Raving About Japan

Josh said the parties in Japan were the best. We’ve been to two so far. I’m trying to change my flight home to make it to a third.

The first was a 42-hour affair at the base of Mt. Fuji. It had a stage and special effects like a semi-major rock concert. Two thousand Japanese kids who know how to party. Twenty-five DJs.

The music started at 6:00 on Friday evening. Except for a few hours on Saturday afternoon (but even then there was music playing out onto a lawn in front of the main ski chalet – the location of the rave was a ski area), the music went on till 2:00 on Sunday afternoon. We had taken down our tents and had our backpacks on by then and were heading through the dance area to Josh’s van. The music pulled at us. We put down our packs and absorbed the last DJ with the few hundred dancers who also just couldn't let it end. All the way home each of us was doing a spaced out, "Niiiiiice party."

The music was extraordinary – Psychedelic Trance. Powerful. Hypnotic. Entrancing. Continually stroking the back of your skull, then building to crescendos imbedded in a hard-driving lyrical beat that causes waves of orgasms in the brain. And that’s when you’re straight. Three names I remember: Sun Project – live – three guys, one a drummer and two on synthesizers, one of whom also played Metallica-type riffs on a guitar. Sick! The second was Talamasca. From Sweden – incredible trance. The third was ....was ... I'll have to get back to you on that. Oh wait, Absolum. And another, Nomad.

The crowd was ... Japanese? Beautiful Japanese girls, thin, dyed blonde hair. Creative hairdos. Hippie/Indian type clothing. Or cosmic-colored spandex that glows electric colors under blacklight. And except for a few very nasty looking Yakuza (Japanese mafia), the guys were also beautiful, and spacey, and tripping, and smiling, tattooed, trance-loving dancers. It was a very very smiley affair.

The second party was totally different – except for the smiling. We had arrived at the campground at midnight in a light rain the night before. Josh wandered around a little with his flashlight and said he thought it was a holy place. In the morning we found a Buddhist monastery in a forest with waterfalls, deep ravines, stone carvings, long steep stairways to altars, and tiny little ceremonies in stunningly clean-lined buildings that say, "You’re in Japan!"

The music started at 4:00 in the afternoon – a very civilized way of starting a rave, don't you think? You kind of ease into it. We wandered around the temple areas for a while in the dark with flashlights. Then we climbed to the main party area.

Our tent was in what became the "chill area" – ambient music for relaxing. Down there the organizers had put together a small pyramid made out of tent poles and placed the turntables under it. They wrapped the top part of the pyramid with white gauzy material and Christmas lights that didn't blink but rather softly came on and off in irregular patterns. At the base of the two front poles, they made clusters of tall paper flower arrangements – big white sheets of graphics paper rolled into cones around bright red floodlights, giving the effect of clusters of huge red flowers. The front of the DJ's table was also wrapped with white gauze. A blacklight lit it and a lovely design made of blue yarn. Candles formed a semi-circle out from the corners, completing the stunningly simple arrangement – one might say also, very Japanese. We could hardly pull ourselves away.

But finally we did. Along a long path above a stream. Candles placed far apart pointed the way. They had thought of everything. It was a good half-mile winding along the path in the dark under trees till we came to a footbridge. Welcoming our arrival, in the middle of the bridge, were two paper tubes with kanji lettering lit from the inside in bright red. More candles lit a stairway path up to the dance area. Around the small dance area were blacklights, and low latticework pyramids in blue and orange placed strategically among the trees. And through a blacklighted sheet a visual showed that was often a sun with expanding rays, very much resembling the flag of Japan.

There was terracing above and tents and people – but unlike the first party, this one had no more than 70 or 80 people at its fullest – around 3:00 am. It went on for eighteen hours. The kids were extraordinarily friendly. They welcomed us into their tents and plied us with the accessories that one always likes to find at raves. They started us slow, saying, "Later. Later." Eventually they took us to places I’ve only ever gotten to at trance parties.

Josh went back to the tent before dawn. Susan had preceded him by several hours. I continued on. I and one other guy were the last ones standing through the night. (I say that not to brag – although there's definitely some of that in being a 63-year-old fart unable to stop till the music shuts down at ten in the morning – but also to somehow express the symbiosis I was feeling with the other ravers. I just did not want to leave them or this place.) Others came back from naps as it got light. A dozen of us danced on into the morning mist. Still others listened and watched from above.

This second party was pure rave – people there for one reason: to become entranced.

So I'm trying to extend my ticket for another week. I want to catch one more party. It saddens me to leave without it. I may never be back (Japan is incredibly expensive). And I'm not filled up yet.