FUKUOKA

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)

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.

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

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 Photography 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!