August 18, 2002 - 2:54PM
Wes Ehrlichman

There is a recent development that has been fairly difficult. I have screwed up several other people's plans lately because they have waited until the day of to tell me about some kind of party that they have arranged. Saturday this happened when I was invited to Seo's house (the people I went to the beer garden with) that night to introduce myself to some friends of his and their children. I already had plans to go to a show though, so I had to turn this offer down. Also just now I got a call from the middle school's Vice Principal Mr. Tokumori, inviting me to the Principal's house to meet him and eat dinner. I also had to turn this offer down because I had already made plans to go to the fireworks in Iriki with someone from the Government Building. Let this be a lesson. I'm a busy guy and if you want me to go somewhere you better tell me in advance!

Yesterday I went to a Japanese show (small concert) with my friend Yumi (seen here).

When she first told me about she asked me I wanted to go to see, "Live." I thought that she meant that she wanted me to go see that band, "Live" that was popular in America in the early 90s, and I knew that Japan was sometimes slow in catching on to things, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to go. She told me that it was free though, so I figured it wasn't actually that band "Live," and I was right. It was a Japanese punk show. Here's the flier.

They were all Japanese bands, and there had to be at least 11 of them. Now in America a show with that many performances would usually start in the middle of the day and end at around 11 so that the kids could make it home, but in Japan it started at around 7 or 8 and ended after 4 or so. Luckily we only went for around 2 or 3 hours of it.

When we got there, the first thing that struck me was how much it looked like a small show in America. Here are all the kids congregating near the ticket seller area, avoiding watching the bands they didn't come there to see.

Speaking of bands they didn't come there to see, when we first got there a hardcore band was in the middle of their last song. It sounded ok, but maybe a little bit too tight, then the band stopped and they started playing "between band" music. I assumed it was "between band" music because it was just american Rap music with the vocals still in, but this guy was up on stage with a mic, saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mic Check one two. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."

This went went on for a few minutes, then in the middle of the song the DJ behind him switched the record to another beat (very badly I might add). It turns out that this dude was one of the acts! He started to say a few more things while this next song played:

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yo, yo, yo, yo yo," and then he'd say something in Japanese.

This was his whole set. He would say "yeah" and "yo" a few times and then near the end he would say "Mutha, Fu***" to mix it up. I started to wonder at this point if something just was not quite right about Japanese music.

We went back out into the hallway for a while where the rest of the people were. Everyone had left because this guys act was so terrible. Here I met this guy:

He is in two Japanese Hardcore bands that he plays guitar and does vocals in. He had a few belts of used bullets around his waste, and a lot of patches, making him look an awful lot like a dirty American Punk kid. He told me that his music was all about smoking cigarettes and world peace, making specific reference to the Atomic Bombs. It made me think that Japanese Hardcore kids were pretty much the same as American Hardcore kids. Minus the Straight-Edge of course.

After meeting the Hardcore guy I went back inside and saw another group of Rappers. This group was much better than the other guys. They had three people on stage, used mostly Japanese in their songs, and stripped the vocals out of the american rap they used as a beat. They only played one song though, and then the "Yeah, yeah, yeah," guy got back on stage so we went back out into the hallway.

We went downstairs to a really cool bookstore that was still open. They had a ton of really cool old toys, everything from old Disney Movie figurines to Lupin the 3rd dolls. They even had a die cast version of the Delorian from Back to the Future!

The whole right perimeter of the bookstore was comic books. I bought two comics from Katsushiro Otomo (writer of Akira) that I haven't seen before, and I saw the first American comic I've seen in Japan. It was Daniel Clowes' Ghost World. I thought it was strange that of all of the quality popular american comics, Ghost World, an underground comic (albeit a popular one) would be the one to make it over here. On second thought, it doesn't seem that weird. Japanese Comics are much more focused on Character Development than plot, and most popular American Comics are the other way around. Ghost World bucks the trend by focusing on the lives of a couple of punk girls in the mid '90s...

It could be that. But it was probably actually brought over because the fashion in Japan is still pretty much where it was in Ghost World. Check the photo:

She's got about a pound of Gel in her died blonde hair to get it to stick up in front.

When we went back inside, the band that it looked like most people were there to see began playing. They were a swing rock band that played mostly covers of American songs.

It sounded alright, but you could tell that the singer really didn't understand what he was saying. It took me about half the way through "Jonny B Goode" to figure out that that's what they were playing, and then I still couldn't make out any of the words. The main singer had a really good voice, and they were pretty tight, but because he didn't know what he was singing about there really wasn't much emotion in it. This was really obvious when they would play an instrumental song and people would start dancing even harder. These actually sounded pretty good.

The crowd was going wild during almost all of it though, and a lot of people were throwing around plastic water bottles. That was kind of silly, especially considering there didn't seem to be anyone there under the age of 21, making everyone old enough to know better.

After the show Yumi and I went home. On the way home we stopped off at a Lawson's convenience store where I got three tickets to the Ghibli Museum for Christina, Quinton, and Me. Hopefully we'll make it to Tokyo on September 20th so we can use them. I want to go to Tokyo game show on the 21st too!

I probably won't be able to update again until at least Wednesday Morning. I have to go to a JET Orientation in Kagoshima, where we meet the other people in the program and do some workshops (I'm assuming). Sorry guys, check back then.