I’ve got a selection of (non-concert) event photos. Or, hit the jump for a more complete review of attending a festival, Japan style.

Summer Sonic was, somewhat surprisingly, held in the combination of (a) Makuhari Messe, the convention center (and home of Tokyo Game Show in a few weeks) and (b) Chiba Marine Stadium. This means that it had all the allure of an RV show — as Modest Mouse said when they started their show, “Welcome to the Modest Mouse seminar at the Convention Center.” However, atmosphere aside, this was a great festival, in part due to:

• Great crowds — For all the shows (except Cindy Lauper!) I was pretty much able to be as far forward as I wanted to be by showing up about five minutes before the show. However, the fans turned out to be great at almost every show, with a bunch of folks knowing the music and
• Great staff — It seemed like, everywhere you looked, there was a (pink-shirted!) member of staff, and unlike many shows in the US most seemed happy to be there.
• Laid-back security — Other than really wanting folks to not take pictures, security was really not interesting in being too overbearing during the shows.
• No stupid restrictions — As noted above, I carried in over a gallon of water each day along with food. No worries whatsoever.
• Air-conditioning — Tokyo was in a huge heat wave with temperatures over 33C (that’s about 95F). After thirty minutes watching OK GO from the pit of the stadium (which was dark vinyl covering on top of the field) I was completely soaked. Fortunately most of the shows I wanted to see were in the Messe.
• Reasonable concessions – Perhaps because everyone could (a) bring in whatever they wanted, and (b) leave and come back, the local concessions were quite tasty and affordable. Yea, it was still festival food, but at least it wasn’t a rip-off. The fresh pineapple on a stick for 150 yen was a nice touch too. Although I thought it was too hot for booze, there were full bars all over the place as well.
• Sleep in your own bed — Although you could sleep out at the venue (and they had an all-night dance party), most venues shut down at 9PM and headliners were on at 7:30PM. Given the heat and humidity, sleeping at home in the air-con was far preferable to the typical festival experience. Not to mention a good shower.

Of course, there were elements of just plain silliness as well (why design 15 or so styles of event shirts but then only make enough so they are sold out within the first 45 minutes of a two-day festival?)

Overall, though, I’d take this festival over the few I’ve been to in the US, even considering the tickets were 15,000 JPY for 1-day and 27,500 JPY for the weekend.

Jason, who provided the invitation (thanks!), was a local celebrity since he had served as a JET in Fujiyo for several years. As a result, we were treated by the very friendly locals to some good conversation and good food — including great local udon (at insanely low prices!) and homemade peanut butter cream sandwiches.

Unfortunately, since I don’t yet have an image stabilized digicam (or a DSLR) I didn’t get a ton of great photos, but there are a few that came out OK in the album. Here you can see one of the towers of bamboo being lit. As the night wore on the fires grew progressively lower (and more dangerous!) making for quite a fun time. There was also some great Taiko music and good local beer on hand.

Only drawback to the festival, besides getting home after midnight on a Sunday? Everything that went to the festival smelled like charcoal for a long time.

Why a blog, you may ask? Basically, after a year there’s a lot of thoughts stuck up in my head, and I’m regretting not having written them down as of yet. However, I don’t intend to comment on what I’m doing every day in Tokyo (posts of “I woke up, went to work, ate lunch, returned to work, ate dinner, went home, watched TV and went to bed” would probably not draw an audience.) Instead, I think I’ll use this as a place for random commentary on occasion, and also take the opportunity to highlight particularly good photos that describe my time over here in the Far East.

Enough of the welcoming. Let’s blogging!