ELECTRAGLIDE. Pretty much the biggest party ever. 20,000 people. 1 massive venue.
I went this past Friday with Bob from Gunma and his mates. Aside from the fact that I forgot my 9,000-yen ticket I had a killer time.
I met up with Bob and his friends at Tokyo station and one of them jokingly asked, "Bob, got your ticket?" And he was like, "No. I forgot it. Hahaha." And then they were like, "Forget yours, April, hahaha." And then I got this sickish feeling as a picture of my ticket, still magneted to my refridgerator--where I had put it thinking it would be a visible, obvious place--crystallized in my head. To make a long story short, after the guys stuck by my side for about half an hour as I talked to the people at the ticket booth (their plan was to make the ticket people think we weren't leaving until they gave me a ticket, and it basically worked) I struck a deal with ticket sellers to get the money from my original ticket, which was now cozying up with my fridge, refunded after I bought a new one. Disaster averted, serious monetary loss *hopefully* avoided.
Once safely inside the massive complex things went off without a hitch. Underworld (a.k.a. Tomato) played a rockin 3 hour set, and aside from the highly suspect dancing (not to mention the white, frilly suit) of one of the Tomatos, all in all it was thoroughly enjoyable. How cool to be able to dance and sing along with 20,000 other people to "Born Slippy." Pretty damn cool.
But the highlight for me was definitely Vitalic. That dude's set was well, for lack of a better phrase, off the hook. It was pure booty-shakin for an hour, non-stop.
I hadn't been to a party like this since freshman year of college, and aside from seeming noticeably older nothing was too different. The crowd as a whole was older than when I was going to raves (I remember feeling like an old-foggie when I was 19 because there were so many damn 13-year-olds at the parties in Austin). And everyone was super chilled out. You take an American crowd that size at an event like that and I have a feeling some things would have gotten out of hand. But although the venue was crowded we all had room to dance in true P.L.U.R. fashion. And the hundreds of Japanese kids sleeping all over the place proved yet again that Japanese people really can sleep anywhere.
Close to 6 a.m. we were sweaty, tired and tired, and so we headed out.