Holiday Hiatus

This blog has gone on holiday and will resume the first week of January.

Christmas Season

My holiday season started last week in Japan and will carry me through the next few weeks of my upcoming trip to America.

Last Thursday I kicked things off with a small party with my Hosono Class. I’ve been teaching these students every Thursday for just over two years, so I’ve gotten to know them very well, and they’re capacity to learn and retain English amazes me. Not to mention they’re all really, really sweet kids.


Hosono Class


The original plan was to teach English for an hour and then have a dinner party with games afterwards, but the kids were so excited it was impossible to have a normal class. We ended up just wrestling for about an hour before they wore me out and we all took a rest to eat.

Unfortunately, the youngest student of the group, a cute little girl named Reika, did not feel well and could not join the wrestling match, but she did try to make an appearance when the food was brought out. She ate a little bit, and then started crying and threw up. Not very pleasant.

Friday, my kiddy Christmas parties continued when I agreed to help my good friend Toshiko, a private English teacher in the neighboring town of Tsushima, with her students’ party.

I showed up a few minuets late, played a couple games with her students, taught them how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which all the students thought was a weird combo, and then split for my very own Christmas party at my house.

While I was away, my buddy Will was helping get things started at my house. We had a little scare when he plugged in his fan heater and blew the fuses to half my house and couldn’t find the fuse box to turn things back on.

My landlady was nice enough to call an electrician, who lived close by, and he remedied the black out problem by spying a small fuse box hidden in the rafters near the entrance of my house.

From there on, the party turned out to be a success. It was a potluck style party, which is uncommon in Japan, but the turn out of people and food was great.

The most memorable of all had to be when Yuki, a young girl that works the front desk at my sports club, came by with her best friend, whose name I’ve forgotten but remember her well because she was really cute and tried to speak to me in Italian.


Yuki & her friend


Both girls were dressed as Santa’s Little Helpers and started rolling sushi and making tako-yaki (small battered pieces of octopus topped with mayonnaise and sweet brown sauce). It was a huge hit!


Santa's Little Sushi Helpers


Saturday I went to see the Acid Mothers Temple play they’re annual boninkai (end of the year party) in a bar called Tokuzo.

AMT is a psychedelic rock group from Nagoya, but they spend a majority of the year touring Europe. They’re only consistent Japanese tour date is this Tokuzo show.

No words can describe this show, so I’m not even gonna try. All I will say is that it was loud. It was awesome. Not to mention two punk rock chicks from Osaka called あふりらんぽ　(Afurirampo) joined them onstage. Both girls were topless and painted bright red like some kind of super hero in a body suite.

The show ended when Kawabata-san hung his guitar from the rafters, or possibly the lighting rack, in a fit of distortion. Then they came back out for a raucous encore of Na, Na, Na, Na, Hey, Hey, Hey, Good-bye!

Monday, in stark contrast, I continued my kiddy Christmas parties with my Shimomura Class. I started teaching these kids last September, and I’m just now starting to see them make some significant progress.


Shimomura Class


For this party, all I did was eat a nice meal prepared by the students mothers, and then go outside for a game of freeze tag. It was not your typical Christmas party, but it was good fun.

Hopefully I can keep this holiday spirit up over the next few days when I travel to Aspen, CO to meet my cousins and my ailing uncle for a week in the snow before traveling back to Gainesville, GA to see the rest of my family.

U.S.A here I come.

Let's Bring Em Home!

Let's Bring Em Home!

I just made a donation to help a soldier in Iraq buy a plane ticket home for Christmas.

If this is something that interests you, please donate here:

http://www.lbeh.org/


Happy Holidays!

Big Frog Over the Rainbow

This past weekend I traveled to Osaka to see Big Frog play in a small venue called Club Vijon. It was an absolutely incredible experience and one of my most memorable Big Frog experiences yet. They have major momentum right now and are getting better exponentially with each performance.

Thursday night (12/2) they played in Yokohama, just west of Tokyo, and drove through the night to my house in Heiwa-cho for a pit stop before Osaka.

They arrived mid morning Friday with friend Kento, the Tokyo Ale manager, just before I left to go to work in Tobishima. While I was working they all crashed out and got some rest.

When I got back home around 5pm, they all woke up and went to a local sento (public bath) while I went to the supermarket to buy the fixings for a nabe (hot vegetable stew).


CobaKen serving up the nabe


Ton & Richard

We hung out watching a new DVD by a Japanese psychedelic group called ROVO and ate dinner, while Kento worked on his laptop, a small Powebook, using my wireless network and placed beer orders for me. So cool.

Then Richard showed up full of giddiness and put on the Live Aid concert from 1985 which drew laughter with all the old school 80's fashion. Bono's bad hair mullet and knee high black boots and Freddy Mercury's flamboyancy almost eclipsed their generous accomplishments.

Afterwards, as people were slowly fading out, I put on Tenacious D: The Complete Master Works which drew even more laughs until everyone finally went to bed.

Saturday morning was slow and easy until we hopped in the car to make the drive to Osaka.

All the band members traveled in their large white nondescript van (license plate: 4 20) while Richard drove me and my friend Shaka in his English Pointer wagon.


English Pointer following the 4 20

Richard was a very adamant about staying right on the Frog's tail because we didn't know the way and he didn't want to get lost in the rain.

It worked out well for the most part except when we went through toll gates and couldn't follow the Frog through the ETC (automatic gates). Once, Richard was so worried we'd fallen behind after a toll gate that he raced and leap-frogged cars until we were actually a few kilometers ahead of the gang.

We eventually worked out the confusion, but only after we were almost crushed by a trailer truck when Richard refused to yield as the truck started coming into our lane. He actually revved the engine, then slammed on the brakes; nearly causing us to skid into the median railing and jostling all the luggage across the back of the wagon.

Things got really hectic once we hit rush hour traffic in Osaka and Big Frog was running late for their soundcheck. They were changing lanes often, trying to make a hole in the traffic, and Richard refused to let anyone come between their bumper and ours.

I think we weaved in and out of traffic in downtown Osaka for almost an hour before we finally found Club Vijon.



Once inside things started to get exciting. While Big Frog was doing their soundcheck, Kento, Shaka, and I were setting up the merchandise table for the band and Tokyo Ale. Richard walked around and snapped some great photos of the event.


Kento getting ready


Shaka lending a hand

Afterwards, the band went across the street to have an interview for Balance Magazine in a kushi-katsu restaraunt, so Shaka and I went to an Indian Curry Shop just next door.


Big Frog interview with Rie-chan for Balance Magazine

We crammed ourselves with curry and nan bread before going back to the club to check out the opening band, Aqua Bomb.

Aqua Bomb was a funky power trio whose lead singer came onstage in a wife-beater t-shirt and a pink & black leopard skin shag cowboy hat.

He often addressed the crowd as "Strawberry People" and informed us, "Za messegii wa... massagii," which translates to, "The message is massage." All the while doing a choreographed dance with his hands making waves and then a kind of wax on... wax off movement. Not to mention, at the end of every song he congratulated the crowd on a, "Naisu Kyachii." In other words, nice catch! Too funny.

Next up was DJ QuietStorm. He rocked the house with a unique blend of rock, hip-hop, and jazz. He got things started with a sliced up version of King Curtis' Memphis Soul Stew and kept the momentum up with mix of Led Zepplin's Whole Lotta Love opening guitar riff and some hip-hop tracks I didn't recognize.


DJ QuietStorm

QuietStorm eventually segued perfectly into Big Frog's set; scratching and cutting up break beats on time with Ton's drum kit to the opening song.


Ton

QuietStorm stuck around and played with the Frog for the first few songs until finally disappearing into the audience.


High Octane Silent Maccos

As Big Frog came out of the shoot firing on all cylinders and I started dancing, my mind drifted towards my family and some bleak news I received last week concerning my Uncle Ned's up hill battle with brain cancer.


Shimi

I determined that if I danced hard enough to the thermonuclear power Big Frog was churning out, I could somehow create enough energy to radiate a rising sun over my uncle and give him a glimmer of hope from afar.


Sato wailin' away

Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I rocked out as hard as I possibly could. The more blood sweat & tears I discharged, the more power I received from the band. I kept feeding off their octane rock until their alloted time was up and they left the stage.



I was so exhausted I had to take a seat on the floor of the club and catch my breath.


Me & Shaka taking a rest

Next thing I knew, everyone was packed up and ready to go. We lingered outside the club in the cool air for a few minuets before hopping back into Richard's car, this time with Q-san as an added passenger/driver.


Mota & Q-san


The Bleshing

Q-san brought his iPod and was able to connect it to Richard's stereo through the radio waves, something I'd never seen before, so we listened to Phish most of the ride back to Nagoya.

As we headed east listening to Phish's infamous '94 Tweezer set from the Bomb Factory, the sun started breaking through the on coming horizon and put on an awe-inspiring light show as it climbed higher and higher in the sky. It made me ponder that my positive energy output possibly did something good.

We dropped Q-san off at Nagoya Station, so he could catch an early train toward Tokyo, but Richard, Shaka, and I continued on to Heiwa-cho, and were blessed by an even more miraculous surprise.

Driving into Heiwa, much to my dismay, there was a wondrous full length rainbow arching directly over the top of my house. Once again my thoughts drifted towards my family, and I wished they, especially my uncle and cousins, could share such serenity.

What a beautiful morning!




My thanks goes out to Big Frog, Richard, Shaka, and the rest of the Bleshing Crew for making this such an astonishing weekend.

I will never forget it.

Windowlicker

I wish I had some great adventure to write about, but the truth of the matter is that I've done absolutely nothing the past few weeks except import music into my iTunes and iPod.

These toys are a blessing and a curse. It's made listening to music around my house much easier due to the convenience of having my entire musical library a few mouse clicks away. Hell, it's even made my drive to and from work downright enjoyable because I've got all my music at my fingertips.

The major drawback is that I've spent every spare moment of the day trying to put more and more music into the thing, and it's turned me into an even more anal retentive person because everything has to be labelled exactly right and fit into a proper genre, so I can find it easily. That might sound simple enough, but when you're dealing with a few hundred albums and a few thousand songs it's a pretty daunting task.

More adventures are on the horizon...