Show Day 2 in Tokyo, Japan

9:37am

It was hard for me to believe what happened at that time this morning. I was sitting at the desk in my hotel room, on the computer, forearms resting on the desktop. Suddenly the desk started to vibrate. Then I realized that the entire room, hell, the entire building was shaking. It was an EARTHQUAKE!

OK, so maybe you're from California and don't even think twice about such things, but I've never been in one. And you can believe me when I tell ya, it scared shit out of me. I started wondering what it was gonna be like to die, because I was about to ride this building down into a pile of rubble. No shit!

As I was deciding whether on not riding the building down from inside the bathtub would improve my chances of survival, it finally stopped.

I can honestly say that I hope to never experience THAT again.

I found out later that the quake had measured 3 out of 7 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale, which is different from the Richter scale. It was stated to have had a preliminary magnitude of 5.0. on of that same 0 to 7 scale. Whatever – it sucked and I don't want to be in another one…

Spent about 30 minutes walking around the neighborhood, checking stuff out. Wound up down at the Starbucks on the corner, where I ran into John, the monitor engineer from Arcade Fire. He's a nice British dude who I met on the Big Day Out tour in Australia, and we spent a few minutes catching up with each other adventures of the past week.

Robert and Sooner showed up and once they got their drinks, I joined them walking back to the hotel.

After the show tonight, we threw ourselves an end-of-tour party at the Hard Rock Tokyo. All but 2 crew people showed up (those 2 had early flights in the morning), and Tom was the only bandmember to show up. Had a good time, met some cool punters (fans). They were mostly kept away by our security guys, but I kept walking around downstairs (where it was cooler, temperature-wise), and they'll always approach you if they know you work for the band.

In the upstairs bar, I ran into John Corrabi, a guy who used to sing in Motley Crue when Vince Neil wasn't around. He was on the Hooligan's Holiday record that I know of, not sure if he was around long enough to do any others. Anyway, John had come out to a Cry Of Love show back in '93 or '94 in Los Angeles. I want to say it was the show at the Troubadour on October 12, 1993 – that was the show that Westwood One recorded and broadcast live. John was a totally cool guy and I think we all had a few beers with him that night. I remember being surprised at how cool he was. I couldn't believe the dude from Motley Crue could be that normal.

So I talked to John for 15 or 20 minutes before rejoining the festivities in our section of the restaurant.

Everything started petering out by about 2am, so I jumped in a cab with somebody and headed back to the hotel. Lobby call around noon tomorrow and I've gotta repack a bunch of stuff.