Shuffle the deck...

Money, money, money, must be funny, in the rich man's world... Three overtime shifts coming up, and we're looking to recoup some of the losses of the past year. Got to get the cash together to get the move happening. We've not planned much of an end of year celebration. I'm becoming quite the fan of the austere Christmas/New Year, so I'm off to the local temple to hear the bell rung 108 times (for the 108 desires that cause human misery, according to the Buddhist canon). To break up the work-on-work cycle, we're having a couple of days in the Hokrikyu region of Japan. Driving in the snow, so I'll be very careful. Let's just hope everyone else on the road is equally careful! Pictures and stories to follow.

News from the last month has mostly been of a musical nature. Tom has finalised the artwork, done the printing, cutting, folding, etc... for the promo mail out of the "Away from the Haunts of Men" album. We're about one or two songs off having finished the next album's song writing, and so we'll be ready to hit the studio again when we get back to Tassie. Exciting times!

CD photos

We saw 21 bands at Socio for ¥2000. Worth every penny. A lot of awesome music, some surprises, some disappointments, by the end of it I was well yoporai, and quite jolly. Made friends with some punks from Australia, Debbie and Jane, who had been sleeping in parks and going to live-houses in Japan for the last 3 weeks. Nuts. Lovely girls.

Massatsu Osaka 2009

On the sightseeing front, we saw a few nice leaves at Tenryu-ji and Tofuku-ji.

Tofuku-ji, Fushimi-ku

Tenryu-ji, Arashiyama

Tenryu-ji, Arashiyama 2

We saw Corrupted play at Unagi Dani Sunsui on the 13th of December. Chew was a little "horoyoi" for you guys in the know, and we had a good old chat, which was really nice. Rosie was there (the Masters student studying grindcore in Osaka and Melbourne) so we got to introduce her to Chew, which was kinda funny ("can I interview you for my thesis?" "no" x 3). The show was good, I got some good photos which I am totally not publishing (due to Corrupted's policy on photos and press), but if you would like to ask me to show them to you in person some time, I'd be more than happy to.

We also played our first live show as a two-piece. It was a successful experiment. I don't think the venue liked it so much, but the audience were pretty happy. We were asked for an encore! I think the venue owner liked talking with Rob, that's my guess. The sound engineer seemed to like us as a two-piece. So yeah, anyway, if we don't play again until we get back to Australia, I won't mind, but if we get a show with Riverge (another band that rocks hard over here) I'd be more than happy to do one more.

Just let the cards fall where they may.

No point in trying to make things happen if you can't really MAKE them happen, if you get my drift. Lovely to hear from those of you who have managed to put pen to paper (all three of you!) and the rest of you, you're a bunch of slackers! We will be giving you a good teasing in person when we return.