It is often said in the music industry that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. In the case of my band Snacks at Midnight touring Japan, the same was true.
Snacks has been a part of the Spokane music scene since 2020, and thinking back to our first shows, I never would’ve imagined that our small ragtag group would become an internationally touring band. By the beginning of 2024, we really felt as though Snacks was starting to make a serious impact. All in the same year we were voted by Inlander readers as Spokane’s Best Band, written up in articles and interviewed on television. We became Knitting Factory regulars, had our first PNW tour and released our best album yet, What You Think You Want.
The true cherry on top of 2024 was connecting with tour manager David Isaac, whom we reached out to through a friend in a band called Quor. David works specifically in getting bands (such as The Fall of Troy and Chon) back and forth between Japan and the U.S., working out all the logistics to make touring the country without being fluent in Japanese possible. Our crew — four band members, a photographer, a merchandise sales person and a tour coordinator — couldn’t have done it without him.
As for how it was possible to afford such a tour, we’d spent all of 2024 playing live shows and saving up the necessary funds to not only stay, travel and eat in Japan, but to rent venue equipment and pay for professionals to run the sound and lights. (A common practice over there for bands not personally invited by venues.) In truth, this was not a profitable tour for us, but we never expected it to be. The plan from the beginning was to continually return until it became worth it for venues to pay us to come across the Pacific.
Here’s a taste of what it’s like for a Spokane band to rock out in Japan.
Jan. 7 & 8
While getting to Japan is significantly easier than it would have been 100 years ago, it was still an uncomfortable prospect. Twenty-one hours of travel door to door. Brutal.
The tour began at 3 am on a Tuesday. It took multiple trips to get all 450 pounds of our luggage to the airport, but we managed to catch our 5:30 to Seattle. After a layover in SeaTac, the band and I filed onto the plane and made the best of the fact that we all had seats in the middle of the middle aisle… for a 10-hour flight.
We arrived in Tokyo, went straight to our Sky Capsule (small hotel room), and then had to figure out dinner. As weird as it sounds, we’d heard numerous rumours about the excellence of Japanese 7-Eleven, and decided to try it for ourselves. We were all shocked at the cleanliness and quality of the food. I joked several times throughout the tour that if someone told me they bought sushi from 7-Eleven in the U.S., I would advocate for its immediate disposal, if not destruction. However, in Japan, it was not only delicious but left no one with upset stomachs.
Jan. 9
On our only free day before diving straight in gigging, everyone was awake by 6:30 am. By 9, we were on the cleanest urban rail car I had ever seen and on our way to Shinjuku Station. Leaving the station was like walking into a wall of stimulation: music from all sides, enormous screens reminiscent of Times Square and monolithic skyscrapers towering over us.
After getting the largest bowls of ramen possible for lunch, we made our way back to the station and headed toward Ochanomizu Guitar Street, a whole street in Tokyo lined on both sides with multilevel stores full of guitars.
Jan. 10
My wife and I spent our day wandering around little shops and drinking matcha while people-watching. After a quick nap and a difficult time figuring out the Tokyo Metro, we made it to the venue for the first show.
Having played music professionally for many years now, I found the differences between Japan’s music culture and the United States’ shocking. We met at the venue five hours before the show started. Had I not known it was a venue, I would have walked right by without thinking twice. The entrance was an inconspicuous staircase buried behind rows of bicycles and plastic milk crates. After following that staircase — which would have certainly violated American building codes — down to the basement, we took a narrow hallway into a small venue that one would expect to see in the U.S.
Well, almost.
Two major differences were immediately evident:
1. People were smoking indoors.
2. The sound and lighting equipment, while typically older, was close in quality to that which you’d see in venues such as the Knitting Factory.
Even though the venue (live houses, as they’re called) would have made any American punk fan feel right at home, the production crew (usually three or more) approached the show with an admirable level of care and respect.
In Japan, it’s common practice before the show to write down one’s setlist, stage plot (a map detailing the needs and onstage positions of the band and their equipment), and a walk-on song (we chose “Come Together” by The Beatles). Not only did the crew follow our stage plot to a T, the lighting engineers would listen to the songs on our setlist ahead of time to ensure the lights matched the music, often with astonishing accuracy.
Finally, in Japan, they don’t ground their electricity. Every venue we played literally shocked me when I would sing. However, it was clearly a common problem as each venue came ready with a jumper cable, which was clamped at one end to my guitar cable and the other to the amp microphone. I quickly learned the word: āsu (アース) meaning electrical ground or earth.
A constant I found while playing music in Japan is that while the Japanese are typically very reserved, they become surprisingly boisterous around energetic live music. I also quickly found myself in awe of their impressive musicianship. I feel that two bands from this show deserve special note and recognition: Kanna, an impressive rock/funk/rap group that stuck out for their energetic performance, and Wang Dang Doodle, a techno/funk female duo with great energy and even better harmonica solos.
Jan. 11
Today, after a dinner of convenience store rice balls, we took an hourlong subway from our hotel to the live house, Babel Rock Tower, and played our second show.
Jan. 12
On our off day, we took the three-hour bullet train ride from Tokyo to Osaka across an impressive metropolitan spread. As car-driving Americans, something we hadn’t anticipated about Japan is that taking the train means a lot of walking and an unfortunate amount of stairs. Which, when there are 10 suitcases (three for merchandise) for seven people and at least one backpack per person, makes for an awkward travel situation, not counting how crowded the trains typically are.
Something of note about Osaka and (seemingly all of Japan) is their incredible love of karaoke. Just in the blocks around our small hotel, the streets were lined with long narrow karaoke bars consisting of only a bar counter and inebriated patrons, often doing duets with the bar staff.
Jan. 13
Our venue tonight, HOKAGE, was two floors underground and is certainly a sacred place for punk lovers: A grungy, stageless room with the lighting and sound system built of lashed together metal pipes hanging precariously over the band. This gig sticks out in my mind for the feeling of appreciation from the audience and other performers, represented by the fact that two of the bands brought us bags of Japanese snacks because of our name.
Sad realization: Japan does burgers better than the U.S. The only downside is they only come with six to eight french fries.
Jan. 14
Off day in Osaka. An old family friend showed us the local lifestyle, mostly consisting of many tiny dishes of meat, noodles, soup, potatoes, and salmon. “Kanpai!” (乾杯), said boisterously, is Japanese for “Cheers!” FYI. We topped off the night in a private karaoke booth with beer and American-style french fries.
Jan. 15
After trekking from Osaka to Nagoya we arrived at Jammin, easily the most modern live house we played. Equipped with changing rooms, showers and two green rooms, Jammin was especially impressive for its cleanliness and professionalism. I even joked during our set that the stage carpet clearly had been vacuumed, something that rarely (if ever) happens in the U.S.
Jan. 16
After traveling to Nara (south of Kyoto) and doing our sound check, we made time to go see its temples’ famed small deer who bow when asking to be fed. They truly did bow, however, they’d also headbutt and bite when they knew you had food.
At past venues, our audiences spoke enough English that they often understood the things I said on stage, but the farther away from Japan’s metropolitan centers, the language barrier became significantly stronger.
Jan. 17
We returned to Tokyo, and played a show at Lush, where we shared a bill with DogStock, another funk rap group that blew us all away. On this day we also learned that Thai food and Chinese food in Japan taste exactly the same as in the U.S.
Jan. 18
Compared with the rest of the tour, our show at the Tokyo basement venue The Wall stood out. One could barely see from one side to the other of the long narrow venue due to the thickness of cigarette smoke. It was a miracle that any equipment on stage still worked; speaker grills smashed in and amplifiers were missing knobs. The halogen lights had us all sweating the moment we walked onto stage. The monitors surprisingly had rebar welded onto where their grills had been so artists could stand on them.
Jan. 19
Our last day off in Tokyo, so everyone went their own way. My wife and I bought ridiculously cheap clothing and, as usual, ate out at half the price you’d see in the U.S.
Jan. 20
The last true day of the tour. We played a live house called The Basement Bar, another grungy basement that we’d be lucky to have in Spokane. There was a surprising amount of people for a Monday night, and as was usual, it took some time for the Japanese crowd to warm up. But by the time I was soloing on the tables, they were head banging and dancing as eagerly as any American audience. By the end of the night, the energy in the room — just like a Japanese microphone — was electric.
Jan. 21
We woke up and went straight to the airport. Once landing, we said our goodbyes in the GEG baggage claim.
As is usual when returning home from such ventures, we all felt a mixture of sadness and readiness to be back in Spokane. Over the tour I learned a great deal from the Japanese, however one thing specifically that I find most admirable was their constant and deep appreciation for the arts.
Arigatō gozaimasu (thank you very much), Japan!
