JAPAN 2002
by jani

MANIFESTO JUKEBOX toured Japan in July, here are some memories of what went on… it was an incredible experience so thanks again to all the people who made this possible: everyone who showed up for gigs, the bands we played with, people who invited us to sleep at their homes, made us food etc… extra special love and thanks go to Yoichi Eimori and Gon, Masa, Champ and Tomo (=I Excuse).

17.7. Tampere-Helsinki-Moscow
The bell rings at 5am… arrgghh… well can't complain really, this is finally the day we've been waiting for too long. We drive to the Helsinki airport and manage to get through security exams etc, and board our flight to Moscow. The other passengers get their breakfast but do we… did they make vegetarian food… no of course not! How hard can it be for travel agencies to pass this simple info on, why is it always like this…?! We wait in Moscow for 7 hours, we can only stay at the airport transit area. You can only buy food at the bars by russian roubles but there's no place to change money - way to go! So still no eating. Instead we buy some russian beer from the tax free shop that accepts our dollars, sit in the restaurant reading our travel books til the waitresses throw us out. Finally we get to board the plane, to notice our seats are scattered around the plane, which means even more boredom for us antisocial Finns. I sit next to the coach of the Australian boxing team who is on the way home from a tournament in Russia but there's not much to talk about. At least Aeroflot has ace vegan food despite its bad reputation.

18.7. Tokyo
After 10 and a half hours we arrive in Tokyo, get though customs smoothly and our host and tour manager Yoichi/Snuffy Smile finds us straight away. The heat is just unbelieveable, unlike anything i've experienced before. We get to visit the Allman record store that Tadashi from the label HG Fact owns but are afraid to spend any money cos we just arrived and can't know at all what to expect, what eating, drinking etc costs, we'd heard so many horros stories of expensive prices… Next we drive to the venue. It looks a lot like the finnish rocks clubs we usually play. Yoichi has made us food and bought some beers so the atmosphere relaxes soon… the guys from I Excuse also arrive, and turn out to be a nice bunch of people. After soundcheck we go for a walk to the nearby park to do an interesting interview for a local zine, cool.. the gigs in Japan start very early so when we get back to The Jam lots of kids are already there and soon The Urchin begins their set. They are one of the few japanese bands i had heard before we came and were very good. Also very nice people, their guitarist Masa borrowed us his SG for the whole tour so thanks again for that! Long Ball To No-one is up next and they're also very good, a bit more aggressive yet still melodic, which i like. Then I Excuse takes the stage and i'm speechless!! They are so intense yet so catchy, whoa!!!!!!!!! Scary to go onstage after them! No seriously, the feeling is very good as we step on stage, it's crazy hot, the club is pretty packed and everything just goes right, one of our best gigs ever! After the gig there's no sign at all of being tired or jet-legged… We drive to Yoichi's place where the I Excuse guys cook for us, yes…! We get the money for merch sales and our jaws drop… in Finland/Europe we're very lucky if we sell 40 shirts in 10 shows, now we sold that amount at the first show and loads of other stuff too…

19.7. Sendai
Wake-up at 6am… we start driving to Sendai on small non-toll roads to save money but after spending most of the day driving 200km we have to take the motorway and that's how it is for the rest of the tour. The tolls are just way beyond belief, totally insane… we end up almost spending more money on driving than the plane tickets from Finland! Well anyway we make it to the venue on time, another nice small place and the gig is very good for everyone again. The place closes down very early so the record market continues outside the venue in the front of a long line of vending machines… these machines are all over the place here, it's crazy! I also meet my first ever japanese pen pal from whom i got my first Snuffy Smile records so the feeling is good… after this we go to our host's place for some food and a few beers, then at like 2am we drive to a japanese bath, whoa!!!! The host are afraid that i would not get in because of my tattoos but i wear a long sleeve shirt when we buy tickets and there are no problems, and they don't come to throw me out when i'm inside and naked either. Japan is still very conservative about tattoos, traditionally only the Yakuzas (=mafia) have them. The bath is crazy - they have almost only very hot baths and saunas. Isn't the weather hot enough!?

20.7. Ojiya
Wake up, get in the van, spend the day there. We are in the north area of the main island Honshu and the landscape is amazingly beautiful so i don't really mind sitting in the van this time. The gig is in a smaller city called Ojiya, and is the hottest ever!! No air conditioning here.. once again a great gig. Afterwards the gift booze we brought from Finland is discovered with disastrous results. The Japanese find the taste of our booze too weird so we have to drink most of it ourselves…

21.7. Kyoto
A very painful wake-up… hangover is total hell in this heat. Like my whole body had been poisoned. Which it was of course… well, by the time we get to Kyoto (the home of I Excuse) we're feeling a lot better. We wander around the city and as we're hanging out by this bridge downtown the Tragedy guys walk by - whoa!!! We had been wondering if we'd get to meet them cos already when we left from Finland we knew we'd play in the same city on the same day, but in different clubs. So we hang out with them for a while and check out this amazing record shop called Base, and soon the gig starts. Minority Blues Band is great and so is I Excuse, of course. And it's good for us too… so good that we end up missing half of Tragedy's gig at the nearby club cos we have to play so many encores ha ha! So yeah we got to see half of Tragedy but all the japanese bands had already played, too bad, would have been nice to see some japcore too. After that, much needed shower, food and sleep at Gon of I Excuse's place.

22.7. Tokusima
Time for tourist action! We go check out temples all around Kyoto and are impressed. Then drive to Tokusima for the last gig together with I Excuse, the feeling of having to part ways with them was sad but maybe because of that the gig was ace, full of intense feeling for everyone. From now on we continued the tour by Shouji of MBB's minivan with him and Tomo of I Excuse driving.

23.7. Matsuyama
This was supposed to be a day off but at the afterparty of yesterday's gig we were asked if we wanna throw a surprise gig at Minority Blues Band's rehearsal studio in Matsuyama - hell yeah!! In the morning we woke up early to go swimming in a nearby river. OK, we did not wake up nicely we had to be violently woken up but anyway, swimming was nice, then we went for a nice cup of noodles and drove to Matsuyama for more temple spotting and a nice afternoon at an izakaya. This meant drinking as much beer as we could in an hour and BBQ:ing all kinds of stuff, cool!! After that the feeling was right for a good gig and fun it was!! Very nice atmosphere, way better than a day off could ever have been! Afterwards we went to MBB drummer Yumippe's place and after some tofu eating checked out the local bath - those are great places, i wish we had something like that here in Finland as well!

24.7. Fukuoka
Hmm… this was the quietest day of the tour in every way - well the afterparty was good fun, first we got delicious curry tofu and then jammed with our hosts after they asked Antti to teach them some of his strange guitar chords.. the gig was the worst for us on this tour but the night was saved by this incredible local band called 1000 Travels Of Jawaharal - i hope i got that right!

25.7. Osaka
Another pretty quiet day. For the first week we'd been in total awe of everything, now we were getting used to being here and began to sense the tiredness, lack of food etc too well… we had been warned about the difficulty of finding vegetarian food countless times but we've always been warned about that before every tour so… but this time it was different, these people really do put fish in everything! Luckily our kind hosts everywhere tried their best to help and understand us and we usually got fed after the show but days sometimes sucked cos there sometimes just was nothing we could eat, not even bread… blah blah. Anyway the gig was OK and after it we drove a very long time to some little village in the countryside - but it was good, our host told we are protected by ninjas there, it's an old ninja village - whatever that means..

26.7. Nagoya
Shopping for something to bring home to our friends and girlfriends… records what else! Should have brought some old Finnish stuff for trade, the prices were just insane… like over $150 for a Lama 7" etc… The general feeling was a lot better than in the last two days and everything went well, the venue was nice (as they always seem to be here) and the gig was awesome again! Afterwards we went to an izakaya with the other bands and friends.

27.7. Yokohama
Time for the last gig… but not before shopping for sake and some other important things! This was a great night, many people who we had met earlier came for the tour final and fun was had. And as a perfect end for a pretty perfect day went to some pizza place with the gig/tour crew, yes…! Then we drove to Yoichi's to get a shower, sort out the money side of things and trade some records.

28.7. Tokyo-Moscow-Helsinki-Tampere
A long day. We travelled for 24 hours but still we were in Finland the same day we left Tokyo cos the clock is 7 hours less here. Yoichi & co drove us to the station and we took a train to the Narita airport, a bit nervous cos it was still possible to fuck up and miss the flight although train was safer in that sense than a car, the traffic jams in Tokyo can be bad… well we made it to the airport in time, the flight was total boredom to the max, the wait in Moscow longer than scheduled because of some terrorist threat… but yeah in the everything was good, we made it though customs without problems and drove to Tampere. Home sweet home…

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