Bunkasai, Vissel Kobe and JAZZTRONIK in Kyoto

My Bunkasai was excellent. My kids are so much fun, they all sang cute emotional j-pop songs in class chorus, had a little speech contest, had 2 rubbish but really enthusiastic rock bands perform, a taiko group. it was fun. Lunch was fun too, all the kids did the cooking (all the cool kids were making takoyaki - octopus balls- for some reason.) They had a fun quiz at the end of the day with surprisingly valuable prizes, folding bike, ds lite, sony mp3 walkman, and an elmo cushion (when this was unwrapped every single girl in the crowd cried KAWAIIII in unison.)



These 3 guys in the first pic of the next set crack me up. The kid on the left is the borderline bad kid of the school, but when he's together with these 2, they are ALWAYS laughing about something. I've seen them in a small conga line, wandering around the school trying to be 1 person, walking in step and speaking together in unison, lying on the benches in front of the vending machines staring at the sky pondering the meaning of life, and oddest of all last week, singing/humming at the desks outside the staffroom with their mouths closed but full of food, doing a strange sort of dance that i can most closely describe as what dick van dyke and his chimney sweep friends do on the London roofs in Mary Poppins.



Fri nite went down down to Kobe. I love random bar hunting, just popping in to places to see if they're the Best Thing Ever. We hit this one called Alco-Hall, with a cheesy name like that you'd think it would be a budget kinda place - oh no. We each just had a single made up with some water (it was a specialist Scotch Whiskey place - i remember thinking I wasn't educated enough about whiskey to fully enjoy the place, seemed to have every single one under the sun, just went with their recommendation) and I was kind of wondering how such a small place (maybe 7, 8 seats) could afford to pay the bills, and it turned out they can cos 2 small drinks like that comes to over 16 pounds. !!!!. Still.
Next place was better, we drank for over 2 hours for the same price, and it was very chilled, all couches, obscure knick knacks and freebie cake from the proprietor who's bday it was. Music was a surprise, along with standard poppy rock stuff (blech) they dropped in cool stuff like Brad Mehldau's version of Paranoid Android, the original of Runaway which Nuyorican Soul covered, Tito Puente's classic Oye Como Va, and Nitin Sawhney's Homelands. Nice.



Saturday, headed down to the football with my supervisor, stopping on the way at a French patisserie he recommended, called 'Bigot'. Hmm. It was supposed to be the crowning moment for Vissel Kobe. Basically we lost. But I wore my Vissel shirt! And I learnt the whole Vissel Kobe song in Japanese! And I bought Vissel Kobe little thing to tie on my phone! And I (re)learnt the phrase for "the referee is blind"! WHAT MORE COULD I HAVE DONE? It was supposed to be a perfect ending to a story as well - our coach, Stuart Baxter (he's English, hence the British flags in the picture below) had just returned from 3 months at his ill daughter's bedside in Switzerland as Vissel were top of the table, this was the game to show we were going to J-1! (Here, the first 2 teams are automatically promoted, and the third has a playoff with the third last in J-1) Yokohama FC were clearly superior though, winning 2-1, and the fact that our goal was an unbelievably good free kick doesn't really make it any better but meh. We all traipsed out of the stadium under a grey sky as the rain drizzled down. Depressing.

(I couldn't get a high quality pic, but check the fan club leaders with their megaphones and jackets. They are nuts.)




Next to KYOTO to visit Shivana where Jazztronik were doing a live set! Exciting times. In a club called Metro, which is in the old subway system. I guess with the train connection thing, the inside looks a little like cargo (raw bricks and stuff) but much more enclosed and intimate. Yoshihiro Okino (KJM) DJed for a couple of hours before the band started, and played some of the tunes he always drops at Freedom Time, also a few Jazztronik tracks (like the minimalistic Yoruba remix of Dentro mi Alma) to wet the crowd's appetite. There are some tunes I know just from him playing but have no idea what they are, but wish I did. Theres a really deep soulful house tune that goes,


Love
love is the key to my happineeeeeeeessss
it shines a light on togetherneeeeeeeeesssss
it is the peace in my liiiiiiiiiiiiiiife

which I would kill to know about, and another one slightly more broken on the chords talking about 'you give me that feeeeeeeeeeeever' that I'm almost half sure I should know what it is but maybe it's just from hearing it out. He also dropped a remix of Afronaught's Transcend Me, MASSIVE tune from way back, and I always thought the beauty of the song was in the beat (twisty broken rolling) but this one was all four to the floor bass kick, and you notice way more complex rhythms in the vocals when it's accompanied by a straight beat. TUNE!

Jazztronik came on about 1.30 in the morning and I was wondering how they'd do... I mean Jazztronik has done a whole bunch off different stuff, you've got deep broken dance tunes, but also sometimes almost a bit too light nu-jazz which isn't as good. First tune was okay, Livin' High, an old one, but I wasn't 100% convinced, but then the second tune was Nana, with the Sax guy KILLING it, absolutely wicked. They ran through a lot of their standard vocal tunes (couldnt do any of the ones heavy on production or requiring a brazilian vocalist with the band) - highlights were the version of Nanairo where Yurai sings lead vocals (I almost prefer her voice to Bebe and she's a lot cuter - theres a pic of her with Ryota [main guy] behind her) and a heavy version of Samurai. Finished up with a awesome version of Estar Com Voce, starting with the standard version (minus the brazian spoken word), letting it settle then BAM the samba mix. Same thing Airto's band did last year at Jazz Cafe, to finish on a high there's nothing like everyone grabbing some percussion and samba-ing out. Turned out it was Okino's bday, so they played a couple of songs 'for him' (not sure how they were special.)


Thing is, I don't doubt Ryota Nozaki's ability as a songwriter producer or DJ, but he was the only guy in the band who didn't take a solo the whole night. Some of the tunes are calling out for it... but overall still was awesome and he more than made up for it with his DJing later. After the band finished, Okino got back on the decks and more soulful jazzy house til dawn. He's fast becoming my favourite DJ - okay so its not eclectic, but he knows his specialism and he's a master at building sets. Jazztronik jumped up about 4 in the morning to DJ, took it a little more broken, including another Afronaught classic Golpe Tuyo Calinda - both of those tunes of his have such recognisable riffs that when you hear coming through in the mix just SOOOAAAAR, the twisty wah-wah chords for Transcend Me and the simple bleeps for Golpe.



Sunday just sleeeeeept til late in my friend Shivana's place, then had some sushi and back to Aogaki. Life is good.

Let me end this longish post with this. If you're feeling kinda tired or ill, it will make you better - well it did me so thats 100% success rate so far. It's my favourite music video, for the the classic UK hip hop tune. Only saw it once on TV years ago but just had the thought yesterday that of course it would be on the internet now in the age of youtube. Check:

Skool Dayz

Small update from school. Tomorrow is Bunkasai, or the school Cultural Festival. Kids have been making stuff for it for a few weeks now, and over the past few days the school has been in the grip of bunkasai fever, everyone staying late and practicing their songs, making banners, posters, selling tickets for food (the kids seem to have realised I will buy any ticket they try and sell me, so I have tickets for green tea, octopus balls, boiled fishcakey stuff, sweets, and a couple I dont know what they are... now when I see kids with a box of money and a book of tickets I sort of run away.) Should be pretty fun, I get to play piano 'fun quiz like music' during their quiz at the end of the day when they're picking the answers (I'm thinking the countdown theme) and hit them with a little 'Spain' after lunch, havent played that for ages so having a first practice yesterday was really fun. I'm kinda under the weather right now (my JTE looked at me as if I had aids, recoiling while saying "um... you don't look... fine... please don't work so hard...aaaaaaagh"), all bunged up and shivering so I hope that doesnt affect any of that stuff. I really like my kids so I'm looking forward to it and hoping they put on a good show. Woo!

Slightly funny thing: I had to fill in a JET questionnaire this week, basic stuff about job satisfaction, how I'm finding the whole experience etc. There was a question on sexual harassment (which in Japanese is given the much cuter term 'sekuhara'.) Now it wasn't merely "have you experienced any sexual harrassment so far?" as you might expect. Check out the level of detail you can go into about sexual harassment:

Have you ever experienced sexual harassment from any of the following while on the program? (mark all that apply)

1. Mayor/Governor etc.
2. Head of your section/school, principal/BOE supervisor etc
3. Your supervisor
4. A collegue/fellow teacher
5. A fellow JET
6. A student
7. Someone else I know
8. A stranger
9. I have never experienced sexual harassment on the programme

followed up by 2 follow up questions. Not saying sexual harassment is funny, but the sheer range of options they gave made me chuckle/die a little inside. Maybe my friend who got a note from one of her students saying "Hey there, I'm 15 years old. I'm on the baseball team. How about it?" can say she's been on the receiving end of sekuhara from a student.

Also a little funny is this excerpt from a textbook we teach from, it's Japanese stereotype number 2: they love robots. The chapter is 'Living with Robots'.

Receptionists will be replaced by robots. Robots will take care of children while parents are out. Children can play and study with robots. At night, robot guards will protect you and your house. If they find a suspicious person, they will threaten the person with light or smoke.
By living with various kinds of robots, our lives will become more comfortable. Robots will help us and support us as partners.

Beyond the home securital impotence of threatening an intruder with a light, Japanese robots are cool. Right under the 'partners' sentence is a picture of the slightly creepily almost good looking robot "Actroid", although she does seem to have the whole 'bluetooth headset knobber' look going on (there are actually none of those guys in Japan, for all the GPS and stuff in the phones, not that many seem to have bluetooth.) "I'd like to 'partner' her", etc.

SOIL! SOIL! SOIL! SOIL! SOIL!

"We call it....... DEATH JAZZ"



This weekend I went to see Soil and Pimp Sessions in Shinsaibashi in Osaka, on the fourth floor of a building called called 'Big Cat'. I can't generalise to every gig in particular, but there were some pretty big differences between the times I saw them in the UK and here. *The crowd went nuts from the start. Not like Cargo, where everybody's way too cool for that and it takes a while to get going, these guys went from silent to crazy in a heartbeat like it was the best gig ever from practically the first note. *No one was really drinking. The bar was in the next room, and no one left to get drinks and come back that I could see. *I could see really well. I heard before I came that Japanese people are in general shorter, but I haven't found that to be the case usually, but at this gig, I could see perfectly over everyone's heads. Lucky! *No talking. I kind of liked this one. Nobody was talking AT ALL throughout the entire gig, even between songs. It was a little... eerie, but coupled with the next thing, *amazing sound quality, best of any gig I've ever been to, the music sounded reaaallly good, especially when they cooled out as they always do on 'Mo Better Blues'.


Soil and Pimp are much more chatty at home in Japan. They also seem to talk a lot of crap. I couldn't understand most of it, but at one point, Midori, the drummer, was going off on one with a stupidly fast bossa n breaks solo, and Shacho (the 'flava flav' guy) was like

Shacho: "hang on a sec Midori". (Midori stops.) "Sounding pretty good there. What did you have for dinner?" (?!?)
Midori: (In a gangsta sounding voice) "I had......... OMURICE!"
Shacho: "I see. So I guess OMURICE MAKES AWESOME DRUMMER!"
.......
(Midori starts again)

Oh also you couldn't take pictures, which we only found out when a guy came over to stop my friend taking them. (Which is why these blurry ones are all I have). Wish I could have taken better ones, but then again was really good not to be in a situation like back home with everyone just filming it on their mobile not really looking like they were enjoying it.


The tunes they played were really cool, but as always the ones off their first album were far and away the highlights. They haven't matched the quality of songs on that one yet - although the latest one, with tracks like 'Sabotage' came pretty close. (In fact an even more disco-ey version of Last Long off Pimp of The Year - borderline speed-lounge in fact, was kinda fun.) Oh, and for soil and pimp fans, the following was pretty cool:



The smudge in the middle is Josei (keyboardist) rocking out on a keyboardy guitar thing like this during the encore, a stupidly fast version of 'fuller love', which was fun in itself, but the smudge on the far left is shacho playing the piano backing! He wasn't amazing, but it's cool he's even more talented than a regular claves and egg shaker man.

The crowd was nuts though, jumping about like no ones business, finishing off with a girl with a back covered in a massive snake tatto riding on a guys shoulders to just in front of us to flash the band. All jazz should be like this.

Saturday I went to help judge a speech contest in Sanda, at a stupidly beautiful school. Seriously, it looked like a really nice villa or something (and not in a cheesy way) with elevated wooden walkways around a lake surrounded with tall trees, a tall tower.... man. Check out these pictures:



As we got out of the car, the school orchestra was practicing the theme from Phantom of the Opera, which added to the mood. I was reminded of how lucky I am with my school and my teachers, I went with my supervisor and another teacher from the department who's cool, and we had a real laugh, some of the boring middle aged grey suits who didnt smile didnt seem so fun.

In the evening, maybe as punishment from god for enjoying such good music the night before, eating in a pretty nice restaurant in Osaka with a friend, nice decor, soft lighting... and Craig David's album on loop? With a whole bunch of identical remixes of Fill Me In at the end? Why, Japan? Did remind me of high school though, which was okay.

Sunday I engaged with the nerd in me and went to the Nintendo World exhibition in Osaka where they were showing off the Wii.



Was fun, although the queues to try stuff out were loooong. We just tried Golf and Tennis and they were really fun. Even Casey who I was with who first thing she said when we got in was 'I can't BELIEVE i'm HERE' seemed to enjoy it. Kind of made me want a Wii, but been spending too much money anyway. Might give in and get one though.


It is getting COLD round here. I have an electric futon now though, which is the business. Things are more settled into a routine, I'm no longer OMG JAPAN at everything, which is kind of nice, but also you need to look a little deeper to find something a bit more. Hopefully it'll give me motivation to study Japanese.

AWAJI AWAJI AWAJI

Went to Awaji Island this weekend for a cooking sort of thing, it was called a 'Town Meeting', no idea why. Had to meet at a market first thing Friday morning and ended up feeling reeeaaallly rough cos Thursday night went out with a friend in Kobe and we ended up sleeping about 2 hours in an internet cafe. Incidentally, on the way down to Sannomiya (central Kobe) to meet I saw for the first time a particular Japan Stereotype: salaryman reading porn on the train like it was just a novel or something. The bar we went was fantastic, little faux european joint with all the belgian beers (stupidly expensive, way more than even central London prices, but sometimes I just don't bother converting the price in my head at the time if I know it will hurt, and the place was nice enough to warrant it), and what really sold it to me was they played Snowboy and the Latin Section's "Afro Cuban Jazz" album through in its entirety twice. Thats a massive album for me, I still have the cover of it up on my wall in Harrow. Koooobeeeeeeee.


So next morning we met at a market famous for its seafood and stuff like that, wandered round and ate some food at little stalls and had the sweeeeeetest lemon drink ever served by the oldest woman ever, then went off to Awaji over the longest suspension bridge in the world. I feel like I should mention that even if its not so interesting. It was a kind of group trip, on a coach, which I normally try to avoid unless it's a unique opportunity, which this was, and I really enjoyed it anyway so maybe I'll rethink about stuff like this.



We stopped to eat our bento (packed lunch... kinda but better) at this beautiful area. Everywhere in Japan seems to be 'famous' for something. Awaji, apparently, is famous for flowers and onions. This seemed to be the only place on the whole island that had flowers though, so maybe it's all A BIG SHAM.



So the place we where headed was right on the south coast of Awaji (you come across to the north when you come over from near Kobe) so it was a long drive with lots of opportunities to stop and see stuff. When we pulled into the next place, there were cows, and my heart sank (I thought this might be where we're staying... and I'm not so much down with the cows.) But it turned out it was just a 'famous' Awaji milk place, so we just wandered round for a while, were slightly bemused by the giant milk carton, tasted some milk and patted some cows (??).



So then we got to the south coast of Awaji where we were staying. The place in the second pic is where we were staying, like a big kind of centre where different groups could go for different reasons. It was really nice, cool artwork on the walls in one place, nice food, a BED (futons are cool and all but you cant beat a bed), and a beach 10 secs from the front gate. Oh and check the pic with the two guys right, there are two grown men doing a demonstration and drawing a diagram of how to FOLD SHEETS in our room. At one point another guy jumped up to help, so THREE PEOPLE were explaining very carefully how to fold sheets. Very strange.



There was a flag ceremony thing first night (no idea why) and all the various groups staying at the place lined up and a couple from each went to help get the Japanese flag down... including a couple in multicoloured gimp suits from a volleyball team who was there... I only had my mobile so the pics are on that, but I'll try and update tomorrow when I get a mini SD reader and can transfer pics off of my phone.

We also went and planted 'famous' Awaji Onions.... hard work. Like seriously, sweatng like a pig. In November.



Saw the bridge that leads to Shikoku (big island below little Awaji), it was so beautiful round that area, my pics don't really do it justice.



So the first day we had food lectures about Japanese food, there was an awesome Japanese chef running the show, really cool guy and so skillfull. We all cooked a few Japanese dishes (I gloss over this but it took ages and was the main thing) and then had a massive meal where we ate what we cooked and shared it around. We kind of ran late, so we had roaring fires going around the place to keep it warm, a strange but cool mix of classical and 70s japanese pop music on the stereo, and I gutted my first fish, which was kinda fun. Look at him right there.



Second day we all cooked dishes from our home country and had a massive meal. The music selection reaaaallllly added to the experience, it was different from the previous day, eclectic and weird but really fun. As we ate breakfast there was a bossa/lounge version of Moon River, then as we cooked there was stuff like the solo piano version of the love theme from Final Fantasy X, a classical music version of 'you raise me up', a female lounge version of 'what a wonderful world', a strings lounge version of 'tonight tonight' from West Side Story, the classical theme that played when Cookie Monster (as Alistair Cookie) introduced Monsterpiece Theatre in Sesame Street, and a track of Oscar Peterson's. So I'm not much of a foodie, I'd happily eat flaming hot monster munch and a picnic bar for dinner every day, but this meal was stunning. I think 3 types of korean food, vietnamese food, some south african style fish, polish salady thing, my indian curry (woo), british soup, american cheese steaks, oh man.




Came back Sunday and had to go back to Kobe on Monday to get my passport stamped so I can go India at Christmas. Went and changed my phone contract to use more internet as I realised my phone has this AMAZING feature: if you take a picture of something and tell it to add GPS data to the picture, then when you're browsing the pictures in the album, you can just say 'take me to this place' and it'll give you a satnav map (except with a little man icon instead of a car if you say you're walking) and give you the route there, updating as you walk. So cool. Went down to harborland in the evening and it looks really nice at night, I'll put the pics up tomorrow when I get them off my mobile. I'm loving Kobe, really chilled city. In a cool cafe my friend knew about heard Lee Konitz' version of Favela and a string jazz version of Someday My Prince Will Come. Japan always hits me with music I love (or some lounge which I dont love but find strangely soothing here) wherever I seem to go.

Speaking of music, if all goes to plan this Friday I'll be seeing Soil and Pimp Sessions in Osaka. Woo! And in two weeks Jazztronik live in Kyoto. Woo! And next month, check this out right, in Tokyo, TOKYO JAZZ/CROSSOVER FESTIVAL 2006 that I am going to go to. Just look at the lineup (only included the ones I really love)

LIVE:
Koop
Sleep Walker ft. Bembe Segue and Yukimi Nagano
Kyoto Jazz Massive ft. Vanessa Freeman and Tasita D'mour
Mark de Clive Lowe
Cro Magnon
Frank McComb

DJs
Jurgen von Knoblauch from JAZZANOVA
Shuya Okino from KYOTO JAZZ MASSIVE
Ryota Nozaki who is JAZZTRONIK
Yukihiro Fukutomi
Karma (on COMPOST records)
DJ Kawasaki (ESPECIAL records)
Shacho (from SOIL AND PIMP SESSIONS)
Masaya Fantasista (from JAZZY SPORT crew)
Piranhahead ft. Diviniti

Music things are looking GOOD. In fact most things are looking GOOD. Except my Japanese level...