LAU

The End

2007-08-09T23:10:00.000+09:00

I'm writing this from my room in the the Hankyu New Hotel Annex in Osaka. I'm leaving Japan at 10 tomorrow morning. Saaaaad. Feel really sad right now but fortunately have had a couple of things and people around to take my mind off it today. Figured it was important to finish the blog off in Japan rather than back home, I want it to be a complete record of the year for me to look back on later. I'll recap from last week.

THURSDAY & FRIDAY
Gave my car back to the garage Thursday then went for a meal with my supervisor and his fiancee before staying over at his place. Really going to miss them, my supervisor added so much to my time in Japan.

Friday was my final day of work. Very sad and very busy. Went for lunch with Kocho sensei (head teacher) which was kind of fun, and was still running round like a mad thing 5 mins before I had to leave. All the teachers came down to wave me off and my supervisor gave me a lift to the station where we said a sad goodbye before I jumped on a train to go south towards the city to see a friend I hadn't seen for ages which was great, and brought back a lot of good memories.

SATURDAY
Saturday headed into Tokyo and met up with Andrea, a friend from Uni who lives in Yokohama. Wandered round the city for a bit before heading to an early Bon Odori celebration, meeting some of her friends, and having a drink before heading out into Roppongi. Hmmm. The crowd we were with was really great and I had a great time, but I can't say I really like Roppongi as a place. Glad I went once though.

SUNDAY
Running only on a couple of hours sleep, went to meet Maho at the edge of Tokyo for a picnic with her and seven of her coworkers. This was great summer fun, playing ball games while kids ran around with nets trying to catch bugs and paddling in the stream. Maho always invited me to places which feel homely. Maho is great.

After this, went to an Izakaya with a couple of other people from Nottingham and a friend of Maho's who I've met a few times this year and ate far too much and very cheaply as friend's sister worked there. Big fun :)

MONDAY
In the morning, wandered around the Keio Plaza in Shinjuku, the same streets I wandered in the day we arrived, the same shops etc, trying to see what felt different. Not sure I have a definate answer but it was a nice thing to do. In the afternoon met up with a Simon, a mate who I met at the London training but haven't seen for a year, and Andrea again and had a wander. Checked all the shops I like in Aoyama and made another trip to Yoshitomo Nara's A to Z cafe which was nice. Said goodbye to Tokyo for the final time and headed back to Osaka on the shinkansen.

TUESDAY
Basically spent the day wandering Osaka in the baking heat. Walked from North to South more than once, all the places I like. Popped in to Especial Records (the record label I love, run by Kyoto Jazz Massive's Yoshihiro Okino, the DJ who runs the Freedom Time night) and he remembered me and was all like 'hey man'. This is very big for me. He said come to the next Freedom Time but when I said I was going back to England he gave me a couple of little badges and stuff and a cool Freedom Time mobile strap to take back. Was stupidly happy. Wandering back up towards Umeda, I asked myself why I'd never given him a demo tape, as he recognised me and was so friendly... so I went to Yodobashi, got a blank CD and a pen to write on it, went back to my locker in Shinsaibashi and got my powerbook out, went and sat in the cool little 'Continue Cafe' in Minami Horie ready to burn a demo... until I realised that 99% of my tunes are on my external HD. Shit! Still, got 2 (Late Nights and Pan Dance from my myspace page), a couple of beats and the Roots Manuva remix I did, bunged them on the CD, took them over, and talked about making music with Yoshihiro Okino from Kyoto Jazz Massive for a few minutes. Highlight of my Japan trip? Definitely up there.

WEDNESDAY
Shino came over from Tokyo to have a little Kansai trip (was also nice to take my mind off the sadness of leaving). We did most of the places I know and like, the Sky Building, Kirin Plaza and Dotonbori, Shinsaibashi covered shopping arcade, Amemura, Orange Street, little bar 'Bandwagon', a bunch of cafes. A new place for me was a cool little street just 2 mins from Dotonbori called Hozenji-Yokocho, which is paved like a street from the old days with a cool little water shrine where you chuck water over various statues. Funfun.

THURSDAY
On Thursday (which is today as I write this), headed into Kobe where I ended my mobile contract (and started to get really sad), went and ate Kobe beef for the first time at Wakkoqu, which was soft and melty.

Wandered around Meriken Park and Harborland with Shino before heading back to Osaka where there was just time for some Macha sweets before seeing her off.
Really pretty sad and with a big lump in my throat by this point, I rode the Kobe line all the way to Sannnomiya and back just for old time's sake, taking some pics on the way. I wanted to go all the way to Okubo, where I went a fair few times during winter and have some great memories of, but time didn't permit.

Came back to meet a friend in Osaka, catch up (again, nice to take my mind off leaving), eat my last meal (I bought from a conbini the same things I used to eat almost every day in Aogaki... I like being sentimental.) I'm feeling pretty sad about leaving. I'm excited about the future, and London and stuff, but there are some great people I will miss, and planning and doing my little trips around Japan has been so much fun this year. Riding the train to new places all the time has been great. I can't believe it's over. Sad. つらいね、ほんまに。

Absolutely wonderful year. I can't think of any better way to end than that.

Lessons Learnt This Week

2007-08-02T12:00:00.000+09:00

*Starting to pack at midnight the night before the courier company comes to pick up your stuff is not a good idea.
*Onsens are quite cool, maybe I shouldn't have left it til 2 days before moving out to go to one.
*I have too many jeans and tee shirts and still dress a bit too much like a student. I am slowly changing this.
*A month's salary in cash may look like a lot, but after spending hundreds of pounds sending stuff home it quickly runs out.
*My predecessor was rubbish. She left so much junk around in cupboards I didn't open for a year which I've had to go through and sort out for the new ALT.
*I still am not used to the idea I'm leaving. Hopefully it'll hit me before I actually get home.

Movies, and being bored at work

2007-07-27T11:57:00.000+09:00

This is frustrating. I have absolutely NOTHING to do at work as I'm leaving (normally I at least can start planning next term’s lessons, or talking with teachers about what we're going to do) and a million things to do at home (tidying, packing, sending boxes...) but as I've used all my annual leave up I'm stuck in the staffroom doing very little. Except making pointless blog posts like this.

I've been watching loads of Japanese movies recently. Something to do in the week, and although you can't really pigeonhole a whole country's cinema, there do seem to be a lot of nice vague pondering films which I like.

Anyway, I rented them all from Tsutaya, and have burned most of them to my hard disk, but wanted to buy some before I leave as a ripped file on your HD can't compare to having the real physical product on your shelf. Thing is, although most things here are similarly priced or cheaper, DVDs and CDs are generally more expensive. DVDs rarely, if ever, drop below £15, and newer releases are over £20. So I thought I'd check on Amazon UK to see if any of the movies have been released worldwide, as I know some of them (Dare mo Shiranai and Tony Takitani in particular) have an international reputation. So anyway, on the UK site they were both available for £7.50 ish, way less than the Japanese ones. (I bet you're thinking what an interesting story this is.) Anyway, the point of it was, the trade off was that the cover was kind of shit compared to the Japanese one. I checked a couple of other movies (I have nothing to do at school and was killing time... it's not my hobby) and in most cases the Japanese was better. And I feel bad for the Americans who always seem to get terrible covers. I guess maybe design is more important in Japan than in Europe? (and more important in Europe than the US?) Although that's quite a broad statement to make. What's also interesting is that most of the Western movies I've seen have the same (or really similar) covers to the UK versions (don't know about America) so I wonder why the designers abroad seem to want to play around with covers so much?

The order - although it's obvious - is JP, UK, US. I love the JP cover of this one.

Think the UK and JP covers of Nobody Knows are equally good, although the JP one sums up the feeling of the movie better. The US gets a bum deal again.

Think the UK has the best design for Zatoichi. America's effort isn't that bad this time compared to Japan's which is surprisingly not that good.

The things you do when you're bored at work... This post... lots of pictures, America bashing, pointlessness... I think I have it all covered.

Me, at work today.

My School

2007-07-26T19:03:00.000+09:00

My blog has mainly been about the places I've been in Japan, which has always been at the weekends as there's not a whole lot round here. So this post is just about what I've done Mon-Fri, at my little school which I'm rather fond of. So, this last year, I have been working here:

with classes like this:

spending a fair bit of time in here:

working with teachers like this:

[A side note about the social studies teacher, the guy who is left on the second row giving the thumbs up and with the anpanman on his desk: like a lot of young teachers, he hasn't yet passed the full teaching exam, and so still is technically a trainee. I can't see what difference this makes in workload, they can be form tutors just like regular teachers, they work just as long hours, the only difference I think is in pay and conditions. So anyway, the teaching exam, which is only held once a year, was on the same day as a baseball match for the school team (which he coaches), and we're not brilliant at baseball or anything, it was the second round of the national high school baseball championships which is normally as far as we go. The guy is so dedicated that he gave up the chance to pass the exam and become a fully fledged teacher just to attend the match as coach. Then later on over dinner Mitsutake sensei told me he did the same thing last year! That is love for the school. (We lost the match by the way.)]

and teaching kids like this: (I know it's wrong to have favourites, but these kids are, they're from my Sogo Eigo class or the Paper Debate writing class and so feature the creators of Sou Chan, Konnyakun, Balloon Chan and Tanbo Bros).

It's been fun. The kids are pretty low level and not all that interested in English to be honest, but they're really good natured (in general, a couple of the new first years have dreams of being rudeboys but compared to London it's nothing) and if you put the effort in to a lesson they'll always give it a go and often surprise themselves.

There's something very sweet about being in a small school, as I think I mentioned before, you get to know all the kids pretty well (which is a massive plus when getting them to work in class) and everything feels small and cute. Our soccer club had one member! He used to disappear for two hours and read manga/do kickups in his Celtic shirt.

I'm not going to become a teacher but the experience of working in education has been great. Working around kids has been brilliant, just like those 'use your head. teach' government ads with all the slogans about working with kids being interesting and never stagnant. It's true! I've gained a lot from my year here and I'd like to think the kids have got a little something from it as well.

Me and Taro, (I'd go as far to say something terrible like 'partners in crime') about to teach English real nice like.

Club Theme Songs

2007-07-25T23:02:00.000+09:00

Or something like that. It seems I'm not the only one to love Club Noon in Osaka, Sunaga t (him of the fantastic mix albums 'worldline' and serious jazz dance dj) wrote a song for it called High at Noon. Got to say though, loving the light jazz beat in the background (not very clear on the mp3 sample) and the chant bit, but really not feeling the nasally vocalist (I've heard her on some other stuff with Hajime Yoshizawa or Jazztronik or someone, but I can't say I'm a fan.) In particular, the piano solo on this is such a nice example of smoky floor jazz done right that I uploaded my own little sample. Persevere past the singer to hear a deep solo. Anyway, it's an ode to such a cool venue I can forgive it.

Also, 'The Room' in Tokyo, a fantastic small club right at the heart of the jazz crossover scene, has a very chilled (and admittedly better) song written for it by (my hero) Hajime Yoshizawa, just called The Room. Had a couple of great nights there and might head back again if there's time. I'll miss these places.

Tamba Tourist Board

2007-07-20T18:25:00.000+09:00

Today was the last day of school with the kids, and I want to make a big post about the school, but I'm off to Osaka in half an hour to hear Theo Parrish DJ at Grand Cafe! Woo. So don't have time. But I'll start off with this that I meant to post a couple of weeks back but kept forgetting.

As a final fun project for my Sogo Eigo class, I had them make tourism pamphlets about the town. Just simple things, creating a slogan, information about where is a nice area, what to see and what you can do here etc. (In fact one of the students wrote about Miwakare Park which I had never heard of the week before I went.) Anyway they seemed to enjoy it, but the bit they enjoyed most was designing a mascot for the town. We had a little brainstorm in English about what makes a good character, then they all got really into this (including taking it home to finish, which they NEVER do) and got really creative. I present sogo eigo's characters (and also the slogans they wrote for the town) along with the little introductions they wrote for them:

Let's Go Hikami with Sou Chan!

SOU CHAN
He is very busy. He is always running. His name is Sou-chan. He is researching more things about Hikami. He has girl friend and rival. His girl friend call Ayumi chan. His rival call Skipkun. His pet call Jagapet. Jagapet is alien.

Sou chan was far and away the best. And the girls decided to draw the other characters on the back of their pamphlet too. They gave me the pamphlet, and also therefore I assume all the rights to the character. I hope one day to become rich off the back of Sou chan merchandising.

Aogaki: The Konnyaku Is Waiting!

KONNYAKUN (a play on Konnyaku, the food, and Kun, the suffix for young boys)
His eyes made from diamond.
His hobby is dance. His body is soft, but he gets angry when touch. Please be careful.

Konnyakun is awesome. I would like to draw your attention to the small konnyakun in the top right poking his head around the corner. On the other pages of the pamphlet, around the town information and places to see, they drew loads of little konnkyakuns poking out from various places.

Hikami: Frank Town, Come Down

Balloon Chan.
This is Yume Town balloon everyday look to Hikami Town. Name is "balloon chan". This is from "Jamaica". He is afraid of high places. In child hood he was picked up in slum.

I feel Balloon Chan, while not the most visually pleasing character, is a complex creature, with a difficult back story and a fear which is kind of inconvenient given his occupation.

Aogaki - Environment No. 1

He is mountain. The tree is old brother. He makes clean air at town. His hobby is look at stars.

This one was just too cute. The tree on his head is his brother.

Let's Go Tanba! Let's Go Tanbo!

TANBO BROTHERS (means rice field brothers)
Taue man plant is Nae. Taue man will die without water. Inekari man cut is Ine. In winter is sleeping. Tanbo rhythm [musical note] tanbo rhythm [musical note]

These characters are great. There should be a company making Sou Chan and Konnyakun goods seriously. I'll leave you with another picture of Sou Chan.

Fukuyama and Kyoto Final Trip

2007-07-17T15:54:00.000+09:00

Weekend of many things.

Friday night, rushed straight from work to the station to go to Osaka to get the Shinkansen over to Fukuyama. It was Black Friday, black themed event which Trish was organising, which was fun. Saw Rose for the last time in Japan, sad (she's one of the first friends I made at the London orientation... over a year ago now! and we sat together on the flight out... which still feels like last week!)

Saturday was a crazy day for weather. Japan's been having a bad time of it recently from mother nature. The kids were sent home early on Friday due to a typhoon warning, and there was the big earthquake yesterday (which delayed all the trains home). Fukuyama was mad with rain and wind and eventually in the afternoon we caught the Shinkansen over to Kyoto. In Kyoto they have the Gion Matsuri all through July, and it was 3 days before the big parade, I don't know what they would have done on this night, the roads were closed off so I assume something, but the rain was torrential and unrelenting.

After dinner at a very chilled izakaya we wandered around in the streets for a while (with a quick stop to play some Bomberman in a game center) before heading to a very small but cool club called Collage where Yoshihiro Okino was doing a Brazilian night. It was Kyoto Jazz Meeting, a monthly (or so) night, sister party of the Tokyo Jazz Meeting we went to last month, but this was a special Brazilian version called Tokyo Brazil Meeting. I guess being the height of summer the thinking was it would suit the summery vibe but in reality it provided a musically sunny escape from the gloomy weather outside!

Yoshi, as I've said before, is such a great DJ and he stuck with the Brazilian classics, I recognised less than if it were more dancey (not to say it wasn't as good), and there was some Djavan, some Sabrina Malheiros, Marcos Valle, and he gradually gradually started to drop more beat heavy tunes til around 3 it was half dancey. (Oh yeah and 'Sombre Guitar' - from being an obscure tune for me I've heard it out everywhere this year) Really good music, and got a fantastic mix CD of classic Brazilian music with entry! Have to check with some people what the tunes are when I'm back in London as some of them are seeerious. Great night, good crowd who knew and loved the tunes including everyone surprisingly knowing the unusual double claps in Guida de Palma's 'New Day'. I realised another thing I like about Japanese clubs. At first I thought they all had amazing soundsystems (and they probably do, they don't do things by half here) but it's not that, it's that the music is quieter as people aren't shouting on the dancefloor. If you're there for the music, this is awesome.

I think this is Yoshihiro's assistant/girlfriend/groupie/friend or something as I've seen her with him at other events. I can't imagine many other countries where sleeping on a bench in the dingy corridors outside a club at 3 in the morning would be safe. Go Japan!

Next day, we went to check Tadao Ando designed Time's Gallery, but the cafe was closed so had breakfast in Ogawa Coffee instead. Really nice coffee shop chain, I mean chains will always be similar, but it has a nicer feeling than your generic lowest common denominator Starbucks. After, checked Time's properly. Apart from an Evisu shop and a Onitsuka Tiger shop, theres nothing really there, which is probably bad for the owners, but it gives it a really cool feeling to have a wander round, it feels kind of cool and empty.

Wandered round some backstreets, where outside their houses some people seemed to have done some impressive things with bamboo (left) before doing a little shopping in some highstreet shops. (I'm gonna miss places like journal standard, ships and united arrows... but maybe not the prices.) Drank some bubble tea for the first time and had some cheap conveyer belt sushi for lunch, including my first taste of horse (right).

Wandered down the main street, which had now been closed again as it was getting dark. Loads of people, some of who were wearing yukata and eating festival food. And I mean LOADS.

There were people in the floats ringing their bell things, but they weren't moving as it was still 2 days before the parade.

There were all the festival foods out, so bought a sausage on a stick and started the walk back to the station. Took quite a long time, but nice to wander through the city for the final time (I won't go back to Kyoto in my last 3 weeks) taking it all in, before getting a final chance to admire the wonderful architecture of the station. We chilled there for a while before saying goodbye to Trish for the last time and leaving Kyoto for the last time. Saaaaad.

Just popped to Osaka as I had some stuff to do the next day, and lay in my capsule thinking how change is crap. But also exciting. But crap. But exciting. But crap.

As it was a bank holiday, used the day just to kit myself out salaryman style in preparation for the job hunting when I come back. Last week with the kids this week... Expect an update about my (wonderful) school soon.

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Nothing to do with this weekend, but finally figured out what the tune was I posted about back in November or something, "Soul Fever" (Remix) by Simbad from France. You have no idea how happy this makes me! And surprisingly the release on Raw Fusion is available on the iTunes store! Cue a good couple of hours of the thing on loop with the bass up. I guess thats what we do for entertainment in Aogaki...

A Lazy Weekend

2007-07-11T13:46:00.000+09:00

This weekend was one of my rare weekends sticking around here in Tamba. Saturday was my friend's 'Wedding Congratulations Party', cos she's moving to Nagoya to get married next week. Was sad to say bye as I get on really well with her, she's helped me with my Japanese loads and, er, there aren't many people in Tamba so somebody as nice as that is even more rare.

I was a little bit worried earlier in the week as I ordered a little present online from the many-times-mentioned here plusminuszero and was worried thought that might not arrive in time, so I wrote a note on my door with a stickman in my best Japanese saying "Hi delivery man guy, really sorry but I work at a school near here, is there any chance you could deliver it there instead?" and this being Japan where things just work it turned up! Wooo.

Meg's friend Eri's husband had, for the party, climbed up the mountain they live next too and chopped and then scraped out the ridges of a Bamboo tree, to make a long thin half pipe. We played this game where you make a mini water run from it and two ladders, let water flow from a hose down the bamboo half pipe, then let noodles 'surf' down the water as people try and pick them up with chopsticks and eat them (after dipping it in the bowl of light sauce in your other hand.) This was actually really fun, and made ridiculously difficult when segments of mandarin were sent down at stupidly high speeds. Eri's too cute baby Shuma helped too with his dad (see below).

Went for a wander to Miwakare Park, which is a beautiful little park in Tanba. (For some reason there's a panorama of it here.) Apparently the lowest point of water in Japan, from here water flows to both the Seto Inland Sea in the south and the Japan sea in the north. I know you wanted to know that!

Playing dodgeball with some friends, a baby, and a dog (full size dog!!) in a beautiful little park surrounded by mountains. Tamba's not all bad.

Sunday just started chucking my stuff in boxes. Oh saaaaad - oh wait I said all that last week.

And work - work! I am really busy in my last 2 weeks with the kids. Between final elementary school visits, setting and marking exams, doing special maths lessons in English with the maths teacher, summer essay classes with the writing class and loads of goodbye lessons I'm trying to fit in figuring out how to leave here with the minimum hassle. I think it's basically busy busy from here on out.

Things Wot I Like and Nara

2007-06-24T17:42:00.001+09:00

Been a couple of weeks since I updated. Recently did a couple of my favourite things in Japan, possibly for the last time... saaaaaad.

WE ARE KOBE - My last Vissel match
Went to my final Vissel game weekend before last (J1 has a break in the summer, I think it's for the Asia Cup). Sad :( I think I only have two of my own 'traditions' in Japan, one is Freedom Time, the other is Vissel games with my supervisor and friend, Taro and his brother Yoji.

Match itself was immense, Vissel had lost 3 in a row so were getting kind of desolate, played awfully first half, second half completely different - went into added time at 2-2 and in the last 10 secs we got a penalty and scored! Place went nuts. Fittingly, it was scored by Okubo, who is one of the more senior members of the team, and shares his name with a place I used to go to more frequently towards the beginning of the year... Ah man, how can I be feeling nostalgic about my time in Japan already??

I love the vissel supporters song (and find myself singing it off key all the time)

Song kind of makes me sad, as it was like my third week in Japan I went to my first game with Taro and his bro, and Vissel and he's really been a good friend over the year and every month we've gone, it's been such a constant thing... aaaah sad!
I LOVE the lyrics. I can't tell if they're cheesy in Japanese, but they seem really nice to me (and I probably translated them wrong)

In this town, our town
You were born on that day
Whatever happens, we won't forget [these two lines refer to the 1995 earthquake]
Together, we were wounded
Together, lets get up
And from that, and forever
Lets walk forward
Beautiful port town
We want to protect you
for as long as we live
we want to love you Kobe!

Funfun.

NARA - Temples and Deer
This weekend headed off to Nara. Nara is the old old capital, home to a lot of temples and shrines, and deer! I quote Wikitravel: According to legend, the god of the Kasuga Taisha came riding a white deer in the old days, so the deer enjoy protected status as envoys of the god; however, based on their current behavior, either the deer have lost the job, or the god has taken an extremely passionate interest in biscuits from tourists (¥150), empty food wrappers and harassing shopkeepers. I can't believe it took me so long to go as it's much nearer to me that lots of places I've been, only takes a bit l0nger to get to than Kyoto, a 35 minute train ride from Namba. We rode a non JR train there, which was an alien and scary experience.

The feeling is different from Kyoto, the other famous temple town. Whereas Kyoto has the feeling of shrines tucked away, of things just out of sight, Nara feels a lot more open plan, with most things being in the main park, which spreads out over a large area with paths and roads in it.

We saw the Daibutsu, the largest Buddha in Japan inside the largest wooden building in the world, Kofukuji, a massive tall pagoda, a cute hexagonal building on Sagi pond, and Kasuga Taishen in the middle of a cool forest. Lovely town to wander round, and ate this really delicious little sweet snack, warabi mochi, from this cool guy running a little stall. One of those 'wouldn't it be cool to have his job' moments but it would probably be shit.

I know I always go on about Japan playing amazing music in normal places, but this one takes the biscuit. Trish wanted to pop into this girls clothes shop, just your normal cool looking little boutiquey place. On the stereo, though, was Gerardo Frisina's (Italian Nu-Jazz) version of Gods Of The Yoruba, the old Horace Silver jazz tune from 'African Ascension' which was the first time I ever met and played music with Dex, Curtis and Dom played too, when I was 14... biiiiig tune . Japan reads my mind! How? Everytime??

I'm going to miss taking weekend trips to places like this. Perhaps I'll take up an interest in home counties' churches...

I made some new friends (or was attacked by hungry deer, depending on how you look at it), then there was just time for us to pop into a game centre to play two games from my childhood, Twinbee and Puzzle Bobble (oddly seems to have been a whole bunch of nostalgic things threaded into this weekend) before heading back to the station to go back to Osaka.

FREEDOMTIME
You knows it. Nother little monthly session from the crew at Especial Records. Domu was the guest DJ (West London wooo!) and him and Yoshihiro Okino made the place feel good until early morning. In Yoshi's warm up set, he dropped some killers, some classic Mark de Clive Lowe, and with his decks worked an on the spot mash up of Seiji's awesome 3dom with Kaidi and Dego's 'Got Me Puzzled' - heavy. Also a nice house mix of Gigi's 'Gudfella' I'd not heard before - but then the biig tune to end his set before Domu came on, the big Kyoto Jazz Massive tune 'Eclipse', from the year 2000, seriously nostalgic, this tune just reminds me of the days of Whitmore and winter evenings sat messing around with Logic and playing the keyboard and jumping out of straight jazz and finding there was this whole world of music out there and wondering what the hell it was like... My ex brought it back on EP from Japan and I loved it. It's completely a product of its time and might sound a bit dated to some ears, but everything tied up with it means I'll always love it. Their other one from that time, Eclipse, was much deeper, but it's a classic and hit me hard back then. Can't deny the funk basslines and you got Hajime Yoshizawa on keys! Maaaaan I Love freedomtime.

Domu has produced a new album with the singer Pete Simpson who was there with him, and this guy's voice.... Wow. At first I thought he must be miming (although I doubt anyone in this kind of music would do that), as how could a guy just be standing there so casually in his baggy Rocawear t-shirt, looking like a friendly guy from down the pub, effortlessly improvising over Domu's beats, switching in and out of falsetto, following twisty chord patterns smoother than a released record? I am picking up their album for sure. You can hear a bit of a slightly deeper more laid back number here.

Pete Simpson stuck around for most of Domu's set, adding vocal improvisations to a bunch of tunes which was really cool - notably Soil and Pimp (can't remember which tune it was), sounded great. Only downside - there's a remix of the sublime Sombre Guitar by Danser's Inferno floating around (DJ Matzz played it at Tokyo Jazz Meeting as well) which uses the opening horns run (link is the original) - and that's it - for the entire housey track. I've nothing against remixes, but when you take something so good and just tease the crowd with the opening 4 bars looped around... it's kind of annoying. (One good thing though, searching for a sample of the track to link to I found that the compilation it's on, Jazz Bizniz 2, has been reissued. It's taken 5 years but I'll soon finally have a copy of this tune! Woo!) Domu also bizarrely dropped the gatchaman theme (???) and countless great tunes I had no idea about. Great night :)

Ah! It's fun being クロスオーバージャズシーンマニア.

Sunday just wandered round Osaka checking the Springtime sales and things. Wandered over to Orange Street, Southwest of Amemura, just beyond Minami Horie, and checked some really cool interior design places. Might pick up a knick knack or two for (hopefully) when I move out back in London.

Oh so sad leaving so soon...

TOKYO: Right Here On The Scene

2007-06-18T17:51:00.000+09:00

I've just come back from what was probably my best weekend in Japan so far. Jam packed around Tokyo, lots of fun things, but mainly music, Music, MUSIC! And Ghibli museum! and Bape! and ramen! and Tsumori Chisato! Big fun.

Jumped on the earliest train I could and ran to catch the right Shinkansen at Shin Osaka. Headed to Shibuya, where we were staying in a cool little hotel right down the street from 'The Room' called Granbell. The rooms were very small, but really well designed, lots of things from the design shop ±0 that I was looking for last time I was in Tokyo but never found. I include a picture of the toilet's remote, not as this is unusual in iteself (even my home toilet has the same remote albeit without the nice silver finish) but that in addition to adjusting the seat's temperature and bidet stuff you FLUSH IT via remote. Amazing.

We ate ramen and gyoza in a tiny little cramped second floor noodle bar before heading out for

GROOVEMAN SPOT @ FAMILY, SHIBUYA
Club Bar Family is a tiny spot tucked away in Shibuya. The event was Cross, a monthly deep hiphop night. The crowd was pretty muted, more head nodders than dancers, (army style caps and fat glasses in full effect, myself included) but the music was wicked. Grooveman Spot spun his deep dark take on hiphop, some familiar songs, I mean within the set he dropped Pharrel (can't get enough of 'Big White Spaceship') Common, Kweli, Gagle, Mos Def, but these are just the classics, also a whole bunch of minimalist stuff I didn't know and occasionally a deep jazz number. Really good vibe. After his set there was a live set from a Japanese hip hop group called Full Member, they seemed quite good. Not Gagle good or anything, but way better than the poppy j-hip hop.

Saturday we got up and wandered through Shibuya up to Aoyama. Finally found the design shop ±0 (I think I must have walked past it before, it's really hard to notice) and though it was a bit smaller than I thought, the stuff was stylish in a minimalistic way. (8 inch CRT screens, retro style torches - and MD players!) Went for lunch at a Brazilian buffet which was good and did some shopping. After visiting a few Bape shops -no longer called Busy Work Shops, which I thought was a fantastic name- recently (Aoyama, Fukuoka, Kanazawa, Hong Kong, Shizuoka) I finally gave in and bought a pair of Bape roadstas, in the Osaka colourway (yay Kansai.)

We walked up to Harajuku station to take the train over to Mitaka to go to

三鷹の森ジブリ美術館
or the Ghibli Museum. This is in a western suburb of Tokyo, a short train ride from Shinjuku on the Chuo line. It's a wonderful place, although the museum itself is not massive (which is kind of nice, a huge Ghibli museum wouldn't feel right somehow) it's the feeling which is the thing, all the street signs, paths, buildings, staircases, staff (in their work uniforms) could have come straight from a Ghibli movie. There's a room which is like a love letter to the history of animation, with exhibits about projectors and film rolls, an amazing set of spinning models with a strobe light to give the illusion of motion and other bits and pieces from the past, all using the Ghibli characters.

There's a room with sketches from all the movies around, set in a very European style which is designed to be Miyazaki's ideal work environment (it looked surprisingly similar to my Grandad's house in Suffolk, which I loved!). It's interesting to see when European stuff comes back through the filter of what Japan likes about it, they pick up on some different points.

They have a nice little cafe, all in the Ghibli style, with pictures from Porco Rosso around. There's also a little gift shop, which is nice, but a bit small and VERY crowded. They didn't have any goods related to my favourite Ghibli movie, 海がきこえる.

There's a small cinema there, called Cinema Saturno, which was showing a short film featuring Mei from Totoro, and a small journey she goes on meeting many different catbuses (including a funny CatShinkansen). Cute.

We headed back to Harajuku to look at some shops, and wandered down the small streets running parallel to Omotesand. We stopped at the KDDI Design Studio (they are one of the big three mobile phone companies) , where you can see the latest mobile phones available, and on the third floor do some little fun things with cameras and such, like filming you for a sec and saying what type of person you are. I was 'the store employee who warms people with his smile.' Get in.

After wandering down Omotesando, wandered more up Aoyama Dori to the start of the road in Gaienmae, where two roads meet. The building on the corner here has some nice little places in it. We ate at a little gyoza place run by a little ojiisan by himself on the third floor overlooking the street.

Then headed for a coffee to a bar I wanted to check up two more floors called Office (really cool bar). Wonderful view, watching the night time traffic flow west down towards Aoyama and then away to Shibuya.

After this, time to get nerdy in the Sega game centre with an old school shooter (which we died in like 5 seconds) and a bizarre but fun Lupin the 3rd typing game, before heading off to

TOKYO JAZZ MEETING @ THE ROOM, SHIBUYA
This was AMAZING. I loooove The Room. Tiny tiny club, we arrived as the music was old school funk. (For the jazz fans, they do a great cocktail called a 'Love Supreme', hehe). Soon DJ Matz jumped up and took it straight up jazz with occasional latin flavours. (Billed as 'Quasimode Special Selection') Seriously, it was awesome to see a stylish little club jam packed with a cool crowd (jazz style hats on almost every head) dancing to straight up jazz, not housey jazz, not broken beat though I have love for those too, but Horace Silver, Chick Corea, and loads of horn led serious jazz burners that I would love to know about. Serious, serious set, and Matz was loving the vibe too. This alone would have been enough for an amazing night but it was just getting started.

There were covered instruments around the edge of the dancefloor, and around 2.30am they uncovered them, and the band Quasimode set up, right in the dancefloor, literally in the middle of people. (Very trusting!) Quasimode are a 4 piece, piano trio + percussion, but had guests from different bands so there were always a few horns (often three saxes and a trumpet - a serious blowing session!). Anyway, they started playing literally a foot from the edge of the crowd, and we were basically almost standing in the band.

The tunes were modern jazz in a hard bop-ish style, but free-er on the improvisation, and after every track the band's line up rotated, it was like a Tokyo jazz all star session, players from Quasimode, Slowly, Soil and Pimp, all that was missing were Sleepwalker, who were in Kyoto playing a party for their new collection LP. Beautiful sounds. Highlights included a version of Love Is Everywhere and the final tune, a massive version of Herbie's Maiden Voyage that became a funk jam towards the end.

This drummer turned up late and seemed a little drunk. Absolutely smashed it though.

The horns.

See how the crowd was basically standing IN the band.

Midori from Soil and Pimp sitting in on the session.

I want those glasses.

Still giddy from the music, we spilled onto the Shibuya streets which were now fully light. Jazz til sunup. BIG.

Sunday we rested a bit before heading over to Ginza. Looked at the Sony Building, which is their flagship store showing all their latest developments and history (including this TINY laptop which apparently dates from 2002), and is pretty good.

Tried to go to the GGG (ginza graphic gallery) but it was closed, sad. Looked at the Nicolas G Hayek Center, which is a unique watch shop where the large lifts are in the foyer level, like little showrooms, one for each brand, and if you like the stuff it whisks you away to the right floor. The Swatch one (all the others are ridiculously priced luxury brands) has a fascinating lift just entirely covered in watches.

Wandered over to Yurakucho, passing by Mikimoto's very interesting looking Ginza2.

In Yurakucho, there is Muji's worldwide flagship store. It's kind of the wrong way round, but Muji always reminds me of home as I always thought muji was cool in high school. Anyway this store has everything that muji makes and is nice to wander round (including Muji Meal, which is exactly as you'd expect a restaurant from muji to be.)

On the other side of the train tracks there's Tokyo International Forum, a really nice structure. Just had a wander through it and the little market that was going on outside before heading back to Ginza station.

Went over to Meguro for the final event, where just beforehand I picked up these CDs in HMV:

The aforementioned Sleepwalker collection CD (with a bonus disc), including a vocal version of Kaze with my favourite vocalist Yukimi Nagano, and Gilles Peterson's Brownswood Bubblers For Japan. The Peterson is already out in the UK but the Japanese edition has a whole extra CD with more songs (one that was on both is a great one from Benny Sings, the Amsterdam singer who EVERYBODY likes, seriously, everybody I've introduced him to loves him). Then over to

BOP CITY @ MEGURO SHOKUDO
Night called Bop City! We entered the small club as they were dropping Roy Ayers' 'Running Away' (always a good start) . Quickly the DJ took it broken beat, and the dancers on the floor started whirling and twisting - these guys are SERIOUS, doing a kind of mix of jazz dance, breakdancing, and free improvisation. There was a 'dance battle' which was the main event, in a jazz dance, Stax Groove style and people started warming up, doing all kinds of weird stretches and things over the floor.

The MC started the event. He was a pretty chatty guy (who liked making a few jokes) and he was like 'we're all regular guys. We've all got normal jobs. Even I've got a normal job. Even the DJs got a normal job. So this is our way to relax unwind.' And WHAT a way.

Video camera, let alone my little point and shoot digicam, cannot really capture how cool this dancing looks. I noticed when I was looking at the little screen then away to the real thing, how much better it is. Every little note in a run or ride in a bar can be interpreted with a little movement, and the crude overall lines the camera shows doesn't capture the subtlety in the midst of the fiery movement at all (and then youtube halves the frame rate making it even worse - although watching it on the actual youtube site [just click on the main area] seems to improve that, no idea why). But it does give you 4 minutes of baaaaaaad jazz. With all that said, here's a few clips edited together:

Then after, there was a live band I Three, to whom the scene's most well known dance crew, Stax Groove, did a performance. See clip:

Unfortunately we had to leave before the final of the battle, but this was Big Big Fun.

Back to Shinjuku to jump on the overnight bus back to Osaka and then train up to Aogaki and straight to work where I'm writing this. I'd normally feel bad coming straight back to work, like I was shortchanging the kids, but they're not coming in to school today as it's the school's foundation day so it's okay. Tokyo musical weekend was BIG.

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Today is a totally different feeling. The kids aren't here, so the school feels empty, it's grey and drizzling (but still humid and hot), the information about my successor has just come through and I'm talking with the office about dates to go back to London. Just beginning to hit home I'm actually leaving... Sad.

FUKUOKA

2007-06-13T17:02:00.000+09:00

This weekend I went to Fukouka, Japan's 8th biggest city (for some reason I wrote 4th before... typing when sleepy=bad), on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's 4 main islands, thanks to the miracle of shinkansen. Wonderful city. Has a nice feel to it, less chaotic than Osaka and slightly more modern.

GION
We walked from Hakata (the Shinkansen station) underground over to Gion, where the temples mainly are. Shofukuji, the first Zen Buddhist Temple in Japan, had some nice grounds, but we couldn't go in as they were doing some work on it. We wandered round the garden then headed back to Daiji temple near the subway station. I like the contrast of those temples that are right in the middle of the tall officey buildings area.

CANAL CITY
Then we headed over to Canal City (they call it a city within a city) a large complex next to the river which is a series of large red buildings housing shops, restaurants, etc. I don't normally like shopping centres/malls, but this had a very different feel, mainly due to the interesting design of the buildings and use of indoor/outdoor space. (Again with hearing fantastic music in cool shops, in a shop where I got a shirt they were playing Morning Dance (like pans used to play) then some weird remix of the Laputa music.)

We went up to the 5th floor where there was a 'Ramen Museum' and ate delicious ramen and gyouza. Mmm. (I love how in the random pic I've taken, the guy who's wandered in just happens to be wearing a NBHD shirt. Ah, Japan. Always with the music and the clothes.)

Nerdily played a couple of games in the Sega World downstairs on the way back down.

We ate mochi cream at the Comme Ca Cafe (they had every flavour under the sun) while making plans with maps (exciting) before heading out and walking across the city, dumping our stuff at the hotel, then heading for Tenjin.

TENJIN
Tenjin is the downtown area, the slightly more stylish shops and restaurants (and at night bars and such). Spent a while around here exploring and also looking out for places we'd checked in advance. I may have mentioned it before, but i LOVE the navi on my phone. Just type an address into www.navitime.co.jp on your pc, then it gives you a link to mail to your phones, then it'll give you a little map to get there complete with little icon of a man who represents you. The bar on the left fills up as you get closer, like a videogame. Ahem. I probably enjoy this more than I should.

We browsed a number of little shops in Tenjin, picking up a few bits and pieces. I nearly bought a shirt from BAPE, it had some interesting transfers and patches on but also a massive american flag on on the arm (and not in a knowing wink wink kind of way) which kind of ruined it.

NAKASU KAWABATA
Walked to Nakasu Kawabata next to the river for dinner. Fukuoka is famous for Yatai, which are basically roadside stalls selling food, but the feeling is more like a portable restaurant than a mere shack. Ate overlooking the river, ate Yakitori, Oden, and a Fukuoka speciality version of tebasaki with mentaiko inside, which is crispy chicken wings stuffed with cod roe.

梅酒屋
Wandered back over to Tenjin. I mentioned a couple of posts ago about my love for Umeshu, and we headed to this tiny little bar which had a maximum capacity of 10, simply called 梅酒屋, or Umeshu Shop, where they had over 150 different sorts of Umeshu! The master was an interesing guy, got a phone call and though I couldnt follow it, Trish filled me in on his side.
"Yes, this is Umeshuya. Hmm... how many of you are there?"
"yes we have room. Do you know where we are? The building opposite family mart. It's kind of a shady building." [full of snack bars - where older guys pay to go and talk to girls.]
"oh, is this place shady?　Ah... Hmm... I don't know... why don't you come and see?"
He recommended a few to us, between us we tried brown sugar umeshu, homemade umeshu, obaachan's delicious umeshu, fruity umeshu, honey umeshu, and 'excellent' umeshu (which happily was excellent). Really cool place.

We wanted to see club Indigo, but there didn't seem to be anything on that night. So after tipsily wandering round the excellently named "Book Off" for a while (who knew drunkenly browsing second hand manga at midnight was so fun) we called it a night.

Momochi / FUKUOKA TOWER
Next morning, after catching Sesame Street in Japanese as we got ready (always a good start), we jumped on a bus and headed northwest from Tenjin to go to Fukuoka tower. This looks stunning, a really tall building whose surface is entirely mirrored.

Up to the top where there were fantastic views of the city and the water (wonderful weather).

We ate lunch in Cafe Refuge a floor down, overlooking the Fukuoka scenery.

OHARI PARK
Took a bus from the tower over to a wonderful park in the middle of the city, Ohari Park. Has a massive lake in the middle and a little walkway over a long island in it. Seriously nice place, little running track around the lake with people jogging as a guy was practicing playing his trumpet with some serious vibrato at one point and a couple of high schools girls playing sax somewhere else as low flying planes flew overhead. Nice! Afterwards, walked back to Tenjin along the side of a river covered with where water lilies (or something similar).

@cafe
As always in Japan we found a really cool little cafe tucked away in the middle of some design shops in Tenjin.

Japan is very big on the stylish little one off cafes. They've got your boring chains like Starbucks too, but they have a lot of love for individually styled places, which I think is great.

Finally we walked back stopping off at some shops (where I picked up this fantastic Bill Evans album) over the river to Hakata to take the Shinkansen home.

Sports Day! (video)

2007-06-07T22:12:00.000+09:00

Today was Sports Day, and it was great fun. It's times like this I appreciate the size of the school, as there's only about 170 pupils, I know them all and so events like this are great cos the school is so close. (I actually thought I'd found a student I didn't know today, but it just turned out she'd had a radical haircut.) Anyway, don't take my word for it, watch this video to the sound of a genuine Sports Day cover version from the Hikami Nishi lounge+muzak music library:

Being ill is crap.

2007-06-02T18:04:00.000+09:00

Excuse me while I feel sorry for myself. This weekend was supposed to be the one we went off to 木の殿堂, the wood palace up in Northern Hyogo, but my friend had to go to a funeral so that was off. Instead, Fri and Sat were two of my friends' bday celebrations, going out in Osaka and Kobe respectively. But I managed to get sick. After work yesterday, I went to bed at 5pm, and save waking up for a few minutes to txt people (mainly to shamelessly elicit sympathy) I slept through til 10am and still felt shit. I had those horrible dreams you get when you're ill where nothing makes sense and you can't properly focus on anything. Also, swallowing hurts, but as I have practically no food in the house all I'm eating at the moment is cereal I've allowed to soak in milk for a long time to get really soft. Bleurgh.

Anyway, I should stop complaining. Life in general is still good, just sucks being ill. I'm planning to go up to Tokyo in a couple of weeks, and you know that life is good when the hardest decision to make is on the Friday night, whether to see Jazztronik and Shacho from Soil and Pimp DJ with live Piano Trio from Josei (also soil and pimp) at Air, or Grooveman Spot and the Jazzy Sport crew drop their deep introspective interpretation of hiphop at Family. A tough decision.

And watching TV a few minutes ago, an ad came on for some new bottled green tea drink by Kirin. And the music was none other than a string arrangement of Chick Corea's Spain! See the ad (realplayer). From this page. (Slogan seems a bit shit - "Japanese folks know! Sweet is delicious!" but you can't have it all) I really am going to miss how spot on Japan is with the music, it's everywhere, you don't have to seek it out (but if you do what's there is even better.)

See my new toys. I bought them for the elementary school lesson warm up game, we chucked the Monokuroboo (for that is their name) around, and when they caught it, they had to introduce themselves. When I bought them though, it was just me and some very young children in the toyshop, and they were staring at me a little funny - fair enough, I was browsing Anpanman, Hallo Kitty toys, wondering what would be best for the kids. When I went to buy them, the guy assumed they were presents and asked summarily as he started wrapping them. When I said they weren't presents, he asked again, slower, assuming I'd misunderstood the Japanese. (Presumably no grown men buy Monokuroboo toys for themselves, or if they do, they have the sense to pretend they're presents for someone else.) I like them anyway. But don't tell anyone.

Right, going to crawl back to bed. My half an hour of being awake must now be followed by a 2 hour nap.

FREEDOMTIME, Art&Design OSAKA

2007-05-28T09:01:00.000+09:00

This weekend was big fun, the old Kobe-Osaka 1-2 again. Lazed around Saturday morning, just finishing off a couple of tunes. Check my myspace page to hear them! No please. Really. Please. Late afternoon, went down to Kobe and met Trish. We walked over to Harborland and despite having been there loads of times I couldn't find Chinatown on the way... My sense of direction was proved to be a bit crap many times this weekend, even when assisted by by my mobile's GPS. Had dinner overlooking the bay. I've figured that Umeshu is my favourite drink in Japan, and as no doubt it's pretty hard to come by back home (although maybe I just never looked) I'm going to drink as much of it as I can before coming back. After, we headed over to Osaka for FREEDOMTIME! Woo! Unfortunately about 15 mins away from Umeda the train stopped for ages, and then it turned out there was a guy who had jumped in front of our train. So we were stopped for about an hour and a half as the cleanup guys were searching under the train, and the police wouldn't give the all clear. They shut down the lights in the train (to help the search guys or something) and it was a bit serious. When we got to Umeda, all trains in and out on the lines that used that section of track were delayed by over 70mins! If you know Japan's trains you know that's MADNESS.

Anyway, went to Osaka and FreedomTime. I've come to the conclusion that this monthly night is my favourite club night I've ever been to, and also one of my favourite things about Japan. Cool club under the JR rail tracks in Umeda, clued up unpretentious crowd, deeeeep jazz crossover with a house feeling spun by a DJ I've idolised since high school and always a fantastic guest who takes it more into their own particular style... (and you can drink Umeshu here.) I think this is the best music for clubbing. For listening I prefer a bit more on a broken tip, but you can lose yourself in the deep deep soulful funky jazzy beats that Yoshihiro Okino spins (and he is a master at sets, when it was time to leave we were like 'after the next track... okay the next one... okay the next one...'). Your more soulful or hiphop type is also fun, when you're out to meet people or just chill but not so much about getting really into the music, and DnB, while definately something you can get well into, is more sound therapy (or 'jumping around like a nutter'.) This strikes the perfect (jazz influenced) balance, you got your tough beats, latin percussions, jazz improvisations, deeeep bass, soulful vocals. Anyway this Freedomtime was Mark de Clive Lowe's Freesoul Sessions, all improvised (well, sometimes I think 'collection of ideas' is a better way to put it). It was the third time I've seen him do this, but today he was doing it with Lady Alma instead of Bembe, and it had a very different vibe. Bembe is more floaty, more off beat rhythms, but Lady Alma is on a more soulful, funky tip, and she has definately got the chops. So Mark de Clive Lowe did his building beats on the spot with his MPC and his Rhodes, Lady Alma vocalising (that should really be a word), then they did a few on the spot remixes of her tracks, Mark's remix of Yukihiro Fukutomi's "Peace", and his own housey cut on Especial Records, "Twilight". Towards the end of the night, they did a wicked version of MJ's "I can't help it" and then to finish up, a heavy extended version of "Hold It Down" similar to the Bugz rework with a rewind halfway through where MdCL took it even more broken bleepy. Lady Alma was LOVING it, the crowd all knew her tracks and were loving the improvisations, and I would imagine compared to the the crowds elsewhere who are either smaller or too cool to really get into things (London) it was refreshing. During Hold it Down, she jumped down into the crowd and danced around the floor still dropping vocals. I enjoyed this the most of any Freesoul I've seen, I think the beats get better every time, I guess as MdCL perfects the improv craft. Big big fun.

Sunday was about art and design type places in the wonderful city of Osaka. Started off in Umeda with breakfast at Cafe Bibliotheque, where they have art and design books up around the tables for you to browse, and a really funky little design bookshop with books from around the world.

Next headed to Osaka Photograp hy Month 2007 "One Space with 150 Photographers" Exhibition. Small little gallery space in the Nikon centre, with work displayed from various amatuers, some really nice pics.

Headed over to Shinsaibashi. Hit the Modern Art Museum on the top floor of a building, where there was a poster exhibition (crazy name: 5 Star Designer's Banquet) of some fantastic designers from round the world.

Then hit a little place in Minami Horie called &'s . 2F is a very eclectic little shop, bit from round the world (bizzare and obscure goods from the 60s and 70s, shadow puppet books, classic calculators, obscure old magazines and for some reason loads of Peanuts goods.) I picked up a bilingual Peanuts book. The 3F is a tiny little gallery where there was the Oops! here I go again exhibition, a mix of paintings and photos, in little series on the wall and photobooks.

After lunch and a bit of a wander, headed down into Amemura, finally checked the record store called King Kong which has some nice bits, then to digmeout cafe, a cafe/art space. Their current theme is online art t-shirts store. The tees themselves are pretty nice, but it's the display more than anything else that's cool.

Osaka is definately the place.

Headed back to Umeda, went to the Sky Building where underneath, by chance they were having a Aloha Hawaiian Festival with groups in colourful costumes doing Hawaiian dancing. Not really my thing but still looked pretty cool. The wind was howlingly strong though, seemed pretty tough for them.

Went up to the Floating Garden Observatory (which is not floating, nor a garden, nor an observatory but 'rooftop viewing platform' doesn't have the same ring to it) just as the sun was setting. I love you Osaka. Even when I cheat on you with Kobe you don't mind.

EDIT: Check Mark de Clive Lowe's Blog about the Japan Tour! You can see me in the pic of Noon's crowd (and like Trish's arm I think, hehe) I'm in the centre 4 back in the grey flat cap. Woo!

Osaka Aquarium and Den Den Town

2007-05-22T20:04:00.000+09:00

Headed down into Kobe this weekend to get a haircut, hoping for one like the barman in Fukuyama last weekend... instead it just looks like a number 3 all over. Oh well, it's okay. My friend Yuki recently started working at the Osaka Aquarium and so we decided to go this weekend as she can get us cheap tickets. Me, her and Alex met up in Kobe then headed over to the Tempozan area of Osaka Port where the Aquarium is. We ate some gyoza and bibinpa (if there's a greater meal out there I have yet to find it) in a cool downstairs area set out to be like Japan in the mid 60s with little backstreets and restaurants. Headed over to the aquarium. I've never been to an aquarium before (and apparently this is a really good one) and I was seriously blown away.

After Yuki pretended she was going to work so she could sneak in another entrance, we met up and went through an awesome corridor which was a tunnel under a tank, absolutely beautiful to see the creatures swimming all around you.

The aquarium is based around real areas in the world, Ring of Life and Ring of Fire or something, so each tank represents a place and has a mix of the creatures you'd really find there. I don't know much about that kind of thing, but this place was fascinating. My favourites were the Sea Otters, like a mix between bears and dogs who can swim really well. Very cute but didn't come out well in the pictures so none here.

Massive new whale shark (they're the largest living fish speccies), unfortunately the old one died recently. There were divers at the bottom of the tank seemingly cleaning, and as their air bubbles rose up to the top breaking up into fine bubbles, the massive manta ray was doing endless backflips in it, presumably it tickled or something.

Cute puffer fish. WEIRD ALIEN CRABS FROM SPACE.

Really interesting jellyfish type things.

These things were about the size of a table tennis ball.

After, Alex had to get back to Shinsaibashi sharpish, but me and Yuki checked the Dream of the 20th Century Modern Design Revisited on at the Tadao Ando designed Suntory Museum:

The exhibition was very cool, I was surprised by how much furniture and typography from the early to mid 20th century would still be contemporary today, but it was very small and we were kind of in a rush to get back to Shinsaibashi to meet up for dinner. Before we did, popped in to the Apple Store in Shinsai so Yuki could pick up a new MacBook, and I finally got to have a go on this:

It's ridiculously poor. Can't cue: after you get to the menu for the song, leave the pod for more than a few seconds and it goes back to the main menu, obviously can't beatmatch or anything like that, pod often takes a random length of time up to half a second or so to start once you do actually select the song, horrible.

Headed off to a mexican restaurant, El Pancho, for dinner with some friends. I've never really eaten much Mexican food and it was fun.
Headed out for Laurence's birthday (another Laurence, obviously) and we went to a couple of bars in Shinsaibashi. I think they ended up in the end in Club Pure, but for some reason few of us weren't in the mood and retired.

Next morning was all about leisurely exploring Osaka. I love wandering as the city wakes up, you see the dressed to impress kids from last night and girls from the seedy snack bars and foppy haired skinny suit guys stumbling back to the station, a few suits going to work, shopkeepers starting to open up, the city start to get bustling, nice feeling, like the city is yawning and stretching. Everybody else went off to play Ultimate Frisbee somewhere (they're quite into it) and the record shop I wanted to check, King Kong, was still closed, so I thought I'd engage my inner geek and wandered down to Den Den Town in Nipponbashi, which is the electronics/nerdy video game area of Osaka, similar to Akihabara in Tokyo (but less dissapointing, that was mainly tourists and shops with the vibe of Tottenham Court Road). From Shinsai you wander south through Namba til you get there. Was kinda fun going into shops which were playing 16 bit game soundtracks over the stereos, retro video games controllers hanging from the ceiling, pictures of scenes from old games up all over the shop. I've come to the conclusion I don't really like video games anymore (it's been years since I seriously got into one, just the odd one here and there these days) but I still like the ones I did when I was a kid, so places like this are fun. Checked Super Potato, Big Tiger and some others I forget. Picked up a kids DS game with furigana so I can understand it, though realistically I doubt I'll play it much. Played a Nintendo Virtual Boy for the first time ever and just ogled the nerdiness of it all. Fun. Also in DenDen Town, theres a large two storey shop dedicated JUST to gundam, a particular type of giant robot anime. I couldn't not have a wonder, and though I know nothing about it, the level of detail and obsession that exists for the fans is kinda fun: figures detailing the exact parts used to make the robot, flags for imaginary robot factions, stuff like that. Surprisingly, there were actually quite a few cute young couples in there seemingly sharing in their nerdy passion. Surprising is the wrong word, I thought it was sweet.

Had no rush to get back, so decided to walk all the way from Nipponbashi back to JR Osaka in Umeda, took about an hour and a bit in total. Through Namba back to Shinsaibashi, then just straight down the road for about 45 mins. We always take the tube from Shinsai (takes about 10 mins) but it was cool to see bits of the city I never had before, office areas, a shrine area, little shopping area, and some cool little sculptures ever block or so.

Dunno what the first one is about but love the robot Star Wars vibe of the second.

I love you Osaka. Come and live with me. (oh yeah and summer is definately on it's way - Yoshinoya has changed from serving hot tea to cold.)

---------------

This week has been busy. It's exam week, but this time round I actually have lots to do. I've been helping make exams with the teachers for English I and II and by myself for Sogo Eigo. I'm really enjoying Sogo this term, I have complete free reign to make the lessons and it's been great. The teacher who officially I am assisting is retiring next year, and whilst he's a mild guy who wouldn't hurt a fly (nicknamed Hage-chan by the kids which means bald as it's similar to his name) he's sort of checked out in his mind already. He hangs around at the back of class and occasionally I ask him for a translation (his English is great, although he'll never use it - at the enkai before the student teacher left, she said she was surprised to hear him talking to me as she'd never heard him use English and wondered if he really could) but that's meant Sogo has been my baby this term.

Also starting this week I'm doing 4 elementary school visits. I can't speak for the whole of Japan, but at least round here, elementary schools are complete madhouses! But in a fun way. Today was the first visit. As soon as I went in to the school, some kids ran up and started shouting in Japanese. "SPEAK ENGLISH!" commanded one. "No, teach ME english!" said one who'd sat down and started dragging himself backwards across the floor as another kid threw his slipper down the corridor and chased after it. As I bent down to take off my shoes a small boy started patting my head while asking "are you an adult?" "Hello!" chimed in a girl in English. Everywhere you look, kids seem to be climbing on things, crawling across the floor, runnning like mad things around and about. The lesson about food went well, but if I was an elementary school JET I'd be KNACKERED. Returning to school, the baseball team who normally seem pretty lively seemed the most serious grown up gentlemen in comparison.

Fukuyama II - Rose's Bday and Onomichi

2007-05-15T20:30:00.000+09:00

Headed back west to Fukuyama in Hiroshima prefecture over the weekend for Rose's birthday. On Friday, we ate at a cool little French restaurant in Fuk called 'Les Enfants Terribles'. Perfect example of how Japan absorbs ideas but keeps them Japan flavoured: the whole place is oozing French atmosphere, the 5 course dinner is very much French influenced, but then you still sit on the floor cross legged under a table less than a foot high, and eat all the food with chopsticks. Cool place.

Headed on to a little bar for her friend Jess' leaving do as she was leaving JET early and heading home to New Zealand, sad. I only met Jess a couple of times but she was lovely and her and Rose were close and everyone was a bit :o( .

Next day Trish and I headed to Onomichi, a little town on the inland sea a few stops away on the local train. I'm guessing it had more than a little to do with the company, but I really enjoyed this place. It has a sort of wistful feel to it, small areas are run down, others desperately wish they were touristy, the sun was out and we wandered down some rustic streets round and about. Chilled in a little cafe next to the water for a while before walking to take the ropecar thing up to a little peak where you get beautiful views of a number of the islands in the inland sea. The weather was great and we could see for a long way. Obligatory day out ice cream later, back to Fuk for Rose's bigger bday night, at a Beer Garden! Beer garden's are a great idea of Japan's, on top of a department store or something similar, open the roof up (or, er, cover it over for no reason in the case of this one) for an all you can drink and eat fun. Was really cool, then headed to some little club to listen to small city rock club music (and surreptitiously snap pictures of the barman whose hair I want mine to be cut like).

Sunday morning just chilled, me and Trish watched the Ghibli movie Nausicca which I've been wanting to for ages but never got round to, very cool. Later in the afternoon, met up with Rose and Hannah who were having a little picnic in Fukuyama Museum of Art grounds next to a cool red scultpure and kids practicing breakdancing to melodius funk from a small stereo. Chatted and said my goodbyes (nice to catch up with people from home home), then back to the old Osaka. Shit, time is going/has gone fast. Shit.

Oh yeah in that area, they have the Asahi group running some things, and I LOVE their logo, simple but brilliant.

End of Golden Week: Vissel+Tokyo

2007-05-07T20:43:00.000+09:00

On Thursday, went to another Vissel Kobe game. Yoji had decided we were going to be wear shirts to spell out "Leandro", one of Vissel's best players, and when you write it in Katakana it's レアンドロ but when you want to say it like LEAAAAAANDRO you put a ~ in it, to be レア~ンドロ and I was the "~". When he did something good on the pitch we got on the screen. Woo! The atmosphere was wicked as it was Golden Week so the stadium was at near capacity, and we were playing Gamba Osaka, who are one of the strongest teams in J1, and Vissel really raised their game, best I've seen them play. The match was really exciting but ended in a draw at 2-2.

On the weekend went up to Tokyo. Maho had organised a lunch meet up for like 9 of us who'd been at Notts and we ate at a Monsoon Cafe in Shibuya, was cool. Met a couple of people I hadn't before and caught up with those I hadn't seen for too long. Then after that we went from Shibuya down to Aoyama, checking the Tadao Ando designed Omotesando Hills on the way. It's nice... but kind of crowded. It's got a bit more soul than Tokyo Midtown, with a central spiral idea, but still not as nice as little shops spilling on the the street individually.

They had a really cool exhibition in the basement about album artwork, loads of LPs up around the walls, and giant murals made of blown up album art. On the tables in the middle were famous and hard to find Japanese ones and hanging around the walls were ones from around the world. Heard Clara Hill in there! It was cool picking out albums just from the giant artwork, had really cool stuff in there, like the Sonny Clark Trio along with Marvin Gaye, Run DMC, Miles as well as the stuff you'd expect like the Sex Pistols, Bowie etc. Loved it.

The we wandered round Aoyama a little, I was looking for design shop ±0 but never found it unfortunately.

Managed to check the new flagship UT store in Harajuku (the new tee shirt line from Uni Qlo I was going on about in the last post), they have loads more there than normal UniQlos, and they all come in cool capsules from vending machine-like shelves on the wall. Very cool. Picked up a 'corporate collaboration' (only in Japan is selling out a good thing) of a design based on Mitsuya Cider, a soft drink. The store has a cool feel, loads of scrolling info screens.

Wandered over to Shibuya, I love this pic of Yuto looking rather badass as Shino just looks cute in the background, and passed a sign for what must surely be the most boring museum ever (of course we didn't go in.)

Just before dinner headed to a little gallery space called Nanzuka Underground, with the coolest logo ever. Look on the right, if you know it's called Nanzuka Underground, it leaps off the page at you, but when you look closer and see how it's actually written, you sort of read it in all kinds of directions. Anyway there was an exhibition called 'A Series of Interpreted Catharsis' about earthquakes, basically photos and videos of very glossy looking models pretending to be normal people as an eartquake happened, and exhibits of broken LPs, CDs, plates and LaserDiscs. Enjoyed the unusual glossy spin put on the idea of an earthquake. Was cool.

After, went off to an izakaya where we drank all we could for a couple hours with the obvious results. Then me, Nori and Yuto hit some club somewhere a couple of stops away - couldnt tell you where - where we jumped around to brit indie til 6 in the morning. The music was just like Rescue Rooms last year, dropped your Arctic Monkeys and your Mylo of course, was great, could almost see the silhouette of Ali in the corner. I kind of fell asleep during the middle of a phone conversation... and I think I slept in the street for a couple of hours when I popped out to get a snack at a conbini which resulted in me having this bad cold and having to take Wednesday off, but was a throwback to Uni and big fun. Parted ways with Nori and Yuto the next morning ("you're a mess" was Yuto's verdict) to rest and shower in a capsule before heading out again to Aoyama with Shino.

We went to a really nice cafe, AtoZ cafe, designed by Yoshitomo Nara together with graf. The place is all done out in white old worn looking wood, the chairs don't really match, in the middle they have a small dark wooden house full of Nara's artwork which you peer through the window at (similar to the exhibition graf designed for him in the art museum in Kanazawa) and a small space of pics stuck to the wall showing pics of Nara's and graf building the cafe. We sat in a little hut like room eating Japanese sweets with a twist. Great place.

Shinkansen back to Osaka. I love Tokyo :o)

In which UniQlo reads my mind

2007-05-02T09:10:00.000+09:00

A pretty chilled beginning to Golden Week. On Sunday just headed into Osaka. Then there was meant to be a big outdoor party in the grounds of Osaka Castle but the police had come and told them there was to be no PA system so they couldn't have the DJs performing. Instead they had a bit of live drumming which was alright but the whole thing was a little bit hippyish. Met up with some friends and went off to Umeda to go clubbing, and on the way back to the station, passed a choir of about 100 students singing Amazing Grace. Very cool.

We went to a really cool little club called Karma, and just as yet another sign of how spot on Japan is with the music, completely by chance, Masanori Morita, one half of Studio Apartment was spinning the deepest house. Drank shochu and enjoyed the serious tunes.

Headed back around lunchtime the next day and did a little spring cleaning, then had a day of work today. Anyway, tonight, on the way to return my movies to the rental shop, I stopped at Uni Qlo to look for a belt. (Uni Qlo has a slightly worse image here than in the UK, think more Primark than H+M, but we all need plain stuff right?) Anyway, Uni Qlo has launched a fresh line of tees called UT, designed to compete with the more expensive designer tee lines, the idea being theres a whole bunch of limited edition rotating designs at low prices. Sounds good and I wanted to check it out, but it was better than I could have imagined. UniQlo×ECM collabo Jazz LP sleeves on tees? Classic albums from Keith Jarret, Chick Corea, Charlie Haden, Pat Metheney, and others? For about 7 quid, and a special deal that if you buy 4 it's about 24 quid? OH YES.

I'm sorry that I cussed you in the past, Uni Qlo. I take it all back. I don't know if the UT line has launched in the UK yet (the website doesn't have it yet), but if it has, or when it does it is definately worth checking, some of the designs are amazing and worth far more than what they're asking. And at that prics it's much easier to build a collection than something like Beams T.

Incidentally, on the subject of classic albums, at the video store, one of the movies I rented (I'm watching loads of Japanese movies now to help with listening, each week now I get a serious, darker movie, a comedy and a love story) which is the equivalent of Love Actually, emotional heartstring-tugging story set in Tokyo aroud Christmas, starts with the main character getting Bill Evans "Waltz For Debby" out of a shelf of records and playing 'My Foolish Heart' (also the name of a bar in the film.) Can a day not go by without some awesome music hitting me in mutiple ways?

I Like Buildings.

2007-04-28T15:40:00.000+09:00

It's Saturday! And the first day of Golden Week! (A week where a whole bunch of national holidays fall at the same time to give most of the week off.)

.... And I'm at work... We've got school on Saturday so that parents and the PTA can wander round and observe classes this afternoon. But lessons finished early at 2.30, so I'm just killing time.

If you are into Exciting Pictures of Great Buildings, like I am, check this website of cool buildings in Hyogo that I've just spent a good hour on, called 'Architecture and Street'. They've got sections for most areas in Japan, but info on Osaka and Tokyo is easy to find anywhere, so it's the detailed information on Hyogo that makes this special. I never realised Hyogo had so many wonderfully designed buildings! I know that Tadao Ando, one of Japan's most famous architects, is from Osaka, and so around Osaka, Kobe and the rest of Hyogo there are loads of his buildings. I definately want to check out a few of them before I leave. A friend of mine from round here who's got great taste - she introduced me to the books of Yoshimoto Banana (including an amazing special edition collabo with Yoshitomo Nara) and recommends me cool movies like かもめ食堂, loves Tadao Ando buildings, lent me a great magazine about design with a piece on design unit Graf's crazy little cylindrical room thing down in Okayama that I want to go to, so whever she tells me about something I'm all ears - was telling me about this place, the 'Wood Palace' up in Northern Hyogo, in Kami, a museum about wood in the middle of the forest, designed to look like a massive tree stump and sit well in the surroundings. That's the kind of place I should definately check, as coming to Japan as a tourist, you see Tokyo and Kyoto, Osaka and maybe Kobe, but who gets to check a Tadao Ando designed museum hours from a big city designed to blend in with the surrounding forest? (And within driving distance.) Sounds cool and definately going on my ever expanding of things to do in the ever decreasing time I have left.

Just rambling now to fill time. Only half an hour more til Golden Week begins for me... and I can get back to listening to this:

Notes from the inaka.

2007-04-22T09:30:00.000+09:00

Three little things that are going on around school.

I hope my supervisor is okay.

I just marked the students' answer sheets for a test my supervisor set them. It was a simple 'fill in the word' type test with about 50 answers. It was a little dark. A selection of the correct answers are:

dead
turn off
sick
accident
empty
unknown
angry
said to myself
death
boring
injured
pain
judge
damage
less than
suffering
ill
weak
took away
voice
sickness
turned down
bombs
say hello to
least
failed

There you've got violence, sadness, death and a clear reference to Scarface. I hope he's okay.

Behind the scenes at a small school enkai

Last week we had the welcome/farewell enkai, which is to say hello and goodbye to the incoming and outgoing members of staff attend (every April, teacher's locations can change, it's like being in the army or something and being posted to different places.) They all make speeches, and it's quite emotional. My Japanese still isn't good enough to understand the speeches properly, but I have got that they always seem to pick some random theme and go on about it. They're pretty interesting this way. For example, the incoming maths teacher talked about bentos (Japanese packed lunch) for the entire speech, and whilst I'm sure he was making a clever metaphor for life as a teacher or something, it did really seem like he was just talking about how much he likes bentos.

Afterwards, cutely all the teachers sang the school song acapella (I play it on the piano at ceremonies so I had to sing the intro for them, as I was less drunk than most of them it was slightly embarrassing) with the departing teachers getting really into it.

I can't get over how cute and innocent my little school is. A few beers and various parts of chicken on a stick in a little yakitori place, and you're seeing sides of teachers that you never saw before. Then hanging around in the carpark with 3 of the other teachers waiting for Takahashi Sensei's mum to come and pick us up! Oh man. Work dos in the middle of nowhere in Japan are fun.

Hosomi Sensei did have a point about the bentos though.

Is there anything better to eat at lunchtime than Hello Bento? No. There is nothing better to eat at lunchtime than Hello Bento.

This is my life for a while whilst I try to stay in and study Japanese more. Small things.

春の旅 Part 2: Tokyo

2007-04-11T18:57:00.000+09:00

We arrived in Shinjuku bit earlier than we had thought. Went for a quick drink in Dug (it's actually moved from last time, there used to be 2 of them but one closed) before on Shino's recommendation hitting a cool 70s-80s era izakaya. At first glance you might just think all the stuff in there is a bit old, but you slowly realise that the old chairs, anime on the screen (including the model of TV itself), posters, toys, uniforms, EVEYRTHING is carefully chosen to be from that era. Really cool place.

Next morning was all about Shibuya, (see The London Police from Amsterdam on the right) after a traditional Japanese breakfast at Yoshinoya. Ahem. Wandered round the shops for a while (sadly Jazzy Sport wasn't open, being so cool it only opens at 1pm.) In HMV tried to give j-pop another chance as they had M-flo's latest album on the stand, but it was woeful. Sad. Tried to wash it off with the Jazztronik listening post, but both his new album as Jazztronik and his solo one as Ryota Nozaki are miles off the standard of his previous work. On the next one along, Studio Apartment has a new 12" single out, a jazzy house version of 'Wonderful Tonight' which was similarly a let down. Sort it out Japan!

Anyway, Shino came to meet us in HMV and off we headed to look at the Obey Giant vs. WK Interact exhibition in Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya. Obey Giant will probably be familiar to most people, the sticker with the odd face and white on red logo is all over clothes, graffiti, skate shops, everywhere, but WK Interact was a new one for me, he's a French graffiti guy. The exhibition was really cool, but pretty small. Shino recommended the national art centre in Roppongi so off we went.

It's a really nice looking building and inside there was an exhibition on loan from the Louvre. A few minutes walk away is the new complex Tokyo Midtown, full of shops and restaurants which we had a look round. The design of the building is okay, nothing too special. It's a little bit soulless although to lump it in with shopping centres/malls would be a bit harsh. Out the back behind the garden is the 21_21 Design Sight, which is a very cool building designed by Tadao Ando, but the exhibition didn't look so interesting so just went for a coffee in the cafe. Went for Sushi after, which was great. Thankfully Shino was in charge of introducing this to Ray, otherwise I probably just would have picked up a pre made pack from the conbini or something and given it to him.

Went over to Roppongi Hills, up to the viewing deck at the top as the sun set and, wandered round. Miwa from Notts came too, and we found a little bar area, the 4 of us drinking sake and cocktails overlooking the metropolis of metropolii.

After going back to Shibuya, me and Ray went to The Room, tiny little club I've been wanting to go for since about maybe 3 or 4 years ago? People like Kyoto Jazz Massive, Hajime Yoshizawa (who even wrote a song about it), DJ Mitsu always name check it and it seemed like the holy grail. It was great, about the size of most people's living rooms. Was a hiphop night called Breakthrough, so it was the Jazzy Sport style deep rhodes drenched beats, before halway through the night a guest DJ jumped up and played all the classics from high school! Kweli's 'Manifesto' into Mos Def's 'Universal Magnetic' into The Roots into Bahamadia. Big fun.

Saturday lazed a bit. Went to Harajuku, looking for some clothes, but had baggy Carhartt jeans on so the stuff I wanted all looked a little odd with them. Explored cool shopping area for a while, then headed over to Shinjuku. Outside an opticians opposite Comme Ca, there was the guy below MCing to a little beatbox about the glasses inside! He was actually pretty good, dropping jewels on such topics as as the wide selection they have and the cheap cleaning service. I'm sure I read an article about him in the 'wacky' section of the news online, but I cant for the life of me find it. In his break from being Megane MC he went inside and just served customers as a normal assistant! What a dude. (EDIT: picture now with 100% more Run DMC) Had planned to go Odaiba but couldnt really be arsed, Ray's mate who we met later said it was a little bit tacky anyway so no loss it seems. Went for a bit of a sleep back in capsule as had had very little night before, before our get together meal.

Met up with Maho, Maya, Shino and Ray's travelling friend Laura and went up to a cool Izakaya. Wicked to catch up with everyone. The girls properly showed Ray about Japanese food (I think the week of conbini snacks and can coffee may have been giving him the wrong idea).

After a little Purikura (see Maya and Shino going at the decorating like professionals), me Shino and Ray did a little bit of Karaoke (more important Japanese culture for Ray), throwing up 'asian fingers' (as Fa and Ray call them) in a brief unguarded moment.

Sunday, walked round the triangle Shibuya-->Harajuku-->Aoyama then back to Shibuya (by which time the shops had opened). In Harajuku, saw a guy with this jacket, which I feel the programme should adopt as its motto and logo, be much better than the current one.

Dropped Ray on a train towards Yokohama, leaving him in the capable hands of Mahoko, before just having enough time to hang out with Shino in Yoyogi park for a bit (which looked more like Autumn than Spring) before getting on the Shinkansen back towards home.

(Nerdy point, the Shinkansen went through like a Shikansen 'car park' or 'siding' or something, with like 15 of them arranged in rows of 5 including loads of Nozomis. Looked amazing. I think I was densha-mania in a previous life.)

Back in the homeland of Kansai, got on the very familiar lonely 10.54 Fukuchiyama line from Osaka (which is the last train! Ha!) and rode for far too long back to my stop. And so ended the spring holiday. Felt like going home to see people in HK and Tokyo, feel really refreshed. (I guess home is people, rather than places. I felt the same when I saw my family in India at Christmas.) I've used up all but 2 days of my annual leave so it's back to the old staffroom for me pretty much every day til August. I'm going to spend this weekend here doing nothing in Aogaki (which will be only the second one since I arrived.) Might do this more from now on, save some money (I've been spending more than I'm earning... oops) and study some Japanese, think about things like CVs and the Future. Hmm.

春の旅 Part 1: Pre-Tokyo

2007-04-10T19:48:00.000+09:00

Ray came to visit, and using the Seishun Ju Hachi Kippu (a five day local train pass) we slowly wound our way East from Osaka to Tokyo. Our trip can pretty much be summed up with this one picture:

OSAKA
I had to work Tue so Ray wandered round Umeda during the day. I came and met him after school was over, and we took the underground to Shinsaibashi, where we wandered round Amemura, before heading down to Namba and Dotonbori area to explore the area and give him a taste of Okonomiyaki, Osaka's trademark dish. After a bit of trip planning over a beer, retired pretty early to our capsule to get an early start towards Kyoto next day. (Capsule had awesome baths, bathtime is the best thing about them. Fell asleep to Super Chample (see couple of posts back) in the capsule as well.)

KYOTO
Wednesday morning, went and had a look round the wonderful station, introduced Ray to another important aspect of Japanese culture, Mr Donuts (I wonder if I'm really the right person to introduce Japan...) before jumping on the train two stops to Inari to see Fushimi Inari, the famous shrine with the seemingly never ending red torii gates that create a pretty magical atmosphere. They have a whole fox theme going on, with statues of foxes tucked in every nook and cranny along the way. We went... quite a long way I guess, but there was more to do so we didn't get to the end. More to see! Headed back to the station for a brief walk round the area (see the McDonalds slightly brown sign? It's supposed to be less gaudy than normal, cos this is Kyoto, and they 'dont go in for that sort of thing' around here... supposedly.)

HIKONE
Made a quick stop here to walk around the castle area (didn't go inside as it looked like it would take the best part of a day to explore), saw the cherry blossoms, and introduced Ray to further important aspects of Japanese culture: see through umbrellas, chu hais, and takoyaki.

On to Nagoya! Some beatiful views along the way. The trains were really crowded in general, we rarely got to sit down (at least on this leg of the journey.) The special all-you-can-ride ticket can only be used during the spring holiday, so loads of people with kids or older people had the same idea as us. Makes me wonder how unbelievably crowded Golden Week will be though (when EVERYBODY in the country has most of the week off.)

NAGOYA
Nagoya has a really good feeling to it. Really good looking city and it's own identity away from the others. Ray and I both really liked it.

First we went to Sakae to the Robot museum where after riding around on Segways (fun but were the safety helmets really neccesary?) we watched museum staff wearing lab coats make three Sony Aibos in Kimonos (??) dance. This was a bit weird. (Can you imagine the meeting? "Yeah, so for our next serious robot demonstration, how about some robot dogs dancing together to hungarian folk music?" "Taro, I love it, but it's lacking something." "I know! Let's dress them in little robot dog kimonos!")

They had a really cool timeline of of bits and bobs from robots in popular culture, astro boy, kraftwerk, R2-D2, Dr Slump, Speak and Spell, Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, various anime... was cool to see it all presented so seriously. Downstairs is a shop with cool robot-y products for your house (and robot shaped omiyage sweets.) There was a room where you could play with various robots, and the girl who worked with the Aibos had named them all, and they are pretty cool. Some even speak in Kansai-ben! You can tell them 'take a picture' in Japanese and then they look at you (there's a camera in their nose) and then you say 'Cheezu!' and it snaps and saves to its memory stick.

Ate some Misokatsu (pork cutlet in heavy miso sauce) and Tabasaki (spicy chicken wings), Nagoya famous foods (the restaurant was playing the new Musiq album) and went round Sakae. They have a Fortnum and Mason's there! Shock. Theres a large TV tower (which has a figure of spiderman climing it at the moment) and they were beaming a thin green light onto it from further down in the street in a sort of a calling batman style. Theres a really interesting place... you can't really call it a building, more of a construction, called Oasis 21. Underground are a number of shops and cafes, overground is an area with grass and cool walkways, and the thing itself is a large oval... platform i guess? But that doesn't do it justice. It's Great.

On the way back to our capsule, in the freeeeezing cold dead of night air, a group of young guys were playing jazz in the pedestrian area in the central intersection of Sakae. They were reeeallly good! Played Straight No Chaser, Feel Like Making Love, Chameleon, September, Pick Up the Pieces and St Thomas - before I got so cold I had to call it a night as a listener, I have no idea how they managed to play in the biting night air. Unfortunately their only supporters seemed to be one of their friends, one of their girlfriends, a guy who stopped on his bike, and me and Ray and a bunch of people who seemed to be enjoyed it as they passed, but the freezing temperature moved them on. Shame. Talked to them briefly between tunes, they were Uni students in Nagoya studying on the Jazz course having a little midnight jam session. So cool! Little things like that add so much.

The capsule here was a good one, in the bathing area had like a fake waterfall over a large rock wall with little hollowed out bits in caves with jet streams and stuff. Watching TV in a capsule is loads more fun than it should be, don't know why. I guess because you turn up at a time when strange things are on. There was an interview with Fidel Castro (who was pretty animated), an old 70s anime and of course Super Chample! Excellent. Next morning, the capsule hotel was playing a lounge version of Killing Me Softly as we left - bonus.

Next morning, went up Oasis 21 (we had been too late to actually go up it the previous night). It's got a shallow pool of water in the middle that really adds to it looks, especially from underneath. Popped into a couple of shops downstairs (all the Ghibli and Jump Comics goods you could need - important Japanese culture to show Ray? Maybe getting there.) Rode the subway back to the main JR station (see the massive towers) then on to Hamamatsu.

HAMAMATSU
Still trying to introduce Japanese culture, I took Ray to Freshness Burger...
Hamamatsu has a nice feel to it... can't put my finger on it, but it's something to do with the fact that it's not huuuge and a lot of the buildings seem to be a little bit older than say Nagoya... Like a fun city, almost stuck in a little timewarp from the 80s or something? To be fair, wasn't there anything near like the amount of time you need to get an accurate impression, but that was my quick first impression of the place. It's called 'the city of music' as lots of music companies are based here, and 100% of Japanese pianos are made here. Some of the stations signs are in Portugese as well, owing to the high Brazilian population.

They have a wonderful museum here - Museum of Musical Instruments! I could spend all day here. Grouped by continent, they have fantastic examples of instruments from all over the world - you can't play most of them, but not a single one is inside a cabinet, so you can see them all up close. In front of each one is a set of headphones playing the music of the instrument, so you can hear everything. I fell in love with the sound of the Shakuhachi (bamboo flute), which I recognised the name of from the default 127 GM sounds of most keyboards, but the real thing is beautiful. The instruments that I knew, the examples there were all such great quality (see the range they have just for maracas in the pic below) that you could trust the ones you didnt were also great. Of course they had steel pans!! And there was a trying stuff out room (which became the playing-the-godfather-theme-on-as-many-instruments-as-you-can room) which had cute mini little pans. A room full of classic early pianos and stuff... wow. I LOVED this place.

Headed up ACT tower (the second pic in the Hamamtasu section) which is supposed to look like a mouth organ, again, with the city of music theme. The views were amaaazing. Slightly different from those of Osaka, Nagoya, and Tokyo which was to come in that they were of a smaller city and so you felt the view was more revealing than the others. I found it absolutely amazing, like a city made from the musical narrative of Naoya Matsuoka's Pacific Jam album or something. Still, no time to ponder on this trip, we headed off to Shizuoka.

SHIZUOKA
We had kind of been neglecting cool shopping districts, but Shizuoka sorted that. Tiny little backstreets with UNDFTD, Neighbourhood and Bape right across from each other and small independent places tucked along the roads.

We saw a massive torii gate and went to investigate. Turned out to be a seemingly endless road leading down to a shrine, and they had had a festival that day that was almost completely wound up apart from the street sellers along the way. I counted over 50 (!) of them, selling tacoyaki (octopus balls), okonomiyaki, chocobanana, karaage (fried chicken), yakitori (grilled meat on skewers), toffee strawberries (think toffee apples), and character shaped dorayaki. That was dinner sorted then, and we wandered round the shrine grounds in the fading light. We decided to go to Tokyo a little earlier than we'd originally planned and headed off.

To Tokyo --> Part 2 Soon Come

Hong Kong!

2007-04-02T17:16:00.000+09:00

Hong Kong was so fun, catching up with people who I haven't seen for way too long and exploring the awesome city.

Ray and Steph came to meet me in town where the Airport express dropped me off. Spent a little while gawking at the awesome skyscrapers and taking pics. I love the look of the city at night, it's really beautiful. Lots of things about the city (road signs, buses etc) remind me of London as it used to be a colony, but it's sort of like London from the future or something.

Steph drove us up to The Peak, where you get a great view of HK at night, then we had a little wander round, look from a viewpoint, then the three of us just retired to Ray's place for a couple of Tsing Taos.

Next morning, see the view from my room in Ray's flat, he lives in an area called Metro City Phase 2, and the name and the view give the place a serious Midgar feel (even more so at night.)

We went down to Causeway Bay, where, like seeinly everywhere in Hong Kong at any time of the day, there was a large crowd bustling around. It was interesting to see a successfully biligual society at work, all adverts etc in both Chinese and English, and shopkeepers etc speaking Cantonese but the second you say 'hello' switching to English. Having said that, some of HK's engrish tops Japan's, check the tee.

In the evening we met up with Eugene! Haven't seen him since first year of Uni and it was awesome to catch up. He took us for a great meal on Nutsford Terrace and then to a stylish chilled little wine bar somewhere where we reminisced over a few drinks. After dinner we went to get the ferry back across the harbour but we forgot it closed at midnight and so just wandered down star street (HK's walk of fame type thing, stars for Chinese movie stars, I only knew a couple.) There's a statue of Bruce Lee guarding the HK skyline, pretty cool.

Next day we went into central and met up with Farah! She drove us round in her rather swish convertible through the city, picking up Steph, then out to a quieter area on the coast, Nathan, where we ate HK specialities (living in Japan has made me care about these things) pineapple cake and egg tart, before heading off to Big Wave Bay, seeing the opposite side of HK form the bustling skyscrapers. Then we headed back to Fa's for a wonderful meal with her family and BEN (the cutest dog ever.)

We went out in Wan Chai, but as it was the weekend of the Rugby 7's (a big deal there) there were a few too many seedy 40 something beer bellied rugby fans for our liking so headed to Lan Kwai where we drank in the street, and met up with Alex and Sam from Uni before we all retired to a cool little bar that we'd spotted on the walk over.

Next day was a lesson in Chinese bureaucracy、we took the train out to Shen Zhen, the border, because it seemed that on a British passport you could get a 72 hour visa for the special economic area only (we triple checked with a travel agent, someone who works at the border, and on the net) but when we got there, after officially departing HK (passport check, departure card and all) they only offered us a really expensive 5 day visa which was pointless. It wasn't a language barrier thing either, as Candy pleaded with them in Mandarin but to no avail. Took ages to get back as well, as a Chinese official took our passports somewhere for ages to make the neccesary DENIED arrangements. Ah well. We took the train back and went for a traditional Hong Kong meal (where ordering form the menu seems akin to playing Bingo), where I tried some new foods like Chickens Foot and Pig's Ear. (I couldnt eat much of either.)

Then we hit an amazing place: Sneaker Street. A whole street of packed shops absolutely bursting from the floor to the ceiling with different trainers. Pretty cheap too, especially compared to Japan (for example some new Dunk SBs there were 50pounds whereas they're 75 here.) The main difference compared to Japan was that as the choice was so much greater, there were a lot of not so great kicks in there with the nice ones, (whereas in Japan there are less but the average quality would be higher) but seeking them out is part of the fun anyway! Came away with a nice little pair, see right.

In the evening me Ray and Candy went out to Lan Kwai again, met up with Fa, Steph, Eugene, Rich (who used to live on my street in Uni but is now out in HK teaching some English, yet another 'small world' moment) and some of Fa's friends before heading to Kee Club for Fa's freidns party which was a cool place , then to a vodka bar before HK snack (kebab equivalent) then a taxi home where everyone was out like a light except Steph.

Final day got up for some delicious dim sum around lunch, me Ray Candy and Steph in the Metro City complex itself (it's kind of like living actually in the shopping center, see the pic below of Ray's flat). Did a bit more shopping (they've got computer centres that and wandering round with Ray and Step, met up with Eugene and Fa for sad goodbyes before they put me on the bus for the airport, which was much better then the airport express train, besides being about a fifth of the price I could sit at the front upstairs and watch the beautiful night views of HK speed past.

Great trip, it was so good to see some of my Uni family again! Today, one day back at work, went with some other teachers to watch our school play in the baseball championships. We lost, but it was loads of fun, and four of us went for a coffee afterwards. Hori sensei is the funniest guy in the staffroom. "5 days in Hong Kong! Such a long time. (then in English). "I think you met a ..... lady... and.... played a.... strange....game." I wish.

Tomorrow is spring break part 2, heading to Tokyo stopping off at various places with Ray. Woo!

Wow.

2007-03-27T02:46:00.000+09:00

I have just seen the best thing ever on TV. I'm not even mocking, I love this. I think I will start watching more TV at 2 in the morning.

I love living in a country where I can just randomly turn on the TV and see a man in a white suit and red top hat with massive shades popping with an old man in shabby work clothes to quality 80s electro in a studio that looks like a kids Saturday morning show.

The rest of the show was equally fresh, consisting as it was entirely of dance offs between various crews called things like HYPNOTIC BOOGIE, CHEEKY CLOWNZ and EGU-SPLOSION and dancers such as SEXY CAT MAIKO. 'Super Chample' could quite possibly become my favourite show.

(EDIT:had a crap version recorded with my digicam but someone has already uploaded a good one to Youtube. That internet eh?)

In fact, looking at Youtube, theres a few good ones there if you're bored at work (the kids are off for spring holiday) including this 'beauty girls dance battle' which was on yesterday and is a lot of fun and an older AMAZING one which just gets better and better, some of the stuff there, looks completely impossible.

TechnoTechnoTechnoTechno

2007-03-26T17:23:00.000+09:00

Can't think of anything else to call this weekend. It was another Osaka weekend. I'm really starting to feel familiar with bits of the city, when I travel away from Kansai and come back to the station, it's not like im 'home' but its a place where I can relax and feel comfortable. It's great for shopping as well, round the South side of town everything's within walking distance. Saturday was shit and drizzly, but armed with the traditional Japanese seethrough umbrellas we checked Minami Horie, the slightly more upmarket side of town beyond Amemura (Hysteric Glamour's flagship in particular is really cool, 3 stories tucked into an interesting building with ramps and stairs half outside half in.):

We went to the Kirin Plaza Osaka for a drink. It's a good looking building with a gallery in and things but at the bottom they have a little bar cafe where they brew 4 of their own microbrews in different styles: Pils, Stout, Weiss and Ale, and you can see some of the brewing tanks from the bar. The little beer set on the left, you can't see the scale in the picture, but each glass is probably less than a quarter of a pint. Under each glass is a paragraph about the style of beer, where it's from and it's history etc, another example of Japan's fascination with providing detailed information on everything.

Checked out a club I hadn't been to before, Saza*e, which is a stylish kind of place, 3 floors, with the top one being a little private bar with a small pool (???) inside. Music was techno, I'm not so into that but the crowd was good. I like the beats (although a bit fast) but I just want someone to break out the guiro or agogo or something, kind of lacking in the rhythms. There was a wedding reception in the upstairs bar up til a bit after 11, and some guests stayed around, so along with your clubbers you've got guys all suited up and girls in delicate heels and wedding dresses jumping around to techno. (The music was like a more energetic version of Peep Show 'he's taking it up, he's taking it up! he's bringing it doooown, bringing it down.') Met a cool group of people through friends of friends and good times were had by all. Later on, on the stage, there were two guys dressed only in elaborate necklaces, chains round their waists and little thongs, dancing with massive feather boas. The thing was, neither really looked like they were enjoying it, one in particular just looked like a salaryman who wanted to go home. There were a couple of girls on a back stage doing a meek little cat dance, but everybody in the room was loving the guys. Later all four of them changed costumes to S&M gear and they got on stage, with Mr Embarressed whipping one of the girls as the other guy pretended to do something rather rude to the other girl. It was all very polite and Japanese.

A kind friend of a friend, 'I will go everywhere for fun' Yusuke, let us crash at his apartment for a few hours sleep early in the morning in nearby Bentencho. Sunday just a hangover curing ramen lunch (kimchi tabehoudai, get in) then back to a different station where I left my car. I realised if I drive another half hour, the station there has twice the amount of trains, which is nice when you frequently miss them like I do.

Got a new camera this weekend, I realised when I saw how shockingly bad the picture of Harborland was in the last post that it was time. I've been wanting a DSLR like Dylan's so badly, but looking back through my blog I saw that there was no way that I could take an SLR to the type of places where I usually take pictures. So I got the FujiFinepix 31d, in Yodobashi camera, a huuuge 7 floor electronics store in Umeda. It's advertised by Ebihara Yuri, who my friend is obsessed with (I think he nearly bought it for himself as well). Anyway, the camera itself looks kind of boring but apparently its the best little camera for indoor pics without a flash in bars and stuff, it's really sensitive. Let's hope so! Here's a test pic I took in a little bar called 'mojo bar' before I was mocked by the others for playing with my new camera taking pictures of... pretty much nothing. I call this 'lonely beer' (at ISO 1600, fellow geeks). Love the abbey road sign. It's not a bad pic but not amazing, hopefully I'll figure out how to take good pics with it.

An aside - there are 'gaijin bars' in japan, generally not fantastic places (though there must be exceptions) which are mainly for expats. Anyway the guy who runs this bar has a sign outside to make it clear that this isn't his idea for this place, he just loves the beatles (well actually the whole of Japan seems to love the beatles but his love is special) and the UK round about the sixties/seventies. Says something like 'Everybody, this is not a "gaijin bar". There are many of those elsewhere. It is a normal bar based on Liverpool and the beatles. However everybody is welcome inside.' The honesty of his sign, his excellent long hair and barmaids in their hippy-esque dresses makes me like the place. The whole place is a time warp, reminds me of my parents' student pictures. Carling on tap too, just like home (is that a good thing?)

Anyway, with my camera I got the BEST freebie ever, a tripod adaptor that you stick on the top of a drinks bottle! Amazing.

Osakobe? Kobesaka?

2007-03-18T18:34:00.000+09:00

Friday night, went down to Kobe to meet a friend for a drink. She was super excited at having bought a DS, she must have been one of the 5 remaining people in this country who still didnt have one. We wandered round Harborland, a nice little area with some cafes and bars and great city views over the bay, this part of Kobe looks great at night. Didn't want to do an all nighter, mainly to save some energy for Sat, so after chilling in the cool underground eclectic little bar that we like (where they played a strange Japanese vocalist covering What's New Pussycat in a sort of reggae/ska fashion), went to stay in a capsule, but arrived too late, and they were all gone, so ended up staying in the capsule hotel in a room they have with loads of futons spread out on the floor, a bit like the shelters people make in churches and places after a natural disaster. Like everything though, was fun.

On Saturday, still in Kobe, picked up some great new music:

I wanted to try listening to some more Japanese vocal music, as much as I like Makoto Ozone and Naoya Matsuoka, theres no lyrics. I don't really like j-pop, each to his own, but the majority of it seems very lightweight and disposable. Gagle, however, are cool, basically because DJ Mitsu the Beats is their DJ, meaning their beats are fantastic. This is a repackaging of their latest album, with the tracks in a different order for no apparent reason. The Antibalas album is weighty Afrobeat jazz, and reminding me why I love record shopping in this country, it had a sticker on it declaring it a 'Hot Chart Hit' whereas in the UK it's no doubt tucked away somewhere in the tiny jazz section. Yes Japan! Finally the Musiq album is great, more soulful melodies and beats (he's great at what he does, I went off him for a bit when I heard him cover Stevie's "Visions", but when he plays to his strengths he's probably my favourite neo soul or whatever you call it singer after Dwele.)

In the HMV, there was a big flatscreen and listening post stand cos Soil and Pimp Sessions have got a new album out. Now brace yourselves Soil and Pimp fans (I basically mean Stewart), it's nothing special. If there wasn't a listening post I would have bought it straight away, but theres really no new ideas on it, and their tunes seem to rely more now on simple repeated riffs than the uptempo soaring post bop melodies that they can do. Theres a cover of Freddie Hubbard's "Red Clay" on it which got me all excited, but it's mediocre at best.

Went for a haircut which is quite different from the UK. In the UK, often, the more you pay, the more attitude the place has (until you find a great place) but here, the people are just cooler. I've tried a couple of other places that were so-so, but Le Chic in Kobe (TERRIBLE name I know) is awesome. I normally have the more senior guy do it, who is cool enough to bend time as he goes past - no joke, the other employees sort of cower from him, running up with a bow to offer scissors and clips as he cuts. This time I had somebody else though, and the normal guy glared at me from the other side of the salon. (check him out, employee number 003 on the website under 'staff' - he always looks like that, never a smile.) From my extensive survey of 4 people I've talked to while having my hair cut, I can tell you that 100% of cool looking people who work in a salon in Japan have visited London when they were a student, mainly for shopping, and they loved it. Of course they did! I have a bunch of 'England lies' that I tell in order not to stifle conversation (when you're as shit at Japanese as me you have to make the most of every chance), namely that I support Arsenal and used to go to the matches a lot when I was a kid, and I stop for tea every day. Having a haircut in this salon is a little bit like those dreams where you're the king, begins with a head massage, jazzy house is played [this is possibly just in my dream] as cute girl assistants are running up and bowing to you all the time (i couldnt work out why, i think it was before and after their breaks). Haircuts in Japan are excellent.

Don't normally blog about this sort of thing, but I'll just briefly cover Saturday night as it was surreal. Mix together one great beginning to a night out with an Osaka girl who works in a hostess club, great meal (Barbara in Umeda is the best non Japanese restaurant I've been to without a doubt) and film (Perfume), go for a late night drink round higashi umeda, it's like pretty much the ideal date... until we run into her ex yakuza recent ex boyfriend with his little crew at a bar and he's clearly still into her (he is admittedly pretty cool but not the right time) and comes over to chat for ages and completely shows me up by mr bigshot yakuza paying our large bill before he leaves without me realising (ZING)... gah. There you have the first half of my latest hilarious-if-it-wasnt-me story (with some great one liners and later situations that just aren't fit for a public blog), available in all harrow pubs from August 2007.

At least life here is always interesting. Off to Hong Kong soon!

White Day

2007-03-14T11:15:00.000+09:00

Japan is big on the gift giving culture. I don't know how important it is to get things 'just right' when it comes to the type of gift, but certainly as a foreigner you're given a lot more leeway. Which is nice when you're an idiot, like me.

Valentine's Day in Japan is a marketeer's dream. Although only women give chocolate, not only do they give chocolate to their boyfriend or someone they're interested in (honmei-choco), they also give 'obligation chocolate' to their coworkers (giri-choco) and these days lots of people (my girl students did this loads) give chocolate to their friends (tomo-choco.)

Then, a month later, on 'White Day' (March 14th), guys who recieved chocolate have to reciprocate, and in a genius feat of marketing, the tradition is that they give more expensive chocolates than those they recieved.

On Valentine's day at work, I got some giri-choco, 2 fantastic little boxes of chocolate from the student teacher and the office lady, a little collection of chocs from the nurse and two individual chocolates from one of the English teachers who went round giving them to everyone. This threw up some interesting questions: am I supposed to get the same thing in return for the English teacher who gave me two little Quality Street equivalents as the student teacher who gave me an amazing box of multi coloured macha, azuki and kurogoma chocolates from Kyoto? The English teacher is the student teacher's superior so should I take that into account? They sit next to each other so I wondered what to do.

In the end, this was all solved as I forgot about White Day until 8.40pm on March 13th, and the supermarkets close at 9. Rushing to one, all they had left was some cheap looking Disney chocolate (I really DO NOT understand why the hell Japan likes Disney so much...) so I rushed to the other one. Sorry guys, I loved your chocolate, but you get a box of strange sesame seed cookies that are for people who are lactose intolerant or something. At least they cost a bit and came in great packing. Hopefully that'll count for something.

End of term time

2007-03-13T10:12:00.000+09:00

This weekend was fun, Saturday let's drinking and exploring more round Amemura ['america town', street fashion and people watching district] in Osaka with friends and met some cool people, then evening time a good night clubbing. Actually ended up going for an hour and a half of karaoke just with a friend, I don't actually like karaoke that much but I guess the right person can make you do anything. We went from there for some late night ramen in the pouring rain with a stall that had set up massive umbrellas over raised tatami mats, taking off your shoes and sitting off the ground cross legged eating as rain pours down around you in the dark was pretty fun :o) Sunday VISSEL KOBE ARE BACK first J-1 home game, great turnout, great atmosphere and I remembered my soccer ball glasses (that also double up as perv glasses, look at Alex wearing them below - blatantly designed for that) and a good time was had by all. (1-1 score... bit disappointed, by then end we deserved to win.)

From Sat: Osaka has SERIOUS flagship stores for two of the coolest Japanese brands, Commes des Garcons and Frapbois. It was so hard not to steal the Commes des Garcons bollard, the brand appealed to my adult brain and the bollard-ness of it to my student heart.

From the footie on Sunday: Wing stadium, soccer ball/perv glasses, the fans and our crew.

Here's some stuff from school.

Exams finished last week, and so I've had loads of lessons where I've had complete free reign, no syllabus, just 'do something fun for the end of term' type things. Highlights have included having the advanced reading class acting out scenes from famous movies (although most were pretty stilted, in the Godfather, Casablanca and Pulp Fiction ones, the kids were fantastic and really got into it), a too ambitious lesson where I draw a massive map of Japan on the board with various cities marked in and the kids move around like a board game based on how many english questions they can answer to get prizes, and having kids design new easter eggs, coming up with names, slogans and details:

Name: Strange Egg
Slogan: 100% Beef
Point: There is beef inside

Name: Energy in Power Chocolate
Slogan: A Nuclear explosion on explosive powerful egg
Point: There is plutonium inside

Name: Noriko Egg
Slogan: Eat Noriko
Point: She is guilty of bad taste!
(Noriko didn't seem at all annoyed by this.)

Name: Danger Egg
Slogan: You are in danger of losing your life!

Name: Pleasant Dreams!!
Slogan: Infinity faith

Name: Dinosaur Egg
Slogan: Dinosaur Egg of Danger. Though it is adventure, want to do people sure?

My favourite by FAR, it's so simple but so brilliant:

Awesome. I'll leave you with some pics of school uniforms designed by my kids. I often use a little design or something to draw them in, then BAM they have to talk about it and cos it's their own thing they want to show off they're a lot more expressive. I LOVE the one on the left with the extra skulls for decoration.

KANAZAWA: Yoshitomo Nara and things

2007-03-05T18:04:00.000+09:00

This weekend, I travelled a long way to visit Siobhan who lives in Toyama-ken, known as the 'armpit of Japan' cos of the shape and location of the massive bay it's in (it's also about 6 hours away from here on the North coast about halfway between here and Tokyo horizontally). Fri night she just met me and we went for dinner and drinks at her local bar 135, and on Saturday we headed down to Kanazawa, the big city in the next prefecture along, Ishikawa. The East square of Kanazawa station is wonderfully designed with a large wooden gate and huge glass roof: (the 'clock' in this picture is actually made up of tiny fountains, and it rotates through different displays.)

We headed over to the 21st Century Modern Art Museum. When you get there, there's a great permanent exhibit called 'Leandro's Pool' which looks like a little swimming pool from above, but there seem to be people in it, then later when wandering round the galleries you come up beneath it and can look up out of it.

The museum is a fantastic building, its a massive one story circle shaped glass building in the middle of Kanazawa. Really interesting design and good to just walk around in.

Anyway, one of the main reasons for going there was to see the exhibitions put on by Yoshitomo Nara, whose work I love. He's sort of artist in residence there at the moment, working with Osaka based design unit Graf on 3 projects going under the name of Moonlight Serenade.

The first one was called 'Voyage Of The Moon', but I couldn't take any pictures inside. The place was a massive dark blue room with a few yellow lights embedded like stars, and in the centre of the room a large hut with a face on top (looking exactly like the one from the picture on the right) where you could queue up to go in, containing a workspace designed by graf with Nara's paintings, drawings, sketches, little models and toys in his signature style (as well as crushed beer cans and written notes) were displayed. It was fantastic. My favourite was a innocent looking kid with the caption. The world owes me. Fucking world. Wish I could have taken a picture.

The second one, 'Dog-o-rama' was two parts: a MASSIVE stuffed dog in the middle of the room called 'Pup-up-the-dog' which people can bring their own things to stuff it with, and 'Pup Patrol' which is full size multicoloured dog costumes hung up around the outside. The idea is that kids can go and wear the dog suits while they go round the museum. The kids look SO CUTE in the outfits, but this photo is off the actual website as I felt it would be a bit weird to ask strangers to let me take pictures of their children.

The final thing he did was to take the outside 'project room' and turn it into a cafe/workshop. Similar to the Voyage Of The Moon hut but on a much larger scale. First he stuck a fake house over the entrance, then made one half a cool cafe and the other half more pinned up drawings, soft toys, graffiti, and this time some photography as well. Was cool to sit in the cafe (which itself had some unusual and cool things, we had "Chocolate Cake(from puddle)" and hot milk cocktails like Malibu and hot milk served as if it they were cups of coffee) and look around. Apparently from time to time he shows up and does work in the workshop, but not when we were there.

Couple of other things from the other main exhibition, called Real Utopia: Tales of the Unlimited. While some things were a little strange (a video of a man repeatedly washing his face with curry), the majority were fantastic. The sort of 'irony' in modern art is something I really don't like, and I loved this exhibition as the exhibits were simple and honest, even when slightly crazy. See the one in the middle below, it was a pitch dark room with regular things in, dining table and chairs, couch and tv, mirror, bench, shelf etc, but all with coloured spots on and a black light. It was really effective! It's called I'm Here, but Nothing, and apparently "generates an endless infinate space, in which all things in the world like the self and other are obliterated, yet exist as each dot in the space."

The exhibitions had great names like 21c. Erotical Flying Machines - A trip to the Galaxy, which was massive spacey drawings and Ladder to Heaven which made use of a dark room, with a blacklight lighting up a white ladder, and positioning of mirrors to make it look like there was a ladder running through the centre of the room that went both up and down as far as you could look, looked fantastic.

They have a room called 'People's Gallery' where apparently different groups can hold exhibitions, and at present it's the graduating students from the Kanazawa college of art. Check some pictures, and and amazing sculpture:

There was a very small exhibition room which was all about monsters, gundams, Godzilla, and stuff like that. I have no idea why it was, although they seemed to have commissioned an anime style drawing of a white dragon attacking the museum itself. The museum was fantastic, and I was so lucky that Yoshitomo Nara's exhibitions coincided with my visit up to that area. Yay for wonderful coincidences.

Next we wandered round the famous gardens kenrokuen, and the castle gate, Ishikawa-mon. They were beautiful, slightly similar to the gardens in Okayama a couple of weeks ago (both are in Japan's top 3 gardens) but with more of a 'foresty' feeling.

Then we did a bit of shopping. Kanazawa has some really good shops clustered together on a couple of pedestrian streets (I prefer them to shopping centres/malls, much more personality) and we happily whiled away some more of the afternoon.

Most of the shops were crazy expensive but had good stuff, then we found this great second hand store with loads of eclectic bits at really cheap prices, like jackets for Y4000 (20 quid) and stuff. See the red Wrangler jacket Siobhan is trying on below? So we're browsing that cheap store, and she sees it up on the top of the shelf on a display and asks the guy if she can try it. He laughs, "it's too expensive" but goes and gets the stick to get it down anyway. IT COST Y480,000. Thats £2,400, or 4,800 Mickey Mouse War Dollars. WHAT THE HELL? They guy said it was 'very famous'. After that Bathing Ape seemed positively cheap. (And it is anyway compared to the UK which made me look at it again in a much more favourable light.)

Headed back to Siobhan's town, Uozu, to have dinner and meet up with her friend Josh, before heading out to Toyama, next town along, for a night called LoveBuzz. Was fun, cute barmaid Yuka from 135 the night before was transformed into cool indie pop DJ Yuka:

And we hung out with some of Siobhan's friends and I met her boyfriend Yutaka for the first time (and his mental mate Yusuke):

Traditional 5AM beef bowl, then back on the first train and crash out. Sunday just hung out with some of Siobhan's friends, dinner in a cool cafe she likes, then some arcade and purikura in Uozu. Uozu is really cool, you can see the mountains on one side (high, white mountains as opposed to my little green ones) and the sea on the other. Really nice feeling to it. Looooooooong train journey home, and time to start next week.

Best anti-smoking poster ever:

Izushi, where funny soba lives.

2007-03-02T22:43:00.000+09:00

Just a little post. Japan is big on regional specialities. In a way that the UK just isn't. Everywhere you go, you hear that this region is 'famous' for a certain type temple, or mannerism, or flavour of Pocky or something. This focus on regional styles is big, running through food, fashion, language, local sights, in Tokyo one of my friends girlfriends was reading a hair magazine, and in there they had styles listed as 'Osaka', 'Tokyo', 'Kyoto' etc, even though (it seemed to me, but maybe I missed the subtleties of it) each style could be seen in any of those places. In fact today I found out that even every Bape store has it's own camo! So anyway, Izushi (apparently called 'little Kyoto' but that's a bit optimistic if you ask me) is famous for Izushi Soba, where me and my supervisor (below) went on Thursday.

Just as I was reading Chris' blog entry about Izushi, my supervisor comes up and is like 'let's go to Izushi and eat Soba tonight'. It's been a while since me and my supervisor just chilled and went somewhere. Rocking to Dave Brubeck in his car, off we went for the hour and a half drive. My supervisor is such a dude, talking bout Yoshitomo Nara, Final Fantasy which we both liked when kids but dont really play now, Vissel, London, we've got really similar interests. He works so hard (one important difference I guess) that its been ages since we just hung out and went somewhere.

We hit a very chilled resturant with fish and a little tree inside (??) which only served one thing, Izushi Soba. It comes on little tiny plates, and you mix up a sauce made of raw egg, dashi (fish stock), tororo (mashed up potato goopy thing), grated onion, spring onion, and a touch of wasabi. You dip the noodles in and they are delicious. You eat in multiples of 5 identical small plates, and apparently if you eat 15 you are a 'soba expert' or something. I could only manage 10 but it was enough. Only cost me Y1000 (fiver) as well. After that you add some hot water with a bit of dashi in to your cup of sauce and drink it.

That was Izushi.

Even though I think Bathing Ape is overdone, I still love their camo patterns, and finding they have city variations was pretty cool.Here are the camos of some places I've been.

Osaka
London
Sapporo
Aoyama
Harajuku
Yokohama
Hiroshima
Kanazawa
Kyoto

Also just booked up my flights for HK next month, with a 8 hour (gah) stopover in Taipei, which gives me the excuse to include this excellent purple camo:

Hong Kong
Taipei

(Obviously theres only stores in the bigger cities, but I wonder why there's no store in Kobe, even though more obscure places like Maebashi in Gunma have one. I guess maybe they think Osaka is close enough? Who knows.)

STEVIE

2007-03-01T08:21:00.000+09:00

Stevie was absolutely amazing.

Arrived at the closest subway station to the Osaka Municipal Gym at about 6, and street vendors were setting up festival food stalls, and loads of people were milling around. From the young to the old, the fashionable young guys and cute girls to middle aged businessmen, it seemed that everybody in Osaka wanted to see Stevie.

The venue itself was quite big, imagine round arena just a little smaller than Albert Hall with just one layer of stalls. (I normally don't like seeing acts outside of a club, but obviously Stevie is an exception) We were sat in the stalls right oppostite the stage, behind the arena, third row back, so although he wasn't that close, we had a great view.

Stevie was clearly in a brilliant mood, being playful with the audience and playing around a little with the songs. It was the last night of his Japan tour and the band were clearly on a high. His voice was in unbelievable form - I'd say better than his last couple of records, and better then on Natural Wonder. The band was smaller than then - no strings, it was drums, bass, perc, guitar, extra keys, trumpet, sax and 4 singers. There was so much energy and you can tell everyone was loving it.

I would have taken more pictures, (as these are terrible I know) but there were stewards milling around looking out and I didn't want to risk it.

I've always had the opinion that Innervisions is Stevie's best album, and so you'll see why I loved the way the concert started. Check the full set list:

Too High
Visions
Living For the City
Golden Lady
You Are The Sunshine of My Life
Higher Ground
Superstition
Don't You Worry Bout A Thing
If You Really Love Me
Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer
Lately
Stay Gold
Overjoyed
Go Home
Part Time Lover
My Cherie Amor
Sir Duke
I Wish
I Just Called To Say I Love You
Master Blaster
So What The Fuss
As
Encore: Another Star

UNBELIEVABLE set list.

Loads of little touches to the arrangements made them great, such as a latin segue at the end of Don't You Worry Bout A Thing, additional vocal refrains at the end of songs, and a whole bunch more solos. (I can't be 100% sure, but I'm fairly certain that during Stevie introducing the band over the As intro looped around, he said the other keyboardist was Ronnie Foster, who's a Blue Note artist - 'Mystic Brew' big tune remixed by Madlib on Shades of Blue.) The tunes flowed straight from one to another (except for a couple of times when Stevie would talk to the crowd) and it built perfectly, towards massive tunes like I Wish (complete with those stops) and Master Blaster. Just to hear all these songs you know inside out that mean so much to you performed with such energy and mastery was incredible.

Stevie was really playful with the audience too, during If You Really Love Me giggling and making little musical jokes during the soft part and before Part Time Lover he announced he was going to sing something acapella and stood up. The bassist started saying something about 'Da Da Da, Da Da, Da-Da Da-Da' and him and Stevie kept this going for a few minutes before getting the audience to chant it, and joining in making it the intro riff from the tune, finally singing it just with bass and drums.

After that tune, Stevie sat at the piano and started playing.
"Welcome..." he said in a strict voice "to the class of Steveland."
"This means, that this is my music class. I want it to be the best music class... in the world. Tea!"
Somebody brought him some tea and he put on a terrible British accent.
"Thanks sou much forr ther teea!"
People start applauding, for no real reason.
"Stop!! This is my class!! Don't do anything till I tell you!"
He started getting the crowd to sing little music exercises, little arpeggios and stuff, and for a crowd of a few thousand odd people it sounded pretty good. It sounded for all intents and purposes like he was going to launch into "Ribbon in the Sky", but then he switched it around, had males and femals singing different interlocking parts at the same time, and launched into My Cherie Amor :o)

Hard to pick out highlights because every track was amazing (kind of trite, but again, with Stevie he sidesteps all that. Same with lyrics, half the things he sings from anyone else would be cheesy, but he's just so honest with it that its not even in question), but I guess for me were the deeep version of Visions, the tunes we used to play in Steel and HYM of course, Part Time Lover which had an incredible energy. If You Really Love Me was fantastically arranged and a lot of fun. And the final encore, heavy rendition of Another Star, perfect finish. When the band did finally finish, unlike the smooth soul they'd been piping in before the concert, triumphant string music like a march from Star Wars was played around the venue. Right kind of feeling :)

After they were selling some CDs including a new double album Best Of, this guys job was to stand there with a massive sign with the tracklisting on, seemed kind of funny when they could have just hung it up. Note how they've highlighted with a red star the tunes Stevie played tonight. Japan is all about attention to detail.

Got the last train back and got home around 1.00. Nice to know I can make it to Osaka and back in a night, even if it is more time travelling than actually being there, but it was more than worth it.

Inner Flight

2007-02-26T11:18:00.001+09:00

(This post must be read while listening to Searching by Roy Ayers.)

Ups and downs. That's the best way to describe the time here. As you can probably tell from the blog, it's usually way more ups than downs, but when you do get down, it's so different from normal. Something to do with being away from your usual people and things who help, and it hits you quicker.

A more chilled weekend. Friday night just chilled at my place with the student teacher who I've become close to and she's helping me a bit with my Japanese. We just watched some Ally McBeal (reminds me of home, Hugh and Jenna used to watch it in our house at uni and during college I used to watch) - which strangely enough made me miss... something but I don't know what. I think when you're in that mood anything can set you off. Saturday headed down to Kobe to meet up with a friend I hadn't seen for a while. Picked up some great music that I'd probably be raving about were I feeling a bit more genki:

Unfortunately my friend had to work the following day and so only had time for dinner, so it looked like I'd be heading back up to Tanba early that night which seemed kind of shit at the time, when you're in that mood the last thing you want to do is be alone in the inaka. Called a friend who was going out in Osaka and headed out there instead after dinner. Was great to catch up with my friend before that though, we just chilled in an izakaya having a few beers and some nabe, smoking vanilla cigarettes listening to Coltrane (thanks again Japanese restaurants) and talking to each other about Life Plans (she's deciding whether to leave the country on an Adventure- of course, my advice was Go For It.) Was still feeling a bit down, and in a kind of dont care mood stupidly spent Y15000 (£75) that I don't really have to spare on a ring... which most frustratingly couple hours later was scratched to shit in the club... stupid.

Commercial hiphop club, got drunker than I've been in ages. I don't say this proudly. I know I'm not 16 anymore and it's not cool or novel to get really wasted. Maybe being on a bit of a downer pushed me on, I don't know... but either way I was out of it. Didn't do anything stupid though so was okay. Clubbing nights in the UK generally end with a kebab, over here its all about the 5AM gyudon (beef and rice bowl). Came back to Aogaki (which is always a lonesome experience in the morning), slept through my stop for the first time ever and ended up even more in the countryside than normal. Even more pretty there though. Came back sunday mid morning, went for ramen with my supervisor, then we went back to mine to play winning eleven 10 (pro evo) for most of the afternoon. Had more people round in the last few weeks than I have since I got here practically. (Still single figures I think, I'm not really living the Tanba life wholeheartedly.) It's weird, you can have weekends you spend mostly by yourself and feel fine, yet then you can spend time with different people over a whole weekend and feel lonely. I guess when you're in that mood, nothing you can do really.

I'm feeling a little introspective at the moment. Situations have changed a little, I'm more than halfway through my time, thinking about the future, the past, etc etc. Feel like my perspective is changing. Missing people I love, missing people I know I shouldn't be, thinking about What's Next after I get back. Will things have changed? What do I want for the future? In thought.

------------------------
P.S. Two new random banners, Beer and Snow.

Okayama Naked Man Festival

2007-02-19T18:59:00.000+09:00

Okayama Naked Man Festival: does exactly what it says on the tin. Thousands of Japanese folk and a handful of foreigners remove all their clothes in the freezing February night air (with added drizzle this year), don a fundoshi (loin cloth worn in a similar way to a nappy) and some thin cloth socks then pack into a temple far too small to acommodate them and struggle over lucky sticks.

First you strip in a tent and have a Japanese guy tie your fundoshi. This feels like ten wedgies at once. Then run around the temple in the freezing air, dipping into a pool of ice cold water (which makes your mind go completely blank, it's interesting) chanting together 'Washoi! Washoi!' Heeding good advice we'd all had a couple of drinks beforehand, I wasn't drunk by any means but it was nice to have a little something taking the edge off the cold.

There are some teams, companies mainly it seems, from young salarymen to old timers, all bonding through that classic ritual of fighting over lucky sticks. (?) And a bunch of yakuza, who wear black fundoshi (everyone else is in white) although the only one I was struggling up against (ooh betty) in the temple seemed more cheery than your regular competitor. Here's me avoiding the paps.

When we all pack into Saidaiji Temple, it's proper madness. I was lucky enough to be in the centre most of the time, because round the edges are where the stairs are up to the top and most injuries happen through falling (or being thrown) down the stairs. When you're in the massive pack of bodies, you basically have no control over anything, and as it gets closer to midnight, somehow more and more people shove in the space that was already more than completely full. With so many people all stepping on your feet, I frequently simply lifted both my feet off the ground, and the squeeze of bodies was so tight that I was carried easily and didn't fall a single centimetre towards the floor. For me it was a 'lets protect our lungs' exercise as I was so close to the centre where unbelievable squashing was going on that the second I lifted my arms from my chest, the massive squash would rush in and completely wind me making it really hard to breathe. (These two photos courtesy of Lena as I was kind of busy. I don't know when she took the temple pic, but there doesn't seem to be as much fighting as later on... I'm way inside the temple in the middle somewhere.)

At midnight, monks throw shingi (lucky sticks) into the crowd, where people fight over them. The crowd starts to undulate like waves, you get pulled completely helpless side to side and backwards, which is much more scary as it's towards the steps. I had to hang on to a pillar a couple of times to avoid falling off the platform. A couple of the sticks are genuine 'super lucky' and some are fake 'a little bit lucky' sticks. My mate Tommi managed to get one of the slightly lucky ones (we assume it was anyway), but it involved a lot of crawling, getting trampled on, shoving sticks down his fundoshi (ouch) and getting a massive cut down his arse cheek. Nice. Loads of people seemed to be getting a bit hurt, and later I found out someone died this year :o( That's not cool.

But I personally had a lot of fun, and although I'm not sure if I would do it again, I'm glad I did and I'm sure it'll be one of my defining memories of Japan.

Next day, only slightly sore everywhere, had a little wander round Okayama; I really like the city. Checked the castle briefly, it's black as opposed to Himeji's white castle and quite a lot smaller. Nice views of the city, again like Himeji.

Next to it though, there are beautiful gardens. Even though they were mainly brown because we visited only a couple of weeks after the grass burning ceremony, they were gorgeous.

There were loads of old Japanese guys with stupidly expensive camera equipment taking pictures of the first cherry blossoms of the year.

This next one will only make sense to those in Japan: Galmy Mart! A parody of Family Mart, although it seems to be a den of sin rather than the life support system that is a conbini.

Also: how could you not love a city with an arcade this big and a red archway proclaiming this?

Only if you were DEAD INSIDE.

Shinkansen home and back to Aogaki where it is finally getting a bit warmer. I feel like I'm coming out of hibernation, it's great.

Happiness at Hikami Nishi

2007-02-19T15:17:00.000+09:00

Something is up. Everybody in the school today is stupidly happy. It started this morning, when I was teaching a couple of lessons with the student teacher, and the kids were so responsive and genki, I wondered what was up. We're both only a few years older than them so I guess they relate more, but it was the best we've had it so far. They still don't like working, but they're so cute with it, like they had cards with information about cities on them and the final line in the discussion was meant to be 'that sounds interesting', and this girl was like (in Japanese) "Lau sensei, it's not interesting. It's really boring. Can I say "I think sleeping" instead?" So I taught her 'that sounds boring' and I had a whole class happily doing the work but ending the conversation with 'that sounds boring' instead. [Incidentally, when a student at the back said me and student teacher were 'best couple' complete with heart sign, instead of the expected rebuff, student teacher said 'thankyou' and blushed. Followed by a beltingly fast exchange of Japanese which she said it was 'better I didn't understand'.]

Then I had a 'debate' lesson, well not really a debate, but the students have spent about 4 lessons preparing their opinions on the topic of 'can (various animals) communicate with people?' Their opinions are so cute, at a couple of points I couldn't hold in my laughter but they didn't mind (remember this is inexplicably happy day). Each group made an argument, to which the other group responded. To the question 'can chimpanzees communicate with people', after the standard 'they can use sign language' and 'they can respond to human language' they had clearly run out of ideas as it went like this:

Group 1: "We think that Chimpanzees can't communicate with people because they can't tell the time."
Group 2: "We disagree, because chimpanzees can get up in the morning."

next reason:
Group 1: "We think chimpanzees can't communicate with people because they can't play the guitar."
Group 2: "We disagree because chimpanzees can beat a drum."

So cute . Also, I think I may have been a bit genki one day and said 'yay' a few times as there's now a group of girls who end every sentence with a super genki 'yay'. Eg, "Hello LauYAY!" "How are youYAY!" "終わったYAY!".

The third years are back as well after a number of weeks away to start preperation for graduation next week (maybe this is what's making the school's mood good) so all the third years are walking round giving everyone a big cheery hisashiburi (long time no see.) [Speaking of graduation , I have to play Auld Lang Syne at the ceremony next week. My supervisor asked me to arrange it to make it as sad as possible. "We want the students who are leaving to cry... ideally."]

On the way to cleaning [don't know if I mentioned before, every day students clean the school and teachers half help half oversee. I run tings at 2F-3F east staircase], I saw students:
*sliding down the bannisters sitting upright (pretty difficult)
*using semi-clear tape to write all over their blazers (they'd written the kanji for numbers on their arm, one guy had 百(hundred) and one 五 (five), no idea why. One had what looked like a massive penis on his back, and as his friend explained this was "男シンボル" (man symbol) I think it probably was. As I arrived they were writing N T for new type across the front, and were sad that I didn't know what it meant. (Also, girls keep asking me S or M and I have no idea why this is.)
*a guy leggin it down the corridor giving another guy a piggy back ("Oh, Lau!! HallohowareyouImfine!!")

Remember, this is a Senior High School. So something is up to make these kids so crazy today. It could be the weather, we had a bit of sun for the first time in months, or the third years coming back, or something else. I asked kyoto-sensei (deputy head) if there was something special about today cos everyone is so genki, and he was like 'I don't know... but they do seem pretty genki don't they...'

Mystery.

Also today I had to make a list of famous monkeys (going to use them in a lesson next week). I got paid to think about this:

King Kong
Bubbles (Michael Jackson)
Zephir from Babar
A Bathing Ape
Milo
Abu from Aladdin
Donkey Kong
Diddy Kong
Cornelius (planet of the apes)
Super Monkey Ball monkeys
Evil Monkey (Family Guy)
Goku (dragonball)
Paul Frank monkey
Mankey (pokemon)
Marcel from Friends
Mojo (simpsons)
Mr Teeny (simpsons)
Rafiki (Lion King)
Ape Escape (playstation)

The students mood has completely rubbed off on me! Great day.

Sapporo Snow Festival!

2007-02-13T21:47:00.000+09:00

This weekend I flew with a bunch of other JETs to the northern island of Japan, Hokkaido. It was the Yuki Matsuri, or snow festival, where they make a whole bunch of sculptures out of snow and ice, really beautiful stuff. There was a massive ice version of a Japanese castle and various big artworks with stages in front, as well as smaller ones made by students and (seemingly) normal people (including lots of characters like Ghibli stuff, Doraemon, Anpanman, kitty etc). There were ones to represent each country as well, the dragon below represents HK, and the description of the American one made me laugh:

There were lots of stages with things going on, including right outside where we got some hot cinnamon wine, a J-pop band miming along to their latest cheesy release. Fun!

We wandered round the snow sculptures, then down to the Sapporo TV tower where from the top you can get a great view of the main street. The queue for the lift was 40 mins, so we decided to... run up. 100 metres or so up you get a beautiful view of the city.

From Sapporo's official website:

In the towns and villages in whole country about 3000 Sapporo was the 5th Japanese city in only 130 years. Why would it be able to achieve such thing? Sapporo is the city filled in mystery and a romance. Wouldn't everyone like to explore Sapporo, which floods such charm?

Then we were well hungry and it was off to an izakaya to drink special Sapporo Classic beer and eat. After this, we headed over to the ice sculptures in Susukino, which is also the going out part of town. You would not believe how many girls, in temperatures below zero, are still going out with shortish skirts. Japanese dedication to fashion is unbelievable. Looked at the sculptures (unfortunately the ice bars had already close) before heading to a commercial hiphop/reggae club amusingly called Booty, which I'm happy to say is not a misrepresentation of the place. Stumbling back to the hotel at 8.30 next morning, it's safe to say Sapporo is a lot of fun :o)

(Even though I lost my favourite Comme Ca hat in some bar, or I have a niggling feeling I may have given it away a la Benny Sings in No More Drinks For Me.)

Next day, headed to snowland or something, on Alex's suggestion. Was okay but nothing really special. I don't think we teased him enough for taking us there. Check all these little snowmen the kids were making there.

Went to eat some Sapporo ramen in 'ramen alley' (they've got they're own style here, buttery and heavy, delicious) and apart from a slightly scary restauranteur, was wicked. On the way back to the hotel in a taxi, saw this massive (easily more than 2m square) logo on the side of a building and took me a while to realise what it was.

Ski lodge place was cool, rediscovered how shit I remain at pool, and the next day went snowboarding. Just wow. So much fun! It was an amazing place to learn cos there was SO much power, even falling heavily didn't really hurt. I only had one reeeeaaallly bad fall, when my legs went over my head and sort of twisted the wrong way and I landed on my upper back heavily, and I know thats the nature of the sport, but it was pretty exciting (though scary at the time) to be thinking, if this was on a street I'd be severly injured. Beautiful mountain views, and Japanese fashion dedication extended to the slopes, with dozens of well turned out young boarders, including what we dubbed 'cute girl ski group' of 6 boarders all in perfect makeup at the end of a long day boarding. Respect! The love of lounge music here extended to the music being piped out of the skilifts and over the mountains a bit, which I loved, and brilliantly during the day I heard both Stevie Wonder's Superwoman/Where Were You Last Winter and Jazztronik's Love Tribe. Still so impressed with Japan's love for decent music.

Went for some night boarding, with the slopes moodily lit (not amazing visibility but such a great atmosphere) and with so few people around and so much powder, was sublime. Towards the end, riding over freshly fallen snow towards the meeting place, it was rippling around the board just like water in a pool, absolutely breathtaking. Back in the lodge, it was almost like being out of Japan, run by canadians and everything western style, roast chicken and veg for dinner, watching Zoolander on the big screen playing pool, like we had gone to a different country.

Next day though (and even more today) my legs ached SO BAD, I couldn't walk properly. Came back to Kansai, remembering to buy this little chocolate you can only get in Sapporo for the other teachers. At Chitose aiport in Sapporo, saw THIS plane: (I imagine it only takes you to really fun places)

Himeji Castle+Art Fair, Osaka Gyoza+Games

2007-02-05T18:21:00.000+09:00

I thought about it and realised what my blog was missing: square photos.

Himeji: nice little city. Got a really famous castle. Had a little look round, really striking.

Himeji City art fair: I think the artists were mainly from Himeji and not professional. A real mix, from the more traditional styles to the out there. Sculpture, pottery, painting, photos, was really interesting.

We ate at a place called Uotami, which is an Izakaya. In general in Japan, they believe in specialism when it comes to food, so most restaurants only serve one sort of food. Izakayas are the exception, serving a little of everything, making them good for a large gathering or when you feel like lots of different things. This one was really cool, you order your food by selecting it via a wireless tablet PC docked on the side of your table. Still cannot get over how cheap eating out can be here. In a moodily lit private booth that's almost like a tiny room in itself, we ate till we literally couldnt move, tempura (deep fried stuff), tacoyaki (octopus balls), sushi, kimchee, japanese omelette, little bit of okra, sukiyaki which included ramen, slices of different meat and a massive plate of vegetables to cook in the delicious broth over a hotplate on the table, and a litre of beer to drink, and walking out paying just a shade over a tenner... man (and this was the most I've paid for dinner in a while). Did I mention they played jazz (including a small combo version of Jaco's 'Invitation'). For the first few weeks back I'm gonna feel England is robbing me over food prices all the time.

On Sunday we headed to Osaka. I'm not really into food. But one thing I really love is Gyoza. So I think its Genius of Namco to put videogames (namco funpark) and gyoza (gyoza stadium) in the same building, Namco City. We played some games downstairs first, there are some really different games, for example about 20 people sat at individual terminals looking at a massive screen playing computer horse racing playing what appeared to be a bookies sim(whats the point?), or these ones which have large tables where people bring their own special card sets and move them around to control troops in a ancient war sim. The most interesting is the new Gundam (giant robot) game (in the picture below). There are about 8 little 'pods' which show a 180 degree view, and you pilot a giant robot, battling against the others. People are SO INTO this. There is a giant flatscreen monitor showing an overview of the battle which people are glued to, there is a HUGE queue for it staffed by a lady in a fake Gundam style pink uniform taking names, and they distribute printed maps of the areas you can fight in so you can plan your game well ahead of time. I think I want to play this once before I leave Japan, but for then it was all about taiko game. Then we went upstairs and tried loads of speciality gyoza (foot long gyoza, pink, orange and yellow gyoza, gyoza with spring onion on the top in a thin sauce, thick beef gyoza), it was fantastic. Writing this, I want some gyoza so badly right now.

I rounded off the week of doing stupid things (puncturing a tyre, losing my keys) by leaving my spare keys in Ouzumi, making my total journey home about 4 hours (when its should be less than 2). If only I'd listened when I was a kid when my dad told me to engage my brain before doing things. I think its too late now.

Ive been trying to set a budget for the weekends, as I keep spending way too much money. I kind of failed again this weekend for various reasons, but this one I don't feel guilty about. Found it in Beams, how could you not buy it?

Thanks, Japan.

Snow! And losing keys in it.

2007-02-02T13:15:00.000+09:00

This morning, there was about a foot of snow. While clearing snow off my car, I somehow managed to drop my car and house keys into the snow on the ground without realising, which then got covered up by the fast falling snow as I finished up clearing off the rest of it. Cue an hour of kicking snow around looking for my keys, followed by giving in and walking to school in order to make second period when I was teaching with the student teacher.

Actually turned out I was teaching first period with her as well but hadnt realised, and arrived with only 15 mins left of the class. She was really nice about it, and my class was more interested in why I had been late than they've ever been in my lessons. It's weird - they can't speak English well but they managed to put me down perfectly, I explained what had happened and a guy at the back shouted out 'Genius!' (We learnt this word last lesson so at least they're studying I guess.) Some of the other guys wanted to know where I live, explaining in Japanese that they were going to look for the key and steal my car. My kids are fun.

Anyway, I had to take 2 hours of precious nenkyu (annual leave) to go and continue kicking snow around looking for the key. Happy ending as it turned out that the office here had a spare key for my house (they are so on top of things its scary) and inside my house I had a spare key for my car so that was okay, hopefully I'll find the originals when the snow melts. It's been a bad week for driving, on Monday after spraying my windscreen with de-icer, I came out the drive and turned directly into the sun which made a blinding effect off all the millions of tiny drops of water which were re-freezing and scraped a broken kerb, cutting and puncturing the tyre which then had to be changed. I'm hoping that all this shit driving I'm doing means it'll all be out of my system when I get back to London and I'll be a great driver... but that's probably a bit optimistic.

Now with pics:

Intl Manga Museum, Clara Hill × Afronaught

2007-01-29T10:13:00.000+09:00

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.

----------------------------------------------------------------

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

2007-01-26T14:08:00.000+09:00

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

2007-01-22T23:03:00.000+09:00

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

2007-01-14T23:08:00.000+09:00

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

2007-01-08T14:03:00.000+09:00

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!

Last Post of 2006

2006-12-21T15:34:00.000+09:00

So I'm off to India tomorrow night. Will be nice to go back. I'm looking forward to the two weeks of doing absolutely nothing except trying to read Winnie the Pooh in Japanese and eating various Aunties' wonderful food. The most difficult decision of the day will be whether to have mango or coconut for breakfast :o)

Today I am crazily busy. Packing, buying last minute presents and food, trying to find what the hell kind of wall plug India uses, tidying, sending things to England, practicing for playing the school song in the closing ceremony tomorrow, buying paint to cover up the latest scratch on my car (its a small one, I must be getting better...), and generally Getting Things In Order.

Anyway, today while practicing for the school song with the kids, afterwards I stayed behind to practice a bit, and having not played on a grand piano for a while, starting playing anything and everything I could think of, was fun. After a while, three of my second year kids crept back in, under the guise of looking for something they'd lost (they kind of gave the game away when they couldn't remember what it was they'd lost). Turned out one of the kids, an ever so slightly nerdy guy from the lower class, wanted to play the piano a bit. He played one of his compositions, a little emotional piano piece (name: "Snow Night") and some classical pieces. He was really good! I showed him some bits and then we had a little jazz jam with him improvising. Him and his friends were trying to speak english, too (in Hikami Nishi?? OMG). One of those things that comes out of nowhere. My kids are awesome.

Wherever you are, have a great Christmas and New Year!

See you in 2007!

Tokyo Calling

2006-12-14T23:30:00.000+09:00

This weekend I went to Tokyo.

I flew out rather than get the Shinkansen as it works out cheaper. Kobe airport is a small internal airport made on a man made island, think it only opened this year and its really cool. As I ate soba in the departure lounge I was crying tears of joy. Or tears of adding too much chilli to the soba. It's not important.

Arrived in Shinjuku late in the evening and just had time to pop into DUG Jazz and Booze (the owner is a jazz photographer, original photos of Bill Evans, Miles, Louis on the walls.) They were playing some Red Garland when I got there, then they put on a cd of stevie covers called "Songs in the Key of Jazz" which is much better than it might have been, check the version of Visions. As I left they had on a uptempo version of Misty, nice.

I was excited about staying in a capsule hotel. The one I wanted to go to was in the heart of Shinjuku's red light district, Kabukicho. Interesting to see girls all standing outside in their long jackets and touts everywhere. The Japanese touts in general ignore foreigners, but a couple of African touts chased after me (both strangely thought I was French at first.) They all have a different game, one is trying to be really smooth (with a pimp hat) giving it all 'heyyyyyyyyy... so there are a variety of places round here...` I admired his smoothness. Much better than the scraggly European man with a front tooth missing who shouted at me in some grainy as hell voice as I walked pat "OI! fuuull sex for twenty five foouuusand yen!" No thanks, guy.

Having sucessfully navigated Kabukicho, I along with 659 of my closest salaryman friends lined up to get a capsule at Green Plaza in Shinjuku. I cannot stress how much fun this was. Pay your fee, get changed in a locker room and put on a light cotton robe thing, then go to your capsule. 600 odd people wandering round the 5 story facility all in little robes is pretty funny, felt like a school trip or a sleepover or something. Chuck your stuff in your capsule then time to go and get naked with salarymen at the massive bath on the 6th floor. Fall asleep watching some random anime on your little screen.

Next day started to walk round Tokyo, just wandering and looking in shops. Went from Harajuku down to Aoyama, to Shibuya then back to Harajuku. Harajuku is nice and all, but I reeeaaallly like Aoyama. Compared to Aoyama, Harajuku is much more of a kids place, but Aoyama feels really cool. Got a new favourite shop, Tsumori Chisato, but I'm gonna have to save before I can get stuff there. Awesome shops round that area, Frapbois, Y-3, Undercover, Commes des Garcons, where I finally gave in to a little consumer lust. They were playing a female vocal version of Here There and Everywhere which may have swayed me. (Check the crazy looking building - it's the Aoyama Prada. Didn't go in cos its not really my thing but fantastic building.)

These pics are of Undercover, one of the coolest shops I've been in. Retro Star Wars figures all in the window, studio apartment meets gothic church interior, and this slightly creepy wall next to the staircase stuffed with cuddley toys where something just isn't quite right.

Wandered round Shibuya, nice area. Went to Jazzy Sport just like I did first time in Tokyo - even knowing where it is it's really hard to find. Picked up a couple of crazy good CDs, a hiphop/broken beat collection from Jazzy Sport and a abstract hiphop beat collection produced by Jnerio Jarel from Dr. Who Dat? There was a mad good broken beat tune on the stereo, asked the guy what it was, and it turned out to be on the Jazzy Sport CD! Lucky!
Popped into HMV to pick up Shuya Okino's new CD United Legends (its a series of collaborations overseen by him, dream collabos - Phil Asher with Blaze, KJM with Fertile Ground's vocalist, Dego with Yukimi Nagano, list goes one.) Taking it to the counter as I heard a craaaaaaazy good soul song, asked the assistant what it was, and it was the Mark de Clive Lowe and Vikter Duplaix track off the album I was buying! Lucky!

Headed back along Meiji Dori to Harajuku checking shops along the way, some niiiiiice trainers around but no money at all for them... very sad. (I really like the Mork high dunks, based on Mork's red and silver costume from the TV show, bottom right of the photo) Hysteric Glamour was okay, but to be honest the shop itself and the signs were more interesting than the clothes. Finally popped into Supreme, but they didn't have the bag I wanted. Was the only place that didn't Irrashai me all day (Japanese shops always greet you like this), I guess they're too cool for that, but Curtis Mayfield's "Trippin Out" was on the stereo so I forgive them. On the way back to the station popped into a Bape store with all the Bapestas laid out like sweets - I think they must have been fake, even a Busy Workshop store doesn't have, like seriously, about 30, 40 colourways all aranged like sweets on the shelf. I don't really like bapestas, but arranged like that they look good. Bape is so old though, the only people I saw wearing it all weekend were a kid kitted out from head to toe in Bape as his mum took him shopping, a fat guy in a computer game store in the a Bapesta sweater, and then finally a British guy who I always seem to see in Osaka in the way back (I know its always the same guy as he is head to toe in the outrageous bape stuff - purple camo hoodie, the Milo Shark zip up etc.)

Dumped my stuff in a locker in Shibuya, then on the way to the TOKYO CROSSOVER JAZZ FESTIVAL OMG stopped off to see what Ginza was like. Answer: upmarket shopping district which is also a bit like Kabukicho but all the girls in those kinda clubs wear stunning evening dresses rather than long coats.

Then off to Shinkiba to ageHa for this:

Woop woop. Words cannot describe how good the night of music was. From 10.30 til 7.30 the next morning, there was about 10 mins of music that wasn't fantastic (which I'll cover later). Unfortunately, during the security search I was told to leave my camera outside, so all following pics are from my keitai.

Arrived as the DJ Masoto Komatsu was playing a wicked remix of Common's "Go" and soon after Mark de Clive Lowe came on main stage. I've seen him once before, but that time I'd had an argument with my ex, we'd missed Airto Moreira and so I was in a bad mood and didn't really 'get' it, thought his beats were a bit wanky. But this time, dunno if him and Bembe Segue (vocalist) have become tighter by doing this so much, or I was just in the mood, but the music was fantastic. He uses a samper/sequencer MPC and builds beats and tracks live with loops played on various keyboards while she floats some vocals on top. Deep musical sculpture stuff.

Cro-magnon were up next, and that was the thing that wasn't amazing. It was more straight up synth funk, which is good, but in this line up it stood out as being not as good [the best I can describe it is something like a more jazzy soulwax who I saw last year with Ali in Nottingham] - however this was completely saved after about 15 mins of the set, when the music stared to get a little latin style, and then Tabu Zombie (trumpet) and Motoharu (sax) from Soil and Pimp sessions jumped up and made it funk with jaaaaazzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Next up was Frank McComb, a jazzy soul singer from the US, but I didn't know he plays the Rhodes himself, he's almost better on that than on vocals. Listened to his CD in a shop before, it was one of those ones that sounds so tight and studio like that as a CD it's not amazing, but you know as a live band it'll be good. His band were really tight, and halfways through, in addition to his current e bass player, he introduced Tetsuo Sakurai, Japanese jazz e bassist who came up and started doing some Jaco licks and crazy soloing, then the two bass players had what i would call a 'bass off'. Fun.

Shuya Okino DJ'd next, started with that tune 'endless fliiiiiiiiight' which is another deeeeeeep kjm tune (great piano solo from Hajime Yoshizawa). Diviniti (female vocalist) was there and did a live PA for her tune on his album "Shine".

Then was the highlight of the night for me, the Japanese jazz band Sleepwalker. Raw, earthy jazz, post hip hop post club culture jazz, jazz that sounds like a mix of 70s afro jazz pharoah saunders style and expansions mccoy tyner style but taking into account everything that's happened since, not playing it but somehow you can tell it influenced this note or that solo. You might be able to tell I'm a fan. They had featuring on different tracks, Yukimi Nagano from Sweden and Bembe Segue from UK. I am ten times over in love with Yukimi Nagano. Ever since I first heard her on Hird's 'Keep You Kimi', her drawling complex yet sweet vocals have made sooooo many tunes. Combined with her cutely nervous stage presence and this little strange shuffle she does while singing, she's pretty much my favourite singer of anyone. Sleepwalker and Yukimi. Same track but from the solo. So combine this with Hajime Yoshizawa's deep searching jazz outfit (who were the first band to get me to understand about this kind of music) with the amazing Masa on sax, I tell you, I was in HEAVEN. Unbelievable sound waves.

How do you follow that?? Well, stick Ryota Nozaki (Jazztronik) on the decks, get him to introduce himself like a shy schoolboy then drop some latin bangers! WOOOOOO. By this point I was practically overdosing on happiness.

Followed by Koop, Swedish jazz band, pretty big in this scene. European nu-jazz business, double bass, vibes and programmed beats with a live drummer as well. Halfway through the set the two main guys took off their jackets and waddayaknow they were in serious drag. Europeans eh! Yukimi came back on stage for a couple tracks off the new album, and of course they played their biggest tune 'Summer Sun'. I like. By this point (bout 5 in the morning) people were TIRED - seriously it had been so upfront since it began - and nodding off wherever they could.

So Shacho from Soil and Pimp gets on the decks. He's like "everyone, you must be tired." Then plays an INSANELY LOUD klaxon for about 15 full seconds. Worked though. He's a pretty good dj, club jazz/jazzy house kinda stuff.

Final live set of the evening, Kyoto Jazz Massive. Okino brothers behind the mpc and decks, Midori from Soil and Pimp on drums, Hajime Yoshizawa on keys, and a few I didnt know on synths, perc and bass (young bass guy seemed to be over the moon to be playing with KJM.) Vanessa Freeman from the UK on vocals, absolutely killllled it. Works so well live, might go and see them again next week down in Kobe. Beautiful stuff.

The only thing left to say was that the encore was SERIOUS. Pretty much everyone jumped up on stage, hajime, mark de clive lowe, bembe, vanessa freeman, diviniti, frank mccomb + band, okino bros, masa, midori, motoharu.... maaaaaaaaaaaaan. Jammed on a improvisational wave of energy off of the back of the 7 or so hours of seriously out there music we'd just heard for about an 45mins. Amazing.

Stumbled out a bit before 8ish, stopped in Shibuya to get a 3 hour rest at a different capsule place. Wasn't so good. You think adding a porn channel in the capsule makes me not notice the lockers are smaller and its more cramped and less plush than Green Plaza, huh Capsule Land? No.

So anyway after my brief sleep it was off to Yokohama to meet up with Mahoko from Nottingham. We did some sightseeing from the comfort of a bus, which was fortunate as the weather was pretty drizzly and grey. Did a teeny bit of walking before looking round some shops. In this shopping centre, they had a big Christmas tree made of Swarovski Crystals which they were lighting in a really cool way, and we happened to arrive as they were having a special thing with lighting and music and indoor snow! Cool.

Then we popped back to Mahoko's place to have a delicious meal, made even more so by the fact I'd eaten at Yoshinoya the entire weekend apart from this. Really good to catch up and Mhk's family is so friendly. Was really nice to be around a family again.

Sunday, headed down to Akihabara before heading back, to get a videogame. The tube map I have I think is a little out of date, as I kept somehow shuttling between the two stops surrounding it, until I gave up and decided to follow a bunch of nerds, figuring they were probably going there. They were. So Akihabara is an area full of game, computer, technology shops etc. Got my nerd fix by playing on a Playstation 3 for a while, and picked up a few games finishing off the last of my money in the world.

Back to Aogaki via Shinkansen after buying delicious omiyage (souveneir gifts) for my staff. Great weekend, and to top it all off, on Saturday VISSEL KOBE WON (well drew but away goals count for more) and so we're going to J1! Yeeeeaaaaaah.

Seasons Greetings from my kids

2006-12-13T15:14:00.000+09:00

My kids are cute:

Dear Tomofumi, Happy Christmas! This year was good for me and I hope it was for you too. My best memory is made a girlfriend. I hope that you strong came to high school. Thankyou for your nice batting. Yours, Akinobu

Dear Akinobu, Merry Christmas! was it a good year for you this year? was for me. Thankyou for your nice pitching and nice playing. I hope that you and she become a best couple. Sincerely, Tomofumi

But also strange:

Dear Masado [maybe, can't really read his writing], 2006 was busy year for you, buy your new load was opened. And I hope you more happy. Now I hear it snows. This years getting colder. How I feel inside. Losing my concentration. I just need more time. Some how I'll make it there. I just need more time. You are nice gay. Hope you have Happy Holidays. LOVE