Hey, alright, I was actually given work to do today. I researched distributors of golf accessories in Japan for our client "Sassy Swings." It's hard to find distributors, I tell ya! I'm learning a few tricks here and there, though.
I actually took a few pictures of my room and my office today! So I will post those as soon as I have time. Probably not tonight because it's open mic at the Ruby Room again. I have a bunch of friends coming this time! I'm excited. Sorry I didn't write much today, I've actually had some other things to do, for a change. And it's almost time for me to go home now, so ta ta!
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Pictures!
Oh man, that seemed like it took forever. I'm going to start taking lower resolution pictures from now on so they won't take so long to upload, but anyways, here's the link:
My walk through Ueno Park and Akabane's matsuri
Let me know if that link doesn't work. I'll go ahead and try it myself as well, just to make sure, but it should work. And I know, I know, it's a lot of pictures of the same thing. I just uploaded everything I took, okay? Some are better than others and I didn't take the time to fish out the best ones to post up there. Perhaps next time (if you're lucky!) hehe.
Bed time!
p.s. The pictures from the izakaya will be coming soon, there's only a few of them, but Aya has them and hasn't had a chance to upload them yet.
My walk through Ueno Park and Akabane's matsuri
Let me know if that link doesn't work. I'll go ahead and try it myself as well, just to make sure, but it should work. And I know, I know, it's a lot of pictures of the same thing. I just uploaded everything I took, okay? Some are better than others and I didn't take the time to fish out the best ones to post up there. Perhaps next time (if you're lucky!) hehe.
Bed time!
p.s. The pictures from the izakaya will be coming soon, there's only a few of them, but Aya has them and hasn't had a chance to upload them yet.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Time takes time, you know
I have noticed that the mornings seem to go by quite fast here, but then the time between lunch and 5:00 just seems to crawl by. I suppose it's pretty 当たり前 (atarimae; natural, as expected), but it's just interesting to me because I don't even really feel bored here in the afternoons. There's certainly plenty for me to keep myself busy with. Also, my fingernails seem to grow inhumanly fast. I know that's totally random but I cut them like 4 days ago and I feel like I need to cut them again already. Is that normal?
So while perusing the internet, I came across the new commercials Apple put out for the iPhone. Is it just me, or does anybody else feel like Apple is getting ready to take over the world? I mean, I know they've got some stiff competition with Starbucks and McDonalds and Nestle, but seriously, can this company ever put out a product that isn't stellar anymore?
Oh, today for lunch I went to a new place: a little udonya (Udon/noodle shop) where you just stand at the bar and eat the food. Basically made for businessman who have a short lunch break, etc. It was okay, but not great. I probably won't go there again. but anyways, one thing that was cool was I saw them serve some guy some kind of egg that was about the size of a robin's egg, but it was grey, and the dude just ate it raw. I looked at the menu, but I don't know the characters (or really the words themselves) for most birds, so it didn't help. yikes, though. yikes...
So while perusing the internet, I came across the new commercials Apple put out for the iPhone. Is it just me, or does anybody else feel like Apple is getting ready to take over the world? I mean, I know they've got some stiff competition with Starbucks and McDonalds and Nestle, but seriously, can this company ever put out a product that isn't stellar anymore?
Oh, today for lunch I went to a new place: a little udonya (Udon/noodle shop) where you just stand at the bar and eat the food. Basically made for businessman who have a short lunch break, etc. It was okay, but not great. I probably won't go there again. but anyways, one thing that was cool was I saw them serve some guy some kind of egg that was about the size of a robin's egg, but it was grey, and the dude just ate it raw. I looked at the menu, but I don't know the characters (or really the words themselves) for most birds, so it didn't help. yikes, though. yikes...
アンコール
... went the (sparse) crowd at the Rock Factory, as I finished up my last of 3 songs. For those (all) of you who can't read that, it sounds something like ancouru!, which is about as close as they can get to "encore!"
The Rock Factory's open mic allowed 3 songs per artist, with a possible 4th if there was crowd support. And crowd support there was. And it's not like they were just cheering for everybody, too. I was one of only two people to play an encore last night. It felt so good. I've never been called to play an encore before.
Last night I met up with Yuki at Roppongi station where she took me to meet two of her friends, Chu and Gilly. Chu is a dude from Tokyo, the same age as Yuki (27), and a drummer who occasionally subs in for Yucca's drummer when she is unable to play. Gilly is a rather large (vertically, not horizontally) man from Brisbane, Australia, whom Yuki had met at yet another open mic. We went and had a dinner, after a fashion, of fish and chips, haggis, and spaghetti bolognese (or however you spell it) at a small pub on the way to the "Rock Fac" as it is called by those who frequent it.
It was my first time in Roppongi and I wasn't too thrilled about it. Ted says he always avoids Roppongi if at all possible because it is foreigner central, and, sure enough, the foreigners were a-plenty. It was nice, however, to find that there were only a couple foreigners aside from Gilly and myself at the Rock Fac. The MC of the evening was a half-New Zealander, half-Japanese girl named Kat, who opened the show with some of her own music, which was, appropriately, half in English and half in Japanese. It wasn't bad, but it didn't really match my tastes. Mostly because most of the time she would take what she had just sung in English, and repeat it in Japanese. It got a little tedious for me. There were then some other artists that I mostly wasn't paying attention to. A white guy, a Korean guy, a Japanese guy... Then it was Yuki's turn. Yuki's music is slow and gritty. It's not easy to listen to at first, but once I got used to it I began to really like it. Right now she's working on a solo album, which is great, but I don't think it'll be done before I leave. Chu played drums with her on two of her songs, as well. He kept saying he was so bad at drums (classic Japanese), but he was really good. They hadn't rehearsed at all or anything and he matched her songs just about perfectly with various beats.
Then I went and played my 3 songs. And then another.
Then Gilly, which was totally different from me. His music stayed true to his "era" (as he said to me) of 80's-style Rock n Roll. He wouldn't tell me exactly how old he was, though--just that he's in his 30's. My guess is 36. He was pretty good and really fun to watch. Chu played drums for him as well. Again, with no rehearsal of any kind.
Well, that's pretty much that whole story. Oh, well, actually there was a guy who played after us who was pretty interesting. It was a man from Fukuoka who just got back from a tour in Taiwan and is now playing all around Tokyo for a couple weeks. He said he has also played in Europe, Australia, and the US. His style was totally wild. All instrumental music on the acoustic guitar, but he certainly used every single bit of the guitar. He would drum on the wood, bend the neck, and really beat the heck out of the guitar. He cracked the guitar he was using in two places last night (he said he has to buy new guitars a lot), AND broke 3 strings. It was really good music, though. Got everyone pumped up, as evidenced by the fact that he was the other person whom people cheered "encore" for.
I have nothing going on tonight (for once) so my plan is to practice for tomorrow's show at the Ruby Room. I meant to practice over the weekend, but somehow my schedule filled up with other things. So I'm glad to have a free night because I really can't stand to do a show on no rehearsal. Plus, it would be nice if I could come up with a new song to play. I don't want to just keep repeating the same ones (which I haven't really done yet, but I will have to soon because I'm running low). Alright, work time. Ciao.
The Rock Factory's open mic allowed 3 songs per artist, with a possible 4th if there was crowd support. And crowd support there was. And it's not like they were just cheering for everybody, too. I was one of only two people to play an encore last night. It felt so good. I've never been called to play an encore before.
Last night I met up with Yuki at Roppongi station where she took me to meet two of her friends, Chu and Gilly. Chu is a dude from Tokyo, the same age as Yuki (27), and a drummer who occasionally subs in for Yucca's drummer when she is unable to play. Gilly is a rather large (vertically, not horizontally) man from Brisbane, Australia, whom Yuki had met at yet another open mic. We went and had a dinner, after a fashion, of fish and chips, haggis, and spaghetti bolognese (or however you spell it) at a small pub on the way to the "Rock Fac" as it is called by those who frequent it.
It was my first time in Roppongi and I wasn't too thrilled about it. Ted says he always avoids Roppongi if at all possible because it is foreigner central, and, sure enough, the foreigners were a-plenty. It was nice, however, to find that there were only a couple foreigners aside from Gilly and myself at the Rock Fac. The MC of the evening was a half-New Zealander, half-Japanese girl named Kat, who opened the show with some of her own music, which was, appropriately, half in English and half in Japanese. It wasn't bad, but it didn't really match my tastes. Mostly because most of the time she would take what she had just sung in English, and repeat it in Japanese. It got a little tedious for me. There were then some other artists that I mostly wasn't paying attention to. A white guy, a Korean guy, a Japanese guy... Then it was Yuki's turn. Yuki's music is slow and gritty. It's not easy to listen to at first, but once I got used to it I began to really like it. Right now she's working on a solo album, which is great, but I don't think it'll be done before I leave. Chu played drums with her on two of her songs, as well. He kept saying he was so bad at drums (classic Japanese), but he was really good. They hadn't rehearsed at all or anything and he matched her songs just about perfectly with various beats.
Then I went and played my 3 songs. And then another.
Then Gilly, which was totally different from me. His music stayed true to his "era" (as he said to me) of 80's-style Rock n Roll. He wouldn't tell me exactly how old he was, though--just that he's in his 30's. My guess is 36. He was pretty good and really fun to watch. Chu played drums for him as well. Again, with no rehearsal of any kind.
Well, that's pretty much that whole story. Oh, well, actually there was a guy who played after us who was pretty interesting. It was a man from Fukuoka who just got back from a tour in Taiwan and is now playing all around Tokyo for a couple weeks. He said he has also played in Europe, Australia, and the US. His style was totally wild. All instrumental music on the acoustic guitar, but he certainly used every single bit of the guitar. He would drum on the wood, bend the neck, and really beat the heck out of the guitar. He cracked the guitar he was using in two places last night (he said he has to buy new guitars a lot), AND broke 3 strings. It was really good music, though. Got everyone pumped up, as evidenced by the fact that he was the other person whom people cheered "encore" for.
I have nothing going on tonight (for once) so my plan is to practice for tomorrow's show at the Ruby Room. I meant to practice over the weekend, but somehow my schedule filled up with other things. So I'm glad to have a free night because I really can't stand to do a show on no rehearsal. Plus, it would be nice if I could come up with a new song to play. I don't want to just keep repeating the same ones (which I haven't really done yet, but I will have to soon because I'm running low). Alright, work time. Ciao.
Monday, June 4, 2007
No pictures yet...
Sorry folks, but the picture uploading takes longer than I thought. I only got through about 20 pictures last night before it was midnight and I decided I better hit the hay. I'm playing (hopefully) at another open mic tonight, so I'm not sure I'll have time to upload more photos tonight, but I promise I will get them up ASAP.
I'm at work now, and it's really bizarre because there is nobody here. I think Shino may be out of town, actually, and Ted sent me a text message saying he had some personal errands and would be in around noon. I didn't get the message, though, until about 10:00, so I was here for about an hour before that wondering where the heck everybody was and was there some national holiday that I didn't know about. I went to my old friends' live last night. It was quite good. I was able to talk to them a little bit afterwards, too, but not as much as I would have liked because it was really crowded and various people kept coming up to them and talking. The live house (that's what they call them--there are a ton of live houses in Tokyo, where a band can pay to play a very professional-style show), was pretty small but really neat. Also, I feel really cool when I'm the only foreigner that goes to things like this and doesn't just do the touristy stuff. Is that bad of me? hehe. The show was actually a line-up of about 6 bands, and it was the 7th of a series of shows called "pure acoustic." The thing I did like about it was that it started at 5, so I didn't have to leave early so as to not miss my train or anything. Most of the bands were pretty good. On the bad end of the spectrum was this woman who, while she did have a good voice and the actual band was fairly rocking, all she did was sing covers of American songs (Stevie Wonder, Jackson 5, etc.). I mean, to do a cover or two in your show is one thing, but to do an entire show of covers--of songs that aren't even in your native language? No, it didn't work for me. I felt like I was watching Karaoke. I really wanted to step outside at that point (also, because it was really hot in there and I was wearing like 3 layers), but I was talking to Haruka, so I stayed. Everyone else there seemed to really love it, though. Different cultures...
On the good end of the spectrum was the group I went to see: Spring-roll. It's a group of two girls, one, Maki, plays piano while the other, Haruka, sings. Maki is a monster on the piano. I mean seriously, she can really wail on that thing. And they had a baby grand in the live house, so it sounded great. And Haruka's voice is pretty good. Most of the time she sings like most of the other bubblegum-pop-style Japanese pop stars, but when she did the more blues-y songs, those were my favorites. The other band that I thought was fantastic was a 3-woman string trio (violin, viola, cello) of all electric instruments (the cellist had the exact same one I have), called "rush!". They played really up-tempo--almost dance-style--music over pre-recorded techno beats. They were incredible, so skilled with the instruments, playing insanely fast tunes that really rocked. I, of course, mainly watched the cellist most of the time and I was just blown away. AND, by the end of the show, she was standing and dancing while playing the cello at the same time. It was pretty amazing. I really wanted to buy their album, but I didn't have enough money on me. I need to find out where I can get it, though. I also wanted to talk to them afterwards, but they never came out from backstage. Probably because if they did, they would be barraged by all us men. They were absolutely gorgeous--like, model-style, drop-dead gorgeous--and wearing these very sexy, sleek black dresses.
So yeah, tonight it's off to another open mic: this one is at the Rock Factory (it's a bar) in Roppongi. They have an acoustic-style open mic every Monday. Perfect for me. Hopefully. Yuki will also be going and playing, and we're gonna meet up for dinner beforehand. Then the rest of the week goes as follows:
Nothing big at work, I don't think. At least, nothing like last week, with all the meetings and shows and the OECD conference. I do want to go to that interior design show at Big Sight, which is going on Wednesday through Friday.
Wednesday night I got invited back to the Ruby Room open mic again, and I have some new friends coming to see me, so I will be doing that for sure. Haruka and Maki said they might come, but I don't expect them to. I think they're a little too big-time to come see me play. But Yuta and Yutaka and Kie should be coming. Other than that I don't have plans until Saturday, where I'll be going to an Oxfam charity event (I believe it's a used items sale--clothing, books, etc.), which will be good because I could actually use another pair of jeans here. I only brought two and I wear them pretty much every day. Nobody wears shorts here. Aside from the very obvious method of picking foreigners out of a crowd, another way is from clothing. t-shirts and shorts; it's a good bet they're a foreigner. Everybody is so fashionable here all the time, it's pretty intense. I like it, though. And I've noticed that people will approach/talk to you much more easily when you're dressed nicer (i.e. dressed like they are).
Then on Sunday, I think I'll be going to the Ghibli museum with Kie, which is really exciting. Studio Ghibli is the Studio owned by Hayao Miyazaki, the genius behind the animated films Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, and many other (Japanese) classics. Studio Ghibli is oft referred to as the Disney of Japan, but the two are hardly comparable. Disney, while creative in its own rights, (in my opinion) doesn't even come close to the creativity of Studio Ghibli's creations. Anyways, I wanted to go to the Ghibli museum last time I was in Tokyo, but you have to get tickets about a week in advance, which I didn't know and I didn't know how to reserve the tickets either, so I was unable to go. Luckily, now I have a Japanese friend who can take care of that for me, so Kie said she would get tickets and take me. Yay!
Well, that's all I've got for now. Stay tuned for reports on tonight's open mic! Much Love.
I'm at work now, and it's really bizarre because there is nobody here. I think Shino may be out of town, actually, and Ted sent me a text message saying he had some personal errands and would be in around noon. I didn't get the message, though, until about 10:00, so I was here for about an hour before that wondering where the heck everybody was and was there some national holiday that I didn't know about. I went to my old friends' live last night. It was quite good. I was able to talk to them a little bit afterwards, too, but not as much as I would have liked because it was really crowded and various people kept coming up to them and talking. The live house (that's what they call them--there are a ton of live houses in Tokyo, where a band can pay to play a very professional-style show), was pretty small but really neat. Also, I feel really cool when I'm the only foreigner that goes to things like this and doesn't just do the touristy stuff. Is that bad of me? hehe. The show was actually a line-up of about 6 bands, and it was the 7th of a series of shows called "pure acoustic." The thing I did like about it was that it started at 5, so I didn't have to leave early so as to not miss my train or anything. Most of the bands were pretty good. On the bad end of the spectrum was this woman who, while she did have a good voice and the actual band was fairly rocking, all she did was sing covers of American songs (Stevie Wonder, Jackson 5, etc.). I mean, to do a cover or two in your show is one thing, but to do an entire show of covers--of songs that aren't even in your native language? No, it didn't work for me. I felt like I was watching Karaoke. I really wanted to step outside at that point (also, because it was really hot in there and I was wearing like 3 layers), but I was talking to Haruka, so I stayed. Everyone else there seemed to really love it, though. Different cultures...
On the good end of the spectrum was the group I went to see: Spring-roll. It's a group of two girls, one, Maki, plays piano while the other, Haruka, sings. Maki is a monster on the piano. I mean seriously, she can really wail on that thing. And they had a baby grand in the live house, so it sounded great. And Haruka's voice is pretty good. Most of the time she sings like most of the other bubblegum-pop-style Japanese pop stars, but when she did the more blues-y songs, those were my favorites. The other band that I thought was fantastic was a 3-woman string trio (violin, viola, cello) of all electric instruments (the cellist had the exact same one I have), called "rush!". They played really up-tempo--almost dance-style--music over pre-recorded techno beats. They were incredible, so skilled with the instruments, playing insanely fast tunes that really rocked. I, of course, mainly watched the cellist most of the time and I was just blown away. AND, by the end of the show, she was standing and dancing while playing the cello at the same time. It was pretty amazing. I really wanted to buy their album, but I didn't have enough money on me. I need to find out where I can get it, though. I also wanted to talk to them afterwards, but they never came out from backstage. Probably because if they did, they would be barraged by all us men. They were absolutely gorgeous--like, model-style, drop-dead gorgeous--and wearing these very sexy, sleek black dresses.
So yeah, tonight it's off to another open mic: this one is at the Rock Factory (it's a bar) in Roppongi. They have an acoustic-style open mic every Monday. Perfect for me. Hopefully. Yuki will also be going and playing, and we're gonna meet up for dinner beforehand. Then the rest of the week goes as follows:
Nothing big at work, I don't think. At least, nothing like last week, with all the meetings and shows and the OECD conference. I do want to go to that interior design show at Big Sight, which is going on Wednesday through Friday.
Wednesday night I got invited back to the Ruby Room open mic again, and I have some new friends coming to see me, so I will be doing that for sure. Haruka and Maki said they might come, but I don't expect them to. I think they're a little too big-time to come see me play. But Yuta and Yutaka and Kie should be coming. Other than that I don't have plans until Saturday, where I'll be going to an Oxfam charity event (I believe it's a used items sale--clothing, books, etc.), which will be good because I could actually use another pair of jeans here. I only brought two and I wear them pretty much every day. Nobody wears shorts here. Aside from the very obvious method of picking foreigners out of a crowd, another way is from clothing. t-shirts and shorts; it's a good bet they're a foreigner. Everybody is so fashionable here all the time, it's pretty intense. I like it, though. And I've noticed that people will approach/talk to you much more easily when you're dressed nicer (i.e. dressed like they are).
Then on Sunday, I think I'll be going to the Ghibli museum with Kie, which is really exciting. Studio Ghibli is the Studio owned by Hayao Miyazaki, the genius behind the animated films Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, and many other (Japanese) classics. Studio Ghibli is oft referred to as the Disney of Japan, but the two are hardly comparable. Disney, while creative in its own rights, (in my opinion) doesn't even come close to the creativity of Studio Ghibli's creations. Anyways, I wanted to go to the Ghibli museum last time I was in Tokyo, but you have to get tickets about a week in advance, which I didn't know and I didn't know how to reserve the tickets either, so I was unable to go. Luckily, now I have a Japanese friend who can take care of that for me, so Kie said she would get tickets and take me. Yay!
Well, that's all I've got for now. Stay tuned for reports on tonight's open mic! Much Love.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Ninja Scatters the Noise
Before I begin, a vocabulary note:
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
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
Camera on a Sushi Bar!
Someone had the great idea to place their video camera on the conveyor belt at a sushi bar, and here's the result! It's slow-moving, of course, but I think it's really neat, plus you get a brief view of the kitchen.