Tour Postcard 5: Tokyo Quattro
10th August 2006
What with the jetlag, the passing of days and nights is becoming confusing. The confusion is exacerbated by the time on my phone and laptop being set to good old British Summer Time, and the time on my watch and handy sundial being very much Japanese. Yesterday, though, we definitely played a gig in Tokyo. A lobby call at 11am was supposed to bring us all together in the same place, but this gigantic hotel has about 6 lobbies, one for each member of the band, and we wandered around them for some time, each of us concerned that we'd miss the bus and indeed the gig. In the end we were rounded up by trusty tour manager Paul Hill, a genial chap from Bury St Edmunds with earrings, tongue piercing and painted toenails. As with most tour managers, Paul has a plethora of tales to tell, although his best has nothing to do with touring.
A friend of his was outside a jewellers in the East End, looking at watches or suchlike, when an elderly cockney couple walked up and stood alongside him, staring at the rings, brooches, and particularly the ornaments and figurines, you know, giraffes and suchlike, made of of delicate crystal and ideal for placing on the mantelpiece. The man said to his wife "Oh, look at all this lovely stuff. Gorgeous, innit." to which his wife replied. "Ooh, Alf, don't, you know I'm a c*nt for glass."
I've found myself taking a series of arse-crunchingly tedious photos which prove nothing other than I'm in Japan. One of them needs to make it to the archive, though, and this is fairly typical:
We arrived at Club Quattro, a venue situated in a nondescript office building above a sports shop. Many treats seem to be found in Japan in nondescript office buildings above sports shops. If you see a sports shop, it's almost worth going in and taking the lift up, just on the offchance that you'll be confronted with apes, ivory and peacocks. We, however, were confronted with lots of metal boxes which contained the gear provided for the tour by our generous Japanese hosts. To our considerable surprise and amazement, everything fitted together and made the right noise when you pushed the right button or twanged the right string. With palpable relief we broke for lunch, and made our way to the Tokyo equivalent of Selfridges Food Hall, during which Alyssa got her arse felt by a stranger. You're warned about that kind of thing in the travel guide– although I think there's an exemption for rotund keyboard players in Appendix A - but it's still rather a shock to hear of it happening. We were later advised by someone in the know that Cuba is a particularly bad place to visit if you dislike opportunistic frotting, so beware.
Back to the venue for soundcheck, and then to the dressing room, where the rider was mysteriously replenishing itself; 6 slices of white bread were always present. If we removed two, and left the room, and came back in, they'd have been replaced with 2 fresh ones. Kind of like the Magic Porridge Pot, but with bread, and in Japan.
We took the stage at 7, in front of a packed but incredibly polite crowd, which we'd been told to expect, and despite battling jetlag we were splendid.
Jeez, 6.30am and I'm not in the slightest bit tired. I suppose I'll get to grips with Japanese time just as I'm getting the flight back to the UK on Tuesday. I hope they let us on the plane with more than a flimsy seethrough plastic bag, because the safety instructions of a Boeing 777 aircraft tend to get somewhat boring on the 15th read through.
