Fuji Rock Festival
FUJI ROCK FUJI ROCK FUJI ROCK FUJI ROCK! Sweet googlymoogly YES! I can’t wait for this festival. The Fuji Rock Festival – Japan’s largest outdoor festival – gets in excess of 100,000 attendees and attracts big-name international acts. This year’s lineup include Franz Ferdinand, The Hives, Jet, Mogwai, The Scissor Sisters and this little band you may have heard of, known as Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
Sweet googlymoogly YES!
But there’s also plenty of Japanese bands to go with the internationals. I’m looking forward to Asian Kung-Fu Generation, personally.
It’s a three-day weekend festival where you camp (or hotel, if you’re that type) in the forests of Niigata prefecture. Niigata isn’t actually anywhere near Mt Fuji as the name suggests. The festival used to be held near Fuji but was nearly destroyed by a typoon in its first year. Hence, it’s new, permanent home in Niigata. It makes for an excellent weekend out in the Japanese summer, with slight relief from the heat of Tokyo in the last weekend of July.
Now’s the downside…the three day pass is ￥39,800 (about US$400), or ￥16,800 for one of the 10,000 one-day passes sold each day. Add an extra ￥2,500 for camping, and ￥2,000 per day car park. The shinkansen there is another ￥6,000 or so, depending on where you’re travelling from. Then there’s food, souvenirs, alcohol…
It’s an expensive weekend out, for sure. But it’ll be a festival you’ll never forget, either.
Links:
Fuji Rock Festival – official page in English
Wikipedia article on the Fuji Rock Festival
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April 24th, 2006 at 12:29 am
It’s an awesome rock festival to attend but remember to bring raincoats and lots of the anti-rain anti-sun goodies..
Went for it last year and it rained pretty much the whole time.. from what i heard .. it rains almost every year.
April 24th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Heh, thanks for the tip. Well, I guess it is typhoon season then.
July 20th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
It’s definatly not the largest out door music festival in Japan when the Sendai, Jozenji street music festival had over 600,000 in attendence, 6 times what the Fuji fest had and the Sendai festival is completely free.