I did stuff!

Today I went to Shibuya with a friend to watch this band Nisennenmondai play.  Shibuya is a part of Tokyo that was sent back in time from the future just to make us all feel excited about what is in store for the human race.  My friend who is Japanese says she hates Shibuya because it’s crowded, which I can understand.  But I was in awe, snapping intermittent photos of nothing in particular (while trying to look casual).  It was nice to be surrounded by droves of fashionable young people.  I really wanted to take photos of individual people, but that can be so awkward.  I already look foreign enough without doing things like that.  But I snapped a few photos that I hope you think are kind of cool.

Anyway, the show was incredible.  I went for Nisennenmondai, and they opened for Buffalo Daughter, who I hadn’t heard of previously except for when I looked them up when I realized I’d be seeing them live.  Nisennenmondai is an instrumental band.  They’re like experimental post-rock electronic noise, I guess?  They just have this great way of building up energy in their songs and they move back and forth between simple repetition and complicated fuzzy noise.  Buffalo Daughter was really cool too.  There were four members, and their sound was funkier and slower with three vocalists including a female lead.

The show was at this small venue called O-Nest.  There’s O-Nest, O-West, O-East, and O-Crest.  I don’t know anything about those other venues except that they are all connected in some way.  The vibe of the crowd was very easy-going and inviting.  People got really into the music but at the same time seemed low-key and respectful.  Tickets were crazy expensive (around $50 at the door), which I guess is just the way it is in Japan.  Maybe 5% of the people there were foreign.  The following pictures are of Nisennenmondai, then the crowd, and then my friend Miho and I.  I thought it was interesting that some guys would show up at a rock show in suits.  I guess they had no time to change after work.

Toward the end of the show, I had this awful headache and was texting Miho from the upstairs lounge.  This guy approached me very shyly and asked me in English if I would come to a show next weekend.  He gave me a flyer and explained that one of the bands, OOIOO, has the vocalist from Boredoms.  Cool!  Then my friend came upstairs and as we were preparing to leave, this pretty woman with very short hair and a bright, shiny top approached me.  She said (in English) that she was with Vice and asked if I would do an interview for a new program they’re making about emerging Japanese bands.  She asked me questions about why I came to Japan, what I thought of the show, what other Japanese bands I like, etc.  I didn’t say anything that profound since I don’t know a lot about Japanese music yet.  There’s a possibility that my interview will be used on the program.  That would be cool.

Anyway, that’s all for now.  Here is an extra picture I took in Shibuya.  It’s an advertisement for a cat cafe, which, if you don’t know, is a cafe where you pet cats.