ADAMS in Stockholm

I'm back in boring and cold Sweden, that's why I haven't updated in a while (not much to do here), but this weekend I acctually went to a gig with the Japanese duo ADAMS!

ADAMS has become sort of a big talk around different communities because of their BL theme, the duo claims to be lovers and there's always some fanservice in PV's or even naked photos like in their previous album 69 (I mean just look at the title...).

I went to their last gig in Sweden which was in April 2014, and eventhough I'm not a fan I quite enjoyed them and they seemed sweet.

So back I went.

This time the gig took place in central Stockholm so I assumed, and hoped, more people would show up, but unfortunately not.

I really liked the new album SEXPLOSION, I felt like they went for a more electronical sound than before and to be honest the songs could be any western pop acts so maybe they can reach beyond Japan-fanatics with this.

The setlist was really good and I'm impressed that they keep giving it their all eventhough there's about 30 people intront of them. Yet again they explained the bands concept of two Adams rather than an Eve and an Adam.
Highlights of the evening was Romance, Seseragi, Boku no sei and Baddest Crown, but I think the opening with the new song LOVE ME really set a good start for the evening and it showed how enthusiastic they are. 

Just like last year Adam and Shota showed up behind the merchtables to sign the items being sold, and they acctually also shock hands with everyone aswell.
I was there to write about the evening so I couldn't have my eyes on the stage all the time, but I can say that they're totally worth seeing, so I recomend everyone who can and want to go see them if they stop by anywhere close! You wont regret it, they're very kind and have a sound which is easy to enjoy.

One of my personal favorites, Seseragi

池袋男子BL学園 -

I've wanted to visit a maid café for quite some time but I've never managed to get anyone to go with me. I finally found a friend in school who's into BL and she told me the most fantastic piece of information the other night.

We talked about maid cafés and butler cafés, and then she told me that a friend of hers mentioned a BL café!*

To be honest I don't have that much experience of BL, because every single one I've watched has either showed rape or pedophilia and that's not what I enjoy watching. So this café of course made me very interested, what is it like? I went home that night google:ing!

The first thing to show up was a BL café that closed in 2013, and that seemed to be it. Fortunatley I was wrong. There it was, Ikebukuro Danshi BL Gakuen. Everything was in Japanese and the rules was put as an imagefil so I couldn't do the lazy version and copy paste into googletranslate just to easily get the image of what it said without having to strain my braincells. My biggest worry was that it would be for japanese people only, yes not that weird here, but we were lucky and yesterday we took off to this some what weird café.

I came straight from an apointment which took longer than I imagened so I had not been home for a change of clothes. You see, the theme for this café was school, on the webpage the boys working there even had a selfintroduction saying which year student they were, so I didn't want to show up in jeans but I ended up doing so anyway due to lack of time.

It wasn't hard to find at all, and a sign was put outside the building so everyone easily could see it.We got up and ironicly stood there laughing not knowing if we should open the door or not, or what we'd see since the only thing we could hear was girls laughing. Being brave we just opened the door and a guy dressed as a high school student turns around. He greeted us welcome and asked if we were here for the first time, if we understood japanese and then pointed to the only free table in the right corner.

The café wasn't that big, looked sort of like they aimed for the lobby of some expensive school with fake leather furniture, blackboard and churchwindows.
Our guy came back and explained the rules, there would be no photographing and no touching. Then, back to the roleplay. He began explaining that when this school opened it was for boys only, them, but now it has opened up for girls aswell, us. We could see which year the students were by looking at their ties, black, red or blue, I think blue was first year, red second and black third. We would automatically start off as first year students but the more we went there we'd upgrade, but as for now, if an older student would talk to us we should use a bit more respectful speach and sit up straight. They reffered to us as our names plus chan since we were "younger".

All of the staff came up at least once to us and talked, asking where we came from, some were easier to understand than others, not because of them but because of my limited japanese. Our guy came back and put a BL book on our table while he walked around talking to others.
This evening I'd say the café had about 12 guests and 5 staff. In general they didn't walk around and made out with eachother which many might think, they would maybe hug or just talk in a cute way to eachother.

While we sat there trying to let all this sink in, we noticed that the table with girls infront of ours got very excited, screaming and laughing, while 2 of the students stood in front doing something.
One of the first year students came up to us and talked, and asked if we wanted to have pocky, the japanese chocolate sticks. We might aswell try since that table had pocky and they looked like they had a blast. He then explained that in the pocky menu you get to set up a BL scene that 2  of them will act out, especially for us. I couldn't really decide if I was thrilled or freaked out, but might aswell try since we're here.

He came back with a glass of pocky, and asked for a story, who'd be in it and who'd be uke and seme. This was a huge decision, we had to think about it. After a lot of thinking we came up with a story, told a third guy who completly seriously listened, asked where it would take place and gave suggestions. Then he walked off to tell the two victims.

They came back, showed us a seat in front of our table and sofa so that we could watch them comfortably.
They sat down and told us to tell them when to start, may I add that the guy who first showed us in seemed very excited so I don't think they suffered. No boys were harmed during this scene.

I'm not gonna tell what our scene was because that's private, but let me say they improved our idea and we got pretty excited.
When it was done our guy said that was nice because he was hungry so we offered him some pocky's and that made him very happy.

Then our hour was up. We asked for our check and our uke came back with that and our members cards. So, what does this kind of event cost? You can chose to stay 30 minutes or 1 hour, 500 yen for 30 minutes and 1000 yen for 1 hour, they sell drinks and even small amounts of food.
The members card cost 300 yen, and eventhough I'm about to leave the country I got one for the sake of a memory.
When we were on our way out another group of girls was about to leave, and we were told to wait. The boys wave you off, so you can't just leave! Very cute. They all got out to the entrance and waved and said thanks (in english) eventhough they spoke in japanese most of the time.

I must say it was a pretty special experience and very fun, but I have to admit not being fluent in japanese became an obstacle. So I wouldn't recomend it to anyone who doesn't speak japanese at all. My guess is that the guys working there are between 20-25years old and the customers looked more like 23-27 to be honest. I've never been to a hostclub, but I get the feeling it's about the same thing but cuter and more innocent.

Walking away from this café I couldn't decide if I was purely excited or if I was feeling like a perverted old man who put a bill in a strippers thong.


Webpage:http://www.blcafe.jp/pc/index.html

*(I don't think that many aren't familiar with the terms but just in case, maid café is a café with girls dressed up as maids, they talk to you and sometimes play games I've heard, and the same goes for butler café but it's guys or sometimes girls dressed as boys. BL is a shortened form of Boys Love, often reffered to as yaoi in the west but in Japan now a days BL is more often used. I've heard some confusion about there being a difference between BL and yaoi, that yaoi is supposed to be more hardcore but that's not true, at the bookstore everything goes under BL, intimate sexscenes as well as boys just kissing.)

8bit Café

I visited Tokyo for the first time almost 4 years ago, and before that trip I collected as much information as possible as I thought I probably wouldn't go back for perhaps another 5 years or so (hehe, I went back the following year). One of the things I added to my lost of doing was to visit the 8bit café I've read about in a gaming magazine. I never went though, nor did I go the following year. Now there's only 2 weeks left for me in Japan so I try my hardest to fill my days with fun stuff. and last night me and a friend finally visited the 8bit café in Shinjuku!

I'm terrible at finding stuff and this place had the tiniest sign outside an entrance with a huge sign for an erotic clothing store. The café opens at 7pm and closes at 5, so we tried to get there as soon as they opened and I'm glad we did because it filled up kind of quickly.

As soon as we reached the right floor the door opened and a girl from the staff welcomed us (she acctually stood there and held the door eventhough I stood in the middle of the stairs trying to take a photo of their awesome sign). As soon as we got in they told us to have a seat and another girl from the staff came with menu's and explained the "rules", which was that you have to pay the entrance fee of 600yen, order a drink every 1½ hour to stay and that photography was allowed.

This really was the cutest place ever! It felt like sitting in someones living room, so many games and a very nice atmosphere. One of the "tables" in the back was acctually an old arcade game, so you could play as you were sitting down!

They offered a small amount of desserts and snacks, but what's most appealing are their special cocktails! They cost about 700yen each and all are refferences to games!
I tried a Dr. Mario first, vodka with Dr Pepper and Coke, and on the side you get a testtube with 2 pills inside which I was told to put in the drink.

Then there was time for some gaming! They had Gameboys and stuff lying around and tons of games and guides you could read, but I went for the Super Mario! It was so much fun, I haven't played Super Mario (the old ones) for about 12 years so it felt very nostalgic.

After 3½h of gaming, drinking and looking through their stuff it was time to go.
The staff was very nice and this is a must for every gamer in Tokyo! But highly recomended to go as early as possible because after 1h it was more or less full.
Don't forget to leave a drawing or a note in one of their notepads!
Webpage: http://8bitcafe.net/index.html

My menu for the evening~

Dr.Mario (vodka, Dr. Pepper and Coke)

Donkey Kong, (can't remember the ingredients but it tasted like banana)

And a cake cheese, yes you read it right, not a normal cheese cake. It acctually tasted a lot cheesier, not as sweet.

In contrast to the modern

The reason I got into japanese culture in the first place was because of popularculture. I loved to watch anime and play japanese video games as a child, and then I was introduced to music which made me hooked and also what made me decide to study japanese. BUT, to be completly honest, I don't think that would've been enough because I've had some huge difficulties with the language and I'm pretty sure that I would've given up long time ago if I didn't have any interest in the society, and also traditional japanese culture. A combinaion of all of the above is what makes me keep going and makes me love Japan as a country.

So, first semester of studying japanese I had to take a class in japanese history and I can honestly say that I'm pretty bad with history, western or japanese so when it started, what I knew about old Japan was most likely that samurais are japanese warriors.

*sound of echoing silence*

Yeah, probably just that (like I said, I barely know any history, and funny thing is that today japanese history is the one history I know the best).
Because it was so different from western history I was quite amazed, and when we then had a lecture in old culture, as in entertainment, I was hooked.
Our teacher showed us short videos of the 3 main traditional theaterforms from Japan; Noh (no idea why we spell it like that when the kanji is read Nou, but whatever), Kabuki and Bunraku, and I was so fascinated by all 3, but most of all Kabuki.

I know that among westerners...okey, among everyone, japanese or not, the main audience is middleaged to old, and people who are into popular culture (of today) is very rarely into this (that is probably why most people laugh at me when I say I like visual kei and Kabuki, very strange combination). But I couldn't help but to see some serious recemblances between Kabuki and visual kei culture a week ago when I went to Asakusa Public Hall.

Posters of this month's program

This is not some groundshaking, new information, as a matter of fact people have compared Kabuki and visual kei for a long time, but I don't agree with that kind of resemblence because some people are trying so hard to make it sound like visual kei has Kabuki as some sort of rolemodel which is obviously wrong since most people who are into visual kei, including the performers, are not fans of Kabuki since they usually want to represent something "new" and not old culture.

So here's some basic information about Kabuki, in case someone would like to know more about it or just isn't familiar with this form of theater.
It was first performed in the 1600's, by a woman! She and some other females began performing dances (dances usually tells a story in Japan) and the women danced as males aswell! The thing was that these women were involved in prostitution so the government didn't aprove of this and banned them from performing. Instead young boys began to do it, but later it turned out the same way. They did prostitution on the side and was banned so left were only older men and since the tradition has kept going. Certain families perform, and all parts are played by men no matter what age! So, a young boy by the age of 10 could make his first appearance playing the part of a 30 year old samurai. It's not common, mostly kids has kids parts, but for a first performance the family might want to introduce their new star in a ravishing role. The more common it is to see a 70-year old man playing the part of a young woman. It might feel a bit weird, but if you have a seat in the back you wont notice the difference (hehe). Well, seriously speaking, the art of Kabuki is to capture the character completly, bodylanguage etc, so it should not matter if a 70-year old plays a young girl.
The thing people love to compare with visual kei, except for men dressing up as women, is the "kata". Kata in Kabuki is basically steps, but it is way more fixed than western theater or dances! There's certain ways certain characters are supposed to walk, stand, talk, fight, etc, and it doesn't change, EVER! Among those kata, there's especially one that fascinates me, it's called "mie" and that is performed whenever the story reaches some sort of climax, when something important happens and what's happening is that the actor, or several depending on the scene, will just paus and place himself in a pose and at the same time role his head slightly and then just fix his position and head until he's completly still! This might sound weird so if you want to see how this might look you can see it in this video (0:21)


There's also "kata" for the audience, at least if you want to. I was very suprised the first time I went to see Kabuki because all of a sudden some man just shouted something out. Weird, I thought, I didn't think the actors made one of those weird public entrances from the audience seat you can see sometimes in western theater. But of course it wasn't. By the end of that performance I had heard so many people all over the venue who shouted that I understood it was the audience. The thing is that you just don't shout randomly, you usually shout the performers name and also during some special moment, like a mie or when the character enters. That's usually what people like to connect to visual kei since many bands has the same thing, like I mentioned before you're supposed to do different hand movements, sing a long in certain parts or even dance.

What I did realise and found funny this time at the Kabuki theater was that the fanculture is very similar! Kabuki really is the middleaged woman's visual kei scene. They didn't just sell the progam which was full of nice pictures of these young boys both in make up and without, they also had a 2015 calendar with them, and of course the traditional photos from the play (I find them to be almost like the cheki's you can get at concerts, just bigger and better quality...for the same price grrrrr).

For the first time I acctually bought 2 of these photos being sold. 

When I walked out from the theater there were groups of people taking pictures infront of the building togheter with the pictures which are supposed to look like old ukiyo-e (woodblock prints made of geisha's, kabuki actors etc). Not that different from exiting a club in Shinjuku after a visual kei performance I thought.

The posters meant to look like ukiyo-e.

Közi at Shinjuku Loft

 
Last night was the last time for me to see Közi *sob*
Eventhough it was sad, I had a great time, and of course Közi was awesome as always!

The event was "Rock is Culture" presented by Like an Edison and Shinjuku Loft, and this evening the bands performing was Közi, Liphlich, Stereo. C.K and Yazzmad as opening act.

The only band I've even heard of before last night was Liphlich and that's litterarly just "heard of", I haven't really heard anything from them...

I don't want to be mean, but the opening acts are always bad. So was Yazzmad. Well not bad maybe (I'm just mean now), but boring. So I was happy when the second act, Liphlich gt on stage!

I've only seen their most recent flyer and I have to say that made me quite interested. Their music didn't disapoint me, and their performance was quite interesting.

 For those who wants to know more you can check this video out!


Közi was last out, so before him I had to endure Stereo. C.K. They were really boring, and didn't even have any good looking bandmen I could rest my eyes on! (fufufu). Instead I got 2 showers from the guitarist spitting out his water on us... and there I was hoping to get Atsushi's spit on me on Buck-Tick's standing concerts, but NO, I get some random awful bands guitarists water in my face! (fangirling problems)

Anyway, Közi was last out and he had the same outfit as last tme (the red shirt, black tie, black pants and black gloves) as did his other two members.

Just like the previous nights Közi wasn't that much of a talker (the "MC" was about 2 sentences long), but he did perform a great setlist! I wasn't a big fan of the remixes of The Eye or Cacophony, so I'm glad he skipped those instead of any of the other 8 songs!

This evening Közi had some background projections as well and I think it looked really good with his shadow being reflected onto the wall. It created a good visual effect for these songs!
As before Közi played bass on Promenade, and on ISM the guy who plays synth played a bit of guitar but mostly he created noise to the beginning part by placing a screwdriver between the body of the guitar and the strings, for an extra industrial finish.

Then the gig was over, unfortunatley.
At the merchtable was of course the solo CD but also Chaosmos and suprise,suprise, the song or should I say composition Közi made for that exhibition 2013! Alot of people seemed to buy that, (including myself because this evening they gave you 2 postcards if you purchased it) so maybe not that many acctually ordered it when it was released.

Közi really impressed me live, eventhough I'm a big fan of his I didn't expect him to be this awesome live, especially since he hasn't been that active. Hopefully this wasn't the last time for me to see him live, and hopefully he'll release more solo or ZIZ stuff later on!

Setlist
Grottesca
Cruel Arcadia
MC
Incoherents
Babylo
Katharsis
Honey Vanity
ISM
Promenade

Picture stolen from Közi's Twitter

Velvet Eden at Ikebukuro CHOP

Last night was my final Velvet Eden gig!
I was cursing over how hard it was to find Chop last time, and was sort of happy when I got home thinking now I don't have to worry about that again... so of course I had to go back once more.

It went a bit faster this time, BUT I did get lost, again.

There were 5 bands playing, Rapunzel (female vocalist and male bassist with fairytale inspired lyrics to the regular kind of visual kei rock), Howling (regular rock band with members looking slightly visual kei, seemed to be older than average and their fans were too, I've never heard of them though), Benisemi (angura kei band, some songs were kind of interesting so I'm gonna check them out later), Kalavinka (barely saw anything of them since I left Chop) and of course Velvet Eden!

I was looking forward to seeing the new costumes and I've also heard that they played Sad Mask at their last gig in Osaka, so I assumed they'd play it here aswell. But no, the setlist was almost identical to the previous gigs I've been to, except that they played No15 this evening.

I stood on Dada's part of the stage, and since it was my last night I tried to focus and remember as much as possible (Velvet Eden and Dada plays a big part of my life, so this live was very important for me).
As soon as the live started I noticed Dada's fingers weren't doing that well, to be honest they were kind of broken. The middle finger on his left hand was almost completly off. Don't worry, I'm not talking about his actual fingers, but his claws. He mentioned it in his MC, and I think it happened during their last gig in Osaka in December.

One big thing was that Dada announced that their working on a new cd! I don't remember where, but I think I saw that the one man they'll have in May will be the release for their 3rd DVD, and now we have a cd to look forward to aswell. I'm really glad things are going so well for them.

The song which has impressed me the most is Toxic Queen, and I've been able to hear it all 3 times I've seen Velvet Eden live which has been completly awesome. But all good things come to an end.

Setlist
Intro

One Caress
Luzifer
Toxic Queen
MC
No15
Confession of mask

The bathroom at CHOP (just because I didn't have nything else to share this time...

Aruiwa anarchy ― N P P N B D K N ―

I'm a bit late with this but I've been a bit busy, so better late than ever I guess (?)

As most who likes Buck-Tick knows their concert at Nippon Budokan was held the 29th of December, and this year it wasn't a The Day in Question as it usually is but more like a continuation of their Aruiwa Anarchy tour.

I entered the FISHTANKer's lottery system and got tickets on the first go so I assumed I'd get a good seat, well seems like either it doesn't matter or I don't really agree with the person who's in charge of seats and thought it was a good one. Left, almost at the top seat... I'm sorry but I've gotten used to starring the bandmen in their faces, so I'm not satisfied when all I can make out of their face is their hair.

It was my first time at the Budokan so I looked forward to it and I wasn't disapointed by Buck-Tick's performance, well a bit since almost everything was the same but at the same time I was very happy to hear Heaven ending their mainsetlist. Before I left for Japan I had a major Heaven/Galaxy craving so it was nice to hear live and it also made a very beautiful ending.

The encore was the same as some night before (can't remember which), but again I was so happy to hear that they chose to play Melancholia -Electria-! I really hope they'll release the whole evening on DVD (even if I think that seems very unlikely concidering that it was almost the same as the normal tour which will be released in february) but I really want to see that song again! (in good quality).
Second encore was completly different from any other night! (thank god, I was so seeing that the night would end with Tenshi wa dare da again) and the funny thing is I was listening to ...in heaven... after the standing gigs thinking I'd love to hear that live, and now I got to! I also think it's very amusing seeing all the old fans almost looking like they're about to tear up when these old songs start to play.
To be honest I had no idea which song Nocturne -Rain Song- was... I haven't really listened that much to Gensou no Hana, and especially not the b-side, so I had no idea which song that was *slightly ashamed*. I'm kind of curious why they picked to play Climax togheter... not a favorite of mine and I would've prefered if they would've played Miss take or Elise no tame ni instead if they had to play anything from Yume miru uchuu, but at least I got two old goodies.

I've had a really good time seeing Buck-Tick, and I have to admit I felt slightly sad leaving Nippon Budokan knowing it was the last time, for now hopefully not forever.

I got the Imai/Uta-panda shirt.

Setlist
01.DADA DISCO - G J T H B K H T D -
02.Devil'N Angel
03.ICONOCLASM
04.Bodoreru de nemurenai
05.PHANTOM VOLTAIRE
06.Satan
07.masQue
08.Sekai wa yami de michite iru
09.ONCE UPON A TIME
10.Uchu Circus
11.Dokudanjou Beauty
12.SURVIVAL DANCE
13.ROMANCE
14.Zekkai
15.Aku no Hana
16.HEAVEN

Encore 
01.Melancholia-ELECTRIA-
02.NOT FOUND
03.Keijijou Ryuusei
04.Mudai

Encore 
01.Nocturnal -Rain Song-
02.CLIMAX TOGETHER
03....IN HEAVEN...
04.MOON LIGHT

 Buck-Tick's online store is having a 50% sale on old items! http://shop.buck-tick.com/

Also I picked up a copy of Ongaku to Hito in which there would be a ivereport from their tourfinal of the standing tour, and also a review of the Aku no Hana (in total there's 6 pages and also the backcover which is the add for Aku no Hana) in case anyone's thinking about buying it and wants to know if it's worth it!

Next up will be Velvet Eden's gig at Ikebukuro Chop on Wednesday