Washington DC / Polysics - 16th Feb

We rode The Metro to The Mall and met some famous dead dudes called George "The Body" Washington and Abraham Lincoln.



I tried to fill a request from my friend Jez with these photos of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Those guys have multiple landmarks, they must have been good.



Then we went to The White House which is where Mr Obama lives. He has a dog.



As we were walking away from The White House we bumped into Polysics. Fumi told me later on that they were just taking photos around DC in their outfits for fun. Although Yano's constant mantra of "samui, samui, samui" (cold, cold, cold) lead me to believe it probably wasn't his idea. Yano made me laugh by walking right up in front of me, bowing and saying "domo" in a really over the top way. They remembered me from the Akron show and were kind enough to pose for a couple of photos with Brannon and I.



We left them taking photos in front of The White House and headed off for food at a high class Mexican restaurant called Chipotle. After we'd eaten we had to drive from the west of DC to the east of DC during rush hour. With the snow blocking off lanes, many bad drivers and dodgy traffic lights it was a horrible drive. I think it took about 2 hours but we got to the venue dead on 8pm when the doors opened (thank you Sidley!). Once again people were commenting on my outfit and this time it was better because nearly everyone was there to see Polysics. At the Akron show a lot of people were there for the support bands and didn't even know who Polysics were. Even Travis had made it to the show, I'd spoken to him briefly at the Akron show and he said I was partly his inspiration for making the four hour drive solo to DC. We chatted with a few other fans too, Mike and Francis are the names that I remember. My super friend Brannon had made a lovely owl for Kayo so we gave that to her. She definitely smiled!



After discovering there was only one support band that night we made our move to the front of the crowd once they'd finished. It was now that I slowly realised that the front row seemed to be mostly (there were actually only 6 or 7 of them) made up of Japanese girls wearing those Polysics towels that can only be acquired in Japan. Hiro had his usual iPod playlist going so a few of us were joining in with Take On Me and making the most horrific noise on the high notes. It has to be done...

Sean appeared with his usual spiel about not taking any photos. I continued my ass kissing by shouting "go Sean!" a few times. Then Polysics took to the stage and here's what they played.



They added My Sharona to the set following the death the previous day of Doug Fieger from The Knack. One lovely bit of banter from Hiro during the set was "Today we went to The White House to see President Obama but he was not home! So POLYSICS gave new album to first lady. She was so excited! She played Kayo's pom pom!". There was the usual balloon shooting into the crowd during Fire Bison (I got one this time) and during one song Hiro shoved his butt into the face of a girl on the front row, she kept turning away but he ended up grabbing her head and shoving it into his sweaty backside. Oh those reserved Japaneses! Again the crowd was not as crazy as I've been used to but at least I had just enough room to join Hiro in doing jumping jacks during Baby Bias. I had a tear in my eye during Black Out Fall Out and at the end there was a lot more cheering for Kayo than usual, one middle aged man gave her some flowers.

After Polysics had left the stage I realised that ALL of the Japanese girls were crying. I went around to each of them asking "daijoubu?" (are you ok?). I spoke to a few of them and discovered that some of them had been to as many as ten shows on the US tour. They'd come over from Japan to see Kayo's farewell tour and in Japan they don't get the chance to meet the band because they play in much bigger venues. After about ten minutes we got kicked out of the performance room and were told that if we waited upstairs the band would come up to sign stuff and say goodbye. I was a bit wary of this because I'd heard something similar at a UK gig and the band hadn't known so they just left. What else could we do though? So about 25 of us headed upstairs to wait for the band. I spoke to a few more fans and we all took some photos of each other. Other than myself are Brannon, Brian, Martin and two Japanese fans that I didn't get the names of.



One of the Japanese fans ran up to me saying that Polysics were downstairs so we went down to the front of the building to see them loading up the van. One of the venue staff told us we couldn't wait there and they would definitely be coming upstairs.... so back upstairs we went. We could see the band from the front windows so in a Japanese/American/English bonding session we all attempted to draw backwards messages on the windows for Polysics to see.



Eventually they did come upstairs and Sean announced they only had about fifteen minutes because they had an early start in the morning. Each band member got a fairly orderly queue and people were being pretty good about getting something signed, getting a photo and then moving along. There were only about 25 of us up there so it all went quite smoothly. I got my Akron set list signed by the whole band. Yano wrote something on there about the UK but I can't figure out what it is.



During the signing session somebody shouted my name to get my attention and one of the Japanese fans overheard them. She came up to me and said "maakun?" (which is a name I use on a Japanese language fan blog), she explained that her name was Haruchi and she knew me from my posts where I'd attempted to tell them I was travelling from England to the US to see Polysics. She told her friend who I was and she seemed to know me as well. Haruchi's English wasn't great so it ended up with her just holding my hand and repeating "maakun, maakun, maakun".

The band had come upstairs wearing some brightly coloured shiny bead necklaces, I only discovered after getting home that this was to do with Mardi Gras, we don't celebrate that in the UK. After Haruchi realised who I was she spoke to the band and as they were leaving each band member ended up giving me most of their beads. At the time I wasn't sure what was going on but I figured the best thing to do was just keep bowing and saying "arigatou".



Washington DC or DIE!!!!