I WAS probably the only person in the room who could not understand a thing… but man, these Japanese bands know how to rock! Two hours of walking aimlessly in the cold, cold Tokyo night (”Lost in Translation,” literally) before I managed to find a gig in this club called Motion in Shinju-ku district.

Apparently, the Japanese are sticklers for time so the gig really started around 7 o’clock as mentioned in the gig listings I got a day earlier. I got in more than two hours later, with three bands left. This band — whose name the lady at the bar pronounced Suppa Maikuro Panchop — came on and struck me as quite an acoustic, experimental type.

The song started somewhat acoustic all right — until much later on the entire band went helter-skelter.

Here’s the video I took of Suppa Maikuro Panchop’s performance.

etsuko heartfield came on next, appropriately providing a downtempo atmosphere to calm things down.

Among the three, this was the band I liked best. From the onset, they reminded me of Sigur Ros with a touch of The Album Leaf — and I couldn’t resist telling one member that while they strolled past me after their set. Their songs create a collage of sounds from a variety of sources — that’s the bassist right there twiddling on an old cassette player. Thankfully, the band is on MySpace.

The last one to play was this band that prefers an acronym of their Japanese name — OWKMJ (ore wa kona mon janai). I struck a conversation with band leader Reisaburo — that’s him on sax — in between sets and he told me their last performance was at South by Southwest in Texas! Their music is a mix of prog and psychedelic rock with a hint of punk. Sax and keyboards make for an interesting mix. And there’s a reason they’re last on the bill because they rocked the house.

Thankfully, they have a CD available and thankfully, I had enough yen left in my pocket.