How are you? How was our spring tour? I thought the tour had a nostalgic feel and showed that we have an interesting future ahead of us as a band.

Now we’ve come to Europe. We’ve played a few shows and are currently in Berlin. The first few days were tough; I was in hamburger hell… The first time we played in Europe was here in Berlin 10 years ago. I came here dubious at first that anyone overseas would actually want to see us play. But then, hearing three thousand people singing together in Japanese, I was surprised and moved. We heard that people came from all over the world for that show because it was the first time we were playing outside of Asia. When I thought about the fact that our music had unknowingly spread to so many people around the world without us even attempting to make fans overseas I felt the flow of time, and it made me happy. Playing at Rock am Ring and Rock im Park in front of tens of thousands of people who didn’t know us was hell…

When I eat breakfast, drowsiness… I’m not jet lagged and don’t get sleepy at strange times because this time I’m being consistent with my bed time. But I still always get sleepy after eating…

I think in the time between returning to Europe and starting our fall tour I’m going to write some songs. I’ll rest for a little while but I always quickly tire of it so I’ll probably be in the studio everyday doing something.

It’s not certain yet, but in the summer I plan to release a special book of my reading the strings segments from the magazine ongaku to hito. I’ve only written boring stuff, but I have written some new stuff for it too. So please read it, even if you’ve already read all the published segments.

Well, see you at the fall tour!