A Sense of Scale

With each week that passes, the end creeps closer. A few weeks ago I could barely detect it, now I can smell it in both nostrils. No doubt in a couple of weeks it will be a deafening roar in my ears. This is the last of our days living in Osaka. This is the beginning of the end.

On the weekend of the 6th through to the 12th of May we had our first return visitors! Our first visitors Dave and Kerry, came back for a second time. We all got into the food and drink when they were in Osaka and then we all jumped on the shinkansen and went down to Hiroshima. Great company, but unfortunately for us, shit weather. It sleeted for the entire two days we were there, which meant that we couldn't make it to Miyajima. Poo. However, we ate a lot of delicious okonomiyaki - in both Osaka and Hiroshima - ate oysters, we sang karaoke, we did photobooth, Kerry and I went to the public bathhouse and enjoyed some Japan style retail therapy. It was all extremely pleasant, until poor Dave was struck down with some kind of mysterious stomach bug. It caught Kerry the day after they left our house. Whether it was food-poisoning or a 24 hour virus I don't know, but he went down like a sack of potatoes on the Tuesday night, but had been resurrected in true Easter style by Thursday morning, back on to the shinkansen for Tokyo and skiing with Luke.

Genbaku, the A-bomb Dome was a stirring sight. I know it is truly impossible to know the absolute decimation that must have ensued after the atomic explosion, but this building is an eerie and evocative monument to an event that truly opened Pandora's Box. The accompanying museum also has a sensitive, even-handed exhibit that outlines the human side and the administrative story of this horrific event. I defy anyone who goes there with an open heart and an open mind to remain dry-eyed.
However, there were a few people amongst the visitors, let us say from a certain country that finds this event particularly difficult to interpret in a favourable light for their own purposes, who were being quite disrespectful about the museum. I heard one middle-aged man say "I get the gist, let's get out of here." I mean, why did you come here? Did you think this was going to be a "U.S.A! All the way!" experience? This event happened, and it was the United States Army that decided how this was going to go down. The funniest part was that this certain specimen of historical denial was only in the first room, in the first few exhibits. He hadn't even gotten to the far more moving exhibits about the hibakusha (a-bomb survivors) upstairs. The pain, the poisoning, the instant deaths, the prolonged suffering, the lurking cancers - some skin and flesh was vaporised, others skin and flesh harboured the poisons that would ultimately kill the victim years later - the potential lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals, wiped out.
Parts of exhibit made me quite angry, particularly the written evidence that the existence of this new, more deadly weapon was hidden from the Japanese and the target city was chosen because of its high civilian population. It was a scientific curiosity for decades after. There is something very cold and calculated about such a decision being made in the name of science, as well as military merit of the bombing, as the penultimate event in the series of reversals against the Japanese army that ultimately resulted in the decision to surrender.
Genbaku (A-bomb Dome) and Hiroshima A-bomb Museum
The atomic bomb museum seems like a very poignant place to commence "The Beginning of the End."

V.V.V. by Thrall
It's the beginning of the end, and it's the beginning of the start as well. Next adventure, here we come. Thrall has done the last Osaka show (thanks to Elsa for the above video footage). As usual, we got offered another show off the back of that show, but it was on after we are gone, so we had to decline. We had lots of people turn up to show support, which is seriously sweet of them, as I know that many of them are not the kind of people who usually (a) go to shows, or (b) listen to misanthropic antipodean black metal. We soundchecked for a good 10 minutes. God, it made all the difference. That, and that Tom bought a line splitter so he could play through two amps at once (which really helped thicken out the sound). We played hard and fast, we roared through all the lyrics, and the crowd stood around and nodded their heads approvingly. It was a good little reception for our last Osaka show. Next we have the Kyoto show, and then it's Sayonara!
So, we've been busy, busy, busy, and to round out our busy time in the last few weeks we went to a very interesting festival, which I shall enter into this blog at a later time...
I recently went back to Nagoya, the town where I spent my first solo year in Japan. And it was tiny! Living in Osaka, the second biggest city in Japan, Osaka is just so much bigger than little Nagoya is. Nagoya just falls asleep at about midnight, the venues close, the bars lock you out, and there's no street culture compared to the vibe of Osaka. I remember when I first arrived in Japan, Nagoya just seemed so enormous, and now it just feels so tiny. My sense of scale has been completely skewed by living here. I really wonder how we will fare when we return to Australia... will it just feel too small for us to fit there anymore?

Reverse Nostalgia

I was just thinking, gee, my blog has been a bit business like recently. No great musings on the nature of place and happiness, no great stories, surprising anecdotes... just a brief run down of where we are and how we got there. Well, I should probably change tack.

Now that we're winding down our Japan adventures a bit, I've been finding myself feeling this strange sense of reverse nostalgia. For those of you who may not have experienced it, it's the feeling that you are leaving a place, probably for good, and that you will miss many elements of the place.

Here are some of the things that I will miss about my neighbourhood:

1. Riding my "mama-chari" (grandma bike) without a helmet on the footpath. I am the terror of Nipponbashi. No where is safe from my cycling! And blessedly, I don't have to contend with "helmet hair" afterwards.

2. The flashing lights of Den-Den town. The mad bustle. The silly "Maid Cafés." The scary "Obaasan Porn" arcade.

3. Mr Howly, the giant dog that lives across the road. He gives the neighbourhood a certain "je ne sais quoi."

4. Doguyasugi - the kitchen supplies alley about 4 blocks away from my house. It's wild! Knives, platters, takoyaki grills, maneki neko, plastic food, and all manner of stuff you need and patently do not need for your kitchen.

5. Cheap food, Osaka style. 7 takoyaki ¥300. Huge okonomiyaki with egg and negi (spring onions) ¥450. You can't get a meal that good for that price at home.

6. Subrock studios. Our home away from home. I spend between 3 and 6 hours here a week, beating the stuffing through the cheap, relatively well-maintained rehearsal drum kits for the princely sum of ¥300 an hour.

7. Ame-mura. Gigs are early, they're nearby, there's heaps of good d-beat around, and I love getting out and seeing what Osaka has to offer.

8. Spaworld. Mad stucco and nudity. What a marvellous combination!

9. Combini. Pay your bills at 4 in the morning whilst picking up some beer, collagen syrup, oden (weird stew), nikuman (steamed meat buns), and garbage bags. One every two blocks around here. Brilliant!

10. La La Indian Restaurant. One of the dudes fully looks like Groucho Marx. Best naan bread - EVER. The curry... whatever... the naan... to DIE FOR.

I'm already missing things and I haven't even left yet. It's a weird feeling.

Infamous Butcher

Ah, if true contentment can be wrapped in a morning, it might as well be this one. Woke today feeling rested before the jackhammers started, popped on some Slayer, and felt mighty inspired to go off and work on drumming (Dave Lombardo - one of my many drum heroes). Tom made me coffee in bed, next I'll have some toast. All to the sounds of:

"Infamous!

Butcher!

ANGEL OF DEAAATTTHHH!"

It's never too early for thrash metal.

What's been happening? Well, quite a lot. Not stuff that is fun to read about or take photos of, but stuff, indeed has been happening.

Let's start with the band. Thrall (Tom plays guitar and 'sings', I play drums, and Rob is/was our live bass player) has been really busy. First, we decided to get the album that has been "being finished" for over two years mastered. Once it's mastered it can not be "finished" any more. It is completed! Ready to send to labels and see if anyone will pick it up. Thank goodness, because I was really starting to get sick to the teeth of that album constantly hanging over us. It's not just being mastered, mind you. It's being mastered at one of the best mastering studios in Australia, Turtle Rock Studios, and it's costing us a truck load of money (even though we got a discount, it's a lot for a bunch of independent musicians to come at) and so Tom's finances have taken a major blow on that front.

A friend of ours from college, Jansen Herr, has been working on a bit of a film clip for us in his spare time. He's quite the film maker these days and is based in Sweden. So, when we send out our little package to labels with our mastered album, we might also be able to include a little DVD of Jansen's wonderful film clip. He's a real artist, that Jansen, and he's made something really haunting and amazing to accompany the song.

We also decided that after over two years of playing that our band needed some kind of merchandise. The last merch we had was some little button badges that said "Thy Plagues" back in 2006-2007! So we bit the bullet and forked out for some t-shirts to be printed in the hope that someone (nay, anyone) might buy one at the live shows that we had been doing. We've not sold enough to cover the cost of printing them yet. We know, we have to be patient, but being patient requires patience, and sometimes supplies of patience run low. You could help by ordering one... :)

Now, you might have noticed from my interesting verb tenses above that we've decided to stop playing live shows. Thrall played the gig on the 21st of October at Socio. And it was abysmal. Socio kept giving us gigs after that first one, and we were quite pleased to be invited back so quickly, until we realised what was happening. Socio was using us as spac-filler on amateur nights. First gigs - all your friends turn up to show support - because they're your friends. It was a Sunday night, everyone could make it. Then we are given a bunch of Wednesday night gigs. No one turns up for us except my mate Glenn. We play to hostile crowds for two gigs that look like they wish we would just die. So we decided that the experiment of playing live with me on drums was a success, that it would work if we did it back in Hob's, and so, there was no point in continuing live shows on amateur night bills. Time to go back to songwriting for the second album.

The deal that we had made with Rob (wherein I play in his pop band, and he plays in my black metal band) had begun to run us both ragged (particularly me, as I was finding it really hard to play soft, poncy drums in one band, and BM, power-striking drums in the other). I try to practice drums at least 3 times a week to keep my double kick training in check, and ultimately, I'd like to play BM drums every day. The feel of one band was polluting the other band, and the time commitments were meaning I was spending even less time with Tom (and I wasn't enjoying that!), so Rob and I have come to an agreement that we will finish up playing in each other's bands at the end of this year. Thrall will do one more live show with Rob on the 15th of December, I will do some session work on Sister Ray's recording, and then we will amicably part ways. It's a great relief for me, because I was feeling really stretched and thin, and as one polluted the other, I had Thrall demanding me to play louder and harder, and Sister Ray demanding I play quieter and more poppily. You try to please all the people, you end up pleasing no-one.

Now I can return to my single focus: to be the most slamming, thrashy, speed-blasting, evil, kvlt, BM drummer I can be. Dave Lombardo, Philthy Animal Taylor, Horgh, Frost, and Daniel from Craft will be back on high rotation as I return to black metal mania!

So, that's all the news about the band. Hopefully soon I will be able to let you all know about which label has picked us up. Wouldn't that be nice?

Either way, in other news, the weather has started to go cold. I'm keen to get out and take as many photos as possible of the changing seasons. Last weekend I caught up with Leila, who I know from Hobart, in Kyoto, and we took a couple of photos of the start of the autumnal leaves. They'll just get redder and more intense over the next couple of weeks, and by the start of December they'll have disappeared. Just like the cherry blossom, so beautiful when you can see them, so transitory, so ephemeral. Haiku like burblings spring to mind.

Tadasu no Mori and Shinagamo Jinja

Kodaiji Temple

My teeth decided to stop working the other day, so I'm currently having some quite extensive dental work done. Finally this extortionate hell-th insurance is coming in handy. The excess for my last dental visit was ¥1490 (about $15 AU). I'm jogging and swimming occasionally at the moment, and my fitness level is still pretty good, even considering that I've not been able to do much exercise in the Japanese summer. So health wise, pretty good. Tom's well too.

Work, we had our Halloween lessons last week, which meant we were obliged to dress up. We both managed to spend less than ¥2000 on our costumes. Teaching is somewhere between fun and a drag. Work. What can I say? It's always depressingly work-esque.

For Christmas holidays we're coming up with a list of things we want to do that can be done as daytrips from Osaka. Tottori, Hikone, Nagoya, Ise, and Wakayama seem to be the front runners for our 5 days of Seishun Ju Hachi Kippu fun. Maybe we'll do one or two overnights, but nothing too drastic. Financially we're hoping to keep the spend quite low. Send back some cash for a car when we get back, and save some yen for our grand finale. Yakushima looks like a definite, Kyuushu, definitely, Okinawa, maaaybe... I'm really keen to get to the Japan Sea for a bit of a look at the Hokurikyu region, and to get back to Tokyo for one last, and very fond visit to that city. I will always wonder how different our lives would have been had we been able to station ourselves in Tokyo. It's just so much bigger. So different to Osaka. I feel like I'm visiting a different country whenever I am there. Who knows... maybe Tokyo would have chewed us up and spat us out far sooner, but maybe, maybe we wouldn't be heading home if we had been able to take the Tokyo route.

Well, we'll never know now.

Hoping you're all well, feel free to let us know how you've been and the like. 24th of April we'll be flying out, so it's not long now and we'll be back in Australia. Then the next question is where will we settle? I'm hoping the employment situation in Tassie will have loosened up a little by the time I get back, but if not, it's Melbourne or Sydney. Any of the above will be fine. We were also looking at the possibility of emigrating from Australia permanently, but that's another music in a different kitchen. More on that later.

Trips

Well, here we are once more, returned from another adventure. We've had two journeys in the last month, and it has left me very, very broke. I have done a lot of things that I thought I would never get the chance to do, and I've had some really good experiences, but at the end of it all, I don't feel like we got to do much resting or relaxing in these holidays, so I'm looking forward to devoting myself to a bit of doing nothing for the next couple of days.

So, when did this flurry of activity start...

Let's see, Monday, 20th of July was Marine Day holiday, which we traded in for some overtime, and then on our usual weekend we went to Koya-san Mountain in Wakayama Prefecture. Koya-san was founded by the monk Kukai, known posthumously as Kobo-Daishi (774-835), who is the founder of the Shingon school of Buddhism. Kukai went to China to study Buddhism, and was the first to import the esoteric or tantric style of Buddhist worship to Japan. Koya-san is not just one mountain, but is actually 8 mountains in a ring, selected to resemble the shape of a lotus, with Koya-san village nestled between these mountains. Kukai intended Koya-san to be like a Japanese equivalent to Mount Wu Dang in China. The town is home to approximately 2000 people, 120 temples, many of which offer temple lodgings. The most impressive of these temples is the Okunoin. It is believed by the Shingon school that Kobo-Daishi is in "eternal meditation" in the Okunoin rather than being dead, and that he will re-awaken on the arrival of "The Future Buddha." Now, I think Kobo-Daishi did a marvelous job of selecting a home for his Buddhist school. The forests are misty, mysterious, evocative, spiritual places, and Tom and I really enjoyed wandering around the enormous cemetery that surrounds the Okunoin, and enjoying the fresh air, and cooler temperatures.

The first day that we were there it was so lovely. We arrived at the shukubo (temple that offers lodgings) and one of the monks gave us simple directions to the Okunoin. It was drizzling, which seemed to add to the magical feeling. At the centre of this enormous grave yard, full of vines, moss, cedars, and sculptures, there was a beautiful temple (the one where Kobo-Daishi is meditating still) and an accompanying lantern hall that was possibly one of the most beautiful sights I have seen yet. We enjoyed beautiful sounds of the forest in the evening, the light of the disappearing sun, the sparkle of stars and the moon, and the wonderful Shojin-ryori (Koya-san's local vegetarian cuisine) prepared by our hosts. The Japanese style garden was full of frogs and dragonflies, and we spent quite a while sitting there listening to it all, watching the light fade. Soon we were tired, so we bedded down. We were awoken bright and early for our Buddhist morning service, where we were shown the "Goma" fire meditation. Upon leaving the sukubo, we began looking around at the town for our second day. The weather was less rainy, but no less grey, and it really didn't seem half as magical... it was funny to think that the rain was what made it all seem so etherial. Either way, we made it around most of the sights, unwound and made it back. I took some nice photos. Tom did too.

Muryokoin

Koya-san Perspectives

Koya-san Close up

After Koya-san, we got to have two more weeks of work, I went off and got my Japanese drivers licence on the weekend in the middle there, followed by the Obon holiday period. Obon is the longest break for us in our line of work, so we used this opportunity to go to the far end of Japan - Hokkaido.

As we flew in, the mountains seemed to melt through the clouds toward us. Navy blues, greys, and whites, separating into green pastures that looked so similar to the descent into Hobart, I kept pinching myself to see if I was dreaming. Nope. Hokkaido looks a lot like Tassie - I mean, sure, it's not exactly the same, but it has a lot in common with Tasmania. It's famous for lavender farms, potatoes, onions, agriculture, mountains, cooler temperatures in Summer, lakes, seafood... does any of this sound familiar?

We had booked the tickets to Hokkaido under the impression that it would be noticeably cooler. After our weekend at Koya-san, I was filled with hope - there are parts of Japan that aren't completely sweltering. Alas, Hokkaido's cities are not one of these non-sweltering parts, and we had inadvertently spent a hell of a lot of money on coming to somewhere that wasn't actually noticeably cooler than Osaka - it was still above 30ºC and 90% humidity! We were, to put it mildly, annoyed.

We flew into Chitose, and took the train straight down to Hakodate (pop. 290,000), the Southern-most city of Hokkaido. Hakodate is a gorgeous little fishing city, famous for it's delicious squid, nighttime views, and a laid back environment. We found it to be rather similar to Hobart. We stayed in a nice hotel, went to the Ainu Museum, ate some delicious Italian food and a lot of squid, and plenty of local brews. We drank a beer at the top of Mount Hakodate, watched the sunset... just beautiful. Had a great day in Hakodate. I don't think you'd need much more time there... it's a pretty sleepy little town.

From Hakodate we jumped on the train to Toya-ko (Lake Toya). Toya-ko is surrounded by active volcanoes, which give it a myriad of onsens around the rim of the lake. The only problem is, occasionally the mountain likes to erupt, or just excavate the roads a bit haphazardly, or cause mudslides, so there are eerie segments of the town that are half-buried in mud, and filled with wildflowers and insects that have reclaimed the disused buildings. I really liked Toya-ko Onsen, the major town on the lakeside. Next to the lake there is a wide boulevard, where there is a little public onsen for your feet. Every night in summer they put on a little festival, some old ladies in yukatas come out and do a little dance for about half an hour, and then there's a 20 minute fireworks display that would put Hobart's New Years Eve to shame. The town itself is so sleepy it may well be in a coma, but that said, it's a very pleasant place to spend a few days. We found a really good little cheap place in Toya-ko Onsen called The Green Hotel, and it put on a massive feast for breakfast and dinner of local seafoods and vegetables. I got a bit excited and hired a row boat and rowed to the island in the middle of the lake. It took 45 minutes to get there and about 50 to get back because the wind got up and we were a little tired. It was so wonderful being at the island, we jumped in the water. There were lots of little fish and iridescent shrimp in the water who were not afraid of us at all. They walked all over our feet and legs and tickled like mad! The local tourists don't seem to go in for swimming in the lake, so we were the only bodies in the water. It was wonderful.

We left Toya-ko Onsen for Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, via bus. As we went around the hills toward Sapporo we saw many crops, almost every bit of flat land was being farmed quite intensively. We arrived in Sapporo - the town is also the name sake of one of my favourite Japanese beers. I was hoping to get myself a Sapporo Beer poster at the beer museum, so we dumped our bags at the hotel and went to the Sapporo Beer-en (Beer Garden). They specialise in "Jingis Khan" (Mongolian Lamb barbecue) which we indulged in. And boy, we over indulged. It was 100 minutes of all you can eat, all you can drink MADNESS. After that we went back to the hotel. We were really tired, and kinda crabby. I've decided I'm not too keen on being close to cooking lamb. The lamb fat just gets into all your clothes and makes everything smell awful. Yetch! The next day we decided to go to Moerenuma Park. Moerenuma park was designed by Isamu Noguchi as an architectural sculpture. It's massive. It's also two trains and a bus away from where we were staying in Sapporo. It was annoying to get to, but nice once we were there - very inspiring spaces. We then went to Sapporo Art Garden to see their exhibition of paintings and prints from the Wein Museum (including works by Klimt, Scheille, and Kokoshka), which was also really good, but it took the rest of the day for us to get there because it was on the complete opposite end of the city, two train rides and a long bus ride away. Sapporo is a car town. What an annoyance - I could have driven, had we enough money to hire a car, but hire car prices in Hokkaido are almost 50% more expensive than they are in Osaka. Ridiculous. And all the while it was so hot, we were just sweating and sweating, just like we had been in Osaka. We were really hoping to come North and be comfortable for a while, but it just didn't work out. We were a little disappointed with Hokkaido, even though it was lovely. We so wanted it to be colder... oh well, you live and learn. This was a particularly expensive lesson, but I think I've actually figured a few things out about traveling just generally - we got really tired of moving around so much. I think it's better to just find one good place and stay there until you unwind than to try and travel around too much on your holiday.

Finally, I did get to have an excellent scallop ramen from the Sapporo ramen alley on the last night, and I've been fantasising about it ever since it was so good. Hokkaido was really nice, and the food was great!

Hokkaido

We then flew into Tokyo for a bit of madness. We stayed in Shinjuku, went to the Mori Art Muesum in Roppongi, we went to Tokyo Opera Building to see Tomoko Konoike's first solo exhibition, we went to Iron Chef Chen Kenichi's restaurant for lunch, I did a little reckless shopping in Ginza (new shoes, new wallet, new neck scarf), we saw the giant Gandam in Odaiba, we went to meet up with Luke Ray in Shinjuku and had yakitori in the famous "Memory Lane" (but all the locals call it "Piss Alley" - how stylish!) and the heavy metal bar in Kabuki-cho (that I may never find again - it was very well hidden!). At the end of it all, we were quite exhausted from our holiday!

Tokyo

Iron Chef Chen Kenichi's Restaurant, Shisen Hanten

Either way, now we're back in Osaka, and we've been trying to make reparations for the over-indulging and over-exertion holiday we just survived. I'll be tight with the cash again this month (what's new?) but I really do feel like this time I got to have a bit more of my fill of Tokyo. I think this will change our next move as to what we will do when we finish up here in Japan.

Either way, my lovelies, this was a very long post, and now I'm very tired, so I'm going to watch some Iron Chef and then go to sleep. Hope you're all keeping well.

Busy busy busy...

It has been commented on more than one occasion that my blog contributions are tantamount to one enormous whinge. Well, just to buck the trend, things have been awesome for the last few weeks. We've been super busy with band stuff, we've made some new friends who have asked us to play session drums on their recordings for their band, our mates Kerry and Dave came over to visit and that was great fun, and I'm really starting to enjoy teaching some of my classes this year.

Non-whinge, over and out!