Nagisa Music Festival at www.davynextdoor.com

Nagisa Music Festival

This is perhaps obnoxiously long so if you don’t want to read the details (I won’t cry) I’ll just let you know right now that I went to an all day techno music festival here in Tokyo and there are pictures of it down below. Here’s the longer version:

I didn’t know anything about it, except that Kenji went last time in autumn and said it was fantastic. Trusting his judgment I decided to go this time around. Good choice, me!

One thing you may or may not know about me is I love dancing. The problem is I’m often too shy, nervous, around too many people I know, or something of the sort to actually dance. I’m working on that. The right music is also important and for me techno techno technooo does the trick. Thankfully Nagisa turned out to be an all day techno music festival the highlight of which was Hallucinogen, a close relative of the mighty Shpongle (if you know this band that is quite odd and I love you for it).

We got there around noon, left at 8 pm when it closed (yes, 8 pm, silly Japan), and didn’t stop moving the whole time except for the 30 minute clean up break they had (yes, again, only in Japan do they stop playing music at music festivals). We includes Kenji, who I went to the Mars Volta concert with, and another friend Howard who I also met last semester.

The concert was in Odaiba, aka Moon Base, definitely one of the most interesting parts of Tokyo. You can read more or see more pictures about it here if you’re interested. It was right in front of the famous Fuji Television building where Japanese salarymen work (the typical Japanese overworked employee that I am crammed in with every morning during the morning commute. This website gives a short summary of the typical life. Not an exaggeration, for most of them the company is their life and family). I only mention that because it felt good to have such an amazing music festival at such a contrastingly corporate location.

The only other music festival I’ve ever been to was Bonnaroo, an incredible 4 day event that happens every year in Tennessee drawing 80,000ish people and a lot of my favorite bands, as well as many amazing ones that I’ve never heard of. Nagisa was… well… unsurprisingly different. There were about 5 different stages playing music at the same time, but most of them were “give us a shot! we’ve got heart!” kind of bands that weren’t particularly pleasant to stand in the general vicinity of. The techno stage quickly became our music of choice as the crowd seemed way more into it than anything else.

The crowd. The bands weren’t the most well known in the world but the crowd didn’t mind. Definitely one of most fun I’ve ever been involved in. Although there were the traditional music festival attending hippies here much more prolific were the ridiculous fashion conscious Tokyo crowd. Both guys and girls alike, the line isn’t so distinct here. These are the people that make sure their little dog wears a new outfit everyday. The people who make sure their hair is sticking up in the right direction every time they go to the bathroom. Not afraid to dance. Descriptions don’t do them justice but you should get a general idea by the pictures below.

Pictures. These pictures are a bit ridiculous, I’m not gonna lie. Being a foreigner in Japan has its ups and downs but certainly one of the ups at Nagisa was that all the little small cliques of Japanese people loved dancing with us and having their picture taken with us. Howard’s camera is remarkably small so he was kind enough to take these pictures and send them my way. You can click on the top right or left of a picture to cycle through them.