Hi everyone,

We've just got back from our trip to japan. And I wanted to share some of our fun times.

TOKYO

We started off in a teapot gallery in Tokyo. This show was the launch of the new brother sister compilation "a fifty gallon drum of savage customs, fresh flesh & random pop" (featuring the andersens, squimaoto, saitto elettrico good sound, emperors of blefuscu & us among many others).  We played with the andersens, my pal foot foot and Royce did a solo set as emperors of blefuscu. Here he is at his soundcheck (he is also above holding the covetted CC Lemon drink, which has the audactiy to claim that it has 70 lemons' worth of vitamin C  in every can).

The song of the night was by mpff which went "co co co co co co co me-ah … (japanese words)". It was really beautiful. That night we invited on the drummer from the andersens and the guitarist/singer/whistle blower from mpff to join us on stage. The result was sweat, cheer, and a flurry of percussion and chants! That night we got to meet saitto (from saitto elettrico good sound, who also are on the compilation).

He turned his glasses upside down for the photo.

The next day, me and okome from the andersens wrote a little song that will hopefully appear in a completed form one day. Even though it was winter, the sun shone through the window while we were playing.

After that, royce daisy and i went hiking in the hills of Kyoto.

I also had the honour of sitting naked in a hot tub next to a big guy with tats all over his back who turned out to be a member of the yakuza! And before that, we saw a log that looked like a hippo, and I met a monkey!

KOBE

Then to Kobe, where Naf and Shin were so generous in letting us crash the night at their (or their grandparents') respective places. Here began the wonderful union of inquiet with squimaoto, who are the nicest, best people in the world.
Their music is great too. That night we also played with this band called passion, which is two guys. First they chanted, then they slowly built up an atonal and beautiful and complex loop with a guitar that was passed between the first member, the guitar stand and the second member about 200 times. Then they chanted again. Then they played drums to a metronome, halving the amount of time between each stroke until they were fighting for space in front of the drum kit and flailing about like a pair of taiko drummers. Then they chanted.

OSAKA

The next day we went to Osaka and were lucky enough to play at BEARS in Namba. At the end of our set, squimaoto and daisy joined us on stage to do a medley of 'the yellow submarine' and 'the lion sleeps tonight'. "we all live in a yellow submalene…" It was sad saying goodbye the next day.

Squimaoto are the best late-night sports-drink drinkers in the world.

TOKYO

Then back to Tokyo to play a show at the cute little Fall gallery/shop. We crashed with our friend shawn for a week. He's into crunk music and mandarin chinese.

The other bands were really cool, okome from the andersens played some of her own songs under the name kunst zada (with kiyokazu doing crazy guitar solos over the top), and we did a no electricity set with our hands, our voices and percussion in one or 2 songs.

That night we also played with a musical saw band -- the THIRD band of its type that we had played with since arriving in japan! Each person at the show got a free linen bookmark, and afterwards we bought some pottery made by tori kudo!

A few days later we were lucky enough to play with Tabata, and Kiyogod which was another formation of the members of the andersens.

There was also this band called best music, that just offered us chocolate and played one james brown song really badly about 8 times. They were pretty good.

Tabata was awesome, and he even played anal by anal, which he wrote with eye when they were called the boredoms.

It was incredible!

The last show was at flo union, an arts night run by craig and david. Apart from us there was this Japanese girl wearing a wedding dress and singing? We had an awesome time on stage chanting like monkeys and we even did a cover of the emperors of blefuscu's song, 'spectator'. It was a perfect end to an awesome trip.