End of Golden Week: Vissel+Tokyo

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

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.

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.

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

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.