Hey! This is Igarashi from SMASH EAST comin' at ya. Our Sapporo office opened this spring. It's pretty small, but keep up the support!

Anyway, we've been holding the Fuji Rock Documentary Festival at certain places around Japan, and with distance between Sapporo and Naeba, it's a fact that there will be few people heading down South for the festival. That's why we're pulling out all stops to promote FRF, and decided to hold a party together with Rising Sun on May 27 after consulting with Yamamoto from WESS.

We of course showed films of both festivals as well as a live talk from SMASH's Hidaka and WESS's Yamamoto, with a lot of directed questions from the audience. The number of people, around 650 in all, way exceeded staff's expectations. Although we thought that it's on a weekday so people will come late, there was a ton of people waiting outside before the show. I was rapped that everyone turned up early on to enjoy the whole show rather than turn up just for the Rising Sun part.

Before the documentary, Hidaka from SMASH went to FM NORTHWAVE live broadcasting (commenting to our Tokyo staff how scary it was trying to book a live program for the daytime) and recorded three programs (one of them was an hour special!) and an interview for Town Magazine (with WESS's Yamamoto). When we asked people how they knew about the party, the common response was something like: "heard it on the radio, and just had to come!" and that's when I realized how glad I was that I'd booked live programming.

The start of the documentary... our MC, SMASH's Kurabashi, seemed a bit nervous in front of the expecting crowd. Everyone seemed in good drinking mood as the drink tickets fast began disappearing. At last, the live talk we were all waiting for. Most of the questions were aimed at gunning info on the "not yet released" artist lineup, like: "I heard XX is on third, is that true?" Hidaka: "Yeah, that’s right," with other questions focused on what'll be happening at this year's festival. Although not yet officially announced, Yamamoto let us in on the names of some of the artists that'll be performing. We were also lucky enough to get to hear a few "adult" questions and just as "wise" answers. All in all, a plethora of interesting and useful information!

After the film and the live talk, staff reported hearing people say things like: "So that’s what FRF is all about ﾐ wicked! I had no idea." One of the main purposes for the party was to bring people a little "closer" to Naeba, and hearing such comments as this seemed that we had accomplished what we had set out to do.

Having said that, there were a lot of things we could have done better. So we are planning to have a combined after-party once Fuji Rock and Rising Sun are over. (Although there heaps of things we have to do before that!)

There's one more thing that needs to be announced. Although I announced this at the Documentary Festival, we have arranged a new "tour pack ferry plan" from Hokkaido with service from Otaru to Niigata on the "Fuji Rock Maru." Details will be disclosed at a later date ﾐ what we can tell you is that we are planning to make it cheaper than the usual price. If we can get the numbers together, we are keen to show past films of FRFs as well as promo videos of this year's FRF performers to get everyone amped up and make the 18-hour trip as cruisey as possible. So look out!

That was the low-down from Sapporo.

reported by Smash-Igarashi  (June 5, 2002)
and translated by ORG-damon with a help of ORG-yohei and ORG-yuko  (June 30, 2002)