Hi all! Here's part two of my vacation to Osaka with Evenor.

Before I jump into the next live report, I'd like to revisit some general notes from the trip, for any aspiring dweebs like myself who have yet to visit JP.

• ⬅️ part one
• ➡ part three

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[Day 0, revisited]

The travel to Japan went ok. We had a long drive, then a flight, then another flight, and finally the big flight, from LAX to Japan. The first two flights were decent (aside from almost missing one connection), but the 13 hour flight overseas was kind of a bear.

Suggestion to self for next time: download a ton of shit on Netflix before you leave.

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[Day 1, revisited]

We arrived at night, on a Thursday. The airport welcomed us with a cute Mario banner; as I was taking a picture of it, a woman walked in front of me, I got scared, and all I got was this:

Customs was a breeze: our bags were inspected and swabbed for drug residue, but the affable (and cute) officer made it a pleasant process. (I'm proud of the fact that I only briefly entertained the anxiety that, perhaps I'd recently started using drugs and forgotten about it.)

The only thing we did that night was ride a train--where we encountered Gackt's ghostly visage on an ad--to our room, where we crashed for the night.

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[Day 2, morning, revisited]

The next morning, we woke up and headed to “life museum” NIFREL; basically a stylish indoor aquarium/zoo. I was surprised to find that the museum was doing a collaboration with Aquirax Uno, an artist who has done cover art for MERRY (メリー) and BUCK-TICK (I excitedly sent a incomprehensible image to suji.)

I spent a lot of time taking pictures of set decorations there and at the mall we visited afterward, thinking “this would be a cool place to film a PV.”

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[Day 2, afternoon, revisited]

That afternoon, we attended the live that I previously wrote about.

There was one thing that I failed to mention from the live: part of the reason that we were so impressed by CieLGraVE is that their songs would have been just as good without a backing track.

I have a general pet peeve with rock bands whose music can't be decently reproduced with just instruments--if you have two guitarists and a bassist, but you can't hear them, what's the point?

Anyway, during the live, we purchased a few CieLGraVE releases, and MAD LIP's only single. We also grabbed a distributed CD from Tsunaga Re:ZERO (繋がRe:ゼロ).

After the live, we checked out a nearby BOOK OFF. They had a small visual section, but nothing of note, save for a few overpriced LIN (凛 -THE END OF CORRUPTION WORLD-) DVDs, and, like, 400 FEST VAINQUEUR releases--still not sure if that's a good or bad for the band.

After BOOK OFF, we headed to discount megastore DON QUIJOTE, which I suspect is a previously-forgotten 10th circle of Hell. We found some GOLDEN BOMBER (ゴールデンボンバー) collaboration condoms there, and that's the only thing worth mentioning.

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Part three will be uploaded tomorrow.

• ⬅️ part one
• ➡ part three