Deathlobin in Himeji

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This morning I woke up crazy early due the pervasive, intruding sun. I was still tired, but it was near impossible in the bright room. I tried anyway though. All morning I just chilled at my hostel. Chatted with the other travelers and searched through their maps and tourist info for the kansai region.



I arrived in Himeji at about two. Stopped at a cafe to get a late lunch. It wasn't very good. At all. And especially for the price. Now I know better.

Wandered through the shopping district. Stopped at only a few stores--a couple music shops and daiso (always on the lookout for cheap music and needed socks, respectively). Then headed to Himeji castle, which is supposed to be the #1 prettiest/bestest Castle in Japan. But...



It's being refurbished and is therefore partially disguised as a really big tent.

This approximation of the castle will have to do:



The doors opened at 5, so I showed up a few minutes before that in order to better get in order. There were 89 fan club tickets. Then I was #8 after that. But the venue was TINY!! it claimed a capacity of 200, but... I think that's pushing it.



It fit about 10 people shoulder to shoulder across. BUT it was a much better venue than Brand New In Osaka. Better stage height, better organization of speaker systems, etc.

Tonight Deathgaze started the show!! Unexpected change, but they seem to be enjoying messing with us... :D they've also been playing entirely different set lists each night.

The girl in front of me never moved--I really hate the people who go to concerts to be pretty.

They ended their part of the night with Genocide and Mass Murder which is possibly one of the best live songs ever. I love it.

Cocklobin is growing on me. The first night,in Nagoya, they played too many slow songs so in comparison to deathgaze they came off as a little (ironically) dead. Last night in osaka they played all hard and fast. And then tonight they finally got that fast-slow-Awesome order just right. :)

They started with "dark," which is the single from the only album of theirs I had before this venture.

--I highly suspect the vocalist's (i think his name is Nigu?) curly hair mess Is a hair piece of some sort attached to his many braids, but have no proof--

The encore. Part of their switching everything up every night, cocklobin was the main band with guests, Naoki, Takaki, and Ai. (which actually made each band equally present on stage). They duet-ed a cocklobin song:

Click to view

Cocklobin's drummer, who I think might be called Sora, also appeared on stage with a video camera to record the encore. At some point during the song he disappeared, the next time I saw him he was squeezing through the crowd, moving toward the stage and happily recording everything.

Ai's shirt (he had switched to a deathlobin concert tee with the neck cut out) kept sliding off his shoulder, so Nigu kept trying to pit it back up. Then Ai would shrug and it would fall down again. Eventually Nigu just looked like he was petting Ai's shoulder.

The end.
(my train is pulling into Fuku, so I gotta stop typing!!)