Day 3

Naeba is a great location, but with it's biggest ever crowds the limitations of the smaller arenas were clear when I arrived, along most of the rest of the festival-goers, at the Field of Heaven to catch the Sonic Youth Experimental Noise Improvisational, to find no standing room and even less breathing space. It didn't help the traffic situation much that there were just as many people pouring out of the arena as were flooding in. Their experimentations in noise just a tad too artistic perhaps.

Top festival fashion	The High-Lows groovin' with a poppy tune that every Japanese Fuji-goer seemed to know by heart, provided a nice change from some of the dreary daylight hour acts on previous days. The Electric Soft Parade, a band from the UK with an amazingly versatile guitar pop sound, and killer lyrics impressed me as I munched on more Indian food. You would not expect this music to be coming from a pair of barely out of high school, teenage brothers. They truly do sound and look all grown up. If they are this good now I'm looking forward to what the future holds.
Jane's Addiction are worth a mention simply because Perry Ferrell was so unbelievably sweet and thankful to his audience, always remembering the language barrier and speaking slowly and simply in order to reach everyone. They didn't hold back, and put on the best show possible with multiple costume changes and passionate energy.
©Yuko Kuroyanagi	For me the culmination of the festival was to be The Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'd been waiting all weekend to see them and wanted to get as close to the front as possible. Again, I had not come up with an original idea. It seemed that everyone was intent on getting into the pit. I managed to push and weasel my way in and held my ground for an hour, but once Mr. Keidis and his pals hit the stage the pit started pushing and pulling so relentlessly that if I hadn't been grabbed by some of my fellow aggressors, I would have been sucked under by the rip tide. I lost a shoe to the undertow and soon after, my patience too.

I wanted to dance and see the Chili's up close, but not if I had to fight for every breath, so I admitted defeat and headed to the back where I was plucked out of the crowd by a huge black superman. Wow! Who was that guy?

Walking away with my one shoe, I think I cried. I'd traveled hundreds of kilometers, waited the whole weekend for the Peppers, and I lasted maybe three minutes in the pit. "Lighten up ya goof !" I thought and headed for a place where I could see the stage, the big screen and freak out some of the less jazzed viewers. I was dancing, with my one shoe, and "Wooing", "Yeahing" and jumping. They finished up with a wicked rendition of Give it Away - and came back for and encore with Under the Bridge. Someone must have had a sweaty sneaker fetish as when I later returned to the pit plenty of other shoes went unclaimed but mine was alas, not among them. To cap things off nature decided to come a callingm and I had the very unpleasant prospect of negotiating one of the now fairly nasty squatty port-o-potties with only one shoe. The plastic garbage bag I'd been carrying around since day one was finally put to good use.

In a large nutshell, despite all the ups and downs, I have to say that Asia's largest music festival, and surely one of the world's best organized was a pretty damn remarkable event. If you have a love for music, can find a couple of friends with cash to burn, and can get 3 or 4 days off, you should definitely make the trip to Naeba next year for Fuji Rock 2003.

08/2002 Krista Sheen