Fuji Rock Festival and being ghetto

me and shiv have many similarities, one of them is that we love rock music, and have been wanting to go to fuji rock since we were both in junior high. We both love the beastie boys (shiv loves their older stuff, i like their newer stuff) and we booked our tickets for FRF the same day that the beastie boys would be headlinig the event. coincidence, i think not!

So here is where the adventure begins. We let jan plan this tip because jan likes to be in control... i booked all of our transpotaion to and from the concert, but we i didnt book accomodations for 2 reasons. 1) we could probably find cheap accomodations if we needed to (its japan!!) we could stay in an internet cafe if need be. and 2) we are too cheap and ghetto to spend for hotels!!!hahah

so the trip to niigata from osaka was long, but we had a really nice bus so it was a classy trip all the way. we got to niigata, wich reminded us of edmonton for some strange reason. maybe the flatness, the lack of a down town core...hmm. But any way we got to nigatta and it was only 7pm. so we decided to keep on going, and try to get to echigo yuzawa. The main station before you get the shuttle bus to the concert. We got our tickets for the shinkansen bullet train!!! and away we went. The bullet train by the way was fantastic. It was full of genuine tokyo business men eating salty fish snacks peanuts and drinking beer. It was what dreams were made of. It couldnt have gotten any more japanesey in car #12 of that shinkansen!

We got to echigo yuzawa station, and luckily it was the FRF station we neede to be at. For a while we were scared that we had bouth tickets to the wrong station. but we saw the banners and we had finally made it. So next we decided we have to find a place to sleep. We went to the FRF info desk and asked if there was an internet cafe near by, and the lady said "no"
a hotel---NO
a ryokan--NO
is the train station open---NO
for real?? we were seriously with out a place to stay, the lady was genuinly concerned fot us and called every hotel and ryokan (inn) near by. they were either full, or charging about 7000 yen per person.
She couldnt seem to understand why we were still saying no to all of her efforts, at one point she offered to have us sty at her place.. for 3500 yen per person, wich is a deal for a ryokan, but not a deal for cheapsters like me and shiv!

So we decided, hmmm either we can 1) walk this small deserted mountain town till the AM then take the shuttle to the concert or 2) go to the concert, be with the people and see what happens.
we chose #2 and got on the next shuttle for naeba ski resort, where the festival was being held.

This story is starting to sound like a choose your own adventure, but thats honestly what it was like the whole weekend.

we get to the ski resort and the town looks like a japanese version of jasper, quaint, but packed with people, tucked in the mountains. by the way osaka temperature is about 30 degrees and humid, and naeba temperature was about 17 degrees , no humidity, so a little chilly in comparison, and me and shiv only have on t shirts and have rain ponchos in my purse.

we decide to roam the town and look for a place to stay. after checking with about 20 places we start to feel like mary and joseph and relaizing there is no room at any inn for us. we have convinced our selves that we are about to be sleeping out side to night, when we see a bunch of earthy peeps going into this one ryokan. so we follow. and the man says sorry no vacancy...but we have showers for 500 yen... hmmm
what do we do 1) sleep outside 2) sleep in the shower alnight
we take his information and decide to get a cp noodle and think about it, on our way to the cup noodle we saw another ryokan with more shifty charachters, so we followed them.
Lucky for us we were greeted by a really drunk japanese lady that said something to the effect of. "this place is really nice, hot water..."
the door guy must have felt bad for us and gave us a coupon. we decided to stay at this place. it was a 24 hr onsen, so you can sleep in the water, or come to a common tatami room and pass out.

One thing about japan that is great is that there are so many people, it is basically written, that there will be some one in your very same perdicament. so we sat, ate our cup noodle, sat in the onsen, slept under the brigt lights on the tatani (in 1/2 hr spurts). The place was really full, and the lights were blaring so you couldnt really sleep, but it was nice to just lay down. we didnt have any blankets so we slept on our onsen towels. this ghetto ness would be the theme of our trip. i love it!

The next day we woke up nice and early, had a big breakfast of tonkatsu curry and headed to get some snack and then to the festival.
Fuji rock festival was worth every penny. it was in a valley that was intricatly decorated to look like a forest wonderland. disco balls in the tress, 7 music stages, tons of resturants, shops etc.. it was grand. even the rocks in the streams had been painted bright colors and had googly eyes on them.

The bands we saw were :hige, motion sity sound track, kula shaker, kaiser cheifs, !!!, lilly allen, feist , iggy pop and the beastie boys. My faves were feist, lilly allen, !!! and the beastie boys. !!! did an awesome performance that me and shiv try to reinact on a daily basis. check youtube for !!! in concert, you;ll see what we mean.

great day, but the night was coming and we had to make it back to echigo yuzawa station in order to get the 1st shinkansen back to nigatta so that we could make out bus back to osaka. phew!!

we took the shutte bus back to echigo, and tried to find a place to sleep, but echigo is way more dead that naeba. so we decided to follow people to see where they were sleeping/going. aftter many failed attemepts at following people, we decided to sleep in the park. we found a nice little park, it even had a foot onsen bath. we snuggled up on the park bench, covered our selvesin out towels and rain jacket and tried to get some sleep. Shiv fell asleep fast, but i remained awake, sort of like the muma bird i guess. well it was funny because as the time went by, more and more vagrants from the festival ended up finding a parkbench and falling asleep in the park. we were really homeless and ghetto, it was nuts.

so I finally drifted og to sleep, only to be awoken at about 3 am by a bright lfash light in my face. AHHH!!! was it the cops, no it was the fuji rock staff!. I was so excited, he was saying" sumimasen (exuse me) you cannot sleep in the residential areas of echigo" and i got so excited. I though he was going to take us to a fuji rock sleeping area, maybe even a ryokan.

But no... he took us back to JR echigo yuzawa station. he rounded up every one from the park, put them in a van and drove them to the station. me and shiv were laughing, and crying inside a little...

so the station alreadt had people sleeping there from the concert. so we picked a nice little place on the sidewalk, put down out plastic bag ( that had been carrying our garbage) laid down on it, used our towels as pillows and slept till morning.
so ghetto, so good.

the rest of the trip was luxury, nice bus and good food all the way to osaka. but after this trip, i will never look at my futon the same way, ever again.