From now on, for simplicity's sake (for myself), I'm going to use the word "live" (pronounced the way you would say "a live concert," not like "I live over there") instead of 'concert' or 'show' or 'gig' or whatever. Here in Japan, they use the actual English word, live, for this purpose. For example, I've been telling people all week that 「水曜日にライブをするよ」which pretty much translates to "I am doing a live on Wednesday." Or I could also say 「水曜日にライブあるよ」which could mean one of two things: "I have a live on Wednesday" or "There is a live on Wednesday [but not mine]." Since that one's a little more vague, I probably wouldn't use it, unless I actually was talking about someone else's live that I wanted to go to.
So onwards with my life now...
On Friday night, as I mentioned before I left, I went to my friend Sorcha's live, which turned out to be quite far away, but it was totally worth the trip. It was in this very tiny pub-style bar on the second floor of a building, and the place was actually owned by some British people, I think. Oh wait, let me backtrack... Before I actually went to the live, I went to have dinner at the little maguro place around the corner from my house. I got there just in time, too because like 10 minutes after I sat down there was a rush of people who were coming in to watch the Japan-Montenegro soccer game on TV. So I lucked out not only in being able to actually sit, but I got to have the great experience of hanging out with some Japanese soccer fans and watching a game. It was so fun. Everyone was so lively and into it. AND Japan won, which made it even more fun.
Okay, now, back to the live. It turned out, one of the co-owners of the pub was this lesbian woman, who was really drunk at the time but that's besides the point, so throughout the night there were a LOT of lesbians coming and going from the bar. But there were also a lot of straight people, too, so I didn't feel out of place or anything. I, unfortunately, didn't take my camera with me, but I wish I had because the last guy to play (he was after Sorcha's set), was absolutely ridiculous. He did a Har Mar Superstar-style (only a few of you, if any, will actually know what that means, but just keep reading if you don't) set, where he had no instruments and just had recorded beats and electronica-style music, and he would just sing to that. Only it wasn't even really singing. It was more like just yelling into the mic. But somehow it wasn't totaly awful. I guess the good beats in the music were his saving grace. But anyways, to top it all off, he was wearing a (oh, this was a white guy, by the way) t-shirt and these really short, tight hawaiian-style board shorts. I can't even begin to describe how absurd the whole experience was. But it was sort of, because it was so ridiculous, it was really enjoyable. And it had everybody dancing, including yours truly. I also made some new friends. In addition to seeing Sorcha (who is an Australian girl who's been living in Japan for 5 years, check out her website if you're interested: http://www.geocities.com/flyingsorcha), I made friends with the two boys who went right before her. Their names were Yuta and Yutaka, which I thought was funny, and their band name was "Forrest Gump," which I also thought was funny. They had only been playing together for 3 weeks, they said, which is I guess the reason why they only played 2 songs. But they were really nice, and they said they might come to my live on Wednesday. I also met a girl named Kie who spoke English perfectly well, and whenever I meet someone who can speak English now, I don't even want to speak English to them. I always want to practice my Japanese. But I guess she sorta felt the same way about English as I do about Japanese because she just kept on speaking to me in English even though I kept on speaking to her in Japanese. That was pretty amusing. She was nice, though. She works for Oxfam Japan, and she invited me to some charity event next week, and also said she might come to my live on Wednesday (as you can tell I've been doing some serious PR for my lives). So all in all, it was good fun on Friday night.
On Saturday I had plans to meet up with Yuki at 4 pm, but nothing before that, so I took the train up to Ueno, to go see the park there, since it was on the way to where I would be meeting Yuki. The park was pretty nice. Nothing at all like Forest Park, it was dirtier and more urban-feeling, but it was still pretty nice. There were a ton of people there, too, which was cool. While walking a long I saw a sign that said something like "Chinese performers starting at 2:00" (I'm not totally sure because there were some characters I didn't recognize, but I understood "Chinese people" and I understood "2:00") and I could see people dressed in circus-style outfits setting up for a show, so, since it was about 1:50, I decided to take a seat and wait for them to start. It was pretty cool, they did about a 45-minute show right there outside, with contortionism and unicycling and other stuff. I have pictures and I will put them up on PhotoBucket either tonight or tomorrow. After the show, I went up to talk to them to ask how old they were (because they looked younger than me, and they were pretty incredible), and also to make myself feel horrible that I could barely remember the Chinese I had spent the past year learning. They were very excited, though, that I could speak any Chinese at all, so they seemed pretty happy to talk to me. The performers were a boy and two girls. The boy and one of the girls were both 18, and the other girl was 20. Pretty impressive. They apparently live here in Tokyo. I was having trouble with my Chinese so I couldn't ask them how long they'd been here or anything, but I did manage to get a picture with all of them, which you can see below.
So after that I decided I better grab something to eat and then head out to meet Yuki. I found a nice little curry place hidden underneath the train tracks, and that was pretty good. Then I headed further north to Akabane, which is where Yuki lives, although we weren't going to her house. Yuki had just come from her English lesson, which she's been taking for 4 or 5 months now, so I got to see her textbook and worksheets and stuff, which was pretty amusing (and I'm sure she'd be really amused if she saw my Japanese class stuff, so I'm not making fun of her, it was just interesting). We went to her neighborhood matsuri (festival), which was pretty cool. It was basically at the total opposite end of the matsuri spectrum from the Sanja matsuri that I went to my first weekend here. This was a real small, neighborhood event, where everybody knew everybody, and I'm sure they were shocked to see me there. It was at their local shrine, which was pretty small. It was a really cool experience though. They had one small row of yattai, which I learned is the word for all the little booths that serve foods on sticks and stuff like that. Yuki taught me the proper way to wash your hands before entering the shrine, which I actually didn't know that there was a real order to the whole process, and she also taught me how to approach the shrine and do the praying and all that. Yuki hadn't eaten since breakfast, so we got her some tako-yaki (octopus cooked with some other stuff--egg, lettuce, etc--into a ball shape), and took that to the river that ran right next to the shrine. The picture below is of Yuki at the river, with her tako-yaki in hand. I took the picture against the sunlight, and then Yuki taught me the actual word for "taking a picture against the sunlight," which is gyakkou. And it's true, because she looked it up in her electronic dictionary afterwards and, sure enough, the definition written there in English was actually "taking a picture against the light or sunlight."
Yuki said she goes to that river quite often just for a walk while drinking a beer, which I thought was hilarious. Apparently Yuki drinks a lot, which is not to say she's an alcoholic, because it's just a totally different culture here. Everybody drinks a lot here. I've had at least two beers nearly every day since I came here. It's really bizarre. Well, bizarre's not really the right word, but you know what I mean. It's just different.
At about 5:30, Yuusaku met us at the river. Yuusaku is another member of Yucca--Yuki and Aya's band. I had met him once before, and he was really nice. He was, again, really friendly and we talked about all sorts of stuff. Yuusaku is really into this one science fiction writer named Hoshi Shinichi, and when he found out I actually knew who that was and liked him, Yuusaku warmed up to me really quickly. So, thank you to my teacher at Wash. U., Aridome-sensei, for telling me about Hoshi Shinichi last year! hehe. After a little while, we headed back to the matsuri so Yuusaku could see it, and we played this little game called katanuki, which comes from the words katai - meaning hard, strong, or brittle and nuku - which is a verb meaning to pierce or to penetrate. The game, which is mostly just played by little kids, is sooooo hard. You have to take this little needle-like tool and try to carve out a shape from this very hard and brittle little rectangle of candy-like material. You pay 100 yen to play, and then you pick a rectangle piece out of the box (they're wrapped in paper so you can't see them). When you unwrap it, there's a picture drawn onto the rectangle, and that's the shape you have to carve out. And if you can do it, you win money. And you win different amounts of money depending on the shape you carve out, but they're all freaking impossible anyways. Yuki's piece broke in half almost immediately. I did a little bit better and was actually able to get the tail of the rhinoceros carved out, but then I broke it's head off. Yuusaku also had no luck, and the picture below is of him right after he broke his piece.
The good news, though, is that the thing is edible, so at least you can eat it after you break it. The bad news is that you just paid 100 yen for a piece of not-very-good candy. heh. It was fun though.After that, there was a short Taiko performance, which was pretty neat. I have a bunch of pictures of that, too, which I will also post on PhotoBucket later.
After the Taiko performance we took a short walk and ended up at an izakaya (Japanese-style bar), which that area was jam-packed with. Aya joined us a little while after we got there, when she got off work. It was really cool. It's very tight quarters and everybody is sitting close together, and you order a bunch of smaller dishes that everybody can share, and drink a lot of beer (or sake, if you prefer--Yuki and I stuck to beer, but Yuusaku had some sort of plum-sake concoction, and Aya, when she joined us later, also had sake). It was really fun. Great times and great conversation with great friends (pictures of that to come later, as well). We stayed there until about 11:15, and then walked back to the station and said our goodbyes.
Yuki told me about another open mic at a different place on Monday nights, so I think we're gonna go there tomorrow. Woohoo! More performances = (hopefully) more friends!
Also, when I came to Tokyo for a week last year, after my study abroad program, I was able to make two friends (also musicians) who I didn't really keep up correspondence with for very long after I returned to the US. I did, however, send them an email a couple days before I came here this summer, just to say hi and I hope they're doing well and I'll be coming in to Tokyo for a couple months and if they're still around and free, we should hang out sometime or something. I never heard back from them, though, so I figured oh well, it's no big deal, I seem to be making friends okay anyways. But, this morning I awoke to find an email from one of them saying thanks for your mail, sorry it took so long to get back to you, we were on vacation in China! And now it turns out they have a live tonight and they would really like me to come! Luckily, I have no plans, so I'll be going to see them later on. That should be exciting. Their music is much more up my ally, too: pop music with just keyboard and vocals.
Well, time to finish up my laundry. Take care everybody. Stay tuned!
Love,
Lawrence
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