Visual kei, bullet trains and Kyoto

Luciano and I had a deal that if he went on a roller coaster, I would go and see a visual kei band, so keeping my end of the bargain we went to Shibuya O-West live house (in Shibuya) on Tuesday night to see this band called Kiryu (see the pictures I've posted below the writing). We waited around for a while with a crowd of tiny, fake-eyelashed, high-heeled and extravagantly dressed up girls (and about 1 boy), feeling very tall and western. We were then packed into a smallish moshpit area where everyone stood in perfect rows, waiting for Kiryu to come on stage. They began exactly at the advertised time, 6pm, which would be very unusual for a band anywhere but in Japan. What followed was probably one of the weirdest moments of my life. Five of the prettiest drag queens I have ever seen ran out onto the catwalk part of the stage and posed in their massive platform shoes and boutique metal guitars, and all the sweet little girls in the audience suddenly developed these very manly, terrifying voices and began screaming the names of their favourite band member while doing either the devil/rock worship sign or making a little loveheart with their hands. The lead singer (the purple drag queen) then began with a very metally scream and everyone in the audience all began this sychronised dance. Everyone seemed to know the same dance moves and every 16 bars or so they would change at the same time to a slightly different move. Whenever the singer screamed and the song got really metally, the girls would all at the same time start this crazy headbanging, which looked particularly impressive (once you got past the totally bizarre part of it) because they all have very long hair. And every single person in the audience would be doing it so it looked like a swishy, stormy sea of hair. Then there would be a nice pop-metal kind of song where the audience could sing parts, and suddenly all the girls (there were about 3 men in the audience) would have their cute little child-like voices back on again. Then the song would end, and it was back to creepy, manly devil voice "yeeeaaaaahhhs" and so on. It took a while to get into the dancing and such because I was totally weirded out, but I eventually figured out some of the moves. Apart from this one which I still don't really understand: About 6 songs in the crowed suddenly smooshed forward and crammed themselves right up against the stage, leaving 3 quarters of the mosh suddenly empty, and at every "on" beat the girls at the back on this crush would literally throw themselves up against the crowd. Then after 16 bars they would just move exactly back into their perfectly formed lines. There was also a "move" where the crowd became a violent "death ring", little high heeled girls suddenly pushing each other over and slamming up against each other (for only 16 bars though) and then going back to being completely still. It was so weird. We had gathered after talking to both Hana and Quan (from regurgitator) about the music scene in Japan that crowds never dance or even clap if you don't tell them to, almost because they don't want to do anything that they haven't been told to do. So we figured out that the members of Kiryu were doing subtle hand gestures (whilst playing very complicated metal guitar) to tell the hardcore fans (everyone in the audience) what moves to do. They do this so they can get the crowd to actually dance, but it also gives the whole show this kind of creepy robotic quality, which really weirded me out. What I did really appreciate about the band, however, was their constant interaction with the audience - they were really lovely and much easier to like than some Indie bands in Australia, or from America or England etc, who are too cool to chat with the audience or even acknowledge the audience's existence. They even took a picture with the audience which I thought was really cute. Anyway, there is just so much more I could write about this bizzarre experience but I've written HEAPS already and you're all probably beginning to look like when Luci doesn't stop banging on about Visual Kei, so I will stop. The day after seeing Kiryu, we sadly said goodbye to Asakusa and Tokyo and hopped on a bullet train to Kyoto (which come every ten minutes and go at about 250 km per hour - cityrail is going to be a very depressing reality when we get back to Australia). So yeah, bullet trains go really really really fast! Unfortunately the stupid business man next to me had the blind down over the window for most of the journey, but we did get to see My Fuji out another window, which was so cool. Kyoto is very very different to Tokyo - quieter, less crazy, more traditional and a little less friendly to tourists, I think. We're stopping here for 5 days before going on to Osaka, which is another city just next to Kyoto. So far we have visited the Imperial Palace, the Manga Museum, eaten in a traditional style restaurant and rode our bikes down the extremely gorgeous Philosopher's Path. I'll leave it up to Luci to write about Kyoto in more detail.

Hope everyone reading this is doing well and that the mountains has warmed up a little since last weekend!

Much love
Annika

(Photos: Kiryu, Luci with a 800 yen (about $9) lunch - the food here is so amazing and cheap, this was a whole set for $9!!!, and shots from around Kyoto - a man on his laptop with his cats, watching the sun set and the main river which divides east and west Kyoto.