Dawn on the day after the Rainbow Festival at Aso Mountain ended. It had rained hard all night.

Miraculously, Sachiho and I managed the day before to find two saints with automobiles willing to convey us, Yoko Nema, Hiromi Kondo (the harmonium player/vocalist and the percussionist/vocalist of Amana) and all of our instruments and belongings, all the way to our next gig, at a mountain temple in Issahaya in the prefecture of Nagasaki, four hours drive from Aso Mountain, including a ferry ride from Kumamoto. After carrying my gear through the mud to the car in my rice planting boots (with some powerful help from Sachiho’s son Laki and some others), I thank Tako and Rokuro Matsui profoundly and wish them a fond farewell.

Mikiko and Kanako, who had done so much to make sure I was comfortable throughout the festival, come to say goodbye. What wonderful friends. I am very grateful to them both.

We drive down to Kumamoto and board a ferry for Nagasaki…

…and leave stormy Kumamoto behind.

Mizuho, a musician who traveled to the festival with Chiboo (aka Chikao Fujimoto), the generous hospital administrator who translated my song introductions for my set at the festival, bought a stack of my merch, and then elected to help drive us to Issahaya, blows his pianica on the deck of the ferry.

Issahaya’s temple, in the forest at the headwaters of the Tomigawa river, is hosting a music festival featuring me, Amana and Sayako’s group, organized by Miso Tachibana, the monk who cares for the temple.

The photo of me in the poster appears to have been taken last October at my show and booksigning at Kurkku in Tokyo. I’m wearing the same shawl for today’s performance.

Some of the audience is seated in the old temple…

…and some in a tipi, undoubtedly handmade by Tako and Rokuro Matsui.

Beside the big temple is a smaller temple…

And a row of bibbed funerary statues.

I am thrilled to see avant-garde singer Azumi of Rabirabi and her husband again. They had already performed before we arrived.

Azumi’s drummer Nana, with her girlfriend. We all danced together to Sayako’s band.

I played a set by myself.

Then Amana played…

…and then I came back to play some songs with them.

I was happy to see Sayako and her band perform again.

Sayako’s daughter Ariwa read aloud the famous Amazonian environmental fable of the hummingbird who carried water to put out the forest fire one drop at a time because that was all he could do.

After the show, Sayako and I swapped CDs. Sayako told me that in the days when she and Sachiho worked together in Zelda, “Sachiho was like elder sister. Much respect!” Sayako was still in junior high school when she began singing professionally in what became Japan’s first and most famous girl band. Sachiho was no more than 21. They toured Europe, made lots of records, wore Doc Marten boots, and created a trend in Japan. Now they are priestesses, and mothers of young musicians.

The night of my performance, it rained, but not during my set. The set after mine was Amana’s, when it not only poured; thunder and lightning shook the sky. I couldn’t even take photos. None of this deterred the audience at the Rainbow Festival. No rain, no rainbows. Just lots of umbrellas, and barefoot dancing in the mud. I wore a pair of Japanese rubber rice planting boots I’d bought the day before in Aso town. Always well prepared, the Matsuis erected a tent under the lodge poles of the stage.

In the morning, I cleaned and warmed myself at an elegant hot springs bath house (above) in Aso town, in the company of Satomi, Toshi and Sola, who I met early on in the festival. While we soaked in the warm water, I sang “Lullaby” from Music From Living on the Earth for baby Sola, and I was dubbed Alicia Obasan (Auntie Alicia). Toshi’s four wheel drive got us through the mud lake that had formed in the Rainbow Festival parking lot. Not everyone was so fortunate.

A band with didjeridoo, hand and trap drums, dancers, vocalist and bassist performed in the drizzly afternoon.

The act before my band was a retro rock band with a singer in an Elvis suit. Droves of small children climbed onto the stage, and danced and clowned.

I wore a wonderful dress made for me in 1971 by Charlotte Lyons, a fellow artist living at Wheeler Ranch in the late ‘60’s and early 70’s. She has gone on to become a reknowned and successful maker of high end patchwork quilts, often with storybook characters and scenes on them. She lives in the mountains north of Santa Cruz, California. It’s a special ceremonial dress for me, and I felt that playing with a band for 1000 people at the Rainbow Festival in Kyushu certainly qualified as a special ceremony. Keeping it mud-free that night required extreme care, but I succeeded. I’m playing my Pro Series Traveler Guitar in this photo.

Futaro played lovely, delicate lead guitar parts that fit perfectly with my intricate folk fingerpicking, and Daisuke’s bass guitar completed the sound with style and grace. Rokuro Matsui, the festival organizer, played trap drums and percussion!

Our audience was enthralled and cheered us wildly between each song.

The last day of the festival I didn’t get a chance to get to the stage and take photos of the other acts. I hardly had a minute to get dressed, wash, eat or go to the outhouse! People were literally lined up outside my cabin all day, and I sold and signed books and CDs from the moment I woke up until after dark, when I ran out of the Japanese editions of both books and all of the Japanese edition of my first CD. I didn’t have many left of the other two CDs, either! Domo arigato gozaimashta (thank you very much), everybody.

While signing over and over, I memorized how to write my name in Katakana, which is one of the three Japanese writing systems, the one used to write foreign words, because the characters are phonetic. The “P” is the sound “ah,” the upside-down check mark is a “B”, the upside down “Y” sounds like an alphabetical “y,” the box is “Lau,” and the LIL is, well, the other half of my last name, with no R sound. My customers were amused and pleased at my efforts to learn their language.

Clear blue skies blessed the third day of the Rainbow Festival at Aso Mountain. Here’s a better view of Tako Matsui’s fabulous handpainted giant carp windsocks.

Coming back from my morning walk, I could see how much the camp had grown. It covered almost the entire meadow.

I put on my festival t-shirt and a gauzy skirt handmade by my friend Mayumi Hirai, and went out in the sunshine to meet new friends.

Mikiko lettered signs for my window, so people would know when my performance would be, and what I had for sale in the cabin. In Japan, the adopted English words used to mean “performance” or “show” are “live” and “stage,” as in “When is your live?”

Most of the European-descent people I met at the festival were from Australia and New Zealand, including Andy and Jen, who come to the Japan for the music festivals each summer. I coveted Andy’s t-shirt that says “I’m a legend in Japan.” He told me I could find them online at American Eagle. I couldn’t.

Drum circles now formed both day and night, all over camp.

Rows of gift and clothing shops, cafes, bakeries, tea shops, and restaurants of many ethnicities lined the meadow.

The bamboo geodesic dome housed a shop selling treats made from hemp seed. The proprietor and her child posed for me in front.

Yu was dancing in a loin cloth printed with cannabis leaves, and his friend wore the dread locks of the Jamaican ganja culture, but I did not smell a whiff of pot anywhere at the festival. Japan has very strict laws about drugs, and no Japanese freaks want to arouse the interest of the police. And, for their part, the police politely stayed away from the Rainbow Festival, which was not the case at Burning Man or the Rainbow Gathering in the USA recently.

Indigo tie-dying and printing has an ancient history in Japan. Modern crafters like this one apply it to t-shirts as well as the traditional banners and kimono.

My hostess for the concert and workshop I am planning to do in June in Morioka, a beautiful forested community in the north of Honshu island, makes hemp rope sandals, and she silk screens t-shirts.

At mid-day, people began to gather around the main stage for the day’s performances.

Futaro (in the orange pants and black hat), a lead guitarist, singer and songwriter who lives near the site of the festival, and who will play in my band the next day, fronted a band including Daisuke, the bass player for my band, and Auta, the drum prodigy son of festival organizers Roku and Tako Matsui. Another child, younger than Auta, played hand percussion with them, and well, I might add. They put on a great show and the audience danced like crazy. Futaro cracked jokes in between songs that made them roar with laughter, and made me want to learn his language.

The audience, with the tent village and Aso Mountain behind them.

I had Thai food for lunch again, this time from another booth. Both had delicious curries, not at all similar.

Sayako, former lead singer of Zelda, the all-girl punk band that Sachiho lead for 17 years, has her own band now, and a forest spirit look, vibe and message. She wears a headdress in the ancient style of the Haida tribe from Hokkaido. She dances, drums on a djembe, plays a whistle, and conjures respect for the earth as she sings.

The stage, lit up at light.

The Minami Masato band, with a cast of thousands.

This way to the Rainbow Festival at Aso Mountain!

On the second day of the festival I met the silkscreener who had licensed the cover of Living on the Earth to print on the festival t-shirts, and he offered me my choice as a gift.

The hemp-organic cotton camouflage tank top caught my eye.

On the back, the moon and the lovers from the back cover of Living on the Earth, plus a tipi and a puffing volcano drawn by someone else, nicely summing up the scene here.

Roku and Tako, the festival organizers, who also manufacture tipis, had just put up one of their largest tipis in back of the stage as a combination dressing room and shrine.

They created a shrine inside the tipi, in the most ancient Japanese style, according to Sachiho.

The big tipi made a gorgeous backdrop to the stage.

On either side of the stage Roku and Tako added their huge handmade and handpainted carp windsocks floating from bamboo poles.

And, I learned that, in addition to making superior tipi poles, bamboo makes a fine geodesic dome.

I was gifted a delicious meal at the Thai curry stand by the chef.

Back to the hot springs for a bath, this time with Kanako, the koto player. In this very natural bathhouse, there are no showers; you pour warm water from the springs over yourself from a bamboo bucket.

Kanako (on the right) doing a card reading with Doreen Virtue’s Goddess Cards for the owner of the on-sen (hot springs bath house), who is in the middle of having her hair coiffed.

Back at the festival, a troupe of dancers performed a ritualistic modern dance.

The children were fascinated.

After sunset, my favorite group of the festival played: Rabirabi x Piko, with electronic avant garde improvisational vocals and synthesizer by Azumi, and percussion by her husband and by her friend, Nana. The percussion got the crowd dancing, and Azumi’s wild vocals (some electronically processed and some not), her skillful synthesizer playing, and her joyous dancing took them to an ecstatic frenzy. I’d never seen a crowd react this way to electronic improvisation before. I wish I had a better photo. Sorry!

After the stage show, the nightly drum circle began, this time with fire dancers!

A Japanese carp windsock flies from a tipi on the opening day of the Rainbow Festival at Aso Mountain.

The festival information booth is manned by the children of the organizers and performers. When Sachiho, Kanako and I returned from Kumamoto, we offered them rice crackers, which they happily ate.

When you pay your admission to the festival, you get a necklace made of cotton cord and your choice of nine stone pendants, all shaped as a curved teardrop, like half of a Taoist yin-yang symbol. Each stone is noted with its healing qualities. I dowsed with a pendulum and chose the blue sodalite stone, for clearing the mind and communicating.  Good idea if you are in a country where you are illiterate.

Daisuke, now the honcho of the information booth, made a special necklace for Sachiho, weaving together several colored strands of cotton and using three stones.

The festival programs and t-shirts all bear the art from the cover of Living on the Earth.

I returned to my cabin, and was met there by my first customer for books and CDs. Her name is Sakura (cherry blossom) and she played me some songs on her ukulele.

I went out to see the newly erected food, clothing and gift booths that the festival attendees had constructed. At Garammasala, an import and beer stand, I bought myself a longsleeved cotton t-shirt from India.

Rokuro Matsui, the organizer of the festival, chose a stage design reflecting his love of tipis. Here he is about to open the festival with a solo vocal/guitar performance…

…appropriately attired in a rainbow sweater over a tie-dyed t-shirt.

At this festival, children are allowed on stage during the performances, and these little ones were so pleased to join Rokuro.

On the first day, the audience is sparce, but, since the festival occurs during Japan’s Golden Week, when just about everyone goes on vacation, soon there will be up to one thousand people watching the shows.

I met Satomi, Toshi and their baby Sola. Toshi goes yearly to Arizona to attend Native American dance events.

I bought vegetables on my way back to the festival, and, since tonight was the last night the pre-festival community kitchen still stood, and I took the opportunity to prepare a huge California style salad as a gift to the people at the festival.

Peace activist author Takashi Masaki (known to his friends as Maisa) sang with two friends at the festival. The latest of his many books is called Flying Buddha. He recently organized a very long peace march called Walk Nine, which is to protest the proposed end of Article Nine, the part of the Japanese constitution imposed by the USA after World War II declaring Japan shall not have a military, ushering in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Maisa’s group is also speaking out against Japan’s nuclear power plants, which plan to begin releasing radiation into the air starting next November.

Next we heard an Okinawan group presenting traditional music.

After that, a very avant garde jazz singer, accompanied only by bass guitar and bongos, performed for us.

I was happy to meet so many new friends.

On Monday, April 30th, I again began my day with a dawn walk up the road from camp.

Clouds were gathering around Aso Mountain for a big rain, but it politely waited until after my walk.

When I came back to camp, I presented Mikiko with two gifts, a silk scarf made from a vintage sari (bought at the Adams Avenue Festival) and a linen purse made by Aya Noguchi.

Then Sachiho and I, with a new friend, a beautiful young koto player named Kanako, driving, left for Kumamoto town to do a workshop and concert in the yoga studio above Shoko Akashi’s elegant natural fiber clothing and metaphysical gift store, Loveland. Here Shoko warmly welcomes us to her store. Shoko owns three stores in Kumamoto; the other two being Earth Collector and Fair Trade Student Cafe Hachidori.

The beautiful exterior of the store, with solar panels on the roof and a totem pole in front.

First Sachiho lead a meditation class.

After a break for tea and snacks, Sachiho did a solo performance, playing her lyre and singing sacred songs.

After Sachiho’s concert, I played some of my songs, and, at the end of my set, we played and sang some songs together.

After our show, we drove to a hotel that housed a hot springs spa to bathe and relax. Before our baths, we had dinner with three members of our audience – a Zen monk and his mother and sister.

As jet lag would have it, I was wide awake at 4 AM, so I got dressed and went out for a walk. No one else was stirring in camp.

I walked up the road to where I could get a better look at the summit of Aso Mountain. Although it appears to be a volcano, it’s actually part of the wall of an enormous ancient volcanic caldera that includes the mountains on the other side of the valley where Aso town lies.

The mountains that form the other side of the caldera, with Aso City below.

View of camp as I headed back down the hill.

The driveway into the festival.

I shivered in my bed my first night in an unheated room high on a mountain
with no electricity and no running water, and I remembered the old way to heat a bed with stones warmed in a fireplace. So I borrowed some bricks, bought some small towels, and heated the bricks by the campfire the following night, wrapped them in the towels and had a warm bed for the rest of the festival.

The Matsuis, ever the gracious hosts, added their beautiful yutampo, and old-Japanese-style hot water bottle, wrapped in a fabric from India, to my bed warming equipment, to place under the back of my knees. Elevating the knees makes the neck flat, eliminating the need for a pillow.

Mikiko Sato, who will be hosting a concert and workshop in June for me and Sachiho at her place in Sendai, Tohoku prefecture, also lent me her yutampo, which is made of metal, like a canteen, and has a quilted cover. The two hot water bottles also provided me with a supply of warm water with which to wash myself in the morning.

Mikiko (on the left) working in the pre-festival camp kitchen. She teaches classes for parents and children together doing Steiner pre-school activities.

The way I got clean most days of the festival was catch a ride into Aso town with friends and bathe before soaking at a hot springs bath house. On this day, Sachiho and I squeezed into a van with Yu and Saori and four other friends for a whole day of fun that included soaking at an on-sen (hot springs bath house) dedicated to Benzaiten (the Japanese goddess of music and wealth who parallels the Hindu goddess Saraswati), followed by a delicous soup at a noodle house. We would also do a ceremony to Benzaiten at a shrine in her honor at a Shinto temple on the same road as the festival grounds, about a mile down the hill. Eight of us crowded into a van for this outing, and we made music while we traveled.

View of the mountains from Aso town.

Cherry blossoms (sakura) in Aso town.

Sign at the entrance to the hot springs bath house.

The bath house from the street.

The shrine to Benzaiten on the path from the office to the baths. Everyone took a moment to offer a little prayer.

Painting of Benzaiten on the entrance to the women’s section of the hot springs.

Painting of Ebisu, the god of fishing and merchants, on the entrance to the men’s section of the hot springs.

Sachiho soaking in the hot springs.

On our way home, we stopped to offer prayers to the goddess of music for our upcoming performances at the festival. We pass under the torii at the entrance of the Benzaiten shrine on Aso Mountain.

Stairs to the Benzaiten shrine.

The Benzaiten altar.

The famous pair of albino snakes who live at the Benzaiten altar. Yes, those are real snakes, and they are alive.

Sachiho leads prayers at the Benzaiten shrine.

Shrine to the seven fortune gods (of which Benzaiten is one) at the Benzaiten shrine.

When I arrived at Kumamoto Airport in southern Kyushu Island, from Haneda Airport in Tokyo, I knew I would wait for Sachiho and her sons to arrive from Okinawa, but I didn’t know anyone would be waiting for me. When I came out of the baggage claim, there was a long-haired young man in a purple shirt, and I thought, “That must be one of my people.” In fact, it was the bass player in my band for the festival. His name is Daisuke, and he is 22 years old. Beside him stood Auta, the 12-year-old drummer who amazed me at Happy Flower Beach Party Music Festival last October. That made sense. Auta’s father, Rokuro Matsui, is the organizer of the Rainbow Festival.

An hour or so later, Sachiho Kojima, leader for 10 years of the all-woman trance trio, Amana, former punk rock bass player and leader for 17 years of the famous girl band, Zelda, widow of New Wave rock superstar, Donto, spiritual teacher, and mother of Donto’s two young musician sons, Nara (named for the ancient capital of Japan, and pronounced “Nala”) age 12, and Laki (pronounced “Lucky”), soon to be 17-year-old rock lead guitarist/singer/songwriter. Born in New York City while Donto was recording there, he was personally named Lakita by his godfather, his dad’s guru, Bo Diddley.

Daisuke drove us from Kumamoto city to the town of Aso, and up to the mountain meadow where the festival area was under construction. Rokuro Matsui and his wife, Tako, have a business making tipis, and quite a few housed their guests at the festival. Today, four days before the beginning of the festival, they erect the first few.

This gorgeous tipi is where Sachiho and her sons lived during the festival.

I lodged in a portable cabin which doubled as the musical instrument storage for Amana’s instruments and as my shop for selling books, CDs and t-shirts. Those are bamboo tipi poles leaning on the roof. Talk about East meets West.

The first people to turn up at my cabin were improvisational multi-instrumentalist Yu and and his lady, Saori, my friends from Happy Flower Beach Party Music Festival last October in Okinawa, and who have arranged for my concert June 3 at Hobbit Theatre in Tokyo.

They gave me a stack of the flier they’d prepared to publicize the concert, which I offered in my store, along with fliers for Aya Noguchi’s beautiful Living on the Earth clothing line.

A mandala sunset over Rainbow City…

And a gibbous moon over Aso Mountain.