Tokyo Auto Salon 2010

I could give you a write up about the whole thing but the truth is you just want to look at the pictures and wish you went with… so here you go… I may throw in some captions for good measure… I may not.

We left Shibukawa THIS early. Innit pretty?

The cars were amazing… no shit huh!

The girls however (with the exception of the D1 and Tire company girls) were clearly hit by the recession. The girls were average at best. Very Disapointing actually. Hell one of the hottest girls there was a TRAP! so yeah. Bloody yanks and their stupid economy messed up my fanservice. BASTARDS!
And wherever there were ladies, there were these mofos. Like flies on shit. They swarmed and went into a frenzy. Its funny how the guys with the uber badass equipment only ever took pics of the girls… Didn’t see anyone of these fools (whose cameras cost more than their cars) actually shooting the stars of the show.

So more cars then?



There was a rather interesting deal at the show aswell… THERE WERE HIPPIE MOBILES!!!!!!

MUGEN, The legendary Honda tuning house and their star concept… no, not an NSX. Not an S2000 not even a Civic. A BLOODY HONDA INSIGHT!!!!!! A BLOODY HYBRID!!!!!

Give me a 2JZ any day.

Badass parts too :p
and the HUGE turbo… About the size of a small child. No really… It half as big as the rotary it was feeding… Its ok… The car had a parachute.

pink wheels are real sexy… though I wouldn’t kick some of the Up Garage(middle pic)  girls out of bed though.

And in the Otaku had a tiny corner at the back of the smallest hall for their Itasha. Funnily. It was not a terribly popular stand. Who would have thunk it?

and the dressup and crazy crowd was in the house too…


Best for last….
Supra modded into a Shelby… with an LED bonnet.
Sexier Supra with BMW lights…. Damn it was fiiine.


Amazing widebody S2000. DO WANT!

THE BEST REAL CAR AT THE SHOW!!!!! Someone destroyed a Honda Odyssey and kept the lights. He attached them to a hot S13 and made the sexiest sr20 housing I have ever seen!

THE BEST CONCEPT AT THE SHOW!!!!
Behold… THE Toyota FT-86 The new Hachiroku.

Deluhi – Yggdalive One Man – 2010/01/09

 

Yes. This is late. This time I actually was genuinely too busy instead of lazy…
Deluhi is my favourite band in Japan. I was waiting to see their one man to publically admit it, but I think anyone who listens to my show or talks to me about VK will have probably figured this out by now.
Having missed the O-West one man I made a special effort to get me a ticket to this one (I did it a whole month and a half in advance… which is late by ravening hyena standards, but I am not one so there.)
For a change I was not alone. Jans joined me on my escapade and broke his VK live cherry at the show… which I must ad is way more than all the yank supposed Visual Kei fans I have met so far… there I go, bitching again… BUT F F S!! if you are going to go around calling yourself a VK fan put your money where your hole is and go to a bloody show… Don't use the fact that you don’t know Deluhi as an excuse to cover the fact that you still think Malice Mizer is still around and that Dir en grey just released Gauze… get with the programme!!!!

ok ok, i will continue…

Jans and I had “C” tickets so we were right at the back but like all shows I go to here, it didn’t affect my ability to see anything. Being late in means that we didn’t have to wait too long to get to the action. In the short time that I did wait I met a guy in a Hibria T-Shirt… Japanese but lived practically his whole life in the US so communication was not a problem… HOLY SHIT A FELLOW METALHEAD AT A VK SHOW!!!! too good to be true. Admittedly he was not huge but he was steel and that makes up for size… He could have given hell in a real pit. We chatted, talked and bitched about the same things… yeah Its good to find someone else that thinks that there is too much pussy and too many pussies at VK shows. We were not alone though.. there was a very good ratio at the show and many looked like they could have gone in hard. Hell there was even a girl in a Children of Bodom T-Shirt, so at least at Deluhi shows.. there is hope.
The show cut us short however because even though we had no pit, as soon as the intro was done they ripped straight into G.A.L.D. I mean ripped… as in ripped me a new one.”

 

“I mean ripped… as in ripped me a new one.”

I have a setlist this time! which I shamelessly stole from here :p

Overture-Yggdalive-
G.A.L.D
REVOLVER BLAST
s[K]ape:goat
-MC-
シェイド
flow snow
WAKE UP
LORELEI
-Leda solo-
HELLO
-MC-
F.T.O(新曲)
Rebel:Sicks,Shadow:Six
HYBRID TRUTH
Orion once again
星の無い夜に
-ENCORE-
-Leda solo-
-MC-
Baby play
Two hurt

As you can see they pulled out all the stops… They thoroughly entertained us and they fed off our energy. Despite not being totally sold out I would say that not many more than 20-30 could have been shoehorned into the venue… but this IS Japan so maybe 60-70? despite this there was barely space to move, and when Brian and I got Our heads flailing we there was even less space… for everyone else.

LORELEI… Leda’s acoustic guitar was hot shit… and his hand work on it would have (and did) given many of the hyenas something to fantasize about… Impressive playing. Even more so were his Solos… his first one was a Mozart and his second one was random old school anime stuff.

“Deluhi is a Metal Band…”

Leda (Yu-to) is a metalhead. You can dress him up like a manorexic lady boy but when he shreds, he is pure brutal steeeeeel! Deluhi is a Metal Band… there are purists on both sides that will give me shit for this statement, but Purists don't know shit about the music they listen to because they don’t have the balls to experience all the other aspects that make their music what it is… Yes, this is my way of saying f@ck you to the stupid hyena fan girls that don't get out of their VK closets and the dumbass metal puritans that ignore the music in VK because the artists look like manorexic lady boys (they do too!)

Orion Once Again… the sing-along version… I think we all sang the chorus 12 times… at the band’s insistence… 4 times were without music. I was both surprised at the fact that apart from a few words I had it down without ever reading the lyrics. but mostly I absolutely loved the connection. I honestly felt that at that moment, every single person in that room was one with the band. I mean there is always gratitude toward the fans from bands but that song was not them playing for us, it was about us being there for them.
Two Hurt… well it was the last track of an amazing show… there is nothing I can say to describe it. Orgasmic would be a horrible injustice. It was so much more.. It was the culmination of my existence… yes. for a brief moment… 3/4 of the way through. It touched the same [art of me that Children of Bodom did. Were Deluhi THAT good? not the whole way through, but it was the first time a J Band took me to that level of ecstasy… I am willing to bet that if there was a pit, It may have even been 40% of Children of Bodom. Which if you think about it is pretty impressive. Versailles only hit about 25% and Blind Guardian was about 23%. admittedly I had no Idea what 100% was till I saw COB so this whole scale could be a messed up attempt of trying to rationalise irrational sensations. Actually I am lying… Deluhi Themselves provide us with a word that truly explains these very sensations…

It is the process of being Yggdalive!

It left me with an adrenaline rush of note, which died just as I got into Club Atom later that night… sadly without any chemical assistance there was no way I could get myself going enough to enjoy the club so I ended up retiring in a Massage chair in a net cafe. Jans kept going though… Don’t know what he did, but I hope he used a condom when he did her.

Haruna Illumination

The last post for this decade.
The other night (thanks to the amazing weather we had) I was able to drive up my mountain to go see the Christmas lights. The roads were fine, the anti slip sand salt made traction at high speed a little bit of a problem, but the traffic ensured that there was nowhere for me to go at high speed.
It was freezing cold. There was no snow on the road but on the sides of the road it was piled quite deep… I got up to the top and decided to see what was so great about the Haruna Christmas lights.

need I say more?

lots of pretty lights… pity the 7d is only arriving next month :(
I didn’t stay long. it was very cold and my toes got numb so yeah.

Update – Autumn Drive on Mt. Akagi

Ok so I want to try and get all, or at least most of this year’s backlog out over the next 2 days. First up… some pics of a drive I took on Akagi on the most perfect autumn day in November.

At the bottom the leaves were still in the process of changing which made for a beautiful initial ascent, but as the road got more fun, the tries became more barren… which is probably a good thing.

  Note the marks on the road ;)

 

This sign has something to do with driving on boobs :p

 

The lake was pretty as always but it was not as pretty as I remembered it. I somehow thought that Lake Akagi was prettier than Lake Haruna… but I was clearly mistaken. Being atop a mountain, it was also rather cold up there as well.

In addition to the beautiful Gunma landscape there was of course the local wildlife. None of the larger predators were spotted, however some of the smaller ones were out and about…

  Well there was ONE larger predator about, but it doesn’t count :P

I took the road less travelled home and was rewarded by both an amazing drive but an almost deserted road all the way to Numata and some spectacular views…Even found a back road to Minakami which I will explore when the current winter snows melt away.

 

All in all it was one of those trips that made the price of the Silvia worthwhile.

exist†trace ~Ambivalent Symphony~ Live Report (2009/11/22)

Yes this is about a month late, but better late than never.
Sadly no hijacked photos from this show... The venue was small and the walls were plastered with NO PHOTO! posters.
Firstly lets talk about the venue… The legendary Meguro Rockmaykan. Since before i came to Japan, the Meguro Rockmaykan was a name I had heard. Some of the biggest names in the JRock world have played here. I was expecting something like Shibuya O-West or at least Harajuku's Astro Hall. I was rather disappointed. it was tiny. VERY tiny. Club Fleez in Takasaki is bigger. The walls are dirty and the decor hasn’t been changed since the 80s. It was a hole. Hell it even had seats. Not quite what I had expected… Till the band started playing. A tiny venue makes for amazing sound and a very personal live experience with the band. The aspects of the live house that were a disappointment became a blessing when coupled with the stellar sound. The seats were still stupid though because nobody used them :p

In the end however the One man is about the interaction. The 2 hours of rapture where band and fan become intertwined in a web of music. 2 hours in a lifetime where there is no world. Where your life exists purely for that moment.

It was bliss.

Having already had a taste of exist†trace before, I knew that I was in store for a phenomenal show, but the degree of energy and for that matter the sheer power of their one man was staggering. It was particularly impressive considering they are all substantially smaller than one expects. YES I know they are Japanese girls and compared to me most Japanese girls are tiny but still. Maybe it is their image and power, or maybe its my fandom, but their real life size was even more of a shock than when I saw Hizumi from D’espairs Ray for the first time.
I think that somewhere someone once said that size does not count… Its what you do with it… exist†trace are proof of that.
2 hours of rapture ensued. I could go on about individual songs and how Jyou touched some impressive notes, or the tightness with which the music was played and the emotions I felt through the show but this is not JAME or JRock NYC or any other fangirl frenzy feeding VK fapsite… No it is Darc’s blog and if you know Darc you should know how I react at lives and when the band happens to be one of my favourite ever bands the results are somewhat predictable.
It was no @Versailles_P_Q live at the CC Hall I‘ll admit, but it was pretty damn awesome. They played EVERY SINGLE one of my favourite songs and many of those that I liked a lot. They paced their show well…It was split into 3 parts with 2 encores with all the hits spaced throughout. They gave you time to reflect on their awesomeness and digest the music properly so you could really get the most out of the show. There was also some amazing emotion. Jyou even cried at one point. (as did many of the fans). It was a connection unlike any other.

It was amazing… did I mention that before?

One more thing i need to mention was the demographic. There were actually men at the show. Yes. the ratio was at least 60/40 male which was a big shock… there were even some men who had testosterone, though we were fewer in number. There were some pretty boys but the majority of male fans looked decidedly Akiba. Yes. Exist trace Otaku… Who would have thought? So while I did get a ratio closer to what i feel is a decent level, It did still lack the hormone balance Loud Park had, but yeah, They are not metalheads so it is to be expected.
I wonder if it would be mean of me to call them Jackals (counterpoints they Hyena quite nicely don’t you think?)
Yeah I am a bastard to fans here. I am sorry… no actually I am not sorry.
Who cares. I had an amazing time at the Ambivalent symphony one man… If their next one man was not on the same day as Deluhi’s Yggdalive one man, I would be there like a bear!

Des a fukkin dag o’ mi fukkin wall!

An’ you tahut ah was fukkin jokin’!
I get up.. It was an amazing sunny day… I decide to open the screens to let some of the rays filter in… and I see a DOG ON MY WALL!!!!

so I am like WHAT THE HELL…
I get the camera, go outside… It stays on my wall. I take some photos… It looks at me.. squeaks and stays on my wall… So I ended up petting it for 30 minutes.
Dogs are good at getting attention but this is one of the best plays I have ever seen. I know my neighbours don’t give their dogs enough attention/affection but this was a good move on the brown dog’s part. He seemed pretty happy about it himself too.
More pics of t3h wall dog:

So… anyone else ever met spiderdog?

Skies ~5 hit combo~

I have this bad habit of looking up when I should be looking where I am going. It has its benefits though!