Day 2, Monday – Naritta Airport and Tokyo 1/7/13

6:15am – Landed in Narrita Airport and made it through customs without a hiccup. Hugh ‘Mr Details’ Blemings guided Ben and I through the airport to train station where we boarded the express train to Shinjuku. The Tokyo trains are amazing. They are super clean and they fang around like fucking rockets. Even their shitty trains are ten times better than our good ones back home. They have no graffiti, nobody pissing on them and their cup holders work better than most of my household appliances.

8:31am – Arrived at Shinjuku station and searched for the ‘Hotel Sunroute’ where we would be staying for the next two weeks. Met up with Kevin ‘The Wizard’ Windross, our fearless bandleader and friend (the term friend is used very loosely here of course). Before we could hear the sound of our luggage hitting the hotel room floor we were out of there and back on the next train to Shibuya to meet Kevin’s friend ‘Mr Kazu Ohto’. Mr Ohto had been organizing most of the logistics surrounding our tour from Japan prior to us flying over.

9:40am – Met Mr Ohto

9:47am – Within 7 minutes of meeting Mr Ohto we find ourselves in a karaoke bar in a private room singing songs of ‘The Beatles’ and ‘Toto’. Now, we’re all aware of the Japanese stereotypes about karaoke and their deep-seated admiration of the art form (roll with it), but I never imagined I’d be singing karaoke so early into our trip. Especially not the minute we stepped off the plane.

12:00pm – Back to Shinjuku and eating off the streets of Tokyo (literally). The streets in Tokyo are so clean you can eat off them. I dropped a large portion of my meal on the street and proceeded to eat it out of sheer faith of the cleanliness of the Tokyo streets. Later that week I discovered people hosing off the pavement here at least twice a day. That means that the streets of Tokyo get cleaned at least 273 times more per year than my house does. Frightening stuff.

3:14pm – Just watched an advert on the train for the video game ‘The Sims’. It scared the shit out of me.

Day 1 – Home, Canberra Airport and a Boeing 747 (Sydney to Naritta) 30/6/13

9am – The day started just like any other. Dry mouth, headache and sore eyes. I’d been out the night before to see some mates play in a band called ‘Decadence of Cain’ or ‘Decadence of Cunts’ as I’d saved them in my phone. We’d been up drinking until 4am-ish and I now had 3 smelly Melbournites camping in my house or front yard somewhere. Dry mouth is a real problem these days they explained to me.

10am – Bacon, juice, showers (all of which were cold) and they were good to go. Decadence of Cain were off to Sydney to play another show and I had the rest of my packing to do.

1pm – Met up with a mate (Nick Peddle, Canberra drummer/extraordinaire) for a sneaky beer (I use the term ‘Mate’ and ‘Beer’ very loosely here as the soft prick had a coffee. Good thing I made up for him by having a couple of beers. Crises averted).

3:30pm – My narcissism got the better of me as I watched a short documentary of my own band ‘The Barren Spinsters’ whilst in transit to the airport. In my defence, it had only been uploaded to YouTube for less than 10mins and I had to test it to see if it worked (I couldn’t leave the country until it had at least a single viewing registered with YouTube).

3:40pm – As I lift my bass out of the car at the airport, the handle fell off. I had to laugh. This is obviously a sign that I shouldn’t be doing this. Nobody tell Kevin.

6:30pm – Christ, how many people in this airport want to see my passport and ticket? I would have sent a group email if I knew it was going to be like this.

9:30pm - On the plane, hearded in like cattle.

10:30pm – The gentlemen next to me on the plane and I didn’t get a meal. I know that I look like trouble but this guy seems to be pretty harmless. Good thing I ate (and drank) myself a new arsehole at the Qantas club lounges at both Canberra & Sydney that our band mate Hugh Blemings somehow got us all into. Cheers Hugh.

1am – Take an international flight they said. Drink all the free piss you can hold they said.  What they failed to mention is that the hostesses won’t bring any more drinks, as it is now 1am. After 1am is when I do all of my best drinking. I even pressed the little button but nobody came. They asked me all sorts of things and made me tick all sorts of boxes declaring this and that but not once did anyone ask me for my preferred drinking times. I would have taken the form more seriously if they had put some alcohol related questions on it.

1:15am – Never taken a piss on a plane before. I’m off to see what that’s all about.

1:17am – I don’t recommend it. Pissing on your own pants at 40,000ft is a sobering thought.

Brendon