Fireflies & Deep House

Just got back from an early firefly viewing. Early in the sense that the firefly season - early summer - is just beginning, and there were no more than seven fireflies to be found along the entire Philosopher's Path. But that means there were very few people as well, so it was a relaxing nightly walk. Also crossed a small electric fence and headed up the hills and into the mountains, through a couple of torii and past a waterfall or two aided by my phone as a flashlight.

At some twenty minutes walking distance from my place! Damn I'm lucky.

Now to finish this rare free evening off with some nice deep house and a fried egg or two.

Ben Watt & Jay Hannan - Lazy Dog, an excellent double deep/jazzy house album I found recently.

Sakura Blooming / Exciting Times with Jungle Mic - One Road

There are many roads to professional musicianship, and we just so happen to be on the one I think might be the most common: the one that winds through a bunch of local live houses, connections with local, then regional, then national bands and event hosts and club owners, and finally people who are willing to pay you adequately for your efforts...all the while learning, learning, learning from those who have come before you and "levelling up" as quickly as you can.

Last weekend was a Jungle Mic weekend. On Saturday, we organized a combined Fall In / Jungle Jamboree (Fall In is the name of the event a buddy band of ours, Es, organizes frequently - except they disbanded after this time because their guitarist is quitting...which I didn't realize until the next day because I usually don't listen to the serious stories in between songs) at Kyoto Muse, our usual place.

I had a lot to do in the afternoon/early evening (i.e. dance practice for the show at that same event, with Ikeyan and Yamaa, as well as meeting Misa for the second-last time before she moves to Shizuoka for her work, which I found out on Saturday and took a couple of days to process, because I thought she was going to stay in Kyoto...Shizuoka city is about 4 hours by normal train or one by Shinkansen), which is why I missed some of the earlier gigs, including one by the band of our recording/mixing engineer at Studio Rag. You can't have 'em all...

Anyway, after some confusion about who had to perform what when, Ikeyan, Yamaa and I all separately made it more or less in time for our dance show. A house show this time, and I'm glad to say it turned out quite interesting. Routines are always more difficult to perform smoothly than you think (no way you're going to be able to do them fluently with ~8 hours of practice), but there were plenty of solo/duet parts which were more improvised and probably more fun to watch. Overall, though we made many mistakes, the feeling wasn't bad, and since the audience was rather unfamiliar with this kind of dance, we probably managed to convey almost as much as we could have even if everything went perfectly. I liked the part where we were looking for the piano sound, I found it first, ate it with a satisfied face, went crazy, then they found it, went crazy, and we all had a blast.

More than the performance, though, last week's daytime practices were really fun, reminiscing about last summer with the sun out at 20 degrees. Beautiful! The sakura are beginning to bloom and I expect full bloom (i.e. riverside parties and gigs every day) in about a week! Ikeyan and Yamaa are both graduating, and though I'm happy to announce that Ikeyan is staying in Kyoto (and in fact moving closer to me), Yamaa (who has recently been added to the business team now consisting of her, me, Yokoo and Freddy) is moving to Tokyo. In other words, this was probably the last show for a long time, if not forever, performed by "Heartbeat Collective", the team that was first put together for Ego's Zero show last year - the first show I ever performed at. Wow, old times. The year is drawing to a close, and all kinds of interesting feelings are bubbling up ... but more about that another time.

Just before our dance show, there was the gig by Nubo, a band from Yokohama. It was the first time I really enjoyed another band's gig at a Jungle Mic event: they played something in between rock and ska and knew how to create a good party atmosphere. At the afterparty, I spent half of the time (i.e. 3 out of 6 hours) with Nubo's bassist, Kim (JM's bassist) and Masa (the aforementioned engineer), and have good hopes for performing together with Nubo again in the future. They're a touring band though, more suited for live performance than selling CD's, so they're on the road all the time and I don't know when we can match schedules. We'll see!

Our own gig went good and bad. We had a lot of new stuff going on compared to a month ago: three new songs, background vocals by Yuuki (guitar) and me, and more rapping by me. Somehow Yuuki messed up quite a lot, and it took quite a while for us to convince him, after the gig was over, that things were quite alright. Because on the side of the audience it actually turned out to be a great gig! Two of the three new songs are uptempo, funky and easy to feel, the other new song is a true slow ballad (Evans loved it, says he can't wait for the recording), U-ta (vocals) performed much better than last time, Satoshi (drums) and Kim were very tight, I did some MCing/call-and-responsing in between songs as well which was apparently a great success. During the encore, we had an acquaintance rapper and the singer from Es come on stage and join us in a mishmash of Resound (a JM song) and a funky improvised session (which I didn't know we were going to have). It was good fun, and though impromptu things like these are never flawless, we got positive feedback from the people in charge afterwards. Keeping the funk alive! In all, the atmosphere and the communication with the audience was very good this time.

As always, there was a feedback session with the manager and the owner of the live house before we left. This time, we got what I considered to be fabulous news: 1. U-ta, though he still needs a lot of practice, is noticeably advancing. 2. For the first time in over a year (which means since way before I joined them), it was possible to see what Jungle Mic is aiming for as a band, largely due to the successful integration of my keys. Whereas a year ago (half a year before I first heard them play at the riverside) it was apparently a total mess, now the way ahead has become clearly visible and the work that needs to be done can be put into words concretely: keep going with the uptempo songs and background vocals, keep working on the crowd interaction, increase variation in the ballad-type songs, have drum and bass play a bit more freely (since Jungle Mic decided, I guess about a year ago, that they wanted to create some more mass-appeal songs, the rhythm section has suffered from excessive holding back).... now that's stuff we can work with! Not like last time, where all we got was "keep it up .. you guys have the potential, but you need to work out for yourselves what you really want", which was not directly helpful.

So the gig was a success - also according to the couple of personal friends I had in the audience. The afterparty was an event in itself. About twenty people there, mostly band members but also some friends. All-you-can-eat-and-drink for 2500 yen - yes I ate and drank a LOTTTT (God I love Japan). As mentioned before, good conversation with Nubo's bassist, Kim and Masa, and with Evans and Mariko (a friend of ours). I also got to know a former member of Jungle Mic, who was kicked out because he sucked at guitar back in the day (they used to have two guitarists around 7 years ago, just after they started), and who has apparently always been the crazy drunk at the parties. This time too, he got wasted to the point of not being able to utter anything other than caveman language, being punched and kicked around by all his friends - outside ... naked. Riiiiight, don't forget we're in Japan!

The party ended around 6 am under a bridge in Sanjo, after which I crashed at U-ta's place and he was kind enough to wake me up with the smell of pizza around 11 am. We left around 12, to pick up some other members and head for Shiga, for the second gig of the weekend. Shiga is one of the prefectures bordering Kyoto; I have plenty of friends who are from there and a couple who live there right now. It's also where Lake Biwa lies (went there to see fireworks and dance in the streets sometime last year). Anyway, this particular live house, Huckleberry (Hakkurubeeri in Japanese) was kind of in the middle of a residential-looking area with nothing interesting around. It was a lot smaller than Muse, but then Muse is really quite big. The smallness made it very easy to get a good sound, though, so soundchecking was a breeze.

This night's event was hosted by a local band which, no offense, was very amateur compared to the other performing artists that night. Accordingly, they performed first - we were third or fourth out of seven (Yuuki, considering the artists after us, thought we deserved to be later). Despite (or because!) of the middle-of-nowhereness, the somewhat improvised organization and the audience consisting of 90% girls, most of which didn't seem too impressed by anything at all (which made me, bad boy that I am, stereotype them into music-illiterate friends-living-around-the-corner of band members), the overall atmosphere was quite good, and we had a fun gig. Playing in such a small space made it much easier to put down an good stage performance, which was nice for a change, though of course we're aiming to wow bigger crowds as well.

The afterparty, though, was where most of the fun was to be had. Contrary to Kyoto-style leaving the live house for another place, tables were set up inside the live house, and the food was prepared by the owner of the place himself. 2500 yen again, but this time all-you-can-drink and plenty of food with no time limit! The food wasn't so great, probably because the owner is an alcoholic and was drunk when he made it. That guy was truly something! As nowhere else in Japan, all band members used plain form (no formal language) with him, and he was cool about it. His idea of a live house is "a place where bands that become big get their baby experiences...no need for all kinds of formalities and strictnesses, just get people together and have fun". Though it's a good philosophy and I honestly think those places need to exist, it's almost hard to believe his business can remain standing, what with the small audiences and unlimited drink sessions every night. When we asked him what he thought of Jungle Mic, having seen us for the first time, all he could reply, time after time, was "I don't really like Kyoto bands...I just like Kyoto girls", and then the conversation would change into hilarious story exchanges between some of the musicians that were more familiar with him, who had been having their own, entirely unrelated conversations a couple of metres away until that moment.

Besides explaining the fine differences between Japanese and Dutch women to the club owner, I spent most of the time talking to the (female) singer and MC (male), both around 30, of Funky Rockers. They're both very cool and had some great ideas about us (Funky Rockers, Jungle Mic, our generation) having the responsibility to change the music scene: music should be about entertainment, going to a live house should be "hey, I hear there's a good party at club X tonight, let's go check it out" rather than planning a month ahead to go support your friend's band because he needs to sell 20 tickets to be able to play at all - let the motherfucking live houses get their own customers instead of making the bands do all the advertising! ..and more of that kind of stuff. We'd played with them once before, in Muse (on an evening where Muse booked all the bands separately), but that time we didn't have much chance to talk to them. This time, we got along really well and I have very high hopes for playing with them again, hopefully a lot in Osaka (because that's where they're based)! Between the two of our groups we have plenty of party fuel to make any event fun.

One thing I talked about with FR's MC was the difference between the live music experience in Japan and in other places. I agreed with him that the majority of Japanese concertgoers is too passive, to the point of making me think they're kind of missing the whole point of the gig. It's quite hard to get people to move (as an illustration of the seriousness of this issue, Yuuki wants one of the next JM songs to be written from the "easy to make the audience move" perspective .. you know, waving your arms from left to right or other stuff I'm sure you've seen Japanese audiences do in concert videos). Now of course it's fine if you don't want to go all out dancing and prefer to enjoy the music by watching from a distance, but it seems everyone is like that. I honestly think there are few Japanese people who would understand a Manu Chao concert video. Finishing this paragraph on a good note, though, Jungle Mic does have some fans that know how to physically enjoy the gigs, and it's always very motivating to see them in the front row. I hope we can make more people get up, get down, get funky, get loose, as Teddy Pendergrass put it in his funky song.

After the afterparty, we headed home around 3/4ish. In our car were U-ta, Kim and me, singing along to Dragonball, Pokemon, Ghibli and other assorted sing-along material loudly until we were back in Kyoto. Just before going to sleep that morning, I realized how lucky I had been to meet them and be accepted into the Jungle Mic family. With the gears moving (gigs planned, our CDs being passed around to record labels, continuing work on the new Jungle Mic image (clothes and all)) and positive feedback about all the changes so far, the future is looking bright. I love these guys.

Fireworks, Funky Friends and that Fine Family Feeling: It's A Free-Fall Free-For-All Fantastic Fork !

Warning: Long.

Last evening, when I was walking to the local udon shop with Evans in the still-barely-bearable Kyoto heat, I told him how my entire stay in Japan up until now seems like one big vacation. Though my recent experience with the entrance exam reminded me that it's about time I started getting more serious focused, particularly with my physics efforts, it's hard to imagine a complete loss of this feeling of freedom and the wonder at being here. Still, I do think I'll sober up once I lose touch with most of my international friends and start hanging out in the lab for 8 hours a day. In any case, this is the middle of summer vacation, and whatever the future holds, right now it's that good old SUMMER FEELING!

I'll discuss the major activities of the past two weeks in chronological order.

On last week's Friday, there was the annual fireworks display at Lake Biwa. Though I had originally planned to go with the Ego people, I ended up going by myself and meeting up with Jesus, June and Jaa, as well as some of their friends and their friends. It was beautiful evening; Lake Biwa is the largest freshwater lake of Japan, and it was my first time to go there. The fireworks are launched from the water close to the shore of the southwestern part of the lake, which is closest to Kyoto; it's not far at all from the city. That part of the lake is surrounded by a 20-meter-wide strip of low vegetation and pedestrian boulevard, so the visibility is very good from a very large area on land. This makes it relatively easy to accomodate the 350,000 people that flock in, and provides for a very relaxed atmosphere with the insanity of Tenjin Matsuri and Gion Matsuri (see my respective posts here and here) being replaced by a quiet, giant picnic next to the water.

The fireworks were amazing, and the spirit of community that was all around us was very pleasant. On walking back to the station with my friends around 10, I stumbled upon Ikeyan and Nonchan, dancing in the street to the music of some girls and guys playing a bunch of rare instruments such as a jew's harp, metal thumb piano, all kinds of percussion, and a wonderful instrument I'd never seen before, called a hang (see this video for a somewhat monotonous example of play). It took me about .5 seconds to lose interest in my station-headed friends, and what ensued was a wonderful music and dance session in the streets of Ootsu. I got the contact info of the main music guy, and he was very excited to help me out with some sonic sweetness for my home-based music projects. By the way, the funky band I met at the riverside last week invited me to jam with them next Thursday, so I'm also looking forward to that. As far as music is concerned, things are going the right way.








The next day, I went to Kobe with Ikeyan, Nonchan and Misa. There's an annual event in one of the many clubs on one of the beaches around Kobe, and a bunch of Ikeyan's DJ/dancer friends from Osaka were to come as well. It turned out to be a really fun day, consisting mainly of bouncing back and forth between the dancefloor to the sea. Saw some really entertaining dance/music shows by all kinds of people - I've come to realize the Kyoto scene is really quite limited -, danced a lot, and felt intense satisfaction at being in the sea again (the previous time was before I came to Japan, on the Moz/SA trip). After getting back to Kyoto, Ikeyan joined Misa and me for nightly food and drinks in one of the cozy places close to both of their places, and the day was finished off in a relaxed, happy fashion. Also got an update regarding the status of weed among the youth in Japan - though it's not unpopular, it's quite a hassle, and in any case waaaay expensive (40 euro/g or so). We're all excited to go to Thailand's Full Moon Party and alter our minds there next year.







Sunday, then. Spent the day at Misa's place (watched Trainspotting for the first time - very cool) to take an evening train to Uji, where there was to be the annual Uji fireworks session. I underestimated the traffic and ended up in the fullest train I've been in in Japan so far (which is not the fullest ever yet for me, though I think the record might be mercilessly claimed by Tokyo next month), and once I exited the Uji station, the show was just about to begin. I managed to squeeze myself to a pleasant standing spot on a bridge 100 metres from the entrance to the station, and watched the show (which was less amazing than the one at Lake Biwa) by myself. When it was over, I met up with Tareq and Evans, who were around there as well, and spent the rest of the evening chilling with them.

Monday, I went to Nara with Tareq, Jesus and June, and we met up with Hibino, our assistant tutor of the past semester, who is from Nara, and he toured us around. I'll let the pics speak for themselves, just noting that this particular day was the lucky once-a-year that a large part of Nara is lit up by candles at night.
















On Tuesday, Koki arrived with a friend of his from Tokyo (who turned out to be a really funny guy - maybe the first person I have been able to practice my absurd humor with since I parted ways with Borgir). They were passing through on the way to their hometown Fukuoka, and had about 24 hours for Kyoto and Osaka. Meeting up (finally!!!) at Kyoto Station, the first thing they wanted to do was go to a public bath, because they'd been clubbing-not-sleeping for a couple of days. I hadn't been to one before, but there turned out to be one smack in the middle of central Kyoto, in a small alley somewhere inside a shopping district. It was a very pleasant first experience; hot and cold baths, a hottt sauna and a bath whose walls sent pulses of electricity through it every second, which I didn't find pleasant enough to enter with more than one leg. From this experience and the next, I gather that Japanese people spend about 20-30 minutes in such a bath, and come out very clean and very refreshed. It's great. I also witnessed a yakuza subordinate thoroughly scrubbing, washing and drying his aged boss's naked body, which was interesting.

Once we got out of the bath, Koki wanted to go to a temple or shrine, so we went to Fushimi Inari, where I'd been once before (the one with the thousand red gates - see this post of mine), walked around for a couple of hours, and took a train to my place, where they crashed out while I grabbed a ton of music and dance videos from Koki's hard drive. When they woke up, we headed to Osaka and met up with Kentaro, a locally well-known dancer who Koki knew, and who ended up being the dude I met at Eszteca's studio some 6 months ago - a nice coincidence. From the practice spot in front of Namba station through the showcase-packed club night, I got my first impression of the Osaka dance scene, and it's basically bigger and more exciting than in Kyoto, though Kyoto's relaxed vibe is certainly very pleasant as well. Unfortunately, DJ time was somewhat crap and the club very full, so there wasn't too much dancing on our side - in any case, not enough for to permit me to ask Kentaro for his number so we could practice together in Osaka sometime in the future, which he'd suggested in the beginning of the evening. I'll get there eventually. Anyway, after Koki and his friend took a shower in a manga/internet cafe close to the station, we went our separate ways around 6 am, and I headed straight for Sanjo, Kyoto, where I would meet Ryu (my tutor of the first semester), his friend/assistant tutor, Tareq and Evans, to depart for our two-day long "camp" trip.




This trip was something Ryu had invited us to a month or two ago, but until the day we left we didn't really have much of an idea of what it would be like. It turned out to most resemble the family gatherings I sometimes have with my extended family in Germany: people of 3 or 4 generations gathering in a comfortable house or two in the middle of nature, playing games all day and drinking and chatting the night away. In this case, the group we joined consisted of some three families, each spanning three generations, who have anually meet in this particular place (some 2-3 hours drive from Kyoto). In line with the strong contrast between insiders and outsiders, we were immediately accepted as insiders (since Ryu and Hibino, who have been doing this camp thing for a couple of years now), which meant that we really became a part of the family.

Spending two days and two nights with those people was incredibly fun. Among the three families' three generations were a ton of interesting, funny, crazy and friendly people. The program consisted of a lot of chatting (a lot of interesting stories about Jordan, Kenya and Japan), a lot of sports (outdoor baseball and soccer, indoor basketball, volleyball, badminton, tabletennis), games (cards, bingo with prizes for everyone), outdoor grilling, bathing together, lots of food and lots of drink. From what is probably the richest Japanese person I have gotten to know so far - a lady working in Tokyo who works at the top level of Toyota's hybrid program - to the grandpa who's funny as hell, knows how to hold his liquor and is extremely sporty, to the bikers and the cute small kids, a pretty lady who just returned from living in the Dominican Republic for two years, a Big Friendly Giant who's ghost-story-telling skills entertained the kids to no end (understanding them was a little tough for me, but it was a fun challenge, and I promised that next year I'll be able to tell my own stories) and the "Mother" of the whole big group (who embraced us as her children from the first minute), the group was fantastic. It was one of the most meaningful experiences I've had since getting here, and gave me a strong boost with regard to my attitude towards the whole integration problem: it is now clear to me that though it will probably be impossible to get accepted into society on the most superficial level because the differences in looks and culture are too obvious, it is very well possible to integrate into any of the endless subsocieties of this country, be it a dance circle, a university or a "family" in the sense of this camp.

I'm very relieved.