"Are we all going to wake up dead tomorrow?" asks my pal Dave as our taxi crawls up a steep, winding road on a fog-drenched mountain.

"Think positive, think of the next beer when we get there," I reply, gnawing at my nails. And then another car emerges through the mist ahead, mere meters away, and hurtles past us. Again we thank God that it didn't hit us head on and . . . kill us.

With visibility down to about 5 meters, we hear an ambulance's siren ahead, but only at the last second do we see its flashing lights shoot by. Then the crash scene: A huge truck smashed into a bank on the side of the road, its body buckled, almost broken in half by a big van embedded in its side. Twenty minutes later -- and after tearing half our hair out -- our cab is flagged down by a gaijin guy with a security pass.

"Are you with Joe Strummer?" he asks.
"No, I'm a journalist, not a rock star, but I'm on the list."
"OK. You can walk from here, and if you have any trouble getting into the festival let me know," he says, giving me his cell-phone number. "My name's John. I live 'round here. Any problems and I'm your man. Let's have a drink later."

John is the first of many gaijin country-bumpkin types we run into who are over-eager to offer assistance. They are so overfriendly that Dave and I -- aloof city types -- can't help suspecting their motives. John later introduces us to his pregnant wife and buys us beers. No ulterior motive. Sound bloke.

Soon we are in what resembles a Gothic film set, shrouded in mist but with huge globular floodlights set up about the place. Demented proprietors rush out, yank at our arms and drag us to their yaki-soba stalls. They place otoshi before us and give us a drink on the house while screaming their welcome. They resemble the cast of a Japanese version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Then an American moseys on up and identifies himself as an embalmer working in Japan. "Why do they need American embalmers?" I ask.

"Because the Japanese don't like messing with the dead" was his response, and he buys us brews.

So this is it. A couple of fields in the highlands of Asagiri, Shizuoka Prefecture, with Mount Fuji looming above us, the site of Japan's last major outdoor music festival of the year -- "Camp in Asagiri Jam: It's a Beautiful Day." And we are surrounded by a bunch of nutters. Cool.

We set up our tent on a small hillock 100 meters from the main Rainbow Stage and are amazed at how the fog at times totally obscures the stage and then, within seconds, clears. Same with the rain -- the odd downpour lasts just 15 seconds. We've missed the first two acts -- Pe'z, and Laurel Aitken and the Blue Beat Players -- so the first thing we see is a guitar-brandishing, Gandalf-like figure in a flowing white robe, wearing a wizard's hat and sporting a big bushy beard that just has to be false.

He wails like an enka singer roughed up in a cement mixer full of killer wasps: gravely groans interspersed by shrieks and bursts of high-pitched harmonica. Someone tells me he was singing Bob Dylan songs in Japanese. But who is he? An announcer had told the kids beforehand: "The next artist, Imawano Kiyoshiro, loves cycling, but because of the rain he couldn't cycle from Tokyo to Asagiri, so his friend's band from Nagoya are going to play instead." The crowd had groaned in disappointment, but when Kiyoshiro hit the stage in disguise it only took a few bars for them to realize they'd been hoodwinked by the infamously loony frontman of R.C. Succession. And then they went mental.

Rovo are next, but their mix of experimental electronic doodling and trancelike grooves is messy and goes nowhere. The headliners on the Rainbow Stage, American band Tortoise, are little better with their hookless postrock, so I look behind me and see lots of little faces illuminated by many fires, staring out from tents and wigwams like lemurs in a dark forest. I decide to investigate.

At virtually every other tent I pass, I'm invited inside to share whatever the inhabitants have on offer. Some tents are like opium dens, cloudy with sweet-smelling smoke, while in others there seem to be mini-orgies going on. Outside, people dance around fires. It's anything goes, and everyone is more than welcome to join in. When a girl asks for a light, I know I'm running low on cigarettes so I ask her if I can buy some on site. "No, you can't, but that's not a problem, is it?" she says, dropping half a packet in my pocket one by one. I never saw her again.

This is the friendliest crowd I have ever encountered at a musical festival. It's what the early Glastonbury festivals must have been like. Asagiri's organizer -- Smash, the same guys behind the colossal Fuji Rock Festival -- has deliberately chosen edification over profit and played it low-key -- inviting cult artists, not star names. So this is for those desiring an essential music festival experience, rather than an event designed to attract masses of "music fans" wanting to glimpse the latest "cool" act. There wasn't even any security: You wanna go backstage, then go. Nobody stops you 'cos nobody's there. The bands are front-stage mingling with the punters.

Tortoise close the day at about 10:30 at the Rainbow and then the Moon Shine dance stage starts in the next field. Aphex Twin is the main attraction, but though I'm a massive fan, his set lacks bite, even though he spins some manic drum 'n' bass and treats us to his ace single "Windowlicker." Maybe the rumor's true -- dance music is dying. Or maybe it's just me. But if Aphex Twin can't do it, then who can? I skip the other DJs -- Fumiya Tanaka, DJ Eye and Moodman -- and stroll back to the Rainbow field where I sit on a very steep hillock waiting for dawn. When it arrives it's awesome, for there is Mount Fuji, towering above, godlike.

Next morning I'm woken up by reggae coming from somewhere. A perfect start. After grabbing some lush curry-rice, which just about everyone is rabidly devouring, Dave heads off on a 40-minute cigarette run to a store while I kick back and enjoy The Sideburns, who play brilliant old-school ska with no vocals. The sun is shining, a refreshing breeze is blowing in from Mount Fuji and virtually everyone on-site -- several thousand -- is in the mosh pit. I'm so blissed-out on the hillock that I'm unaware the screams from below are for mad jazz ensemble Shibusa Shirazu and the equally deranged butoh dancers stalking the stage.

7VO7 (aka The Boredoms) then seduce us with laid-back tribal electronica before Soul Flower Union miraculously get the mosh pit going with dreary funk-lite jams.

When Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros stroll on, the smell of coffee beans being roasted over open fires is wafting through the pit. Strummer's solo stuff is OK, but it's The Clash songs that go down best -- "Rudie Can't Fail," "Bankrobber," "I Fought the Law" and, best of all, the punk-reggae workout of "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais."

"We'll play for five bottles of tequila," shouts Strummer. "Same time, same place next year, and we'll bring some of those groovy DJ c***s as well." Joe is loving it, but the dwindling interest in dance music will probably see more rock acts here next year. Very appropriate, 'cos, looking up one last time at the mountain towering above me, I thought that this -- despite a couple of dud artists -- was the real Fuji Rock Festival, not the big one that has found a home in Naeba. That might be a scenic place, but man, this is Mount Fuji, and it rocks.