May I be the first to wish you all a very Happy and Healthy Thanksgiving.

I'm off to a Thanksgiving dinner, which, rumour has it, may or may not include fried octopus balls. Mmm!

Response to Iain's Comment

(For those of you not in the know, Iain posted a comment on my last post. I thank him very much for it. You, too, can leave comments there; I appreciate all the feedback I can get.)

Tonight, on an invitation from Iain, I headed up to Inuyama for what will hopefully be the beginning of a musical endeavor, the likes of which the Japanese have never seen. More likely, what the Japanese will see will be two gaijin with guitars in a bar in Imaike, once. But hopefully not. (Timmy: do you think you could use your wonderful post-ownership influence to "suggest" a "showcase" of an "up-and-coming new band" to Joe? After we write songs of course.)

Anyway, tonight was kind of a precursing (ahem) to some songwriting; with various influences tried and tunes tested. Good times. We played until our fingers were sore. Afterwards, we decided to try a local remedy for sore guitar fingers: beer. We headed out to Iain's local for a round, and a game of darts. It worked: sore soon fingers were forgotten, and Kei's wall had a few new holes in it. [I also won the game, barely, and in large part to great generosity on my Scottish comrade's part.] I'd brought my guitar with me to facilitate an easier departure, so we took turns playing a few more songs at the bar. (Well, Iain played most of the songs, since he can actually play the guitar; I mostly just looked sidekick-y and sang a bit.)

This actually may have counted as our first bar gig, as we were each given an orange by an appreciative young woman at the bar. Or maybe she thought that we'd be quiet for a bit if we ate oranges. Either way, she filmed a little of our performance on her cameraphone for posterity (yay for cameraphones). You should be able to find it online soon: just Google "crazy gaijin music video".

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Seriously though, for all of my "smartness", I really am excited to be working on some music again. Iain's a great musician, and hopefully we can get a few songs written soon, and maybe even a show or two in. And, as the Scot said earlier, "We'll be huge on the Indie scene. Hell, we'll BE the Indie scene!" Nagoya - nay, Japan - will never know what hit it.

Rock and roll.

Update, Part 2

Regarding my last post: yes, I've acquired a guitar. And yes, I play it while watching sumo on TV.

The guitar was my big purchase of Oct/Nov, since I hadn't done much traveling; went to Osu Kannon and found it in a used music shop for 3800 yen. Not a bad little acoustic guitar, fun to jam around on, and re-pick up all those songs I used to know, and even a few new ones! Suddenly, the old dream of becoming a Rock Star is reborn...

I made the mistake of telling a guy at my local that I'd picked it up, so now he's hounding me to write some songs and PLAY there ("C'mon man, I used to OWN this place! You can play here no problem!"). I told him I need to practice a bit first.

My other purchase that night in Osu was an old copy of "Fletch Lives" on Japanese VHS. I figured, heck, we've got a VCR, and Alwyn really needs to experience more American culture before he heads back to New Zealand. My other justification was it only cost 100 yen, or 90 cents US. Ahh, cheap entertainment.

"Fletch Lives" reminds me of my friend Rebecca back home, who is a big fan of the Fletch movies. And who, if she reads this, NEEDS TO COME VISIT. Playing old songs on the guitar reminds me a bit of Melissa.

Hmm, the differences a year makes. "Discuss amongst yourselves. Not too seriously."


More to come, stay tuned...

Update, Part 1

Discovery: My new favorite activity is playing guitar while watching sumo wrestling with the sound turned down. Good times.

Well, enough has happened in the past few weeks that I haven’t written about that I think it’ll take more than one post to fix. So much has happened…

Anyway, here we go:
HALLOWEEN - October 30^th found me heading out to an izakaya in a black trench coat, black t-shirt, black pants, black shoes, and two plastic pistols shoved in my belt. The plan was to look like Neo from The Matrix. People told me I looked “tall”. But anyway, it was fun; lots of great people, lots of great costumes. Devin was Hunter S. Thompson, and looked pretty much dead-on. The izakaya was great; we had an entire room to ourselves, “ourselves” being 35 Nova and Aeon teachers, and three hours of nomihoudai and tabehoudai – all you and eat and drink. Which, with 35 people, is a LOT.

The best part of the night, I have to say, was Yukiko: she’s an Aeon teacher, twenty-eight, gorgeous, speaks great English, and just so happens to know my good friend Luke Scripter. It turns out she lives in the same town outside of Nagoya as Luke lived in, and met him on the train when he was going to Korea. I met up with Luke on his way back from Korea, about a week later. Cue “It’s a Small World”. Yukiko was thrilled that I knew where Nakatsugawa was, and I, in turn, was thrilled that she was thrilled (I’m all about the small victories). We ended up talking about Luke for a while, the differences between Nova and Aeon for a while, and the origins of Halloween for a while. Good times.

After all the eating and most of the drinking we could do, Sean, organizer of our little soirée and ringleader extraordinaire, decided it must be time for us to hit a club. So we all ran to catch the last subway to Sakae and find the club, which Sean knew more ABOUT than WHERE it was exactly. Along the way we either amused or frightened the Japanese we happened to meet; Rob especially frightened them. When you’re a head taller and twice the size of the average Japanese man, it’s not too difficult to do; add black clothes and a clear plastic mask, and you’ve got a pretty frightening sight. Well, we finally found the club, which really wasn’t too hard; all we had to do is follow the guys in tennis outfits. The club offered free admission with a costume, and there were a LOT of costumes.

We stayed at the club for a few hours, chatting with some costumed and enthusiastic locals and listening to Japanese hip-hop. The strange thing about Japanese music is that it throws random English (or, more commonly, Japanglish) into songs; so you get, “[something something something] flying the sky, [something something] baby, [something]”. So after a couple of hours of listening to bad English in bad hip-hop inside a third-floor club with a low ceiling, we decided to take the party somewhere a little quieter. So karaoke it was.

But before that, we needed to FIND a karaoke bar. There are plenty in Sakae, but the trick is finding a cheap one open at 3:30am. And despite the fact he didn’t know where to go, our fearless leader Sean kept us moving until we found a place that would admit 15 costumed gaijin. Note: It helps if you flash money.

Karaoke, as always, was a blast. There’s nothing quite like sitting in a dark room with a bunch of people you’ve just met, and belting out tunes that everyone seems to know. Karaoke – bringing the world together. Well, the English-speaking world at least. I, as always, sang the one and only Jimmy Eat World song in Japan – “The Middle” – to much applause and many jeers. I think I’ll keep my day job, y’know, just to be safe. We all had fun singing, or croaking, along with everything from Chuck Berry to the Beatles to Men At Work to something Japanese that someone accidentally punched in. Japanese karaoke songs are like Japanese TV: you can make up your own words, and it’s funnier that way.

By 5:30 we were all pretty knackered (tired); and rightfully so, since we’d been going since 8pm! Fortunately, the first trains started running around then, so we hopped on the first one heading our way, and beat it home. After a healthy breakfast of microwave teriyaki burgers, I hit the sack. Woke up at 2pm, got ready for work, and taught five classes. Piece o’ cake.

And that was Halloween! I’ve got a lot more coming, so stay tuned. I’m Audi 5000.

Osu

Hmm...

Well, I spent a good portion of this evening in a part of town called Osu Kannon; an area known for its large temple (which shares the name) and discount electronics shops. That, and the numerous other shops, parks, and shrines that neighbor each other on Osu's narrow streets.

Osu is a really cool area, one that I like to frequent on my days off to read in cafes, mainly for atmosphere and pretty decent coffee (which is pathetically rare here). Osu is home of the first public park in Nagoya: one big tree atop a burial mound, three wooden benches, and a sign in four different languages declaring that it is the "first park in Nagoya"; all nestled between a bakery and a shoe store.

Another fun thing to do is checking out the used clothing stores, which I've had mild success in, scoring a pretty kickin' jacket for less than ¥1700 (about $16). Today was more of a wandering day: I checked out a couple new coffee shops, jammed out to The Mars Volta, almost bought a couple CDs, REALLY almost bought a pretty beat-up acoustic guitar (which I may go back and pick up tomorrow), and checked out some awesome "Engrish" shirts. My favorite so far was on a handbag: "The Seven Wonders of the World: It's a mystery why such phenomena happen now and then." To which I reply, "A mystery indeed", and laugh. Every time.

The variety of shops in Osu never ceases to amaze me; so far in addition to "Smash Head Cafe", I've found "Oops Hair and Make [up]", "Jonson's Head Shop" (there's truth in advertising), and today's favorite, "Samson and Delilah Hair Salon". There was even a used American clothing store which proudly proclaimed "Old store since 1978". Makes you wonder what it was before then - a "new store since 1976"?

Americana is amazingly popular here, even the most mundane things - like Coca-Cola bottle openers and old Saturday Evening Post pages - are for sale, which makes me wonder about how the Japanese interpret American culture.

And everything is done to the Nth degree: tonight I saw a guy walk by in a black leather jacket, tight jeans, sunglasses (at 8pm), and the most impeccably greased pompadour known to man. He, apparently, had just walked off the set of Grease. At least that's what I'm telling myself. But it seems that everyone here is the same way: if you're going to dress a certain way, you're going to do it 1000% - if you're hip-hop, you're going to buy Nelly's old underwear; if you're 50's rock, you're going to put John Travolta to shame; and if you're a goth girl, you're going to wear neon pink Little Bo Peep costumes with your bright pink hair. Wait...what? Yep.

All this to say, even after five months in Japan, in the same city, I'm still perplexed and bewildered at Japanese culture every time I leave the house. I talk to my roommates about this, and they agree: we are bound together by this surreal experience because it's SO surreal that it will be impossible for anyone at home to actually believe it. Perhaps the memories will one day fade for me to the point that I'll begin to think the whole thing has been an extremely strange dream, and a reason to not eat spicy food before bed.

Meanwhile, I'm kicking myself for not bringing a camera along to document these strange, local adventures. Tomorrow perhaps...

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..."

Peace,
thom