Intl Manga Museum, Clara Hill × Afronaught

This weekend went off to Kyoto to see the International Manga Musem. Woop. It's really cool, every corridor and tiny nook has got bookshelves packed in there, and EVERYWHERE you look there are people, kids to adults, crouched in the corners, sitting on ledges, steps, anywhere they can, reading manga oblivious to the world. It was the penultimate day of their special 'World Comic Exibition'. Pictures:

Sign out front. Nice 80s styles. Design a manga character thing.




DORAEMON ALL OVER THE WORLD OMG.



Me and Lena decided to take pics at the 'standing and reading corner.' I chose the comic I'm holding cos it's called DOPE, how could you not, and Lena chose hers cos "it has a monkey on the front". Both excellent reasons.


Silly amount of manga books. Korean versions of manga. Exhibition gallery. Slightly naughty comics from back in the day.



We'd hoped to visit Fushimi Inari (the temple with all the red gates) but we wouldn't have had enough time to do the whole thing before it got dark, so decided to leave it for next week and headed off to Osaka instead. Went to the Umeda Sky Building, two massive buildings connected on the 40th floor with an incredible view of the city. (the pic is between the towers looking up.)



Click on this to see a full panorama, taken with my shitty camera but it gives you an idea of the view from the calmer river side.


On the way down, they had a poster for something, with a token weird looking blonde foreigner on the front. I started to moan about how Japan always often uses weird looking foreigners for ads and stuff, as if they can't tell who is actually well presented which is odd cos Japanese people (especially compared to the foreigners who actually live in Japan) in general are more stylish and so doing this sort of makes them look bad, when i saw THIS GUY.



Thanks for undermining my argument, guy. Even his pretty rude trainers don't make up for the mickey hood.

While on the way to dinner, we passed this excellent love hotel. It's Christmas everyday at Chapel Christmas!


In the tapas bar where we had dinner, they were playing Studio Apartment's album (including the beautiful 'We Are Lonely" - seriously check this tune). That's one thing I will miss when coming back, hearing amazing music in places you wouldn't expect. It seems like there is no real underground here, everything is valued. In a standard department store, maybe the equivalent of Debenhams, I heard a Yam Who remix last week. All cafes that I choose seem to play Jazz... I don't know if they all just do or somehow the kind of place that a person who likes that sort of music would pick happens to be the sort of place that the owner would want to play that kind of music... either way I LOVE it.

Then it was off to what is probably my only Japan 'tradition' so far, drinks at Bandwagon then off to club Noon for FREEDOMTIME.

My hero, Yoshihiro Okino from Kyoto Jazz Massive, recognised me by face! I guess cos I've been at so many of his nights, all the FreedomTimes since i got here, Cool to Kool in Kyoto, Tokyo Crossover Jazz festival and at his record store, and said hello most times I could. Dude CAME OVER TO ME and shook my hand and said 'thanks for coming from so far away'. (Last time I was in his record store I told him I live in Northern Hyogo.) Lena teased me about being a bit starstruck by him, but seriously, like from the age of 14 in my room in Harrow going what is this music? its heavy!! to finding out about this whole jazz/future jazz/crossover scene to coming Japan and one of my heroes recognised me by sight? Serious.

As Shuya Okino (other half of KJM) DJ'ed, Clara Hill, beautiful female vocalist, did a live PA of 5 or 6 tunes, starting with her tune with Shuya, then some stufff from her albums, I think my favourite was Nowhere I Can Go, her tune with Atjazz. She has an AMAZING voice, when she started we were sitting upstairs and I thought that she hadn't come and they were just playing the tune. That was fun.



Then Afronaught jumped on the decks and took it all broken, of course played all the old Bugz classics but some wicked new stuff as well. Yay for Osaka. Yay for Freedomtime. Yay.


Just as a side note, the visuals at Freedom Time, projected on a large screen above the DJ booth, and on various screens in the bar, are always amazing. It's done by 'moss design unit' and the guy brilliantly calls himself 'mossolini'. Always some abstract visuals, snippets from obscure movies of nature, cities, far out stuff. Anyway this time, during one of the most bugged out broken tunes Afronaught dropped, mossolini was mixing images of young children running super fast in an African village with... the penguin dance from Mary Poppins.



Love it.

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EDIT: just found a video of the Tokyo Crossover Jazz Festival I was at last month. Anyone who likes jazz, check it, Sleep Walker and Bembe on fantastic form.

What a weird lesson

I just went to a class I practically never go to, as it's run by the worst English teacher who doesn't teach very well and commands no respect from the students. Anyway today he wanted to use me as a human tape recorder for the first years (I think my supervisor, who I do proper lessons with but is on the school ski trip now, must have asked him to use me in some way as I hardly ever go with him) so it was really dull. But one girl had graffitied over the back of her English I textbook in a big permanent pen with this:

FUCKING!!
LICKING!!
SUCKING COCK!!
BIG TITS!!
FUCKING NOW!!!!

In HUGE letters, with a couple of hearts. I was kind of shocked, and asked her where she heard that. She said 'my friend said it'. I asked where and she was like 'here in school'. ????? I asked if she understood the meaning and she said no. How weird.

And earlier, I was looking in the textbook to prepare a lesson on the next topic, 'equal roles' which is about sexual equality. Sample from the conversation:

Bob: When I get married, I want to share the household chores equally.
Megumi: That sounds wonderful!
Bob: It's the way of the future.
Megumi: I agree.

Then the book moves on to a debate about whether girls should be allowed to wear trousers to school instead of a skirt. Okay, so they're about 40 years too late with that debate, but at least they're trying, right? A reason given for the argument of why they should wear skirts, is schoolgirls look more attractive in skirts. Yes, it is being taught that a valid reason for female children to wear skirts to school is so that they look attractive. I know they have they whole schoolgirl thing over here, but endorsing it in a text book?

When I saw it I laughed out loud, and my other teacher (who's lovely, and normally very with it) asked why I found it a bit weird. I said that making schoolgirls look attractive was not really the point of uniform... Her reply was 'here in Japan many people find schoolgirls uniforms attractive. Some middle aged men buy schoolgirls' uniforms when they graduate. Of course this is not really acceptable in society.' All with a big smile on her face. And all this time I'd thought Hikami Nishi was the one bastion of normality in crazy Japan.

It's fun to spend the last of your money on music

Another Osaka weekend, was fun but not a whole lot of OMG JAPAN moments. Thu and Fri had the JET mid year conference in Kobe, 480 Jets and Japanese teachers crammed into 2 days of sessions, was nice to see some people I hadn't seen for a while. Kobe's full of cool little cafes, the whole place is more chilled than Osaka. Anyway, on Sat it was a couple of friend's joint bday celebrations at a restaurant in Osaka then on to a commercial hiphop club. Was fun, wasn't the sort of club I'd necessarily pick myself (the clue is the lack of flat caps) but enjoyed it and we all went for 5AM karaoke, where I fulfilled another of my Japan Goals by singing Michael Franks at karaoke.

HMV in Japan is SERIOUS, whilst in Kobe went to their January sale (or WINTAA BAAGENN) and picked up some fantastic music:



The new Jazztronik is great (what the hell is the cover art about though, small kid with aeroplane on her head and inappropriate slogan on tee?), the DJ Kawasaki is some deep dancefloor jazzy house, the Raphael Sebbag is like his most chilled work with United Future Organisation, the Yam Who is of course big beated funk type London productions (fantastic cover of Minnie Riperton's 'Here We Go'), the Moodymann is a classic old dark shuffley detroity house album, and the Webster mixes are interesting, I think they'll grow on me. Right now I am in music heaven and it is a Good Place. The last few times I've been in record shops, I've not even made it to the proper jazz section as I've run out of money before I've got past the club jazz section. Next month's paycheck is all for jazz.

Ordered a real BED from muji too, so from Wednesday there will be no more sleeping on the floor, I'm sick of a futon. Filled in the official form to say I'm not recontracting for a second year, so started to think about home again. Halfway through already! How did that happen.

City Weekend: That's Better

Ahhhh. Just came back from a great weekend doing city things like people are meant to. Saturday me and Lena headed into Osaka. The winter sales are now on, and they are good here, serious reductions and not just left with XXL after 15 minutes of the shop being open. We checked Comme Ca, where I picked up some cool Levi's Purple jeans. I think it's a Japan exclusive thing, they've got your regular 502s, 503s and 507s, just with purple stitching in various places on the jeans and the badge. They weren't expensive either and look pretty good. Also picked up a whole bunch of other things I can't really afford. Yay. Also managed to replace my DS which broke in India. Yay.

Then we got all arty and headed down to remo, which stands for Record, Expression and Media Organization, for some trippy art moving image things. The show was of two artists, Yoshimura Ayako and Palla. Ayako's stuff was pretty interesting, a massive projection of a massive panorama of a city, a couple of old school video slideshows (as in it seemed to be a pile of photos in front of the camera which she would remove one by one) with accompanying nature sounds in headphones, and a sort of focus on houses called 'place-home' which was all about houses with only minor differences and....supermarkets and... background chatter... I didn't really get that one, but the main reason I wanted to come was to see Palla's work. He developed from his blog, where he would post his works, (check it - it's amazing) and if you look back over the entries you can see his style develop to where itis now, intricate patterns based on urban architechtural patterns, absolutely fascinating stuff and I love it. They had a huge canvas of one of his works on the wall, and a projector rotating through his moving image videos which had shifting black and white patterns which played with your mind and I loved, headphones with baroque music for one video, german monks chanting for the next, kicking back on the couch and drinking a beer. Thats my kind of art. (there's a really interesting interview with Palla here.)



Oh, check the pattern above, its from the lifts to remo. I liked it too much.

After this went up to Shinsaibashi to check Cafe Absinthe, where the music was suitably deep jazz. Pablo came down, and we tried Absinthe cocktails. As you'd expect though, they all taste exactly like Absinthe tastes straight. I don't think there's a single flavour you could add that absinthe wouldn't swallow up in its aniseedy black hole.

Sunday checked some more sales, Beams especially, and got a cool pair of work trousers with a diamond pattern on and WOOP WOOP a pair of trainers. I've been needing a new pair for ages, just before Christmas tried to get these based on the hi top Vans from Tsumori Chisato:



But the Kobe store didn't have my size and the Osaka one wouldn't let me pay by credit card, so it was a lonely, trainerless Christmas. But the new year Beams sale saw me right with these actual Vans:



Buying is fun. Got a watch from Muji, real retro styles. Seemed pretty expensive, but I realised its an actual wind up watch! One of those that clicks about 5 times a second and you have to wind every day. How cool.



Popped into an arcade, played some Giant Robot Gundam fighting game, bet lunch on it with Lena. Neither of us really knew what was happening, giant robots, missiles, you know, traditional Japanese culture, but at the end, my screen said 'win' and hers 'lose' so I was treated to a lovely Thai lunch at Elephant Cafe.



What a great weekend. I may have no money left, but Life Is Good.

India

I'm back from India, and it was great. But the minute I got back I got tonsillitis. Rubbish. So I'm sitting here feeling pretty shit, so I won't type much, just show pictures of the village, cute nephews and nieces and a couple of Calcutta (sorry, Kolkata.)



As you can see, our village is pretty rural. No one from our family lives there full time anymore, though a lot of my cousins were brought up there. Most live abroad or in the cities and come back for Puja or for a family get together when we go. Everybody in the family loves it and speaks of it in hushed reverential tones though.

This is the post office:



And this was my dad's first school:



It was hard to leave, I didn't reealise that I missed my family but it turned out I do. And India's such a warm place, everything bustling along, everyone interested in whats going on, having loud discussions about anything and everything. Anyway, back to Japan.

UPDATE:

heres a small video I made when we were driving in India. While not the worst that Indian roads get, it illustrates a few points. Watch at the beginning for the woman in the orange sari who we are going to run over until a split second before collision takes a nonchalent step to the left. Then at 0:41, the old man who steps out slowly and casually right in front of the car, followed by a GOAT doing exactly the same thing 15 seconds later. And finally theres the good old bullock cart, a mainstay of West Bengal roads. I wouldn't have the guts to drive here.



Also added an Indian header to the random rotating blog header. There are now 17! Collect them all! Trade with your friends!