Happiness

Jack Johnson - Sleep Through the Static (the song)

Today, a public holiday! *checks* The day of Showa (the previous emperor).

I just got home from Nagisa festival, where I went with Ikeyan and a work buddy of his from Kyuushuu, Nonchan and Reggae. What a day! Gorgeous weather, extremely colorful people, music spanning the spectrum from punk to techno, rock to jazz and even afrobeat, can you believe it!? 13 Japanese (including 3 percussionists) playing Fela Kuti covers as well as original material (which sounds identical!). Japan is a wonderful place. Good food, non-stop dancing and the festival atmosphere I hadn't seen for quite a while. Jodie told me he'd performed there once with Eric and the Tribe, so if he and I work on our two-person dance music fest, we might be able to perform there next October or next April. It seems the perfect venue for our kind of project, and I'd love to perform at this festival, so I'm all pumped to continue with it.

Skipping back to last night, I had dinner with Manchan (the flamenco guitarist that looks like an Italian pirate), after which I went to a house practice session in Fly dance studio and ended up crashing at Ikeyan's place, with 3 hours of sleep before waking up for the festival today. Some twelve hours of dancing in two days - exhausted but it feels great!

Coming home in a great mood, I also found out that U-T-A finally posted the next Jungle Lifestyle episode. Haha, I love these guys. To quickly recap the Jungle Mic activity of the past week and a half: a gig at Doushisha University south campus in the middle of nowhere on a beautiful sunny day; three days later, rainy, a gig at Big Cat, a very respectable live house concert hall in Osaka. That evening a certain lady from a certain company came to see our gig and have a chat with us, hinting at a very bright future for Jungle Mic !! So in order to make that happen, we're totally psyched for the recordings next month (three songs, 2 of which are uptempo and one a true ballad .. I'm sure you can find pieces of them scattered around the video blog). This time, I'll be adding lots of cool keyboard parts to fill the space, there will be percussion, raps by me and vocals by me and Yuuki, and even the sax player who I met on the riverside last Friday because I was attracted by his sound will probably make a presence in some or all of the songs (we jammed in the studio this week and it was good stuff)!! Wow, things really couldn't be more exciting.

Of course school is well under way as well, and it's not strange for me to be in the lab around 2 am lately, calculating propagators for the antifermions of quantum field theory. Tomorrow morning I have a presentation, and I'm kinda behind on my Anki reviews (and quite hungry besides), so I'll stop now.

A very happy day indeed.

P.S. Pics coming soon, I promise!!!

Different Rhythms

It's almost spring .. out with the old, in with the new! But lately I've only been in-with-the-newing. Had some physical annoyances which prevented me from blogging and kept me at bay for a while, but they're gradually being solved by my daily massage+electricity treatment. I was recommended this place by a girl I met in the club a couple of weeks ago, and what with insurance covering the majority of the costs, it's basically a 1-hour treatment, every day, for 100 yen per time. Holy shit, right!? Yeah, my body, mind and wallet are in a very harmonious relationship at the moment.

The talk of the month is organizing registration stuff for school and MUSIC! Jungle Mic (new songs in the making - they're FUN!), MSB (second gig last weekend, new songs in the making as well, trying to plan recordings for our first demo now), and more: I jammed with a band called Eric Mandala and the Tribe and fit in quite well, so they invited me to gig with them as well. Unfortunately but hilariously, the guitarist/band-leader recently broke his arm in an arm-wrestling contest (epic) so he's AFK for a month or so. However, I've been getting along well with the drummer of that band, a Canadian dude who's maybe twice my age and has been in Kyoto for a number of years now. He does drum programming/sampling as well, and he has a vision which we're trying to put into practice. If it works out, it's going to be something like 2 guys with their respective keyboards and laptops, plus an acoustic drum set and percussion set. Me all red, him all black, walking in between the different gear and creating dance music based on loops created in the moment, live sampling and live drumming!! It's very exciting, but the setup is quite difficult (we might need to bring in our own sound guy at every gig since mixing the computer stuff with acoustic drums is gonna need a finely tuned ear). Anyway, in the most optimistic scenario our first gig is exactly two weeks from today!

Dance, too. Got around to watching some vids Koki gave me a while back, and grabbed a large dose of inspiration from Brian 'Footwork' Green. Furthermore, dancer buddies have been coming back from vacation (Europe mostly), and everyone hanging out as much as possible before all the graduating people move out late March / early April. Events abounding, and I managed to squeeze in a little show on the 21st (at another Jungle Jamboree) with a 3-man-team consisting of Ikeyan, Yamaa and me - house only this time, been a while. I gotta get my part of the choreo done by next Wednesday... And I've started on my quest to learn what there is to learn in my circle: funking, locking, breaking (practically speaking, I just relearned the six-step, but hey you gotta start somewhere!). I'm planning to ride along on the dance bandwagon for a long while!

Music I've been digging lately - check 'em out if you've got the time:

Me'Shell NdegéOcello
Phat Phunktion
Ali Farka Touré

I'm also downloading the already-old-new Tenacious D DVD and quite excited about it.

On the love side of life, I finally managed to match schedules with a certain girl from the dance circle. Next Tuesday .. let's see how that goes. Then there was a cute Osakan girl from another band at last week's Metal Passion, where I performed with MSB, and I think I'll meet her again later this month. Small things but they keep me happy and motivated.

With mom back in Mozzy and new and old friends taking up the old place in Amsterdam, plus me getting all the documents finalized for starting the real studying in April (and getting somewhat of a perspective on what the Master's entails - not as bad as you might think), I'm feeling like a new phase of the universe is beginning. All the best wishes to everyone, everywhere - you'd be surprised at how much time I spend every day thinking about all the people I've ever met, though of course that doesn't justify my lack of communication. I've been meaning to buy postcards for three weeks now, can you believe it? Living the happy life of an egoist in the Far East, I still can't believe it.

Finally, check out Jungle Mic's video blog. We've only got 3 episodes so far, but are planning to post one weekly. Comments welcome! If you'd like any particular translations I'll give them to you (like, for example, the details of how Kim grew up on White Base).