Day 0 - The Journey

In preparation for the coming trip to Earth Celebration, I took Thursday Aug 16 off. The sole purpose was to go to the final practice that morning at Ryogoku taiko practice place and give myself a long resting day for the long drive ahead at around midnight.

Tokyo that day was 38C outside, which means it was 42C inside my concrete apartment. I had my air conditioner on full blast the entire day. It was set for 18C, but the darned machine was only able to bring down the temperature to 30C.
After finished packing at 2:30 pm, I tried to nap.

Failing miserably to do so in that heat, I spent about 3 hours on my guitar while watching something on the DVD as the background. At 7 pm the Sendagaya fireworks started. I joined my landlord and his family to the rooftop and enjoyed it from afar.

Around 9 pm my passengers began arriving to my house. First one at the door was one of my fellow drummer, second to arrive was Lady M and finally another fellow drummer arrived at 11:15 pm.

As predicted, we left my house at around midnight to the direction of Niigata port. The distance was about 350 km, and the navigation system predicted 4.5 hours for the entire trip.
For the most part of the trip Lady M made an excellent companion. She has just returned from a summer trip to Germany and I had been extremely busy at work prior to the trip, so the long drive was a perfect opportunity for us to catch up with each other's life. The two drummers at the back were relatively quiet at the back of the car since one of them was having a terrible cold and the other one was probably just a little sleepy.

The journey was quite uneventful and after about 4 hours we made it to the port. Yes, I sped up the whole time. I kept the velocity on 120 km/hr at minimum - and why should you not, the roads were blissfully empty when you're out that late (early??).

At the port we had to fill out some freight paper work for the car ferry ride. At 5:20 am we finally boarded the ferry, along with our car and belongings.
Immediately after we got everything settled with parking the car, I sank on the sitting area inside the ferry for a much needed break. I needed to close my eyes, stretch my legs and daydream for the 3 days ahead.

zzzz....