Everyone's heard of the Bullet Train. The sleek high speed train that goes all over Japan. We got to take it from Osaka to Nagoya, and will take it again to Tokyo. It's great - large comfy seats, snacks delivered to you, and it travels at over 100mpg.

    Updating this page doesn't happen without getting online, and travelling around the world, that gets... interesting.

   Hotels always have a phone, and usually some easy access to the modem. Sometimes, though, the connections aren't right. Anyone but a musician would carry the right tools, cables, and stuff needed to get the line going - but most of us just wing it.

   In Nagoya the phone in the hotel room had no modem out on the phone. No problem - just use the phone line - but the "dial tone" was the beeping one usually found in Japan, and my modem didn't hear it.

   No problem - just find another phone extension, dial zero on that for the real dial tone. Ah, but the other phone (on bathroom wall) didn't dial out at all - only there for receiving calls.

   So, the soloution: dial zero on the bedside phone. Run to bathroom, take that phone off hook and leave it. Run back to bed, pull phone cord from phone, plug into computer and quickly start dialin procedure before losing the dial tone.

   Oh yes, after connection, get back in the bathroom and hang up that phone which is now (if things went successfully) howling like a banshee, and the guy in the next room is about to call hotel security.
(Unless it's a bandmate in the next room, and he's thinking "Oh, so that's how to get online from this place!")

    I finally noticed that SteveO, the Japenese tech who helps out with everything on the tour, was taking photos of the "unplugged" piece we do, with my camera.
Somehow I'd seen a shot or two with me in them, but hadn't thought about how that could be. So now I have plenty of evidence that the group does go out into the audience for the last encore.
Thank you SteveO.

    After the last show in Tokyo, there was a rare party. Some members of the "tl club of Japan" (!!) had invited me out to dinner after the show. I didn't realize there were to be thirty of us at that dinner. We had a lot of fun (including photos of the bald ones, of course, and I got to meet some very nice people. It seems there are a lot of bassists and Stick players in the group, because I certainly signed a lot. (And one bassist had made his own version of Funk Fingers, which he calls Punk Fingers!)

    Finishing up the Japan Tour page before catching the plane to NYC today. Yesterday, our last day in Japan, we did some interviews, then an appearance at Virgin Megastore. All in all this tour, though short, has been as enjoyable as a tour can be. Lots of good shows, very nice people, and the CGT feels that they're making inroads into making the public aware of them in Japan. I'm sure we'll be back on another tour here before long.
Now, I've got to get some promotors to let me come back with my group for a tour!