Asia Tour!!

Hello dears! We’re back from Asia!
This summer has been such an amazing musical adventure for us, so I thought it would be fun to share a virtual tour of our trip with you – just imagine we packed you up in our suitcases and brought you along with the band! 🙂 Here we go…

And we’re off! I was surprised to see that cars drive on the left hand side in Japan. Our amazing liaison Rune gave us a warm welcome and brought us back to our music themed hotel in Tokyo. Even the beds were shaped like pianos! We wasted no time before hitting the streets to explore. It was pretty tricky trying to make sense of their crazy maze of a metro system, but it’s really convenient once you figure it out and you can get pretty much get anywhere.

We checked out Sky Tree – the tallest building in Tokyo; Shibuya – the busiest intersection I have ever crossed with literally thousands of people; Asakusa – a beautiful temple area; and Harajuku – a super funky neighbourhood where the womens fashion is famous for it’s quirkiness.

What an incredible venue! We played 4 shows at the world renowned Tokyo Cotton Club. It was a real treat to play their incredible Steinway piano! The staff there was top notch; they took attention to detail to a whole new level.

Noah rocked so hard during our shows that he ripped his shoe open!

We were invited to the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo so we stopped by for a little taste of home. They gave us a tour of the Oscar Peterson Theatre, the art gallery, the library, the traditional Japanese Zen garden and of course, a tour of traditional Canadian knick knacks!

Nothing quite like a nice cold glass of  ‘Pungency’, or a visit to the Cat Cafe. It was pushing 38 degrees so shade became a highly sought after commodity and all manner of fans and parasols were employed to help us with the never ending task to keep cool.

Tea time! One of our very first stops in Busan, Korea was our friend JinKeun’s Good Cha tea shop. I think I could be happy just hanging out in that tea shop for the rest of my life. 🙂

I adored Korean food! Every meal comes with a whole bunch of tasty side dishes (and don’t forget, kimchi!) and everyone gets to share. That’s me eating an entire small crab! Our favourite bar there is called Nurieh and we had a little impromtu jam session. The owner thought I looked and sounded like Olivia Newton John and pulled out a record to prove it. Ha!

Gotta love Korean toilets. You can adjust the seat temperature, have a rear end shower/blow dry, there’s a special setting just for kids, and you can press the ‘impulsive’ button if the spirit moves you. I was never brave enough. 😉

We played 2 big shows in Korea – The Busan International Rock Festival and the The Ulsan World Music Festival. I looked out onto a crowd of tens of thousands – totally mind blowing!!!!

Awe-mazing to be on that stage!!!! That’s me up on those jumbotrons!!!

Many sleepy metro rides later, a couple of zany beach trips, an amusement park complete with a ride on a stuffed dog and a radio interview for Busan’s English speaking radio station 90.5 FM…

On the last day, we visited the incredible Korean coast line and a tiny, colourful village. Ji Young Chu, a famous Busan visual artist gave us a tour of her amazing studio. That’s our favourite tour guide, translator and dear friend Jina – our little sister! It was sad to say goodbye, we love her! And back to Vancouver!