My tentative plans for Saturday were to go to the Setstock 2004 concert In Bihoku National Hillside Park. That’s a little outside the small college city of Shobara, about an hour up the Geibi train line from Mukaihara. Main draws for me on the bill were Puffy (who does the Teen Titans themes), The Pillows (who did the music for the anime FLCL), My Little Lover (who along with Every Little Thing were one of my first JPOP favorites) and Bump of Chicken (a huge group at the moment and the headliner I think).

I hadn’t had much luck running the web site through my translation software, so I decided to just use the train to get there and back. That would mean I would have to leave early to catch what seemed to be the last train (I discovered Sunday that there was a bus between Miyoshi station and the concert, so I could have taken that and seen the entire show, oh well). I was a little slow getting going after getting back from the cookout/sleep-over & didn’t leave here until 13:13 and arriving there at 14:09. Did the usual “follow the crowd” trick for a 20 minute walk to the park. Impressive thing was I could hear the music for most of that walk! Paid entrance to park, then the concert itself (total around $70). The park is pretty impressive (has a monster huge slide jungle building complex) and the venue for the concert was good too. There were two stages, one on a huge hillside amphitheater. They alternated between the two stages. Had a pretty good selection of food and drink venders that weren’t completely ripping people off (a 150 yen drink was going for 200 yen instead of 300 yen like I’d expected).

I timed things well, arriving during Puffy’s 2nd or 3rd number. But the highlight was a couple songs later, when they played the Teen Titans opening. Eat your heart out guys. Once they were done, went and bought a concert t-shirt (hopefully the large that was their largest starts fitting a little better here soon). After that caught Going Under Ground and a bit of Hy. I wanted to get prime spots for the pillows and ran into a couple guys I’d seen on the train. Turns out they were English teachers with one of the private companies out of Osaka. Quite a trip to the middle of nowhere for them. Got a good spot, though, and enjoyed the show. They played mostly newer stuff, but ended with one of their best songs which was used as the opening to FLCL.

Final highlight performance for me was My Little Lover. I was kinda tired by then and just sat and rested in upper part of the large amphitheater while listening to her sing. I wanted to stay and see Bump of Chicken, but the train schedule I was needing to keep meant I needed to leave soon after MLL finished, so I caught one number by orange pekoe (who’s sound was surprisingly jazzy) and then headed back for the barely existent Nanatsuka station. It was kinda cool listening to the jazzy notes echoing through the valley on the walk. Later recognized Bump of Chicken’s sound in the distance and listened to them remotely all the way to the station (really, the sound system didn’t seem all that loud but it sure carried). Caught the 19:04 train and finally got home around 20:19 (trip was 820 yen each way for reference, same as going to Hiroshima).

The concert continued on Sunday, but I didn’t recognize any of the groups and I wanted to do other things (like some shopping in Miyoshi). Anyways, was quite enjoyable even with the limited time I was there. Hopefully they’ll have as interesting lineup next year.

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