Last Updated on 2026-07-10 by a-indie
Being Island Nations, and the Challenge of Touring
Maririn: Japan and Australia are both island nations. Do you feel that makes the music scene insular, like a closed off space?
Maisie: Yeah, a little bit maybe. Everyone kind of knows everybody, the scene itself is amazing, but it is compact. And it is hard to go outside of it. Touring is so expensive right now, the cost of travel, the cost of living, everything has gone up. But that is what we are trying to do at the moment, break out into new places. We really want to.
Akiyama: Do you feel closer to countries like the US or the UK, since you share the same language, English, or to somewhere like Indonesia, which is geographically closer? Which feels culturally closer to you?
Maisie: Personally, this is my first time in Asia, and it has honestly felt a bit like being on holiday (laughs). The UK is probably the furthest place from us geographically, but culturally it is probably the closest. America is close too, but it feels a little different. Australia is such a young country though, so it ends up mixing a lot of cultures together. We even drive on the left, like Japan does, so there are a few things we have in common.
Akiyama: That is what we share.
A Sake Brewery in Tokushima, and a Night at Scala in London
Maisie: The owners of the sake brewery, we actually met them when they came out to Australia, and they set up this collaboration where our band name and the tour name got engraved on a sake bottle. Toshi handled the whole booking for this tour though, so honestly that is about all I know (laughs). As for a venue that has really stuck with me, we played a showcase at Scala in London back in November last year, and that was the biggest headline show we have ever done, even counting Australia. I think it was around six hundred people. That was a really special night.
Akiyama: Scala is such a great venue. I went there once to see Kikagaku Moyo play.
Maisie: Really? That is so cool.
Shimonaka: The one that has stuck with us the most is a festival we played in India, maybe about two years ago now. It was in the middle of nowhere, almost right next to Bangladesh, and it took about twenty four hours just to get there. We only got seven hours of sleep across four days.
Akiyama: There is only one road leading to the festival site, and thousands of people are using that same road, so everyone just ends up making their own four or five lanes out of it. Then a politician’s car comes through and just forces its way in. Apparently the person hosting the festival is a politician, so it is just chaos.
Shimonaka: The stage setup still was not finished right up until the last minute, and staff were working up on the scaffolding without any safety ropes. Then somehow, during soundcheck, a rocket firework hit our guitarist Kamoto directly. He was not hurt though (laughs).
Maririn: (laughs) Maisie, do you have any experience that comes close to that?
Maisie: We have actually been invited to play a festival in India too. Got an email about it.
Shimonaka: Oh nice, what was it called?
Maisie: I think it was called the Cherry Blossom Festival. But there is no way we can top your story (laughs).
- is a music media platform run by BELONG, a Japanese music organization. We publish music articles with a focus on indie music.