I wake up at first light, just as the coach is emerging from a cloud into the wooded valleys and lofty peaks of Niigata prefecture. The curry from the generic Japanese service area where we stopped last night is beginning to wear off, I want to go back to sleep but the tourist in me won't allow it. Another half hour or so of contemplating the majesty of the scenery and I spy tents in the distance.

Festival Rule 1: Don't leave your wallet on the coach.

I break this rule instantly but the frantic Japanese coach lady catches up with me in time and I save the last shred of my dignity with a nifty catch. Somewhere in the distance the Welsh flag hangs limply beneath the ominous clouds. A strange feeling.

Festival Rule 2: Don't pitch your tent at a 30 degree angle to the horizon.

This rule quickly proves impossible to comply with since the campsite is helpfully situated on what for 6 months of the year is a ski slope. Tent satisfactorily erected, sleep beckons.

Festival Rule 3: Don't leave your shoes outside when you sleep.

Remembered just in time as the first drops of rain begin falling. The rain will not stop for at least another eighteen hours. I get a couple of hours in before water falling through my tent and onto my face makes further sleep impossible.

In the festival grounds themselves I don't think I've ever seen so many British flags in all my life. There's a stall selling fish and chips and with the steady downpour showing no signs of waning the sense of unreality is enough to make me suspect that I've dreamed the last two years of my life and I have in fact never left home. The fish and chips is undercooked making me sick immediately and the loos have toilet paper in them. I'm definitely still in Japan.
My stomach is empty and my spirits damp, the only cure is rock and roll music.

Thee Michelle Gun Elephant (Green Stage) are rock and roll. Coming on stage to the theme from The Godfather after a short documentary tribute to the late Joe Strummer they know their job. Take in the trees, the streams, the peace, the quiet, take aim, fire. Comparisons with The Hives seem unfair since they pre-date the Swedish upstarts by a good couple of years but the similarities are unavoidable. Black shirt, white tie, old MC5 riffs, evangelical enthusiasm, no tunes, totally awesome.

"Rock and Roll!" says the singer from Minuteman (Red Marquee) roughly translating as "Here's some more sub Shed Seven indie sludge. Sorry." The audience tolerates it because they've heard something special is just around the corner.

Electric Six (Red Marquee) are chancers and they know it. Fresh from a personnel turnover that would have made Fleetwood Mac blush but still firing on all cylinders after their UK top 10 hits "Danger! High Voltage!" and "Gay Bar" they rip the place apart. Singer Dick Valentine demonstrates "Improper Dancing" (it seems to involve jerking your thumbs from side to side and occasionally waving at the audience) and threatens to kill us if we don't watch The D4, before ripping off his shirt to reveal a t-shirt reading "Ugly and Poor". Again, tunes are in short supply but fortunately there's a surplus of intense danceability.

Ignoring the lure of The D4 I eat pizza which doesn't make me sick and walk as slowly as possible towards the sound of Sugar Ray (Green Stage) who seem to be covering "Blitzkrieg Bop" by The Ramones. Teeth on edge, I stick it out. A girl in a blue raincoat is dancing badly in front of me with an pained expression on her face. I decide to take her as the cultural barometer of young Japan just as singer Mark Mcgrath struts into the grasping arms of the crowd and immediately starts crying for help. Like a girl. Safely escaping he crosses himself and puts his hands together in prayer.

Better suited to the weather are romantic realists The Libertines (Green Stage) and there's a lot of love in the air as the depleted but dedicated audience sings along with singer/guitarist Carl Barat (whose London flat, estranged co-vocalist Pete Doherty is currently getting arrested for breaking into). He seems uncomfortable performing up front by himself but he's still got the passion, the flair and, importantly, the songs to carry him through. The girl in the blue raincoat's cry of "Caaaaaaaaaarrrrrllllll!!!!!!" as he strips off his dashing red guard's uniform to perform the rest of the set topless says a lot about the band's charm.

As darkness approaches the temperature drops and the rain begins to fall with renewed vigour. Still, within half an hour the place is full and within three seconds of The Music's (Green Stage) opener "The Dance" it's clear that they've become one of the best live bands in the world. Robert Harvey is a better singer than Robert Plant and a better dancer than Michael Jackson (?!?) and the band make the kind of stadium-shagging noise that would sound like U2 if it wasn't so immediate, danceable and downright wired. The raincoat girl goes crazy.

I can take the rain no longer and rumour has it that something dark is happening across the river. Death In Vegas (Red Marquee) are about as accessible as instrumental psychedelic krautrock dub gets (i.e. quite) but, trapped in the tent by the downpour outside, the relentless repetition and fearsome noise of the guitar army stage front works a kind of insidious voodoo magic on the audience and by the time "Hands Around My Throat" reaches its climax we can almost see the angry pitchfork wielding villagers snaking along the mountain path towards us chanting "Turn it down you young rascals!"

Giving myself an even thirty minutes before the night takes me I head back early, feeling utterly ashamed of myself for being such a wimp, only to find a pool of water the size of Loch Ness in the corner of my tent. Yes! -Ian Martin, Sep.26.03