01-1994 / Friends Of The Pastels Newsletter / Japandemonium (3/3)

Katrina remembers…..Japan november 1993
The Pastels flew (in an aeroplane) bang over an electrical storm somewhere in China. We couldn't hear it, but man, we could see the lightning flash. We were happy to note that we hadn't gone bang. It was a good beginning. Then I saw a seagull perched on the wing right outside my porthole - one with good powers of resistance, since we were jetting along at 500 miles an hour. I pointed it out to Stephen - he believed me ! Of course he denies it now. I suppose we were all pretty excited, those of us who weren't terrified.
18 hours later we arrived. We were in Osaka. Newt day, those of us who'd managed to sleep (during the 'night') decided to make our own little adventure despite our tiredness. The Floppy Four made their way to the train station kitted out with phrase-book, yen (and yawn) but with true fighting spirits, destination - the ancient and holy city of Kyoto. We miraculously made it through the ticket office and onto the right train, where we plonked down into the lushness, quite pleased with ourselves. We chose Kiyomizudera to look around - it means Clear Water Temple on Sound-of-Feather Mountain - sounded cool to us and indeed it was packed with wonders. We witnessed : the actual footprints of Buddha imprinted in stone, dragon springs spouting Japan's purest water, fortunes tied to trees, giant spiders in giant webs, golden Buddhas with 1000 arms and 1000 eyes. There were temples for everything - the Temple of Easy Childbirth, the Temple of Achievement, and a sad little one called Hall of 100 Jizo where you can go to pray if your child has died - it was full of baby-sized stone buddhas dressed up in brightly knitted hats and scarves.
We pressed on, over the eager tourists and soon came to the Kyoto equivalent of The Royal (gift shop) Mile. Dave got his friends some nice daggers, Aggi and I found an oriental Melody Dog instrument for Pat and David spent 3 hours choosing a pot. We weaved back through the streets towards the (Eastern !) setting sun, on the way we bought an apple as big as a melon and shared it between us. Soon we were home - the Osaka Grand !
In the morning I walked along the Tosaborigawa River to the Rose Gardens. They were beautiful and maintained to the point of obsession ; I saw some weeping willows propped up straight on sticks like swans in necks. Schoolchildren were out in the sunshine with easels strapped round their necks drawing amazing pictures of the buildings all around. Exotic birds sang unfamiliar songs, business-men chattering on mobile phones cycled around or did exercise routines en masse on the grass. All this and a huge and fascinating cricket on the path brought me to my knees.
On to Tokyo, and we drove straight into Rough Trade shop where we played a short but sweet set with a couple of acoustic guitars and (don't tell her) Pat's knocker. Then we performed a mad signing session - records we're not even on, dungarees, guitars, anything went. Stephen even had the honour of naming a band - Tokyo City Soul Soociety, or something like that, from whom we're looking forward to great things.That night we checked out Fugazi at Club Quattro - they were amazing and they made us feel like a right bunch of stay-at-homes when they told us their tour schedule - Europe, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, U.S.A… nevermind,, we prefer to eke ourselves out over the globe on our expeditions.
We found some cool record shops, one of which St Etienne had already discovered, and had signed Foxbase Alpha with the legendary but dubious 'Cheers me old mucker'. It seemed to be the elderly owner's prize possession, judging by all his coy giggling. We happily added our own autographs to his collection in exchange for some free records - a (questionable) bargain all round. We also took some good photographs - I snapped the sight of Tokyo from our speeding van, and they disappointingly turned out as blurred other vans.'And this one's of the Emperor's Imperial Palace, behind the truck', 'Hidden here is the spectacular Tokyo Tower', and so on. Stephen did some tasteful portraiture in the airport, it was a shame the camera was broken at the time. And David managed to lose his entirely, luckily being reunited later in the week after it was found on a bullet train.
Camera fun over, it was time for work, which of course is for us, fun again. Yaggi and Tomo, our roadies, began their countdown to our soundcheck at 2.30, and woe betide you if yr noodles weren't eaten up by 3.00.00 No time is ever wasted in Japan, tho. We paid no attention to this. After our shows, at exactly 8.00pm, we got to meet people for exactly 10 minutes. It was fun and intense, especially the strange young man who presented me with some gold cardboard and a still-wrapped markerpen (standard practice for obtaining an autograph) ; stupidly I wrote my name but this was discarded in some disgust, and I was gruffly ordered to write 'Deacon Blue' on afresh piece. I did, and then he didn't even want my photograph - bizarre.
In the evenings we took to sampling different restaurants with our hosts and Yaggi and Tomo who soon loosened up after a 3 litre mug of beer - 'Kampai !' We joked around, crosslegged on mats, testing out our national tongue-twisters - 'red lorry yellow lorry' soon sorted out Yaggi, and he gave me one that seemed to be quite hilarious… We made encouraging progress in our chopstick technique on those nights, keen as we were to try out unknown foods, and although the raw fish didn't exactly agree, and the 3,5 vegetarians were glad of their principles, and David's legs wouldn't fit under the table, and we drooped rice in our seaweed, it was all quite an experience, and we even got some groovy kitchenware to take home.