Oblivion Dust | JBinnacle – A Travel Logbook

I spent the day at Ebisu [恵比寿], where I got to say hi and meet a lot of known and new people . First, I had arranged a late lunch with my friend with E**chan. Unfortunately, her trains had problems and she was forced to drive to another line station to get from her village outside Tokyo to Ebisu – so in the end it was a very late lunch we had. I spent the time wandering the malls and the Ebisu Skywalk [恵比寿スカイウォーク], which is basically a long corridor without anything to see – the train service was disrupted and we did not know when she would arrive, I did not want to leave the area. She finally made it, and we managed to find some super-nice place in the Ebisu Atre building. By that time, we were starving, and when we caught sight of a traditional restaurant, we went for it. We ordered a katsudon [カツ丼] each, because it looked fantastic – and it was delicious..

Katsudon lunch set: miso soup, a bowl of rice with meat and egg on top, a cup of tea and grated cabbage to share between two people

A scoop of vanilla ice cream and a cup of green tea

Afterwards, we went to the Oblivion Dust’s Gods Of the Wasteland Tour 2019 Gods Of Reborn concert at Ebisu Liquidroom. Oblivion Dust, shortened as “Oburi”, is a three-man Japanese rock band. The current members (none of whom are founding members) are Kentaro “Ken” Lloyd (vocals), Iwaike Kazuhito “K.A.Z” (guitar) and Rikiji Masuda (bass). They usually work with two supporting musicians:Yuji (guitar) andArimatsu / Arly (drums). I’ve often seen both K.A.Z. and with VAMPS.At present, they are touring with guitarist Ryo, as K.A.Z. has broken his hand. Reportedly, he “remains behind the scenes, doing synthesiser work”.

Despite K.A.Z’s broken hand, Oblivion Dust has carried out a sixteen-concert tour during summer, Gods of the Wasteland. There are four different setlists, each played four times:Gods Of Elvis, Gods Of Misery, Gods Of Reborn and Gods Of Butterfly.

Gods of Reborn setlist:

    1. Goodbye
    2. Girlie Boy Imitation #6
    3. Ghost That Bleeds
    4. Sugar Free
    5. Under My Skin
    6. Death Surf
    7. Come Alive
    8. Plastic Wings
    9. Alien
    10. No Medication
    11. Nightcrawler
    12. Crazy
    13. In Motion
    14. Haze
    15. Lolita
    16. Sail Away
    17. Evidence
    18. You

After checking out the merchandise boot, E**chan and I had our numbers called and we went into the floor. We found good spot on the left,, just on the edge of the “mosh pit”, the central area where people jump and dance, and elbow you if you are not careful.

The concert lasted for about two hours, and it was full of energy. Vocalist Ken always amazes me because he does not drink anything, he just grabs bottles of water, dumps the liquid on his head, and then throws them at the crowd.Bassist Rikiji is probably a relative of the Duracell Bunny, and he does not stay still whatsoever. He mimics shooting at people with the neck of his bass, or is busy jumping around. Ryo was all right, but he was… not K.A.Z, which also showed as Ken and Rikiji did have their fun and trolling moments – Ken stole Rikij’s “bass microphone” and and Rikiji just offered him the bass to go with it. Ken also went to “visit” Arimatsu, who was having too much fun to be bothered, and just made some more noise. I mean, Ken seemed to be everywhere at once.

After the concert, everybody was happy-exhausted.I for sure was absolutely drained. E**chan invited me to tag along her and some of her friends for dinner, and we went to a typical izakaya. The food was great, but a bit (all right, a lot) on the expensive side.

The logo of Liquid Room, styled to look like an organic chemistry molecule, with hexagons for Q and Os

Walked distance: No idea, I forgot the watch. But most of what I walked was on the Ebisu Skywalkas I was bored waiting for E**chan since I was early but her train was super-delayed due to the accident (≧▽≦).

I caught up the 8 am ferry and was downtown in Hiroshima [廣島] round 9.10. my first stop was the quite-impressive and down-brining A-dome. This is the building above which the atomic bomb went off, and it is very, very sobering. What impressed me the most was the bottles of water still being offered to those who had been killed by the bomb.

I strolled around the Peace Memorial park, Hiroshima Heiwa Kinen Kōen [廣島平和記念公園] for a while, but I could not stomach the museum, to be honest. So after a while I decided to be on my way. Just imagining the amount of destruction and victimisation was spine-chilling.

My next stop was the old Hiroshima castle grounds. The first thing I saw there was Hiroshima Gokoku Jinja [廣島護國神社], which was full of people doing Hatsumode (I think this was kind of a pattern all through this first week of the year. Oh, the surprise (*≧▽≦)).

After that, I continued towards the castle, Hiroshima-jo [広島城], which holds a little antique museum, and was doing a demonstration on katana-making. However, I did not get to see the blades, they were just working on the guards, which is… I mean, don’t get me wrong. Not as cool? The castle was destroyed when the bomb went off, so it has been reconstructed since then. Part of the museum was dedicated to the reconstruction of the area. On the top floor there are a resting room and an observatory.

After the castle, I decided to head off to have some food and afterwards I went to Club Quattro, which was hosting an Oblivion Dust concert. Not that I am a hardcore (or much of a) fan – as a matter of fact I had never listened to any of their songs – but the guitarist is one of the VAMPS members, K.A.Z, and I kind of wanted to check them out.

I stayed over with Ms-san (who had helped me get the ticket) and some other acquaintances to see the band come in – and we got a half-assed wave from K.A.Z – and then I stayed to buy some merchandise. Then I realised that I had a… tiny problem. I had no transport to get to my hotel after the concert ＼（〇_ｏ）／ because my last bus to the airport was at 7 pm, and I had a hotel very close to that!!! Well, I could have taken a taxi, but that was mover expensive than getting another hotel and losing the reservation for the previous one. It was a stressy hour until I could get there, check in, get some food and come back, but it all turned out nicely in the end.

The concert, part of Oblivion Dust’s 20 anniversary “I Hate Rock n’ Roll Tour 2016-17”, was really fun. Even if I had not heard any of the songs before, it felt familiar, as I could relate K.A.Z’s music style to what I knew from VAMPS and the long-gone Hide with Spread Beaver to some of thee songs I was listening to. The ‘average setlist’ for the tour was the following, so it is possible that this was what I listened to:

In Motion
Under My Skin
Radio Song
Red Light Green Light
Come Alive
Evidence
Erase
Easier Then
Designer Fetus
Elvis
Sail Away
Crawl
Never Ending
Lolita
24 Hour Buzz ’99
Death Surf
Nightcrawler
Sink the God

K.A.Z was quite serious and concentrated most of the concert, and he only smiled a couple of times when he was exchanging glances with Arly, who is the support drummer for both Oblivion Dust and VAMPS. Most of the time I don’t even check on Arly that much, because I’m following Hyde around with my eyes, and that is a challenge, so I think this was the first time I was ever aware of how much fun Arly has at his job.

The bass player, Rikiji, was pretty fun. Ken, the singer, has a very different style from Hyde, but I could really see some parallelisms in the way he jerked around stage and jumped up and down. At one point, the guy climbed on the stage scaffolding-like thingy, hooked his knees, let himself and sang upside-down for a while. Now, that was quite impressive.

Surprising as it might, considering that in VAMPS he has to share the spotlight with something like Hyde, K.A.Z was quite… I’m not sure how to describe it… he did not have so much of that spotlight. No much guitar twirling, not that much jumping up and down either. At one point he went all zen in the back of stage where he could barely be seen. Seriously.

After the concert I went to eat with Ms-san and one of her friends and we had a few local specialities, such as Hiroshima okonomiyaki and roasted oysters. After that we all headed back to our respective hotels.