Summer Sonic Rock Festival

A week ago, our Aussy neighbours had their baby - a third daughter called Eva Grace. In true Aussy style, Ross was invited to 'wet the baby's head', so on Friday after work headed to the 5th bar on the Roppongi pub crawl to be greeted with 4 shorts and a beer lined up on the bar. Poor Ross, didn't have much choice but to join in! 13 shorts, several beers, and one chicken dinner later, Ross managed to stagger home (on the train!). My side of the story was that I was awoken at 3am by a noise and went to investigate - Ross's keys and phone were on the table, but no Ross. So I presumed he'd gone to the little local bar with Mark, but then 30 mins later I hear him stagger about the house - he'd fallen asleep on the balcony! He was very much the worse for wear, can't remember getting home, and doesn't know why he fell asleep on the balcony! Mark was made to drink 15 shots in one bar - but did get his plaque on the wall, commemorating his new baby daughter - something to show her friends when she's older! All Ross could say when he was staggering about the house was 'they're a bunch of *^$£ing nutters!'

So, when I woke him up about 8am the following morning he was a little the worse for wear, so with plastic bag in hand, we jumped on the train to Chiba to go to the Summer Sonic Rock Festival - a smaller Fuji Rock really. We had arranged to camp, so first put the tent up - the campsite was right by the beach (not a swimming beach though, as it's right on Tokyo bay, so a bit icky) but nice to see the sea! In this first pic, you can see the Marine's baseball stadium in teh backgroud - this was the biggest stage.

Then we headed through the very well managed traffic to the venue. Essentially, the festival took place in a huge conference centre, with stages in each of three big halls, and with two food, drink and merchandise halls in between. Then there was a very large venue in the baseball stadium over the road, and a really cute beach stage, which got going late at night. There was one other stage which we didn't find!

The whole set up was a bit 'music festival in a parallel universe' to me - all the essential features of a festival were there, but it was in a conference centre! They had put a lot of effort into all the decorations etc. - each of the halls was dark, with lots of pretty lights, and flags, and strobes etc.

Here's a picture of the Mountain Stage before it all really got going.

We watched a few songs from a couple of local bands, then went to buy 'tour T-shirts' for Ross and Felix.

The first band we saw was Biffy Clyro - they were very good (and came out without shirts on, which was most shocking for the Japanese!!)

Then we went over the Sonic Stage and saw Delphic (this is around 3pm!!)

Then over to the Marine Stage (in the baseball stadium) - this was a really big venue!

Saw a little bit of Nas (American Rapper - not that great!!), then saw Nickelback, who were surprisingly good. We wathced Neve's fave song 'Rockstar' but the bloodly Blackberry wasn't working so the recording didn't work (sorry Neve!)

What was strange about the whole affair, was that probably 40% of the bands were American, and a further 40% were English - so they all spoke and sang in English - the programmes were all in English too - the Japanese didn't seem to mind though!

Here's the stadium - it was very large!


We weren't supposed to take our cameras in, but we just pretended that we hadn't understood and took it in anyway - we thought it was a silly rule that needed breaking.

This was just before Nickelback came on stage

We then watched the Offspring, wondered back to the other stages and saw Pendulum, and the Smashing Pumpkins, and caught the last few tracks of Orbital and Calvin Harris

Other acts were Jay-Z, A-Ha (!!!), Richart Ashcroft, 30 Second to Mars, and Eels - what an eclectic selection!

On day 2 (which we didn't stay for as you had to buy each day's tickets separately) was, amongst others, Stevie Wonder, Jason Derulo, Sum 41, Taylor Swift, a Tribe called Quest, Hole, Pixies, Black Rebel Motorcylce club, and deadmau5 - once again, a bizarre selection!


By the end of the evening we were starving as we'd not really eaten all day (apart from beer, which isn't very nutritious!) and we found a kebab stand, selling proper donnah kebabs with proper chilli sause - it was like manna from heaven!

Whilst we were sitting on the 'grassy chill our area' ( having obediently removed our shoes!) eating said kebabs, someone was taking a yoga lesson, which many of the Japanese found to be a good idea. We just watched and ate kebab!

Then we went back to our tent - it was only about 11pm at this point, and many caught the train home - we'd assumd that the gig would end after the trains, which is why we'd booked the camping, but actually it was lovely - the camp site was lit by hundreds of little latterns, and there were bars and food places, hammocks, and a small stage playing what sounded like the Japanese equivalent to Jack Johnson. So we wondered along the beach a bit, with a lovely cool breeze (it's still about 30 degrees at night time) and then crashed in our tent.

...We then woke up at about 7am drenched in sweat (unfortunately you don't get air-con in a tent!), so the day started rather earlier than we'd planned!!!