Day 1 Japan: Ikebukuro, Tokyo

After an 11 hour flight over the international date line, plus daylight savings... My internal sleep clock is all screwed up.

Yesterday was my first day of 5 weeks I'll be spending in Japan. After arriving in Narita, myself and the California based band I'm working for went head to head with the new Japanese customs and immigration. On one side, you had polite, yet stern government officials with the power to dawn rubber gloves and violate all your holes if they deemed it necessary. On the other side, their was us. An entourage of dreadlock headed, heavily pierced, tattoo covered gaijin with enough felony and misdemeanor convictions to keep you reading for quite some time. Not to mention all my camera and audio equipment, which, when laid out on the ground looks like an assembly line for a small nuclear device... or a time machine... or one of those Ghost Buster guns. As much as I fly with all my gear, it's actually quite unsettling to me that I ALWAYS breeze right through security. Ah well, guess racial profiling has its benefits, as long as you are a cracker like me.

The guys in band have had some bad experiences with customs before, and this new and improved Japanese system had them sweating a bit more than usual. Or maybe that was the alcohol. Free booze on international flights! They scanned our thumbs, took our pictures and asked how long I was staying. Then with a curt smile, sent us all on our way. Easy peasey.

Boarded the Omiya line to Ikebukuro, which took about 2 hours. I think, I was going in and out of jet lag induced stasis mode so it was all a blur to me. The bright lights of Shinjuku caught my attention for short while. Seeing he tall buildings, colorful lights, massive video screens, and the swelling mass of humanity below finally caused me to realize... I was back!

After checking in to our hotel, we headed over to a meeting with 10-FEET's management and the crew from Zepp Tokyo. They shuffled us all into this conference looking room at a near by establishment and started to talk buisness. Boring.

There was a pretty funny rockstar moment when a girl came to take our drink order. Every single band member, roadie, and even myself starting blurting out 'biru and whiskey'. To which 10-FEET's manager told us this was just a coffee shop. I guess that's not so much a rockstar thing as it is a dependency problem.

After the boring meeting, we all heading out for some yakiniku, meaning "grilled meat". The beer and whiskey flowed, and we spent the rest of the night exploring our new neighborhood. Spent 5 nights in the same hotel, is not something I got to do on the last tour. I'm excited to spend more than 48 hours in one place.

Tonight we have a sold out show at Zepp Tokyo with Insolence and 10-FEET, should be good times.