7/30/07

Tour Journal page 1: Super Start

We are already on our 3rd day here in America. It is so great! Here is a run down of what has been up on the first 2 days.



7/28 Saturday:

Too excited to sleep, we left our house a little before 6 on a morning train to the airport. We took a plane to Korea where we had a 5 hour layover that flew by.
If you ever have to have a layover you should try to do it in Seoul because it is the airport with the most delicious food in the world! We had crazy delicious tofu chige.
tofu chige!
Then the airport staff let us borrow a power adaptor for our computer. So we watched a couple episodes of Wonder Showzen we had downloaded from iTunes before we left. It is so funny. But, when we were sitting in the chair in the airport we kept smelling something kind of terrible. At first we thought it was the guy behind us but he got up and left after a while (probably because we were laughing too hard at Wonder Showzen), but the smell stayed! And then we could find the real culprit... the chair Yoshimi was sitting in! It was the stinkiest, BO smelling thing in the world. I wonder who left that smell there? It was almost worse than something any human could do! It was like an elephant sized stink. So, if you do have a layover in Seoul be careful when you choose any seat around gate 22.

So, our flight left around 4 on Saturday afternoon in Korea and we got to San Francisco around noon on Saturday. So it was like we had taken a time machine!
When we got to the airport, our super friend Tim came to pick us up. We first met him when he was touring around Japan as the bassist for Rf. He showed us his wood shop where he is making a lot of furniture. He made his own desk on stool, which you can see here.
Tim Frick
Then he took us to the mission where Yoshimi tried her first Burrito ever.
It was so delicious.
first burrito ever (before)
first burrito ever (after)
The mission seemed like a pretty cool spot too.
After that we went to our best friend Patrick (PatPat)'s sister's house where we are all staying for a few days. It is always so much fun to hang out with Patrick and this time we get to take a road trip with him for a whole month! Road party!

If you don't know about his amazing photography yet, you have to check it out. Him and his girlfriend have a big spread in the newest Vice Magazine, and you can see the photos from it here (maybe not to good to check at work though):
www.viceland.com

In the night we were going to go to see copy and panther play, but the jet-lag caught up with us and we ended up going back home and sleeping at like 11.


7/29 Sunday:

In the morning we went to an awesome farmers market which was perfect for Patrick because these days he is really into this strange farmers hat for some reason.
farmer Pat in his farmer hat
At the market they had so much fruit we could sample for free, and it was even pretty cheap to buy too. Fruit in Japan is way too expensive. These raspberries were perfect.
perfect raspberries
Then we randomly ran into Gerald who we knew from Nagoya when he was living there for a while. I guess he is living around Patrick's sister's house now. Crazy!
Gerald
So, we were eating our fruit by a little stream and there were these cool little kids making boats out of sticks and grass and "putting them to sail" (everything in quotation marks are directly from this 6 year-old's mouth). There were 2 little guys. One was the "builder" and one was the "supplier" (he ran around and picked up broken branches). But, none of the boats made it very far before falling apart so the "supplier" was also in charge of "the museum" which was a big rock they put all of their old broken boats on. This is one of their best boats:
cool boat
After a while, they offered to let us start the "raft company." Together we owned those seas! But, in the end some grown-up lady told us all of our boats and rafts were clogging up some pipe at the end of the stream. I think she was either just jealous of all of the fun, or an undercover pirate bent on halting our expedition. Oh well.

Then we walked around and saw this:
Bart

After that we went back to the house for a BBQ! The weather in San Francisco is perfect for BBQing!
BBQ
We had to leave the BBQ a little early to head down to the Space Gallery, where we played our first show in America in so long.
Space Gallery
I was a little worried how it would go because half of the songs were in Japanese, but everyone seemed super super into. People clapped along, gave us some hoots, and looked overall excited which made us more and more excited and totally killed our jet-lag! Then we sold so many CDs and bags! Thank you so much to everyone who came! And, thanks to the Megamoog (who was awesome for setting up the show) Space Gallery for having us, and giving us free beer. The red stripe really matched Yoshimi's new dress!
red stripes with red stripes

At the show, another super friend and future collaborator Sean Talley gave us some fruit and bread which we took home and ate on the porch as a late night dinner
late night porch party
and then we hit the sleeping bags Patrick's mom let us borrow.
sleepingbag spooners
Spooning in two separate sleeping bags is pretty funny.

7/27/07

virb + tour ep

tour ep
We made a new tour ep to sell on tour. It has 8 tracks.


Virb
And we made a new Virb page with some of the tracks on it.
Check this: http://www.virb.com/lullatone
Virb is like a much better myspace.

We are going to be in California in less than 20 hours!
I can't wait. I think we our going to go see Panther and Copy just after we touch down in San Francisco. And, we will be playing our first show in America in forever tomorrow. I'm a little nervous, much more than I ever am about playing in Japan. I have no clue what the music scene is like the States these days, and this is our first time ever in the West coast.

Fingers crossed!

7/23/07

more bags, beach life, the perfect pink

new bag

Yesterday we printed some more eco bags. These ones say "minimalism is cute" in pink ink. We had to mix our red and white inks for a while to get the perfect pink, but finally we could do it! The only thing is we ended up making way too much of it because we kept adding a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more of each color. So, we have to think of some other pink pink things to make soon.

beach life

And, during the weekend we went to Yoshimi's parents' beach house with her whole family. It was super fun.
We ate lots and lots of delicious fish, went swimming too much, got way too sun burned, and went to an onsen (Japanese hot spring) and sauna where I hung out with her dad and brothers naked for a long time.
I am crazy lucky to have them as my family. Everybody should hang out naked with their in-laws more!

7/20/07

our bedroom factory



We are using our print gocco to make a lot of eco bags to sell on tour. This is our first design. I think they turned out really well! Especially considering that we made them all in our bedroom!

I hope we can sell a lot to pay for gas from city to city!

print goko printing press

factory worker

If you don't know about print gocco you have to check this out.


Also, one more good link...
This is what we listened to while we were printing:
deerhoof live on the radio

7/16/07

new commercial

Yesterday we made a new commercial for our tour.
Thanks to a lot of coffee, we could do the whole thing in less the 24 hours!
It was the fastest we finished any project in a long, long time so I was really excited. I want to start working really fast like this more and more.

Here are some shots from making it

making a new commercial

tour dates (video still)


and here is the finished video:


Today we are going to do a lot of print goko! I cant wait!

7/11/07

US Tour!


P.A.J.A.M.A IN USA!!!
We made this new illustration for our tour. We are so excited about playing in North America in the first time in forever!


Here are all of the dates and info so far:

7/29 San Francisco w/Megamoog, Bear Claw
@ Space Gallery
1141 Polk St, San Francisco, CA 94109 Phone:415.377.3325


8/1 Davis w/Plants
@Delta of Venus
122 B Street, Davis CA Phone:530.753.8639


8/2 Eugene w/ Double Plus Good
@Stonehenge


8/3 Portland w/ Startegy, White Rainbow
@Someday Lounge


8/7 San Fransisco w/RF&Lili De La Mora and more!
@ Poleng Lounge
1751 Fulton Ave @ Masonic San Francisco, CA 94117 Phone: 415.441.1710


8/13 NY w/Aa, DJ Nick Gazin
@ Silent Barn
915 Wyckoff Ave @ Hancock | Ridgewood/Bushwick, QNS/BKLYN


8/15 Boston or CT


8/16 Burlington w/the smittens
@ Firehouse Gallery
135 Church St Burlington, VT 05401 Phone:802. 865.7165

8/17 Montreal **tba


8/18 Peterborough w/ Fire Flower Revue 6:30 PM, Show starts
@ The Spill Cafe
414 George St. N Peterborough, Ontario Canada K9H3R5 Phone: 705.748.6167


8/19 Toronto w/I am Robot and Proud
@ Sneaky Dee's (wavelength)
431 College St. (at Bathurst) in downtown Toronto Phone: 416.603.9030

8/20 Buffalo TBA
@ soundlab
110 pearl st, corner of pearl/swan, downtown buffalo 14202


8/21 Rochester
@ Boulder Coffee Co.
100 Alexander St. Rochester, NY 14620 Phone: 585.454.7140


8/22 Philadelphia TBA


8/25 NY w/ alias pail, tristan perich/loud objects and more!
@ glasslands gallery
L Train to first stop Bedford Ave / JMZ To Marcy
289 Kent Ave (btw South 1st and South 2nd) Phone: 718.599.1450



If you have some free time, let's float away together!