Big Adventures, Little World

The last day of Fuji Rock had arrived, which was as much a good thing as a bad thing. Some things like walking up the mountain would not be missed, and after 3 days of broken sleep and and being on our feet for most of that time, we were glad it was the final day.

We started packing up the tent and took most of our gear to the car before catching the Dragondola, (a 5.5km cable car run through to mountains to another stage, which turned out to be hippy central. While there wasn’t much on up there, the ride up was nice, as well as the ride back down. Once we wee down we saw the end of Jason Mraz, and then onto Red Marquee where we sat for a bit waiting for One Night Only.

After having a bite to eat we went over to the Green Stage, grabbed a seat and saw Jakob Dylan of the Wallflowers, and then began our wait to see Ben Folds. As we were waiting, we heard some of the loudest and longest thunder cracks, and biggest lightning strikes I had ever seen, which didn’t fill us with the best confidence considering how much electrical equipment we were surrounded by! We stayed out there, and then, the rain came. And it didn’t just rain, it poured! We were that wet we stayed out there and it was definitely worth it, Ben Folds was great, although he didn’t interact with the crowd as much as I expected.

We decided we may as we’ll stay out in the rain and wait as we weren’t getting any dryer, or wetter. We were waiting for Ellegarden, another Japanese punk band, but this time, they sang mostly in English. As with Mongol800, as soon as the band came on stage, the crowd stormed to the front, and it wasn’t your normal mosh pit crowd. There was kids and parents in there too, small petite girls getting in amongst it also, and people running around in circles and purposely jumping into each. It was really a site to be seen, and the music was really good as well, as the ain continued to fall.

As the sun started to set, we headed back to the campsite for the last time, to pull “The Hilton” down and back to the car before ending the Fuji Rock experience! We would have stayed longer if it wasn’t for the rain, but we weren’t overly fussed missing the last few acts, and were much more excited about heading to the onsen (translated as hot spring, best described as a public bath).

After our onsen we started the journey home, this time going a different way which turned out much quicker than the trip there. We got home about midnight and after unpacking our gear we were off to bed after our long, long weekend.  which was much better than I ever expected it to be!