Japan!

Ok, so Im missing a big chunk of a week, where we stayed in London the whole time, but I will definitely go back and recap that with photos as well.

But since im up at 530 am in Japan, I figured I might as well get straight into our Japananese experience.

So we left London early Friday morning, and enjoyed a long 12 hour flight to Tokyo, which went by surprisingly quick. It was surreal to see Melee on the inflight radio program and the airflight crew were all Melee fans. They even took Ryan and Chris up to check out the cockpit at one point. Pretty exciting flight. So we land, already feeling the jet lag, and we wait for our luggage to come. We wait...and wait...and wait. Turns out our baggage was left behind in Amsterdam and it wouldnt be delivered until the next day AFTER our set at Fuji Rock. This posed a couple problems, we were missing ALOT of musical gear, and we were missing stage clothes, leaving us in shorts and sandals and smelly shirts haha. So gabe quickly brainstormed and we went running around Shibuya, restocking in the gear we needed to play, and picking up an outfit wed each be able to swing by on for the day.

Finally, after a three our drive up to Fuji, we made it to our hotel, beyond exhausted and all passed out. We woke up prety early yesterday, to set up and soundcheck and see what we could make the best of with our gear situation. Luckily everything turned out well and we were set to play. It was so so so beautiful up here in the mountains, simply breathaking. We played on the main stage which looks out onto the forrests in the mountains. The show was defniitely a Melee highlight, with a amazing fans singing along and dancing. Ive never felt so much energy in my life. One great moment was when Chris asked the whole crowd to turn around and on the count of three to scream as loud as they could, and then listen for the echo, he did that twice and it sounded completely magical, and to their surprise, when they turned back to face us, we immediately began playing Built To Last and every freaked out! Sooooo much fun!

Afterwards we did some interviews, and got to meet Ben Folds and his band and get excited about our upcoming tour with them in December. We then had a live on air interview with J-wave, which we had to trek two miles back and forth in the pouring rain to go do. But again it was great....we played Rhythm of Rain in the rain, making for quite the euphoric moment. Our day was done and we went back for dinner and hung out for awhile, which including arguments between all of us over the Dark Knight, and trying to prevent Gabe from ruining the movie for me. haha

Ok so lots of pics coming soon!!

love
ricky