them. But they're good at what they do. At one point I was on a pedestrian crossing, being directed by no less than 12 staff. In a straight line. Across a regular-sized street. JUST TO MAKE SURE I DIDN'T GET LOST. God Bless Japan.
Our first stop after the merchandise stand was the food hall, which had the usual assortment of overpriced crap. That and alcohol. I've only been here two weeks, so I'm still not over the fact that Japan has no alcohol tax, therefore booze is incredibly cheap here. So when I saw two Japanese girls in bikinis selling Smirnoff Ice and Doubleblacks for 300yen each, I had to grab a couple. Of course, my brain soon caught up with my excitement and recalled that at festivals, they open your drinks for you so you can't hoard it. Whoops. OK, well, I'd just be walking around with a few drinks for a while. No biggie. It of course then came to light that the alcohol had to be consumed IN THE FOOD HALL. Watch A-chan go from 0-tipsy in 8.6 seconds.
NOTE: drinking significant amounts of alcohol with no food and no water, then entering a moshpit for 6 hours on a 35 degree day is not a good idea. DEHYDRATION TO THE EXTREME. Don't worry mumsie, I came out and downed about 5 bottles of water once I realised I was an idiot.
Summersonic also awarded me my first encounter with a species well known to us westerners – the Gaijin Asshole (sorry mumsie, I don't like it either, that's just what they're called). This is a gaijin who, back home, would be easily recognised for the complete tool he is, but being in Japan, he is able to use his Gaijin Charm to further his assholery in new and exciting ways.
This particular GA was, I'm sad to say, Australian. He'd stolen a soccerball-sized block of ice from a vendor (Gaijin Smash) which he was proudly carting around and using to impress Japanese girls, given it was 3million degrees Celsius. Two sugarsweet Japanese girls had asked for some of the green and gold zinc he was wearing, so of course he agreed, and proceeded to draw something incredibly immature on the girls' arms, claiming it was Fuji-san. The girls then offered to write the kanji for Australia on his back, and at my whispering request, returned the Fuji-san favour. I can't really express how adorable it is seeing two Japanese girls consulting an image on their arms so as to accurately draw a penis on a stupid gaijin's back. I didn't spend much longer near this guy, as being Western Woman, I'm immune to the Gaijin Asshole's charm.
It would be hypocritical of me if I didn't admit I'd used the Gaijin Smash myself on occasion. My companion for the day, an English teacher from my school, is quite small, but holds up remarkably well in moshpits. I'd been intermittently using my power to push us ever closer to the front as we waited for her favourite band to start. I apologised for pushing through, concerned she might be embarrassed by my attempts to forge a path to the stage, but she was more than comfortable with it, exclaiming happily 'I think you have gaijin power!'. I raised my eyebrows in return. 'Oh? Would you like me to Gaijin Smash?' 'Yes, please!'. With all the might and power of superman, I grabbed her arm and forced us through the crowd, immune to the native stares and sending small Japanese women flying in the wake of my smash. The result was some pretty nifty viewing space for the next band. I wasn't a fan, so agreed to meet her outside afterwards – passing on the way out, a line of easily a thousand people hoping to get into the same stage area I'd just left.
As after any good concert, I stumbled home at 2am smelling like someone else's feet and collapsed on my futon, sleeping soundly in the knowledge that I had no commitments the following day. Things never work out that simple though, do they?
My slumber was rudely interrupted at 9am by that all too familiar Japanese chyme: PimPom! Who on earth would be ringing my doorbell at 9am on a Sunday morning? I dragged my corpse to the door and poked my bedhead through the crack. My groggy appearance did not deter the well-dressed family assembled on my doorstep. Surely, they couldn't be...
'Hello. We are Japanese Jehovah's Witnesses. Do you know Jehovah's Witnesses?'
You've gotta be kidding me.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm a Christian. I have no problem with people of faith. But I do have a problem with being woken at 9am after a day-long moshfest. I'd only been there a week, how could they have possibly found me so fast? That wretched Gaijin-Law-of-Kumiyama had done me in again.
I should probably explain. The Gaijin Law of Kumiyama states that anything a gaijin does, says, wears or eats, will be known by the entire community within 24 hours. Let me illustrate with an example: My first day in town, I arrived in the afternoon and was taken directly to the Board of Education. We came home briefly, then went out to dinner, returning home after midnight. Overall, we outside in the public eye for less than half an hour the entire day. Yet by the following morning, we found not one, but two paper fans in our mailbox advertising an upcoming festival. The junkmail lady already knew there was a second gaijin in the apartment. This is what I call the Gaijin Law of Kumiyama.
There's another gaijin in the apartment? You never mentioned that.
Posted by Rocke | 5:25 AM