“After just arriving home from ARABAKI Rock Festival last week, and just finishing off JAPAN JAM this week, we had our IKI Tour final. We’ve been performing a lot this year, and we’ll be performing but, before we do anything else we have these concerts, this mountain to conquer for this first half of the year. It’s been two years since our last ARABAKI appearance, and it was our first at JAPAN JAM so, it all felt very fresh. I think these days have been shaping up good.The fact that we appeared in these festivals amidst our tour, not to mention amidst the final stages of it, meant that there was a side to it about living true with our emotions. But, it’s definitely true that with one-man concerts it’s different, I get nervous. I mean, even so, since last year I’ve been enjoying these much more, and I feel like I’ve been able to contemplate a lot.     

The tour we’ve been on since January has ended. The album IKI itself is almost like my life. I’m glad we wrote it, it has such an immense meaning to me as a piece, as a tour. On our eighteenth tour date in Nagoya, I felt a sensation I had never felt before on top of the stage. **(FOOTNOTES PLEASE) Maybe I was in the zone, maybe I felt dazzled by all the audience’s consciences in front of me, yet I felt insanely calm through all of it, and, it was really just mysterious, just unbelievable. You often hear that humans don’t use 100% of their brain at a time but, I wonder how much I was able to use at that time. Or was it my brain or my heart, I don’t really know but, I seriously thought that I need to start feeling like that every time. I was getting woke of all this at Takamatsu. Even so it was undoubtably a special day and, at Shinkiba too I had gotten overly hyped but, yeah, somehow, I think I’ve come to understand. This adventure will never end.

I know exactly what I want to do next. It’s a surprise to me but I know specifically what it is. I want to run around, I want to sleep, I just want to live with happiness. For the rest of my life, if I never forget about what I said at Studio Coast, I think that I’ll be okay. I too am clumsy, so I want to be loved, so I’m trying my best.”