Another night of my tent shaking alarmingly in the wind while water drips ceaselessly onto my face and I awake once more to unbearable heat and glorious sunshine. This, apparently, is the way they do things up here in the mountains. There are about 150 toilets at Fuji Rock, catering for about 40,000 people, which works out as about 267 people queuing for each toilet first thing in the morning. I go piss in the bushes.

The Mooney Suzuki (White Stage) are about as un-experimental and un-arty as it's possible to be for any band whose name is a combination of two different vocalists from arty 1970s German experimentalists Can. They have a song called "Electric Sweat", they have a drummer who does bizarre body-flops in the middle of songs, guitarists up on top of speaker stacks trying to get feedback out of the PA, giant sideburns, and they say, "this is a song written by The Mooney Suzuki, but you may not recognise it as one of our songs" before launching into a riff that has a confused audience asking each other, "What? I thought Pete Townshend wrote 'Won't Get Fooled Again'!" before you realise they're actually playing "School Of Rock".

We're not really fucked about yawnsome Swedish nancy boys Eskobar (Red Marquee) but we are very hungry so we put up with their whining from a distance as we prepare ourselves, desperately trying to keep our expectations down, for what we all secretly suspect will be the event of the festival.

Franz Ferdinand (Green Stage) do not disappoint by any stretch of the imagination. They're suave, handsome, well dressed, tight. The audience love them from the moment the first chords of "Cheating On You" ring out from Alex and Nick's twin guitars. There's a lovely moment of Fiery Furnaces inter-band drummer sharing on "Shopping For Blood" but the real key moment comes not then, nor even as Alex Kapranos croons in his best Jarvis Cocker voice, "You might know this song" before sending the whole field spastic with joy with an awesome "Take Me Out". The real key moment comes just after "Take Me Out" finishes. Turn round. Watch the audience. What are they doing? They're fucking sticking around, that's what. They're riveted to the spot, desperate to hear what happens next. From that moment onwards, Franz Ferdinand have the audience in the palms of their hands, gently teasing them to ecstasy with a feisty closing "Darts Of Pleasure".

Back on planet Earth, Mo'some Tonebender (Red Marquee) balance moments of extremely impressive art-noise with moments of trudging guitar-laden bloke-sludge. They get the award for Best Hotpants On A Fat Guitarist and further bonus points for their unwavering commitment to tearing a new arsehole for those for whom the one is insufficient.

A brief moral disagreement results in two thirds of the Clear And Refreshing team wandering off to catch the open-wound car crash spectacle that is Courtney Love, leaving stubborn old me to contemplate the question, "Just how rubbish is Ben Kweller?" A while later and everyone's back together for the frequently baffling, but always entertaining Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Red Marquee). Karen O is wearing something ridiculous and makes sure everyone gets a great flash of her knickers as she bounds joyfully around the stage, cackling with witchy laughter and moaning incomprehensible asides. Ms. O is now at the stage where she has almost totally eclipsed the rest of the band, with Nick Zinner hiding in the shadows and Brian Chase all but invisible behind his drum kit. There's some music in there somewhere but by now it hardly seems to matter.

Bumbling onstage without the faintest clue about what's going on are the first band I ever saw live, The Charlatans (Red Marquee). They seem to be making up their set list as they go along, with Tim Burgess confusedly filling in the between-song gaps with rambling apologies, painfully aware that no-one in the audience can understand him, but battling on like the true survivors he and his band undoubtedly are. And who cares anyway when they launch straight into "Weirdo" and follow it immediately with "The Only One I Know". A giant Union Jack emblazoned with the word "Manchester" is raised when they play "North Country Boy" and even the new stuff sounds okay. They play greatest hits for an hour but they could have doubled that and still had classics to spare. There is nothing off "Us And Us Only", no "Just When You're Thinkin' Things Over", no "Jesus' Hairdo", but there is a titanic "One To Another", a fierce, grinding "Toothache", the crowd are jumping for the heavens in "How High" and a wave of goosepimples run through the audience the opening keyboard lines of traditional closing number "Sproston Green" sweep across the packed tent.

A break follows as the Red Marquee switches over to its night time alter-ego and we concentrate on eating, drinking and going to the toilet. One of Clear And Refreshing spots that Bryan twat off the telly and we debate whether to dash over and administer a gang beating to him. Surely no jury in the world would convict us? In the end, however, peace and love win out and we settle for making sarcastic remarks from a distance until the arrival of The Streets (Tribal Circus). Mike Skinner is all too aware that the subtlety and sly wit of his narratives are going to be all but lost on this audience so he has clearly done his research and, using the full extent of his Japanese ability, works the audience the way a potter moulds clay or the way a cake maker moulds cakes or the way a pencil sharpener sharpens pencils. Or something. An example:

Mike: Ichi Ni San...
Audience: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

The audience haven't quite got the hang of bouncing yet. This is clearly a cultural nuance in which they will need to be educated and "Fit But You Know It" provides the ideal opportunity. The songs off "Original Pirate Material" are perhaps the most familiar to everyone but recent mega-hit "Dry Your Eyes" most successfully takes the leap beyond language and into the weepy realm of universal understanding.

Crap DJ Santos (Tribal Circus) makes everyone's ears bleed before Buffalo Daughter (Tribal Circus) come on to confuse the fuck out of everyone with their unique brand of psychedelic techno spacerock. They blend the strangely accessible with the painfully self-indulgent and a large portion of "303" is drowned out by the anguished cries of a clearly suffering young lady to my right as she begs her fashionably goateed boyfriend to take her away from this horrible sound. We sit it out and force ourselves to enjoy the bleeping and noodling until suGar finally picks up her guitar, the beats kick in again and we can practice the kick-dancing that we learned at Supercar yesterday. -Ian Martin, Aug.12.04.