One day ticket for Saturday, July 25th. We bought these way back in Osaka as a way to close out our trip. Why Saturday? Well the original impetus was because the headliner that day was Muse, whom I've seen once before in concert, I think it was 2010. But I like that band.
Alternatively, we might have chosen to go Friday to see the Foo Fighters, which I'm sure would've been great as well, but that's not what we did. All of this talk of headliners also discounts the importance of oh so many other bands and artists being featured on the festivals many stages, and it just so happens that back in Osaka our hostel host had provided his suggestions on Japanese acts we should see on our day there.
The main was a crazy jazz piano player named Hiromi, accompanied by a nuts drummer and bass guitarist; this was our first targeted event and it dictated our departure time from Tokyo. We had planned this all out way in advance, and had reserved seats on the requisite trains. Therefore on Saturday morning we left our hostel to catch local trains to Tokyo Station and hopped on our shinkansen departing at 10:16. This brought us to Echigo-Yazawa at about 11:30, and Hiromi's set started at 13:20.
The stick in the spokes of our plan turned out to be all those other damned festval-goers. You see, the festival offers a shuttle between the station and the festival (a good 30-40 minute drive by bus) but we didn't calculate the fact that there would be about a bajillion other festival attendees awaiting buses and that we'dhave to wait in line for over an hour and a half.
Ouch. And they had a ton of buses running the route too, there were just too many people.
Eventually we made it though!
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| Note the tape on my glasses. This is pair #2 I've broken this trip. |
Long story short: we didn't miss Hiromi. We arrived and found our way into the festival (got our wristbands and sweet map lanyards) pushed through into the main event and BAM, right there on the main stage was the jazz triplet, mid set. So we didn't see the whole thing, but we caught the end.
Other artists we caught included:
- Twenty One Pilots
- This guy: 星野源
- Super Furry Animals (barely)
- This other guy (crazy japanese pop-star...he had backup dancers): 岡村靖幸 (barely saw him too, from far away. Too bad, he seemed exciting and weird.)
- Deadmau5 (I'm still not sure what the point of him performing in a concert setting is...but his light show was spectacular!)
- Muse
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| This is what photos at concerts look like, thus I don't have many to share. |
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| A stranger enjoying Deadmau5 |
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| Lot's of strangers enjoying waiting for Muse |
And we rocked out and everything hurts.
That's what we paid good money for, after all.
And this is where the adventure gets exciting.
You see, Muse ended after 23:00, so there was no train home to take us back to Tokyo. Instead, we scheduled ourselves on the first train in the morning: 6:00 Sunday, which demanded we catch an early shuttle--those began at 5:00. You see, we were stranded at Naeba for the whole night.
This wasn't a huge deal. It's a festival in the middle of the mountains and it is organized to encourage people to camp at the festival to attend multiple days. This means that there is generally stuff going on all night. So what did we do? Ate some food, walked around, joined fellow attendees in kinda-but-not-really sleeping on the cold grass. Watched/listened to some EDM DJs in a sort of half-awake daze.
We meandered out of the festival around 3:00 under the pretense of checking how long the walk to the shuttle would be...but by the time we got there we saw already a line was forming. Probably only about 40 people in it, but we figured we should jump in. The ground was sharp gravel, which I found surprising comfortable to lay in if you take the time to shimmy around and get all the big rocks out of the way.
As I lay there, the sky began to gradually brighten. By 4:30 it was bright and cool, and I rose to observe the world around me. Mountains, and a long line of people stretching out behind us.
In twenty minutes time we were aboard a bus and heading back to the station. Dazed and tired, we boarded our train. Slipped in and out of consciousness for an hour and a half before arriving at our stop, switching to a local line and at long last arriving back at the hostel.
A quick 7/11 meal and a shower later, we were in bed by 9...am.
Fuji Rock.
Been there, got a t-shirt.
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