Clapton, culture, and craziness

I had an interesting weekend. On Saturday, I joined my good buddy Nori at Saitama Super Arena for an Eric Clapton concert. A company affiliated with Nori's work was the main sponsor of the show, and as a result he was comped a pair of tickets. Lucky for me, he hooked me up with a ticket. We got to the show a little early so we could catch up and have some afternoon beers. Then to kill some time before the show, we took in the John Lennon Museum, conveniently located in the same arena. The museum was quite interesting, and there was many cool Lennon-related items there including; guitars, clothes, artwork, and letters. Although I couldn't take any pictures inside, here is a picture of Nori with the famous couple.
After that, it was time for the concert. The fan base at this concert was quite a bit different from what I saw at the Loud Park Metal Festival in October, with most people being in their 40s and 50s. I was quite jacked for this show though, as Clapton is one of the all time greats and I had never had the chance to see him. Our seats were decent, just off the floor to the right side of the stage. Clapton was amazing, and he was complimented by a stellar backing band. He ran through most of the hits, including Layla and Crossroads. After the show we went to Omiya and caught up with some drinks and dinner.
The next day, I met Natsumi and her sister Yuko at Tokyo Big Sight. We met there so we could attend the Tokyo Design Festa. This is a yearly meeting of all sorts of artists from Japan and other countries around the world. The variety of exhibits and paintings on display at the event were quite amazing, but some were also a bit confusing. It was interesting to walk down an isle and see a goth booth, and anime booth, a performance art booth, and the a musician's booth all packed in together. Some of the stuff was a bit amateurish looking, but some of the people who were making the goth dolls really paid attention to detail. Example:
One of the funniest/freakiest things that I saw there today was some of the performance art pieces. In one (which I will put up on Youtube ASAP), tow masked guys were addressing the crowd. They looked like guys from WWE wrestling, wearing overalls and those cheesy masks. All of a sudden, the final scene from Terminator 1 (where Arnold gets shot up and lowered into the molten steel...remember?). Anyway, when the scene came on, the two guys proceeded to enact the scene as well by screaming like idiots for about 2 mintues. And I mean SCREAMING. It was so ridiculous, but sooooooo funny. I"ll put up the link to the video soon. Anyway, after that we headed to Shimbashi and walked around in Ginza. There was even a Subway restaurant! I hadn't eaten Subway in about 3 years...natsukashii! School tomorrow though :(

l8tr!