#the mortal

I hit up Tower Records again but mostly take photos. There’s some nice displays for Buck-Tick and I even spotted Yukio’s autograph. He was in The Mortal with Atsushi but his main band is My Way My Love.

Tower Record! No music, no life. No Buck-Tick, no life.

The magazines I actually bought below. Plus, one of the Welcome back to Victor tote bags.

One thing I did not take a photo of was my haul from the used shops. Never skip out on purchasing first releases when you can afford it. There have been periods when I don’t buy Buck-Tick stuff right away and then it’s really hard to find. Plus, it was still motherfucking expensive. I got the Oral History book, Atsushi’s solo books, and some magazines. There’s still some magazine issues from the late 1980s when I first became a fan that I don’t own. My friend owned them so I would look at her copy. But one day I will get my own copy. Those things are even harder to find now and still expensive to me.

I came home with a lot more stuff than perhaps I thought I would be coming home with. Here is my haul of The Mortal goods.

Before I left Japan, my friend asked if I had opened the chocolate bar. She said it was tasty. I said I haven’t tried it yet. Some time passes at home and I eventually open the chocolate bar. Each comes with a sticker. To my surprise, mine was signed by Atsushi. 当たり！

So there you have it. You never know if the merchandise you purchase has something extra special about it.

Since the main point of my trip was to see The Mortal live, let’s talk about The Mortal!

First, I hit up several record stores to see how I could go further into debt. Several stores had some displays for The Mortal and tour goods for sale, or just Buck-Tick displays and stuff. Images from store displays below. The Tower Records in Shibuya is the most notable because The Mortal played an exclusive show there. I didn’t bother to try to qualify because my itinerary was quite full for the trip and I was satisfied enough that I had a ticket to one concert. No need trying to win a ticket and getting my hopes up and missing a day of turbo mode tourism.

Now, on to the show! I went to Studio Coast in Shin-Kiba. To me this venue is notable for another side project, Hisashi’s Lucy recorded a live video there.

They had lockers so I bought a bunch of merchandise and threw it in a locker. Tickets were general admission and by the time I hit the floor, it was more crowded than I would have liked but I haven’t seen any member in forever so I don’t care. I’m just happy to be here.

There’s no photos at major label artist shows and fans are pretty respectful of this so I have nothing from when the band was on stage. The little old lady in front of me never wavered. She stood like a rock! She was so short but so solid. I wish I have such endurance to watch a live show when I’m her age. Much respect to you!

Here are the obligatory flowers from friends and companies. I don’t really get this practice but then again I’m not into flowers. I think it’s a waste of farmland that could be used for food.

After hearing all the songs, I was really glad that I was being so weirdly paranoid about my mortality and chose to go to this show. The Mortal by themselves don’t have enough songs for a full 2 hour show that seems to be standard so they also played Atsushi solo songs. Since I never saw Atsushi perform solo, it was a welcome treat for the ears. I still think though that he was pushed too far for some songs and his voice does not have the range needed.

The show started at 7:05pm and ended at 9:30pm according to my notes. At the beginning of the first encore, Yukio played with a theremin bow thing. Honestly, I can picture his silhouette on this but I have to go back and watch the live video they sold to remember exactly what he was doing and what it sounded like. That is, I assume he did the same thing at every show because the video is from another night. At the beginning of the second encore, it was Jake’s turn to show off so he did his solo thing.

Setlist:
1. Tenshi
2. Dead Can Dance
3. Pain Drop
4. Yume
5. Fantômas - Tenrankai No Otoko
6. Tsuki
7. Grotesque
8. Mother
9. Guignol
10. Sacrifice (Atsushi solo)
11. Hallelujah (Atsushi solo)
12. Wakusei (Atsushi solo)
13. Barbaric Man
14. Mortal
15. Sayonara Waltz
Encore I:
16. Shadow of Love (The Damned cover)
17. Cities In Dust (Siouxsie & the Banshees cover)
18. Spirit (Bauhaus cover)
Encore II:
19. Yokan (Atsushi solo)
20. Neko (Atsushi solo)
21. Explosion (Atsushi solo)

Bonus: the venue had this Buck-Tick poster. I should have nicked it ;)

Oh and uh if you heard someone singing the original English lyrics during “Cities In Dust”, well that would have been me.

The story will continue.

There once was a time when this blog post would have been a tale of a recent trip. 7 years later, this blog post is a story from yesteryear. I have a folder of photos I already prepped to share. I just never bothered to write up the tale.

There once was a time I lived in Japan with my grandmother and my uncle. Both are dead now. The house has been torn down. Yet, whenever I go to Japan it’s to do a 里帰り (sato-gaeri) trip, a trip home. (Sato implying countryside, a return to the hometown is a return to the countryside.) I stay with my other uncle and am generally bored out of my mind as the adults gossip about family. As more time passes, more relatives fight and I’m restricted from yet more relatives I haven’t seen since childhood. I wonder why I used my money and vacation time away from work to be bored. People think going to Japan is exciting. Japanese think going to Okinawa is a vacation. For me, it is neither. I’m not at a resort. I’m not at the beach. I’m not in the big city. I’m not even going anywhere new. I’m hanging out in a living room in the suburbs, having McDonald’s brought over for breakfast everyday, watching that same damn guy on every show on every channel. It can be downright annoying. No more. It’s time for a 大都会帰り (dai tokai-gaeri), a return to the big city. (My made up phrase.) Or that time I thought I was going to die so I went to Japan to see The Mortal perform live.

I don’t have any specific reason, other than perhaps I was not getting enough sleep each night and was commuting a couple hours everyday in an area heavy with vehicular traffic and thought I was going to get into a bad accident, but I had an overwhelming feeling that I was going to die and soon. Around the same time, Buck-Tick announced that Atsushi Sakurai had a new side project called The Mortal and they would play a handful of shows. I haven’t seen Buck-Tick live since 1997. I told myself I wouldn’t let 20 years pass without seeing them again. I feel like I’m going to die. I need to go back to Japan and see The Mortal. I have to. Ever since the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, I’ve started talking again to my old B-T friend who now lives in Tokyo. Good excuse to see her too. Would she want to go too? She hasn’t been to a Buck-Tick concert since 1995. This would be an opportunity to see things I’ve always wanted to see. But there are so many places I’ve wanted to see because we never sightsee. We just spend a couple days in Tokyo before we go visit relatives. There’s a place that seems interesting to take children but I don’t have children. A friend tells me I don’t need children to go there. Just go. I take time off work. I buy a plane ticket. I buy concert tickets. I plan what I’m going to do each day. But there is this guilt. I can’t tell any family members because I’m not going to Okinawa. I’ve never gone to Japan by myself. I’ve never gone to Japan and not visited family. I am feeling an incredible amount of self-generated pressure. But my mom just went back to Japan with her boyfriend to visit where he’s from and she didn’t see her family. Screw it. I tell her I’m going to Japan and not going to see family. She couldn’t care less. My mind is blown. They give me a transit card that has a little bit of yen left on it. My girlfriend is going to take care of the dogs while I’m gone. This is really happening.

First, Buck-Tick adjacent or non-Buck-Tick things I did. It was November so I thought it would be cold and changed my clothes in the airport bathroom then headed straight for some Gegege No Kitaro sightseeing. I’ve always loved that show. Damn, the store I really wanted to shop at is closed. I should’ve looked up their hours. I’m starting to realize it’s not cold at all. I started sweating and had to take off a layer of clothing. The creator of Gegege No Kitaro is Shigeru Mizuki and he’s still alive. My trip concludes, I go home, and Shigeru dies. 4 years later in 2019, there would be a collaboration with Buck-Tick where their song is used in the show and there is merchandise sold with the members drawn in the style of the show.

I pack my days so full of things to do that there isn’t much room to breathe. I do leave some room to hang out with my friend. I check in with her and every time something is going on, she invites me to join but I don’t always join. I stay in a hostel dorm and am the first one up each day and the last one back in the room each night. Everyone is asleep and I get up. I get back and everyone is asleep. I really crammed in as much as I could each day because I felt my mortality creeping up on me and I was alone. No family obligations. Go, go, go!

My friend wants to check out the Kawaii (cute) Monster Cafe. I’m not into cute. I’m into cool but sure, let’s check it out. I check out some temples and shops in Tokyo. I run into the crazy cat man of Shinjuku. I check out a town in Saitama. I go to Disney Sea in Chiba for my birthday because I’ve never been. I go to Tochigi and walk until my legs almost fall out in Nikko. I go to Kanagawa to see the Daibutsu of Kamakura (great Buddha statue) and watch yabusame (horseback archery) on the beach. Could that day be more Japanese? I’ve almost seen all of Kanto now!

One day my friend takes me to a party with an interesting assortment of characters. Another day we go to a gathering with an even more interesting assortment of characters. One person is an artist from France. He doesn’t speak Japanese but one person speaks some French. So we’re communicating in Japanese via the volunteer translator. The French guy speaks English so sometimes just the two of us are speaking in English. I am starting to realize that this is a great trip. The youngest one there asks me what I think of Japan, perhaps forgetting for a moment that I’m half-Japanese–it happens a lot. I say that since perhaps my last trip some years ago as an adult, I’m seeing for the first time that Japanese can be kind. My childhood was not so nice. It was perhaps too honest and too real for such a casual question. She apologizes, perhaps on behalf of all Japanese, perhaps even for a time when she wasn’t even born yet, and I can see how awkward this could be. Even more awkward, I’m coming to a realization that almost of my bad childhood experiences were with my own people and it wasn’t even Japanese being mean to me, if we want to draw the line between Okinawan culture and society vs. Japanese culture and society. No time for a self crisis therapy moment. Anyway, I mention I also plan to visit Takasaki in Gunma and this person is from Maebashi, Gunma. They say that anytime they wanted to do anything, they would go to Takasaki. My friend and I are perplexed because Maebashi is the capital city of Gunma so surely there are things to do. No, nothing. Maebashians go to Takasaki. One night, I see a mouse in the subway. Probably going to his job as a sushi chef.

My friend and I walk around to see some Christmas lights (illumination). I’m pondering when did this become a thing. When I was kid, there was no illumination, no Halloween, etc. in Japan. You just got a cake from KFC for Christmas. More and more Western culture creeping into Japan in strange ways.

I go to one place and the owner is friends with Takanori Nishikawa from T.M. Revolution and there’s some Buck-Tick connections there but I don’t ask about the owner’s friendship and any celebrity sightings. Just a matter of fact thing. One shop is having an Okinawan fair so there are Okinawan products for sale. I buy some shikwasa juice because I always drink it when I go back to Okinawa. And here I thought this trip would be without shikwasa. I go to another place and there’s cats that just hang out there. There’s a glass of water just for the cats (labeled in Spanish) so don’t drink it unless you want babas.

While I’m visiting, there’s a terrorist attack in France. So many people left flowers at the French embassy.

I see a couple a dentist office named Imai and an apartment/condo complex.

More to come. Spoiler alert: I didn’t die.

What happens when you consider every song that Buck-Tick members have ever played on? Their albums, their side projects, their guest appearances. Well, for me it went something like this. Again, my results may vary depending on the day. Next week I could create a different set of songs entirely.