Adventures in Japan

TeReBi

It's amazing that Carla posted anything at all. We were too busy to post when her folks were here and as soon as they left we got our dish installed.

Yes, we already have cable, but it sucks. It has sucked ever since we got it. It is going away soon. Because now we have a dish. And it is glorious. Plus, we get a whole bunch of channels for free the first two weeks.

So much TV, so little time. As an apology, I give you: this.

Some stuff happened, I guess

Well. Well, well, well, well, well. I haven't posted anything in a loooong time. I'd like to say it's because nothing much has been happening, but that's not exactly the case. In December I flew back to Canada, and Tyler flew back to Canada, and just last week my parents were here in Japan. They managed to blog about their trip (read it here), so I guess one post from me shouldn't be too much to ask. I guess.

Ummm, let's see... what do I remember from four months ago? I was back in Canada for the first half of December. While I was there, Regina had a cold snap, a chinook, and a snowstorm, so I figure I got all my weather bases covered. There was early-Christmas-ing, and lots of good food, and lots of leftover pizza and turkey.

I felt pretty good the first night I landed, no signs of jet lag or anything, but the next morning I woke up sick and miserable and stayed that way for the rest of my visit. I imagine I caught the cold from poor, sick Tyler before I left Japan, but the extraordinarily dry air of Saskatchewan brought it on full force. Oh my, but it was awful.

I would have liked to lay around and recuperate, but I had shopping to do. Lots and lots of shopping for clothes and shoes that weren't teeny-tiny Japanese sized. And a wedding dress. Fortuitously, I found one in the second shop we tried. And it was on sale. So awesome.

And then, um, I don't really remember what else I got up to. It was four months ago, after all.

But here's a picture of some snow. Said snow made driving very difficult.


And OMG! It's snowing here now! In Osaka! At the end of March! That's practically unheard of. What's going on?

I suppose I'd better post this now, before it gets lost forever amongst my many unfinished drafts. More to come. Who's to say when...

Also

Carla's parents are here. In Japan. In our apartment. They are reading this blog as we speak. Are we speaking? Technically? I think not.

Grrr

I had a post all typed up with my thoughts on some movies we've recently seen. Then the computer died and I lost it all. Rest assured, it was fantastic. But I can't be bothered to type that all up again. Short version:
Crash - liked it.
Narnia - liked it less than Crash.
Munich - loved it.

With that out of the way, I can finish off the band reviews.

The last band we saw was called Natsumen. We didn't go out of our way to see Natsumen, we hadn't heard of them at all. It's just that Aka Inu was their opening act. And how can a band be bad when Aka Inu opens for them? Well, they could be Natsumen, that would certainly do the trick.

Ben, Jon, Carla and myself were at Club Quatro. We all adored Aka Inu. Within 5 minutes of Natsumen taking the stage Jon retreated to the back of the club. We all followed within the next ten minutes.

Natsumen is another big band. There's a brass section. A few guitars. Two drum sets. You take all that, add it up, and what do you get? Noise. Keep in mind that we had just seen Aka Inu (they're noisy), Deerhoof (Noisy) and Ariampo (NOISY). I liked all those bands, their noise is good. Natsumen's noise was just noise. There was no sense of composition, no 'songs' that could hook you, and that can work BUT there was also no sense of fun, no sense of exploration. It was just a bunch people on stage playing music. Not together.

All of their songs sound like the ends of songs. The jammy, improvised, loud ends of song. But without the build up, without the beginning and middle of songs, those endings of songs don't really work. They're sound and fury signifying nothing. Disappointing ending to an otherwise awesome weekend of music.

Catchy Pop Songs With An Extra 'O'

Afriampo and Deerhoof were on Saturday night. After the show the skeezy Colin Farrell guy, name of Tom, and his friend, name of Lathe (or something like that, soft 'th') started talking to us. Tom was from Idaho and Lathe from Minnesota. Tom was a jackass and Lathe seemed really nice. Tom wanted to stay out all night but we did not. Well, I never have a problem with staying out all night, but we had plans for the next day so we thought it best to get a decent night's sleep.

The next day we went to a massive flea market. Massive as in really big. It filled the Osaka Dome. As the name suggests, the Osaka Dome is a massive domed building in which a multitude of sports are played. Today's sport was bargain hunting. I'm gonna say we lost. We got a late start and the market ended early. Well... it ended on time, but that time was earlier than we had expected. And people always start packing up their goods before the market is officially over.

We had barely over an hour to browse through all the stalls. I'm gonna say we hit a good 85% of 'em. But we didn't get to take our time and poke around. And that's how you find all the cool swag, when you're poking.

It wasn't a total loss. We got some good postcards and buttons and I picked up some videogames. But everybody else (Ben, Kishin, Yayoi, Yusuke, Atsuki) left with much more merchandise. Next time, next time we'll totally get there at a decent time.

Right after the flea market we made our way over to Club Quatro to experience another Aka Inu gig. Man, they rock. I've tried to describe them before and failed. I'll fail this time as well, and I will keep on failing. This is a band that you need to see live. It doesn't matter if you don't speak the language, any language, music is it's own language. When those horns start blaring and the violin kicks in and everyone around you is dancing in time, you will too. Even if the song is about poop.

I've mentioned before that the four lead singers like to dress up, well this time one of them came out dressed up as a referee and another game out dressed up as a wrestler. Between the second and third song, there was a wrestling match. The dude dressed up as a wrestler took on the mic stand. It was fantastic.

He circled the stand, looking for an opening. But the stand was cagey, ready for anything. They locked up a couple of times, but neither could get the upper hand.

The audience was in danger of hyperventilating from laughing so hard. As were some of the band members. Finally the lead singer got the upper hand, he gave the mic stand a couple knee lifts and knife edge chops. But the mic stand retaliated by using its cord to strangle him. Then it headbutted him! Wrestler guy was down! The referee began to count him out...

Wrestler guy staggered to his feet! His forehead was bleeding! Could he continue?

The drama!

Wrestler guy pointed towards the violin player in the poofy pirate shirt! The referee went to investigate! Wrestler guy stabbed the mic in the head with a fork that he pulled out of his tights! The referee turned around just in time to see the mic stand fall down. One! Two! Three!

I love this band.

And I love unco. Unco is one of their songs. Great use of the horns, the violin, the... everything. And like a lot of their songs, their is a dance that goes along with the song. This particular song is quite like YMCA in that it's all about holding your arms above your head and spelling along with everyone.

U!
N!
C!
O!

Then there's an optional little hip boogy move. I usually opt for the hip boogy.

Most of the band members are in their underwear by this point.

Most of the audience is female. That is a delightful bonus.

Ben finally figured out what the chorus is, we can usually just sing along to the spelling part. Here's the chorus:
U! N! C! O! Unco! Unco daisuke desu!
Here's the translation:
U!N!C!O! Unco! I love unco!
Here's the translation of unco:
poop

It's a song about poop. A song about loving poop.

I love this band.

Oh yeah, they've added a bagpipe.

And the dude who plays the cow bell rocks it harder than Will Ferrell.

I love this band.

My Pal Deerhoof

So I was writing, ages ago it seems, about the live shows we took in a few weeks ago. I did a very poor job describing the Afriampo experience. I shall now attempt to do the same for Deerhoof. Part of the problem, this is where I try to shift the blame off of me and my lacklustre 'skillz', and onto something (anything) else, is that the venue, Fandango, kinda sucks. I like the look of the place. From the outside it looks like a hole in the wall. The inside is covered in fliers and posters for interesting looking bands and graffiti. Really kinda grungy, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

But the stage is too small and too low. Way too low. Especially if the audience is full of white people. Which this one was. We couldn't see Afrianpo. Occasionally I could see an arm. And I liked to watch their shadows.

The place was pretty smoky too. Not much of a fan of that. But not much of a choice, either, not in Japan.

So yeah, not the best of environs.

Anyhoo...

I've already mentioned that Deerhoof's sound is hard to describe, so I'll just describe the band members. In no particular order...

The drummer looked like a cross between Joss Whedon and Ron Howard. He writes and directs great banter-centric character driven emotionally manipulative middle of the road movies. He did the bulk of the between song banter. His Japanese sounded like it was at about my level.

The lead singer was the only Japanese member of the band. You know how I could tell? She was the shortest. By far. She was about as tall as the drummer when he was seated. Very energetic. Very sweaty. And not very young looking, which is odd for Japanese girls.

The guitarist had a bored, distant look in his eyes. Occasionally, a slight smile would slide across his face, as if remembering an amusing anecdote. Looked a bit like a cross between Nate and the lead Singer of Maroon 5. Which is to say that he looked exactly like John Travolta. (that joke is so inside even I don't get it)

The bassist looked as if every note played by anyone else was an affront to him, a challenge. His jaw and lower lip stuck all the way out except for when he smiled. Which was about half the time. It looked like his face was constantly at war with itself. Occasional 'O' face.

They all had haircuts that looked like they keep meaning to get haircuts but just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Even though Deerhoof has an explosively eclectic sound, they played really tight. We were digging them all to pieces. The tall, slightly stoned looking, ugly white guy behind Carla was dancing his little heart out. Which was too bad for everyone around him. The guy who looked like a greasier Colin Farrell (I know!) was moving his hands about in an excited fashion.

Then it got better. They played the Panda song.

Here are the lyrics for the Panda song:

Panda panda panda panda pan- panda


Fantastic. I was so happy. As was everyone. Ben turned to me and remarked about how awesome it all was. I told him that I preferred 'Come See the Duck'.

They saved that gem for one of their two encores. Here are the lyrics to 'Come See the Duck':

Come! Come see the duck!
Come!
Come!
Come see the duck!

You can really see the band's progression, lyrically. Also, the lead singer made her hands look like ducks. I liked that.

As I said, they played two encores. Both were only one song long. Both were very short songs (the duck song and the bunny song, she jumped about like a bunny). These lacklustre encores caused the ugly white spastic guy to boo. I wanted to punch him in the face. And smack his hand with a golf club.

Two bands down. Two more to go.

Gale Force

Sorry, I totally want to continue my recappening of last weekend musical extravaganza, but something has come up.

That something is Treat Williams.

I'm a fan of Treat Williams. He's got that whole Bruce Campbell, Billy Zane vibe going. You know they should be in better things, but you don't want them to be in better things because they are just so damn good in bad movies. And Treat Williams was in a BAD MOVIE last night. Audaciously bad. Compellingly bad. Illegally bad.

Seriously, I don't know how the makers of this film did not get sued. Seriously. Here's how we started watching this bad... bad thing. I was flipping channels when I saw Treat Williams running from some very bad looking gang members. "This," I said to myself, "looks like crap." I continued watching. Treat got into his car and sped off. The gang of goons jumped into their vehicles, including a mini van, and the chase was on! And what a chase it was! What at first looked like D-grade film direction and editing suddenly morphed into some outrageously over the top action. One of the goons started throwing lit sticks of dynamite at Treat Williams' car!

Treat dodged the dynamite as best he could, sometimes reaching into the back seat to pick up and dispose of said explosives. It was at about this time that I realized that this scene was lifted straight from Last Action Hero, one of Schwartzenegger's bigger flops. And by lifted, I do not mean a shot for shot remake, I mean it was the actual footage from Arnie's movie. You could see the kid hiding in the back seat in some of the shots.

After the car chase I noticed that Treat Williams was dressed exactly the same as Arnold's character in Last Action Hero. How did the film makers do this? What kind of legal hoops did they have to jump through? My mind broke, just a little tiny bit. I was hooked.

After the theftastic opening, it was all downhill. Not so much downhill as... cliff... plummet? It was SO bad. Treat Williams was a cop who didn't play by the rules. So his chief had to kick him off the force. Then this chief persuaded Treat to take part in a reality show.

Yeah.

Treat and some other people were flown out to a tropical island to compete for 10 million dollars, buried somewhere on the island. Unbeknownst to the contestants (or the amoral producer who has a change of heart in the final act), the host (who owes lots of money to lots of people) has hired a team of ex-Navy Seals to kill everyone on the island so they can steal the money. Unbeknownst to the Ex-seals, debt ridden host, and contestants, but known to the soon to reform Producer, his assistant, and his meteorologist pal is that a massive tropical storm is going to hit the island at any moment!

And by island, I mean botanical garden. Which is where this film was obviously shot. And by storm I mean some dude standing offscreen with a hose. Swear to god. Oh, and the storm also includes a giant Computer Generated wave that manages to destroy the building that the formerly amoral, money grubbing producer is in (that receives satellite transmissions but has no dishes visible in any of the exterior shots), but leaves Treat and his buddies unscathed.

But Treat and his friends are very hardy. When the ex-Navy Seals shoot bazookas at them, causing buildings and trees from other, better movies to explode, they remain unscathed.

I want to go into more detail, but part of the fun of these movies is seeing just how bad they can get. This one gets really, pretty, rather, profoundly bad. Times ten point two.

I highly recommend it.

One more thing, the scenes where the meteorologist is tracking the storm brought to mind that old CK promo. The one with Tom Brown peering vacantly at some really old AV monitoring equipment and then turning to the camera and intoning gravely, "It's big! And it's coming this way." But that promo was better than the scenes in the movie. The people involved in the CK promo are frikking geniuses compared to whoever was involved in Gale Force. Except for Tom Brown. That jerk deserves a punch to the nose and a golf club to the hand.

Weekend Update

In honour of today's title, please pretend that any time I write something funny I ruin it by laughing at my own joke before saying it aloud. And that I'm fat and Hispanic.

This past weekend was filled with music - some of it good, most of it excellent, some of it bad, but ALL of it... interesting.

Y'ever heard of a band by the name of Deerhoof? I won't hold it against you if you haven't. Ben, the Ozzie, hadn't and he's a fount of musical minutiae. Here's a quick quote from The Onion on the band:

"Deerhoof sounds like a group of music-school whizzes playing at being a homey rock band, dividing the distance between their Steely Dan and Shonen Knife records."

If you don't know who Shonen Knife are... too bad for you. There's only so much hand holding I can do.

They're (meaning Deerhoof, although the following could also apply to Shonen Knife. But it doesn't) odd and catchy and oddly catchy and catchily odd. And oftentimes loud. Well they were doing a gig in Osaka on Saturday, so we went.

But this post is not about they. Nay!

Nay! I say!

This post is about Afriampo, Deerhoof's opening act.

Deerhoof's sound is hard to explain, Afrianpo's even moreso. Maybe kinda a little like The White Stripes except they're both twenty-something year old girls, and a whole lot rawer. Just a drum and a guitar. And some amps and speakers of course. Without them, you wouldn't get all that squealy feedback. Of which there was a lot of. I just, right there, began and ended a sentence with 'of', is that legal?

The girls made their way to the stage, banging their drumsticks on anything they could. They were both dressed mainly in red. Ragged red rags. With slashes of red... make up? all over their faces. With much smaller slashes of white as well. Very off putting if you ever got to see them up close. Which I did. Not that we were anywhere near the stage, but the guitarist ran through the audience at one point.

But I'll get to that later.

So they drummed rhythmically as they made their way to the stage. The audience clapping along. Then they told us to shhhh. They shushed us for a good long time. That was followed by a longish silence. Then each of the girls just kinda started talking. I have no idea what about. But I imagine things would not have been any more clear had I actually been able to understand Japanese. So on and on they talked, getting louder and louder all the while. By the end they were near screaming, then there was a wall of feedback and then they started rocking out.

Man, them girls could play. It was loud and raw and primal and good.

The third song was about bread. Bread is called pan in Japanese. "Pan!" they yelled as they threw slices of bread into the audience, "PAN!" This is when the guitarist ran through the crowd and this is also when I noticed that their armpits weren't exactly what I would call shaven.

That was probably the high point of the concert. But it was all good.

I would try to describe it more, but that would just be a waste of words. There was loud, driving music. There were soft, quiet parts too. Some of the songs had actual lyrics and structure. Others were just feedback and be-bop screamings.

Never seen anything quite like it.