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!!!

The Real Deal

Okay, so it's very annoying that I have to bend my neck every time I pass through a door, and that my bathroom mirror comes up to my chest if I stand normally. But honestly speaking, the practical inconveniences of Japan end right about there. In almost everything related to daily life, Japan is extremely convenient for anyone living here: public transport, public safety, supply of consumer goods (from apartments to second-hand clothes to electronics to books to 24/7 food), the cellphone system, etc.

Despite these luxuries, I am quite sure I won't live my whole life here. Of course my desire to see as many different corners of the world as possible is a major factor in that feeling. But there are other issues. And today, they seem quite heavy. So heavy, in fact, that it seems impossible to overcome them without sacrificing some things that lie quite close to the core of my being. On the other hand, I love a good challenge, and there will be goods and bads wherever you set foot in the world. Japan might not be that bad. For now, I'll leave things as they are and keep on living my life - a strategy which has proven itself often in times of philosophical impasse or other complicated situations. Personal conclusions and related important decisions are still a while away, and we will discuss the issues at hand many, many times before that, I'm sure.

So which issues, you ask? Here you go.

The above website gives a very good layout of what culture shock is like for most Western foreigners coming to Japan. In my first year in Japan (I had several parties this week to celebrate the one-year anniversary, by the way! You can look forward to the next blog entry), I've had to deal with many, but not all, of the issues the author describes, and it was a refreshing read for me; reminded me of where I'm standing right now. Though I doubt anyone can understand those issues without being in Japan for a long time, hopefully it'll help you to bring your (probably way-off) image of Japan a bit closer to reality. Hopefully it'll turn you on, rather than off, and stimulate your curiosity. Hopefully it'll motivate you to shake loose of the usual confinements of your world and stride into the wild universe out there.

To stimulate your curiosity even further, let me give you a teaser of what's to come on this blog. Just the other day, I mentioned I should start making a list of the small cultural differences between Japan and Holland so I can show it to people whenever they ask that dreaded question. Well, here it is! A beginning of the list of things that are strikingly different in Japan than in Holland (I keep using that country because I don't want to generalize to 'the Western world', though in many cases it might be just as appropriate...if I speak about languages the contrast is usually between Japanese and English, not Dutch). Compared to the being-'of-the-same-age'-if-you're-equally-old-on-April-1 quirk, the following things are kind of deep...but here goes!

• The meaning of love
• The rhythm and melody of language
• Music
• The concept of normality, or of absurdity
• The concept of quality
• Rationality
• Justice and its value
• Interpersonal relationships
  
• Sarcasm

Dear blog, dear readers: we have a lot to talk about.

This will be one of the last vacation posts, since that blissful time is slowly drawing to a close. I have yet to hear the distinct call of the cicadas, who supposedly produce a very recognizable "Kids, sit down and do your summer homework, time's running out!" sound around this time of year, but my phone's calendar works in equally depressing fashion. It's not that bad, because I almost feel like I'm dumbing down by not studying for so long (besides inserting hundreds of words into Anki; my Japanese conversation skill has definitely improved this summer). So before I leave on my last trip of this summer, to Tokyo, here's a quick Previously...on to recap what's been going on.

After coming back from Shizuoka (see this previous post), it was only a couple of days until I left with Misa to go to some onsen, about 5 hours' train, cable car and bus travel from Kyoto. We only went for a night, but the town's isolation and completely different climate made it seem like longer. What a relief it was to run around in the 15-degree rain! Maybe Dutch climate isn't that bad after all, and I just need mountains and forests to make me happy...nah, actually I hate it, but it was really refreshing after hanging out for months in 35-degree, 90%+ humid places.

We stayed in a ryokan, the only thing to do in onsen towns. It was my first time for both onsen and ryokan, and both of them were very pleasing experiences - I have already recommended my Finnish grandmother to take her sister to some of them as soon as possible, since I think they'd have a fabulous time. Anyway, when we arrived at our ryokan, which we had specifically chosen for its pretty-looking outdoor bath and the possibility of mixed bathing, we received the unpleasant notice that "We are sorry, but our outdoor bath is currently broken". We were very disappointed, not knowing what could possibly be broken about a hot spring, since that bath was basically the reason why we spent the whole day traveling to get there in the first place. Fortunately, there turned out to be plenty of other pretty outdoor baths in the town (even one with the possibility of mixed bathing), all accessible for a small fee.

I am thoroughly enjoying the Japanese public bathing experience. It makes me feel clean and reinvigorated. With saunas, hot and cold baths both indoor and outdoor, and even baths that have electric pulses sent through them periodically, there's plenty of fun to be had for the whole family. The onsen water, however, is another experience altogether, and as soon as I entered into my first onsen, I felt my limbs starting to tingle - this was the good stuff. Healing properties of the mineral-rich water, or in any case a very, very good way to relax while looking out over some uninhabited forest on the hills across the river.








On the way back from the onsen town, we took an afternoon stop for some sightseeing at a UN World Heritage site whose name I can't remember, where the main attraction was a huge graveyard in the middle of the forest. Not just any graveyard, but probably the funkiest graveyard I've ever seen. There were many graves belonging to companies instead of people, supposedly to honour the people who died while working for those companies (from accidental machinery mishap to actual honorable service - either way it's pretty weird to see graves marked by the words NISSAN, JAPAN SPACE AGENCY or YAKULT), graves for animals who died as a consequence of laboratory experiments, graves for children, a gravestone dedicated to graffiti, and many other things Misa also couldn't figure out. Most of these didn't have any actual physical remains in them, but were there for the symbolic meaning. However, there were some graves that I think contained actual physical remains, and they belonged to rather important people in Japanese history, like Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu's brother. Quite impressive to be so close to them.








One last remark about the onsen trip, for those of you who are wondering what that last picture is about. It's the latest in Japanese weeding technologies: an old-school flamethrower! I can hear the dude thinking "and STAY down!". What a job.

On to the next trip, then. The dance camp! Four days in a place more or less as isolated as the onsen town, in Hiroshima-ken (didn't get to see the city). Four days of dance, play and party. Four days, 130 dancers! Crazy fun. Great chance to make new friends and strengthen bonds with existing ones. Joined a couple of sweet workshops (funking, hiphop, locking) as well as the big battle (lost out in the second round, which is progress!) and had a blast overall. There was even a nightly ghost tour. Sweet fun.






















On the topic of dance: Yesterday was the long-awaited day of the event called Symbol (or its Kyoto version, at least - Kobe and Osaka have their own versions). Different universities from Kyoto create elaborate shows to show off their circles' prowess, and there's inter-university battles (Ego lost to Air Action, Kyoto Sangyou University's circle...it's a boring truth that b-boys win without fail in inter-genre battles). Unfortunately, I had to leave before the event was halfway through (before the really cool stuff went down), since I had agreed to meet with the band at the riverside.

Before I continue, here's a quick summary of the first gig I had with Jungle Mic, last Wednesday: it was AWESOME! The live scene is well organized here; this particular live house (Kyoto Mojo) was quite small but very cozy, with everything you need, including sound quality way beyond my expectations. Soundchecked around 1 pm, then spent most of the day hanging out with the other bands and doing nothing much, until doors opened around 18h and it was back and forth between seeing the other bands and chilling backstage. The gig itself went well, considering we had practiced the songs together just twice, I had never seen them live so didn't know what to expect in terms of show, and it was my first gig in a long time. About 100 people in the audience (including some steady fans, who happen to be cute girls), a lot of humor and most importantly, FUNK! There's a DVD, but I think I'll wait to show you all what we're made of until we're a little tighter.

Back to yesterday. Got to the river, prepared for the outside gig, and headed off to a small but cool radio studio in Sanjo belonging to a small local station broadcasting on FM and in particular to a cafe nearby, where Yuuki (the guitarist) has a half-hour show once a month. This time Yuuta (singer) and I joined him, they introduced me and we had some laughs. It was my first time to participate in a radio program, and I enjoyed it a lot, so I'm looking forward to more of it in the future.

After that we got started on the gig, which was great fun for about an hour and a half, when a policeman (unprecededently for that early hour) arrived to inform us that someone was complaining and we had better pack up and leave. He was sorry, we were sorry, the 50 people sitting by the river were sorry, since we were all having a great time and honestly not playing any abhorrent music, but that all didn't matter. Anyway, it was a good experience, and there probably won't be a problem next time (they've been playing there twice a month for about 6 months now). We headed to the rehearsal studio and recorded a rough version of a work-in-progress, after which we had gyuudon and laughs (I can laugh til tears with these guys, it's great) before they dropped me off at home and I crashed an hour or two later.

As a final treat, some recent miscellaneous pics. Thanks for reading, and keep in touch.









P.S. An Indian girl committed suicide out of bullshit-based fear of the world ending by LHC's attempts to recreate early universe physics (LHC finally started operation last Wednesday). No comment.