Japan tour 2018. day 1

Travel day to Kurashiki

The last time I had the privilege of visiting Japan was for the promotion of the album “Tokyo’s Bad Boy” with the Joris Posthumus Group. This was an extensive tour we undertook in 2016, traveling all over the country and playing to crowds of passionate fans. In 2017, our focus shifted to performing in The Netherlands and Belgium, and we were honored to be invited to play at the NSJ Festival later that same year.

The preparation for this tour started months in advance. I spent a lot of time writing new music, crafting a detailed schedule for the tour, and getting ready for what was to come. The real journey, however, began on August 30th, 2018 when I boarded a flight from Osaka to Tokyo, the starting point for this tour. I usually fly into Narita airport, but this time we were starting in Kurashiki, so it made more sense to fly into Osaka.

After an 11-hour flight, I finally arrived in Osaka Kansai airport, a little tired but eager to begin the next part of the journey. I took a short rest and lit up a few cigarettes before boarding a train to Osaka station to catch the Shinkansen to Okayama. Here, my bass player Satoshi was waiting to pick me up and drive me to his hometown of Kurashiki. We had some time to spare before I could check into my hotel, so we decided to check out the club where we would be performing the next day. Of course, we first made a quick stop for a delicious bowl of Ramen, a staple of Japanese cuisine.

We walked around the club, located in the beautiful Bikan historical area, a 17th century merchant quarter filled with wooden warehouses painted white with traditional black tiles. The area was surrounded by a canal framed with weeping willows and filled with koi fish, and had been designed to closely resemble the look of the Meiji period, with no electric poles in sight.

We also visited Scott Chadwick, the trumpet player who would be joining us for the performance the next day, along with his son and drummer Kei Morishita. Scott runs a guitar shop and we spent some time there, enjoying each other’s company in the hot, 34-degree weather. It was a wonderful experience to be surrounded by such talented musicians and to have the opportunity to share our music with the people of Japan.

Satoshi dropped me off at the hotel I was going to stay for 2 days, we would meet later that evening for dinner. Satoshi was not only bass player during this tour; he helped organising it, contacting clubs, finding guest players. Also he was my manager, food expert, driver and we always talk a lot about the music, what we think could be better and so on. After we had a great dinner we stopped at a place where a tenor player I already played with during the album release tour 2016 was doing a gig with his band. Because we were kind of late we waited outside for the gig to finish and went in to say hello and have a drink. Tsutomu Takei was going to play with the Joris Posthumus Group in Kobe so we talked a little about the tunes. I went back to the hotel, but first I did some walking around the area of the hotel, it was very close to the train station and I got some drinks at the local 7 eleven store.