I prefer my punk in a club. It's an aural thing: Big metal power chords sound really bitchin' in a huge place, but that fast, choppy stuff just gets lost. So I wasn't really psyched about seeing Green Day at the Saitama Super Arena, but my man Toshi promised it would be "better than Motorhead at the Budokan." Coming from anyone else that would be sacrilege, but I decided I had nothing to lose but my prejudices.

Prejudices caused at least a little bit by my kid brother, who plays in a Green Day cover band called Sniveling White Assholes. They really suck, but it's difficult to tell if they suck because Green Day's songs are all about the same depressing things and contain the same three chords and the same rhythms, or because they just suck.

Toshi lent me some CDs. I tried a few cuts but, frankly, Billy Joe Armstrong's nasally voice makes my skin crawl. It's like listening to my mom laugh at Jay Leno. Still, it was difficult not to be blown away by the crowd. Twenty thousand people bought tickets to the Green Day Festival on March 31, but apparently about a fourth of them were housewives from Omiya who thought it was a gardening convention. For security reasons, the floor was divided into five standing sections -- Heaven, Hell and the three stages of Limbo. The housewives were all in Limbo 2. Toshi and I were in Limbo 3, but we decided we'd try to sneak into Heaven, which was closest to the stage.