Psychedelic Microwaves: Japanese tour! Day 34

You know the most ridiculous thing about these series of blogs is the fact that I keep calling them "Psychedelic Microwaves: Japanese tour! Day" etc. We have now played all the shows we were going to play, all 2 of them. Apart from that we have just been tourists, which is fine.

I'm writing this in Koyasan; one of the most holy places in Japan. It houses quite alot of Buddhist temples and not much else. We were in Ise, (also one of the most holy places in Japan, but for Shinto), for a few days until yesterday. We left Tokyo on the 27th of November, not a day too soon. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the place. I did! 2 weeks was definitely long enough though.

Our first gig was at Nana Hari; a tiny little place with great character.We played last. We played with Samm Bennett and Tokuhisa William Kotaro. We also played as a 3 piece. A friend of Max's; Ben played guitar with us. The audience (all 2 of them not including the other artists, the venue owner and Max) seemed to enjoy it! Skye loved it but I was feeling a bit weird about it so I don't really remember it too well. Maybe it was stage fright or something. Who knows! Not me!

Our Second gig was at a place called Pool. We played first. We managed to get a projector that would work with Skye's laptop. We couldn't get the one at Nana Hari to work :*( . I put together some videos we took at the Osaka aquarium of jellyfish and played them at 1/4 speed. As you can imagine it was mesmerising. I felt remarkably better about that night's performance, but alas Skye didn't. Can't win 'em all.

I sold the guitar I bought for way less than what I payed for it and left Tokyo on the night of the 27th still hideously hung-over, nauseous, but relieved to be going somewhere far far away.

In Ise we hired some bicycles for the first time since Kyoto and rode and rode and rode. Through the hills and tunnels through mountains and forests and little villages and along the beach. We saw the wedded rocks (Meoto Iwa) and Ise Jingu (the oldest and most important Shinto shrines in Japan). Ise was, in a word, pretty fucking good.

Today was our first full day in Koyasan. We went hiking. We saw numerous temples and monks. I was very impressed. Tomorrow morning we are getting up at 5am to see the morning ceremony (Otsutome) at Okunoin Kobodaishi Gobyo (The Mausoleum of Kobo Daishi Kukai - the founder of Koyasan about 12 centuries ago). Then who knows! Not Me! On the day we leave (the day after next) we will be going to some kind of great Onsen a couple of hours drive from here. I'm looking forward to that! Then we have 4 nights in Osaka, and Arriva Derche Japan! as they say...

We extended our stay in Malaysia by nearly a week so we could go to Penang and eat lots of Mie Goreng  on the beach. So... sucks to be you I guess.