百年後の自分

I gotta write early today because we're leaving in about an hour to go out to Tokyo Big Sight. This week is an automotive maintenance show (bound to be less interesting than Interior Lifestyles), and one of our clients is actually here for the show, so we must go. Hunter Engineering manufactures auto maintenance equipment (computers for tire alignment, calibration equipment, etc.), so it's basically a perfect opportunity to show their stuff around. I believe they already have a distributor here, but it never hurts to look for more investors, right?

Last night I went to Yuki's show in Shinjuku. It was my first time in Shinjuku since I came here and I got lost a little, but eventually found the place, on the fifth floor of a building with an awesome play on words: the building is called "Just Bill" only written in Japanese so it's more like jasto biru, and the word biru is used as both the name, Bill, but it also is the word for 'building.' I guess it's not that funny, really, but I thought it was great.

Yuki was 3rd out of 5 or 6 bands that were playing. First was this 17-year-old girl, Aori, who played acoustic guitar and had an amazing voice. She was one of my favorites of the night because she basically played exactly the kind of music that I like. Second was a guy who said he hadn't done a live show in a year and a half, and he appeared very nervous and had some troubles, but overall did pretty well. He played a couple songs I enjoyed, but his music was a bit too slow for my tastes. Then was Yuki, who rocked it. Chu played drums for her again. I swear she keeps getting better. I think this is the most she's ever played solo before, so she's getting a lot of practice and thus is getting better. She also gave me two demos that she made a year or so ago with her solo music. I listened to them a bit this morning and they were pretty good. Her singing voice is so different from her speaking voice it's sort of hard to match it to her face when listening to the CD, but anyways, that's getting off-topic. After Yuki was a guy who was so oddly calm and still. He sat while playing acoustic guitar (actually, Yuki was the only one who didn't play acoustic guitar; she went electric) and had a great voice--really high-pitched and soulful. In between each song he warmed up his voice again singing "a i u e o ka ki ku..." which is how the Japanese alphabet (if you can call it that) goes. Finally (so I guess it was just 5 bands), was this guy named Adachi who was soooo bizarre. He seemed like sort of a beatnik dude who went through this very long, sort of zen ritual of getting ready on-stage before he began (he got out lotion and rubbed it on his hands, then his face, then he would tap various parts of his body: top of head, shoulders, ears, waist, knees, etc.; he closed his eyes and breathed very slowly, etc.). His music was equally bizarre, using props such as a metronome (not used to keep time, though, just there for the sound), radio (used for the background noises of both static and of some people talking). He acted out half of a cell-phone conversation, the other half of which was pre-recorded, live on stage. He was meant to be talking to 百年後の自分 (himself from 100 years in the future), and this was all meant as the introduction to one of his songs. It was really strange. Anyways, I met some more good people, including the guy who runs Yucca's record label, and had some good conversations and then went home a bit earlier so that I could actually get a decent night's sleep, unlike last night.

I don't really have any plans for tonight, but Chu said he was going to a live and would send me the details of it if I was interested. I think it's of an American band, but I'm not sure. I haven't heard from him yet.

I am excited that I get to sleep in tomorrow. Last weekend I didn't really sleep in at all, so it'll be the first time in nearly 2 weeks, basically, that I can sleep late.

I thought I had something else I wanted to talk about, but I can't remember at the moment, so for now I'll say goodbye. Love, Lawrence