No work, all play, aka, "funderployment" (part 1)

Between the last day of work and my departure for the homeland, I have been filling my time with a variety of activities. Most activities are not very interesting, (sleeping! going out with friends! Internet TV!) but there have been some definite highlights so far, namely last weekend.

On Friday I went with my friend Tu to Summer Sonic . We got there early to get some free stuff (ooh, sweat towels!) and see The Veronicas. Another friend of mine went to high school with them, and I'm pretty sure they recognized him (as he is over 6ft and blond, was in the front in a sea of Japanese people). After the Veronicas we went to check out Solange (aka Beyonce's little sister), because no one else we knew was playing, and she was playing in an air conditioned building. We were entertained by her, surprised to hear her call out her sound guy, and the eye rolling at her getting the crowd to sing "hey Mr. Sound guy, get your shit together". Sorry Solange, you are not good enough to be that much of a diva! We said "Solange you later." (Solange as you don't tell anyone that we went to see her at all...) and went to find some delicious festival food.

Full, and wandering, we stopped by The Vaselines, who were performing in air conditioned beauty, and then went to go check out Maximum the Hormone-- a hilarious Japanese metal band, and they opened with the one song I know-- "Koi no Mega Lover". I head banged for the first time in my life, and after a few songs had enough, and went to find some other JETs and then together went to see Lady Gaga. She put on an unsurprisingly rude and entertaining show-- lots of "I love Japan!"s and we also saw Perez Hilton there, shouted his name and got him to wave at us. Gaga was followed by more festival food and then Ne-Yo, followed by no other than Beyonce.

Beyonce put on a serious show-- complete with 3 drummers, 2 pianists, 2 guitarists, a basisit, a 3 person horn section, and 3 back up singers (all female). Her set took about 30 minutes to assemble, and she had 4 female and 4 male back up dancers. She opened well, and closed well, but the middle was some sort of "ode to marriage/Canadian singers and crazy Robo Beyonce". She had a crazy song where she sang Ave Maria, and back up dancers frolicked up and put her in a sort of wedding gown? And then another when she was wearing some sort of robot costume, and the background was snow leopard/robot Beyonce? But the close was amazing, and she left the main stage to go to a smaller one in the middle for some impressive dancing, and where I wound up being crushed but within mere inches of her. Later Tu and I were discussing that Beyonce is impressive, but she's been doing this for ages, and is so polished and it's almost creepy.

Exhausted after a full day in the sun, dancing, headbanging, sweating etc, we finally made it to Tu's place around 1:30, and then were up the next day, Tu for more Summer Sonic, and me to head up to Fukui with a Japanese friend of mine (which I shall describe in Part 2).