Happy Jul, people!

Hi! Merry Christmas!
Sorry for the delay, the last week in Japan was soooo fucking busy, and then I got on a plane and well... I guess I've just been in hyper relax mode since I got here. That' an oxy moron for you right there ;)
I know it's the holidays, but in my experience I never know when someone's gonna start to nag me, so I'm trying to relax as much as possible!

I've got a few things I want to write about, so I'm taking a break in my busy schedule of horror movie watching and willpower battles with the gingerbread.

First of all, the last week before Christmas I had my two last days of recording. The last one was the hardest. On both the other days we got two songs down with a good margin, but we saved the longest, most difficult and least practiced song for the last day. The title track of the album, "Goodnight, Cruel World". Very describing for my feelings throughout the day btw. We've only had one practice with this song and only one live, and it's like five minutes long and had THREE full sheets of lyrics. That's my fault though :P
Here is the whole team after we finished.

I do feel that we've made kind of an epic punk song though. It's a bit juvenile, but in spite of it's title the lyrics are definitely more punk and less emo than any of the other tracks on the CD. I'll try to make a lyric post sometime during the holiday, and then we'll just have to wait for the release in March to hear the song ^-^ I'm pretty excited about the whole album actually! We're so much better now than the last CD we made!

Naturally, some celebrations were in order.
This time yakitoriniku... don't tell me that's not a real type of food, have you been to this restaurant?

Since we had to sit at two different tables Tomoya entered competition mode and suddenly it was all about who could eat the most meat before our time was up... All so healthy ^^;

Kento ordered this grotesque shit. I've seen a lot of intestine looking like intestine in my life, but this one takes the cake.

Who could eat this??
Just thought I'd share, you know :D

Takaji, self acclaimed Party yarou (party bastard), hadn't really celebrated for a while.

Being a responsible contributor to society can take it's toll on your alcohol tolerance. Just a warning to you people out there who are thinking of taking the step and actually grow up soon :P

You're never too old for purikura though, are you?

Beautiful. There we go.

We also filmed a new SALTV that day. Finally!
And it's not just another SALTV, it's the one all in English that I promised the international twitter readers a loooong time ago^^; It'll probably be up sometime during the holidays, so please look for it! I'll ofcourse post it here!

The very last two days before going home to Norway for Christmas I went to the town office to take care of some long overdue address changing business, and then I had a Christmas date with my guy on the last day.

We started out with some Christmas shopping in Shibuya, bought each other presents, and then moved on to yakiniku....
It's Christmas, ok? You're allowed to stuff yourself like a pig, right? ;_; Right?

We ended up inviting Cat to have dinner with us too, so I got to spend a little time with my two favorite people in the world before getting on that plane the next day.

Bye, Japan. Bye, Pirate Puppies. See you again in a few weeks hopefully!

Hello, Norway. Hello, goat cheese.

Goodnight and merry Christmas, Cruel World.
I'm so jet lagged lol

It's that time of the yarr, mates!

Hey there, where were you yesterday? I was at the Dog Pirates Banquette vol.2!

Dog Pirates Banquette is an event that my band arranges. We dress up as pirates on stage, the last time we had Norwegian candy and alcohol, this time we didn't have the time to have anything sent to us so we made do with the free Tequila that is always offered at Headpower.
This was also the last live performance we will have in 2013.

Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of my pirate costume this time.
The guys wear the same outfit every time, but I really love dressing up, so I've made a new outfit for each time so far. The hat I've even made myself, out of a cowboy hat from the 100yen shop, because believe it or not it's not easy to find a pirate costume hat in Japan!

The first band out was 過剰装飾人形楽団 ( I think it's pronounced Kajousoushokuningyougakudan, everyone in the house were breaking their tongues trying to pronounce this XD)

They were a visual kei band that I didn't know from before, I'm not sure if they were friends with Tomoya or Takashi, but they were really nice people! They're music was also pretty good, though the wierd anime voice actor intros were a bit too nerdy for my tastes ^^ The vocalist had a really good voice though, and the guitarist was amazing!
They had this one guy in the front who was his own little otaku freak show, it was hilarious. He had dances to all their songs, like a visual kei fan girl, except he was just a very normal looking office worker in a suit and glasses. He also had a glow stick.
It made me laugh, but I actually think it's pretty amazing when people can come all alone and just be that into the music that they're just completely oblivious to their surroundings and don't give a fuck.

We had told our guests they could dress up as pirates too, someone only heard the part about dressing up and not as what...

I also have no idea why he's sitting at our merch table XD

 For the one kid who did come as a pirate, he got some pirate make-up done by Cat (https://twitter.com/SALTYDOG_staff), who also did the make-up for the boys in the band that day. I just realized I didn't get a picture of her pirate outfit either :(

This is Make Money For the Fixtures, a band basically made up of employees at Headpower.

Lol, DJ Saburo looks like the Grim Reaper in the background XD
They've changed their vocalist. Wierd coincidence that both the former and present bartender at Headpower have extremely good, deep voices. I was also super impressed since I didn't even know that Ojou was a singer!

Here's Liquidz Edge, the ikemen band XD

Also very very good, and very nice guys!

Ever wondered what's going on backstage at a live? Here's a taste of what you could be missing...

The drummer of the next band, Crisis Slave.

First time I heard them too, and I really liked them! Also, I'm so in love with the vocalists t-shirt.
I couldn't watch their whole show though, because we were next!

At first we had kind of a hard time, because one of Tomoyas friends who had come was way way too drunk to be there, but I think we more or less handled it. And luckily, one of the guys who came to see us handled him after a little while and took him outside ^^
Other than that it was so much fun though my pirate costume was so fucking hot I felt like I was singing on the sun and sweating like a pork roast.
I forgot my hat when I first came on stage, so Cat had to go grab it backstage for me, it was a very busy day for her too, thank you for the hard work!
 

For the encore we changed into 塩犬(Shio-inu, literally means salt dog in Japanese), supposedly a cover band of SALTY DOG, where Tomoya and Kento switched roles, so Tomoya played guitar and Kento played bass. We played two songs off the old album, Petra and Melt Down. We haven't played Petra in a long long time and it was so much fun for me since I know it so well and also since it's a lot less challenging to sing than out newer songs (though ofcourse our new songs are a lot better, I have to say^-^). It was not easy for Kento and Tomoya though XD

We had a well deserved after party with the people who could stay behind. I haven't really been drinking-drinking for almost a month now, so I was very careful, only having Malibu since it has a lot less alcohol in it than normal Rum, which is my usual favorite. Oh, and I smoothly avoided the free Tequila, that stuff is satanic.

We kind of look like drunk cartoon characters in the pictures, being all green in the faces. Or zombies XD

My friend Alex and my new friend Junya. He had a Chunk! No Captain Chunk! sweater on so we kept calling him Captain Drunk, by some miracle I actually remember his real name.

Some people had been enjoying the free Tequila from quite early on. It can be a little dangerous to make friends with the staff at Headpower XD

I was sooooo sleepy when going home in the morning. Getting too old to party all night^^;
Luckily today was Saturday, so I could just chill aaalll day, sleeping, waking up, sleeping, listening to Norwegian radio and finally watching the Walking Dead mid-season finale. JHC, what the hell are they gonna do for the actual season finale??!O__O
I cried, I screamed a little without even realizing until afterwards XD I almost had to pause it to catch my breath, like I did a lot in the first season. I guess that's gripping television ^-^ Is it almost February yet? I can't waiiiiit!!

Since I also have the first day of recording for the album tomorrow, I'm trying to be nice to my body and eating stuff that's good for me. Drinking a looot of water too!

I'm eating way too much though, alcohol gives me munchies, but it is a Saturday, right?^-^

Here are some bonus shots, it you can call it that XD

Trying on my pirate costume the day before. With my beautiful Norwegian wool tights!
And using fake lashes as a fake mustache...

Cat bought these lashes for the day and she let me have a pair. I'm not used to wearing fake lashes (I think it can look real good, I'm just way way too lazy for that stuff) so I kind of felt like my eyelids were half closed all the time XD

Gonna have a cuppa hot ginger water now and some supper. I'm wondering if I should pack a lunch box for the studio tomorrow...:P

Byesies!