Zushi Fes'09 [Summer Days!!]

Wednesday 12 August [Zushi Live Festival 2009 @ Kamakura, Zushi]

It had always been a plan of me to visit some live music festivals (or live houses) when I'm in Japan. The perfect festival was RockInJapan Festival. Which is a pretty big festival with a lot of japanese bands and artist. And most importantly, YUI performs there too. But unfortunately the festival was held on 31/7, 1/8 and 2/8. Whereas we already got our flight tickets for 3/8. So that was a real pity. Anyway, decided to go to this Zushi Festival. Which was a rather small one with only 2 stages (or actually 1.5 stage"-__-) . But still, it had some great artists peforming like Ai Otsuka (photo below)

And Do As Infinity! The tickets were bought at Family Mart (Combini,Convience Store). With help from the storeguy. Buying tickets seems to be pretty easy in Japan, they got a machine where you can select the events from and insert money to buy it.

Now having the ticket, the next step was to actually get there. The description was written on the site asto how to go there, but the site itself was in Japanese. So at times like these, BabelFish is your best friend, for some raw translation.

It was pretty far. All the way at Kamamura, which was near Yokohoma (near Tokyo). Lucky they got shuttle busses taking you there. These shuttle busses would be picking you up at Kamakura station. So knowing that, All I needed to do was to go to Kamakura station. (Which took like more than 4 hours! From Osaka to Shin Osaka = 15 min. Shin Osaka to Shin Yokohama = 2 hours 45 min Shin Yokohama to Yokohama = 15 min. Yokohama to Kamakura = 40 Min. Kamakura to Zushi = 10 min.

Kamakura itself is a pretty old-styled small town. Zushi however, located at the seaside, is a pretty upclass place. Reminds me of Monaco or Miami (sort off)(Or maybe it's because of the palmtrees)

At last I got there!

It was time to go in, but a slightly little problem occured. When you go in you'll get the usuall wristbands. There were 2 colors, Blue and Red. With red you'll get acces to the front-row-area. Whereas Blue wristbands holders couldn't get as close to the stage. I was supposed to get a red one. But they didn't got any anymore (such bad organisation). So they gave out these to everyone. A sticker which you must stick to your shirt or somewhere. This wasn't a big problem untill I lost the sticker that is..."-__- (even though they weren't really checking that much)

There were already some artists performing, So I missed those. But it didn't matter, cause the most anticipated band for me was Do As Infinity.

I got to the Palmtree Stage which was right next to the sea.

The back-row-area.

The band of Do As Infinity tuning the instruments

After a while, the Guitarist of D.A.I appeared first, Ryo Owatari.
Then after him came Van Tomiko. Everyone was excited. Right from the first song, which was SUMMER DAYS, everyone was enthousiasticly jamming along. ,
I didn't took any photos of it, since I was enjoying the music myself =P

They ended with 本日ハ晴天ナリ.

Well after this, I went to check out the other "stage" as you can call it that. Which was actually a stage at the swimming pool. With all the crowd in the water.

So like a lot of people were swimming, sunning and stuff.

Also a place to eat. Everyone sitting under cover for the sun, enjoying the day.

They also got Turkish food in Japan. (Durum)

PE'Z, a Jazz band perfoming. Pretty upbeat.

After PE'Z was done, people started to come in again, To get a nice place to see the next big artist. Do you know who it is?
It's.............Ai Otsuka!! There she is. When she came upstage you heared the usuall screaming:"Ai-Chaaaan!!"

It's really her!

More photos. I must say, the crowd wasn't as excited as with Do As Infinity. But Otsuka herself was stunning though. Great live singing!

The crowd did became enthousisiastic afterwards though.

After Ai Otsuka, it was already kind of late. I still needed to go all the way back to.

But I decided that once I'm here, I might as well stay a bit longer.

Here's at that other stage with カラーボトル. (Me not really interested...)

I actually wanted to wait for J-Min, I don't know her but wanted to check it out. So I chilled a bit and waited. (In the end didn't seen her)

People resting/chilling.

So relaxfull at the seaside.

With palmtrees.

Sitting on the grass watching the sea.

Resting from the world.

The sun is shining.

Back to music! Triceratops performing. Look at the videos I posted below to get a feel of it.

Or check here Zushi Fes '09 & Zushi Fes '09 (Yeah)

Time to go back again.

Small Town.

Back at the station, look how crowded it is. So many people.

When I got to Shin-Yokohama, I needed to wait 1 hour for my next train to arrive. So I walked a bit in this 'Cubicplaza' which has 'Bic Camera', a 7 floor electronics store! (it even rhymes...)

So well, it was a nice day. Nice live music. Great live perfomances. Nice place. I enjoyed it.

I think the best performance was D.A.I's .

"Summer days, they have never been the same"

(Do As Infinity, Summer Days)