Dir en grey was the first Jrock band I got into, in the fall of 2005. A friend from school said she wanted to “turn me Asian,” which is a pretty ridiculous thing to even say, but I humored her and let her send me Jrock songs, which she figured would work since I mostly listened to assorted genres of rock music at the time, anyway. None of the things she sent me at first - I don’t remember them all, but Asian Kung Fu Generation was in there somewhere (and I actually like that song she sent me by them now) - appealed to me much, until she sent me Diru’s “Dead Tree”. She didn’t even like that song, but a friend had sent it to her, so she facepalmed a little when that was the only one I liked. I searched out some more Diru on my own after that, and particularly liked “Pink Killer” and “Umbrella” at the time. I eventually found a picture of them and thought that they looked really cool. It was a few months later that I got into a lot of other Jrock artists, but Diru will always be particularly important to me since they were the first.
So naturally, being able to see them live twice within the space of a year was a pretty big deal to me.