Q078: How do you feel touring? What are your impressions of Canada? What are you impressions of the United States? What do you like most? What do you like least? When you get back to Japan, what do you feel you've missed most? What do you feel most annoyed to be reminded of?
A078:I recent years I've spent six months out of every twelve on the road. It's great to be able to meet all kinds of people, but touring really does wear you down both mentally and physically. When I'm on the road I get loads of new ideas that make me want to rush home and start recording. But when I'm recording every day, I get this desire to get back on the road.
Wherever I go people ask me about which countries or cities I enjoy the most and I always give the same reply - "there's good things and bad things about everywhere, things I love and things I hate. Wherever you go there's people, cities and nature, and it's all pretty much the same. And besides we get to see very little of the places we visit apart from clubs, record shops and wherever we're crashing that night."
If there's one thing that really gets me down on the road, it's the food. I prefer to stick to a pure Japanese diet and trying to change that is really hard for me. I don't like bread, cheese, ham and other processed meats, pasta, pizza or fruit, so often it is hard for me to find anything that I can order. Recently I've been drinking nothing but shochu, and I can't really drink much beer any more. But everywhere we go, we always get given beer. I try vodka instead, but what I really want is shochu! In February I went on a solo tour of Europe and this time I didn't bring any food with me from Japan and tried to get by on what I get locally. That's was tough and my health suffered. On the road it's important to look after your health, so the change in diet is the most difficult thing for me.