On a side note, American Airlines fucked up our "vegan" requested meals for the millionth time despite our three calls made ahead of time in anticipation of said fuck up.
Sixteen hours in the future smokers are to smoke inside a smoke box as opposed to outside.
Arriving in Japan, we reached this very futuristic landscape with wonderment, glee, and exhaustion. And indeed we are now quite literally sixteens hours in the future, compared to Pacific Standard Time.
Our first two shows were at a venue called O-Nest in Shibuya, Tokyo. Melt-Banana played the first one and shredded as usual! The surrounding area I have settled on describing as a Philip K. Dick-esk amalgamation combining Las Vegas, Tijuana, and New York City.
Recalling what I read in a book written by Alan Watts: Tao the Water Course Way, I am reminded of the jealousy I used to have for humans growing up speaking languages which do not use a non-intuitive system of consonants and vowels, but instead use ideograms and calligraphy, such as Japanese. Apparently F.M.R.I. scans showed that people who speak in Japanese or Mandarin use the right side of the brain when communicating, which is commonly known to be the "artistic" side of the mind. In direct Juxtaposition, when Latin derived languages such as English and Spanish are spoken, F.M.R.I. scans showed heavy activity in the left side of the brain, which is known to be the "logical" side. At this point in my life i do not have much room for jealousy of such things any more, life is simply too short. Plus the cultural differences may have been the catalyst that lead to the different systems of language, not the result.
Shibuya at night
During some down time I went in search of a nearby temple but found a couple of shrines instead. At one of these shrines an older woman sat at a sort of reception area and attempted to direct me to the temple i was in search of. For fifteen minutes I happily listened to this woman oozing kindness all over me. The experience, ill sort of embarrassingly report, filled the back of my neck with goose-bumps. It was unclear if she knew that I only know a handful of words in japanese, but she pressed on seemingly getting something out of the interaction as well. This was not the first goose-bump eliciting experience I have had thus far on this trip. On a bus ride from the airport into Shibuya the male driver would every so often make a kind, soft spoken announcement in Japanese over the semi over bassy P.A. system. These announcements only happened about seven times but I quickly became addicted to his soothing work-voice inflections. Later Joey said the guy sitting in front of him was looking at gay porn the whole ride. I wonder if he rode that bus for the sole purpose of listening to this man’s professional bus driver announcement voice while being turned on whole time.
We took a short domestic flight to our third show which was in Sapporo, on an island north of mainland Japan. Its kinda’ funny to me to think that there is a beer called Sapporo as well. I can’t help but think: what if there was a beer in America called "Chicago".
That day my volume pedal and Gabe’s kick pedal broke. Our set got cut short and by the next show in Kyoto we replaced and fixed the problems. Volume pedals cost twice as much as they do in the states, i quickly discovered.
Near Counter Action (the venue we played in Sapporo) were six or seven narrow shopping structures one after the other.
Street performers played in these shopping halls after hours and music-goers seemed to be ready for the event bringing materials to sit on.
Kyoto seems to have as many shrines and temples as the universe does galaxies! This morning I ventured out and went to the Heian Shrine which has an enormous garden covering thirty sqaure meters. Later on, since we had a day off, we all went on a family field trip, lead by Katoman, to the Sanjunsangen-do Temple which contains 1000 similar statues within, in addition to a giant Buddha and several other deities mostly borrowed from Hinduism. According to a display, all one thousand of these life sized statues burned down in the first year of their completion. They were subsequently rebuilt from scratch again by only three artists. Now thats some patience! We also visited the Kiyomizu Temple which had an elaborate ceremony today consisting of droney traditional horn tones and one of those long dragons requiring several people to move it about, granting it the gift of life. It is very interesting to me that Buddhism appears to have become more of a "religion" than a philosophy in contemporary Japan. This was first brought to my attention when taking an Eastern Philosophy class many moons ago. It seems that some of the original teachings by Mr. Buddha might be lost in tradition. After all it was around 2000 years ago when he walked around as a two legged creature on this planet. This is all particularly interesting since the book im reading right now is The God Delusion written by the cogent advocate of Atheism, Richard Dawkins.
Sanjunsangen-do Temple. Photo taken from this website: www.taleofgenji.org
The show we played in Kyoto was, for lack of a better term at this moment, awesome. It reminded me why i like live shows! Melt Banana played this show as well and were somehow even better then they were at the show in Tokyo. The second band that played the show were amazing, incorporating weird samples, split second changes with a creepy tinge of strange holding it all together called Dr C N, i think. Their name is written in Japanese, so i hope i got it right.
The show in ....Osaka.... was super rad as well. A band called Vampillia played which consisted of ten band members including an orchestra qualified violinist, a super attractive petite male cross dresser playing guitar and doing operatic vocals, a madman dreadlocked front man, and a man in a suit underneath a traditional Japanese robe using a huge knife on a cutting board as if it were a violin sometimes in time with the music but not intended to nor making any audible sound. I guess there is an ex member of Bordems in the band. Another rad, band i think named the Sun, played and reminded me of inventive bands on Gravity Records in the early 90’s.
Vampillia in ....Osaka..... Photo by Robin Laananen.
After the show we went out to eat with some friends. I have a picture that i dont think i can post here on myspace. Its of a man who introduced himself as the Japanese Jimmy Page, right before his pubic hair was consensually set aflame at the dinner table. Many other shenanigans ensued including, but not limited to: a bottle in his anus, drinking tabasco sauce, and wasabi on the tip of his penis. Even though so many pictures were taken from several cameras, he was all to ready to redo some of his poses for those who did not get a good shot the first time around. For instance, he lit his pubic hair on fire three times for the sake of the shot! The waitresses at this restaurant tried their best to ignore this behavior and continued to serve us drinks, unbelievably. One of the great quotes from that night was from our new naked friend as he confidently professes, "I am Jimmy page," dropping the "Japanese" out of his title. He had surpassed world wide status at that point. Soon we were all using the lyric "Have a nice day" from the Bon Jovi song as a toasting term instead of "campai" which is "cheers" in Japanese. Another great little rendition evolved, thanks to Gabe I believe, using the Japanese word for excuse me (sumasan) and singing it to the tune of Have a Nice Day in a James Hetfield of Metallica vocal style like this: "suma-fucking-san!"
Confirming that Japanese Jimmy Page’s butt is in fact two separate cheeks using a pizza cutter.
This is Katoman, our fearless leader here in Japan. He has been our friend for years and set up all three of our Japanese tours, this being the third. He runs a label called Dotlinecircle. Photo by Robin Laananen.
In Tokyo we played with this band called Nisennenmondai. They are an all girl band and they are fucking awesome! Photo by Robin Laananen.
As Americans we stand out like sore thumbs. Photo by Robin Laananen.
Funny food. Photo by Robin Laananen.
Holy shit! Photo by Robin Laananen.
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto. Photo by Robin Laananen.
Sanjunsangen-do Temple also in Kyoto.
Beer and wine from vending machines in Kyoto.
Heian Shrine in Kyoto.
Osaka wall of ads
Ridiculous crab on wall. Perhaps its a recycled hamburger?
The show after ..Osaka.. was ....Nagoya...., which is the smallest city on this tour resulting in the smallest venue. As in ....America.... and European countries; the bigger the city the bigger the sub culture and hence the bigger the show. We played with a rad band called Nice View, whom weve played with on other Japanese tours several years ago. The drummer in that band (Talow) is so fun to be around and is one of the most inspiring weirdoes ive ever met. Similar to the two other times ive been in ....Japan...., him and i spent all night working on music together. This time we went to a rehearsal / recoding studio and like the two other times we had to mainly communicate through music itself as he doest speak much English and I speak next to no Japanese. Facial expressions explaining either a positive, negative, or neutral feeling towards a musical idea and hand gestures signifying tempos and repetitions were enough to fuel a night of jamming! Our musical project is called Kichigai Cuso, which directly translates as "crazy shit." The meaning of the phrase doesn’t actually translate so well in ....Japan.... so its more like "shit craziness." Unfortunately when I coined the name in 1999 I knew only a few words in Japanese, "crazy" and "shit," being two of them. I will however never deny the power which resides within the term "crazy." In fact one might say I hold the word in the highest regard as it is the first word I actively attempt to learn in any language. With it I have been able to seeming express excitement, empathy, gratitude, and pain with this single, mysteriously flexible word in a handful of languages using voice inflection to help contextualize.
This is Talow in one of his "Drum-Bot’s" which he uses for his one man band Talow the Tornado...
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Today I saw one of the beginning sketches of Gabe and Joey’s furniture ideas! Holy shit, I cannot wait!
The last show was in ....Tokyo.... at a rad venue named Super Deluxe which sort of seemed like an art gallery. A cool band called Shobu, which our friend Monika is in, played. Most of us met her on this tour and she works as a translator. On our first night in ....Japan...., over drinks at a cool little bar that Katoman djs at sometimes called Beat Bar, she gave me a crash course on ordering food and drinks which ended up helping a lot! Thanks Monika. 2UP also played that show and were rad to see! Our good friend Tetsunori plays guitar in this two piece which has songs about such topics as mops, and asking where one can buy sweat pants! So fucking rad! Tetsunori and I have actually been working on a band through the internet called Thank You Forgetting Ideas. Its really, really weird stuff which I cannot even begin to describe yet as its unfinished.
2up is going to tour the east coast (....USA....) in early April 2008, catch em’ if you can!
Monika myself and Tetsunori (left to right).
this is really nice post thanks for shearing it we also offer Japan Escorted Tours
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