I love late summer, early autumn. There's a lot of false starts with the Japanese autumn. Is it going to finally be comfortable yet? Cool breeze one day, back to hot annoying bluster the next. One of the signs of late summer is the change in the sounds of the insects. Suzumushi has moved into my drain on my balcony. Who is suzumushi? Well, it's the Japanese Bell Cricket. He makes a beautiful noise in the evening. "Ping, ping" goes his call, "ping, ping." He's really very soothing compared to the racket of cicadas ("semi" in Japanese) from early summer, and he doesn't wake me at dawn, unlike the cicadas! I've named him "Mr Chirpy" and I hope that he'll be calling in my drain for a few more days before the warm weather and his beautiful calls go away.
Zeni Geva! Oh, my goodness, what a gig. They were just outstanding. They played just as well as they did on their recordings. Just an amazing band. I'm hoping that next year I might be able to collaborate with the Brisbane Hotel to get KK Null down to Tassie for a show, as he's already going to be in Melbourne doing the Liquid Architecture festival in June. KK Null was very nice and said hi to Tom and I outside the gig. We told him we had seen his Tassie gigs, and he got rather excited about the proposition that we might be able to get him down for a third visit.
Tom and Rob and I all got to play our first show as Thrall. It was grand, and many people turned out to show their support. Mel, James, Glenn, Jo, Marcus, Leila, Jeremy, Jai, amongst others all came out of the woodwork and came to what was probably the most powerful and exciting show I've played yet. Thrall will be doing a few more gigs before we go now, because this gig went so well. We got offered another gig on the 26th of September and again on the 21st of October because the venue owner really liked us.
Hooray for music!
My mum was here from Monday the 14th to Thursday the 24th of September. It was so lovely to see her. I tried my best to show her around, but she was struck down by a cold half way through her stay, and was forced to spend 3 valuable days in bed. Now, it's my turn. Same cold, got me sitting in bed blogging, rather than out and about, doing my usual mad busy weekend flap.
My mum arrived the day before my birthday, and on the first night I took her and Ross for a quick bite at The Royal Road Izakaya (also known as the ¥290 Bar). Showed them around Minami Osaka a bit. I could see that it was quite exciting for them to see a city of this scale. The next day we went to Hong Kong Chong Long in Namba Parks for a bit of yum-cha lunch, and unfortunately I could not attend the aquarium in the afternoon with them, due to my bike being nabbed for being parked in a no bike zone so I had to go to Bentencho to go and retrieve it (well, it's a fair cop, I did park it in the no bikes zone, but it was bad timing considering it was my birthday!). The next day I went to Kyoto with mum and Ross, we went to Kiyomizu Dera, looked for some bits and bobs in the tourist stores in the surrounding area. Wandering around the cobble-stoned back streets of Higashiyama area was most pleasant. The next day we returned to Kyoto, to Heian Jingu and Nanzen-ji. We ate dinner at Luxious European buffet. I had to work the next couple of days, but then my Mum got sick, and we couldn't really get out of Osaka again during her visit. I had hoped to get them into Nara and over to Himeji, but alas, cruel fate, had other plans. We got to go to Ryokuchi-Koen to see the Osaka Open Air Museum of Traditional Farm Houses, and it was fantastic. We had a couple of nice spicy lunches in Nan-nan town, courtesy of the Vietnamese and Thai restaurants down there, a fantastic dinner on the 36th floor of the swissôtel, and finished it all up with a visit to Torikizoku. A perfect Osakan holiday - involving a lot of eating, and enjoying the crazy metropolis feeling. It was really lovely to see them both, and I think they had a lot of fun.
They left on the Thursday that Discharge, GBH and The Exploited played at King Cobra. Great gig, great fun. Only two members of the original line up of each band remained, but you could tell which ones were the ring ins and which ones have been at it since the early 1980's. Great powerful music. There's something quite community building about screaming your lungs out and getting sweaty all over with a bunch of other punk rockers. There's always a couple of boofy agro boys who bounce off everyone and try to beat people up, but mostly it's just a great surge of energy, toward the stage, in a musically inspired show of mutual passion. The nature of music and community building has been on my mind a fair bit recently, as most of the Japanese friends we have made over here have been music fans. We've been invited into the inner sanctum of the Osakan extreme-metal/d-beat scene, and made to feel very at home, despite our limited Japanese language ability. It's quite humbling, and I feel lucky that I have the ability to share in this amazing little microcosm.
So, we played our second Thrall gig on Saturday the 26th. I started to feel a bit off colour during the day, and by the time that we played, I was feeling downright sick. But we played well enough, and I got home promptly afterwards. I made it through a rocky shift on Sunday, but couldn't go on Monday. Just too sick. Hoping it lifts from the chest pretty quickly by itself without anti-biotics. I'm guessing I'll be OK for work on Thursday. I'm about to book our end of year travel in Shirakawa, based on the beautiful Gassho house at the Osaka Open Air Museum of Traditional Farmhouses.
I'm ready for the next part of our Japan adventure, the end of our Japan adventure, to begin. Here we go!
Suzumushi is chiming for me... chime me in, little friend.
