来日公演が終わって約1ヶ月ですが、リンダ・ストロベリーのツアージャーナルが更新されました。日本公演の行われた7月31日から8月6日までの期間の出来事や写真が沢山更新されています。コチラから。リンダの日本や日本のファンへの温かい表現に感謝！とても楽しいレポートです！（thanks:Kiku）
下記に原文
ive procrastinated japan for as long as i can. i dont know why. maybe its because dont know how to put it into words. none of my pictures turned out..so all the pictures im including are from other people.
im awake at six o’ clock in the morning and im not happy about it but i can’t sleep no matter what i try. so here i am writing this at six in the morning. the sun is coming up. im in chicago looking out at the view and wishing i was zzzzzzzzzz. ya, ok, enough complaining.
i miss the shows. i miss the broken toys. but, im having a good time finishing my record. see..two parts complaining..one part happy. improvement.
i have a feeling im going to ramble alot and use bad punctuation.
bleh. the water i just drank tastes like pollution. mmm. that’s reassuring.
ok. japan.
the flight to hong kong was awful and fun at the same time. i sat next to brian. brian is hillarious. he always says exactly what he thinks no matter how brutal it is. our tv/video things that make the flight tolerable would stop 10 minutes before the movie was over and would START AGAIN. (i started watching “fever pitch” for some reason..and had to watch it THREE times because it was driving me crazy that i didnt get to see the ending…feel free to make fun..) the first time we were just mildy annoyed but by the third time we were both going to throw forks. the flight attendents were very japanese. what i mean is they were polite but stern underneath. impenetrable. they offered us a “voucher” because our video systems didnt work but then wouldn’t give them to us at the end because our screens “turned on”. and when brian and i got furious they just kept politely apologizing and saying something about “policy” but wouldn’t budge. for a brief rock and roll moment we were going to break shit. haha. i think instead we made them bring us more free drinks…i can’t remember, but its highly possible. (i threw in the free drinks thing so that it wouldn’t be all just complaining…) one more complaint though, or a few more…..haha….the seats were stupid pieces of $%^&…and its not fun sitting on a stupid piece of &*@# for more than an hour..but eight hours is infuriating… when we got to hong kong (we were flying there, staying the night at an airport hotel and continuing on to osaka the next morning) we had to go through chinese customs and my luggage smelled like fish guts. i also got picked for the extra screening..lucky me…and all night i couldn’t sleep because of the stench of the fish guts..
the next morning things began to improve. we were all very excited to be in china even if it was at an airport. i bought some chinese pain reliever that comes in a little bottle that you drink. it really worked…and i bought a chinese fan..because im a typical american tourist.
the flight to japan was painless.
when we got to osaka i felt like i had traveled to another world. i was immediately stunned. billy kept looking at the look on my face and laughing saying he knew i would love japan. love is not strong enough of a word for how i feel about japan. i didnt want to ever leave.
the people from the label were so good to us. i think thier names were tomo and junko..if not i apologize. they were very organized and took good care of us.
we had the day off. as soon as i got up to my room i wanted to go exploring. i was able to find my way around every city on the tour except for the ones in japan. i went downstairs to find an atm so i could buy a phone card to call my boyfriend..but i got immediately lost. i knew i was in the downstairs mall “takashimaya” but i might as well have been on another planet. it took me an hour to find my way back upstairs and i was too scared to go out again without someone coming with me…. i went back to my room and gathered up all my foreign currency and the concierge gave me back 20 bucks so i could get the phone card. the 20 dollar phone card was only good for 21 minutes. i took a nap and ordered noodles. i didnt know how much the noodles cost because i didnt know what 2,500 yen meant..but i was so hungry i didnt care. there is a drink they have over there called “pocari sweat”….i got addicted to it. later on that night billy and bjorn and i went looking for food. gooch and bjorn had found an atm that would accept our cards but the only catch was that the atm was in a little booth that was about a million degrees. when i got my card out of the machine it was scorching hot and all melty…and the money wasn’t much cooler. i got out 50,000 yen thinking it was probably about 50 bucks….(it was more like 500 but i found that out the next day..) we couldn’t get a hold of matt and brian but somehow out of the hundreds of restaurants to choose from we walked into one on a tiny sidestreet and there they were!! how wierd is that? the menus were in japanese and the people that worked there didnt speak english so it was kind of exciting ordering. i cant remember what i got..but im sure it was good. after that we started walking around. the way everything looks is indescribable…there is so much neon and so many game places. toy shops..ect. bjorn and matt stopped and played a video game where you bang on drums and bjorn won…matt was determined to win so they kept having “rematches”. meanwhile we wandered into a game place and played some games. i think billy brian bjorn and i all raced each other and i think i won. im going to try to include some pictures in this that visually describe it since im shying away from a sloppy literary attempt.
back in my room..i watched a japanese game show and fell asleep..
when i woke up i sat next to the window for a half an hour. the view was otherworldly. i ordered more noodles..drank more pocari sweat..and got enough courage to wander downstairs. its amazing to shop in japan. every little department is seperate. i wanted to buy a purse so they took it from me while i stayed in the same spot and brought it back to me wrapped up nice with my reciept. when they give you your card back they hold it by both corners with both hands and bow. the same with reciepts. they fold them up nicely and present them to you. i bought a little purse with cherries and a wallet then i went to the makeup dept and got an eyeliner and then i saw a black and white striped wrap sweater. i wasn’t sure how much it was and i assumed it was probably only 20 bucks so i bought it..besides it looked good on the display and i had to get back to meet everyone to go to the venue….when i got to my room i finally asked what the exchange was and found out that i had just spent 100 bucks on a sweater i didnt really like enough to spend 100 bucks on… from then on i was very careful…when we got to the venue (i think it was called namba hatch) konako, a japanese fan that came to almost all of our shows, was sitting out in front. billy got a present from two other fans of little cat figurines…but what was amazing was there was a drawing included that was really incredible. soon after i met yuri and yushimi (im sorry if i spell the names wrong). yuri was the artist and yushimi they call “hippie girl” because of her style. they didnt speak much english so it was funny trying to communicate.
i wore my overpriced sweater at the beginning of the show. japanese crowds are very different. they are quieter overall but the girl screams are very high and piercing. the vibe is so different. very polite. konako explained that most japanese people try to not show very much emotion. after the show billy, konako, yuri and yushimi and i all went out and ate korean barbeque and went to play video games. yuri was laughing at me because i didnt know what anything said because it was all in japanese so i would just sit down and start pressing buttons. when we got back to the hotel there were a bunch of fans waiting for billy. we were down there for a while.
the next day we had another day off in osaka and i was a little bit more courageous. i went out and played more video games all by myself and didnt get too lost. i haven’t mentioned the heat though. it was blisteringly hot with high humidity so walking around in the day was a little bit miserable. i had to change clothes three times. im trying to remember more about that day but for some reason its a little blurry. i do remember the japanese 7eleven. that was a trip! it was exactly the same looking..but everything inside was different. i wanted to buy hairspray but was too overwhelmed. instead i bought the only item i could recognize…pocari sweat.
the next day we traveled to nagoya on the train. the trains are so cool. something about them as they pull up reminds me of sharks. i wish i had pictures of it. it took only an hour to get there. when we checked in bjorn billy and i ate a really really good meal in the lobby restaurant and then went to the venue. the show went well but the crowd was small. afterward billy me junko and konako went to eat..(thanks junko)(there were some other old friends of billy but i can’t remember thier names..im sorry) konako and i got a little wasted on champagne. we didnt really realize it until we stood up. she had missed her train so she continued to hang out. after we went back to the hotel we were still awake so we got bjorn and went up to the top of the hotel bar/night club. it had a 360 degree view of the city and a lounge act. they were like a vegas lounge duo except they were japanese which made it even more awesome. haha. we got in a heated discussion about music and then stumbled back to our rooms.
the next day we got to ride the train again to go to tokyo. this time i was still exhausted so i fell asleep…but when i woke up i was half off the seat.. embarassing. haha.
tokyo is wild. again…there is no description. we checked into the hotel and then went to the venue. there is a strange phenomenon with japanese fans. they seem to be telepathic. they always just pop up as if they know where you are going to be at any minute even if you dont know yourself. after soundcheck i decided to wander off to find a present for my boyfriend. as i was walking suddenly yushimi was right next to me. she helped me for the next hour to not get lost. (thanks!!)
when i got back i met an amazing girl named sayo. her personality is magnetic. i also met a very interesting girl named misa. the catering was delicious. (oh, i forgot to thank yushimi for the japanese shoes she gave me in nagoya..)(in tokyo yuri drew me a picture and gave me some cool socks..thankyou!) the show was really really great. the crowd really clicked. it was packed. i think they danced more than any other crowd we had had. that night we went for a special dinner at a restaurant that was used in the movie “kill bill” with the crew. it was incredible. we had three whole tables and we had a great time. thankyou warner japan. afterwards i think we all went to sleep..its a little blurry.
the next day we all woke up early and went bootleg shopping. i bought more presents for my boyfriend which made it really fun. billy got at least a hundred and was complimented on his amazing taste. most of the places we went into had pictures of billy on the wall. they graciously gifted us half of our purchases. i love japan!
our last show….we didnt think it was going to be full but it was. i was sentimental. we all took our cameras on stage. during bit 7 (the one with the horse in the background) we all took little videos and pictures. it was strange though it really didnt feel like our last show. at the encore billy did something he never does and he introduced us. we then put on the house lights and took pictures with the crowd going crazy behind us. it was very magical. we couldn’t have ended the tour with a better show. i think there was even a brief moment of crowd surfing. haha.
after the show billy me and 13 japanese girls went to do karaoke. i wont tell those stories…haha. but ill just say it was REALLY fun! then we went back to the hotel and i said goodbye to billy. (i was taking an earlier flight back to l.a.) i couldn’t sleep a wink on the flight back to l.a. my mind was racing between my memories of japan and the anticipation of being able to finally spend some time at home with my boyfriend and our dog. needless to say i was incredibly jetlagged. i slept the first day away and then the second night charlie took me to devo. i got an energy dome..(one of those red flower pot hats they wore in the video for “whip it”. the show was amazing and i ran into bon who got the lead singer to sign my energy dome because they are friends from way back.
i wanted to end my story with that.
thankyou billy for the amazing opportunity. i had so much fun hanging out with you. i learned so much! it was definently a growing experience. it changed my life and the way i view the world completely. thankyou to matt for all the advice and for generally being someone i can look up to. thankyou to brian for always making me laugh and for checking up on me when times were rough. thankyou to gooch for all your hard work. thankyou to bjorn for always looking out for me. love you guys.
thankyou to the thousands of fans who packed our shows and made it magical. i met so many good people. my favorite shows were st. louis, cologne germany, the acoustic sydney show, and the last tokyo show.
xxxxxxoooooo thankyou.
now im back to making my record. (and hopefully some sleep)
later gators.
xoxxoo
LINDA STRAWBERRY
