Music, sweet music...

Well, it's been a busy little week. Very, very busy.

We had our first night on the grog on Wednesday for this year. Reminded me why I've not been on the grog. A powerful and bombastic hangover ensued. I strained a muscle in my shoulder whilst being silly and drunk, and have yet to feel it fully heal.

Ah! She'll be right.

I say that because I have been reminded by Tom's recent trip to the doctors (with what was presenting as either tonsillitis or a cold) being quite traumatic. He was bombarded with questions that he couldn't understand, given treatments that he didn't understand either, and was told to come back the next day. He decided that it would be better for his health if he just had a lie in instead. Doctors that don't speak your language = stressful!

All health problems are being put off until we get back to Australia. I've had it with Japanese doctors. Japanese dentists are awesome, Japanese doctors are stressful.

So, anyway, the Wednesday drink was brought on by a gig. Leila was doing her first show, her solo performance called The Patty Hearst Noise Opera. I watched and took photos for Leila's Artists CV. There were some points that I thought were quite moving, hypnotic, interesting, and there were other bits where I was just wondering "what am I meant to be thinking about here?" I'm a bit simple when it comes to performance art. I don't really get it. But I think it might have been good.

Either way, with the entry to the venue, you get a free drink ticket. And that was my undoing. I spent the drink ticket on beer, and had a few more, and was suddenly on Father Jack's Rollercoaster of "drink! drink! drink!" After the gig I had the excellent idea of going to Bar Konton for a few extra drinks, and well, got completely hammered. It was at Bar Konton that I received the shoulder injury. I didn't really feel untoward until the next day when I felt like I'd been hit by a truck.

But I was having a happy hangover, so I went off and tried to make the most of the day. Only much later did I start to realise that I wasn't bouncing back from this.

On Friday I had one weird event lesson type thing, on Saturday they gave me three kids model lessons (!) and one event lesson (!!) - a move that I was kind of annoyed with because I was on that shift with someone who is a more than competent Kids teacher, that the branch have decided to go cold on, so instead of talking to him about it, they just loaded me with all the model lessons. Pretty pissed about that. Will be having firm words with said school this week.

The shoulder strain was a bit of bad timing, that's for sure. We had to play a gig on Sunday evening, and this gig was with bigger and better bands than we've played with since we left Australia, so we were really hoping to put on a good show. I rushed all the way from Kuzuha to Amemura carrying my stupid, heavy, piece of shit kick pedal with me to get there on time, and then realised that this venue doesn't do on-time, and I could have actually saved myself the hassle. Unfortunately, the stars were crossed unfavourably. The amp that was supplied at the venue was a Marshall JCM900 that shat itself every time Tom tried to apply the "big muff" to the sound. So when the music should have sounded louder, it ended up sounding quieter! What a pain! I couldn't get the drum kit to sit together in an ergonomically sensible lay out, and the snare skin looked older than Byōdō-in. No one seemed to be mixing us. Tom's vocals were too quiet, my snare wasn't cutting through. It took us two songs to really lock in, and by the end of the 5th song, I was quite tired from struggling against my injury and my less than ideal set up.

Lesson to be learned from this: soundcheck. YOU MUST SOUNDCHECK. It doesn't matter if everyone has to wait for a few minutes. It's better for all concerned if you soundcheck.

I'm not too disappointed because I think we still did a fairly intense and fierce looking performance, and those three songs in the middle had enough smack down in them to make up for the three that sandwiched them, but I would have liked to have done better.

That said, after the gig, the venue owner asked us to do another show in March. So, we went from "Last show" to "not last show" again! And then we got a call from a dude we met at the gig on Wednesday night asking us to do another show in Kyoto in April. People seem to like us even when we're not firing on all cylinders. How strange.

But I suppose that's it. Music is a powerful force. Surprising. Thought changing. Strong. Emotional. Physical. That's kind of what Thrall is about. Creating something Thrall inducing. To put yourself into a sort of trance and let the music overwhelm you, and your audience. When it works, it is truly gob-smacking. When it doesn't work, it's just another band.

I'm off to another Zeni Geva show tonight. I'm really excited about seeing them again. The last show was so good, and this show is at a much vibier venue, so hopefully they'll be laying the smack down in quantities that won't be able to be resisted by the audience. It's my turn to lay down my will to someone else's sound and feel the power of their 'thrall.'

Relativity

Ooops! I forgot to post in the blog last month. Well, probably not that much of a concern for you all, as last month was pretty cold, and I had an infection (doctors still have not managed to explain how I got it, but it's gone now, thanks to the marvel of anti-biotics), so we didn't get out much. But there is enough to report to make this more interesting than many people's lives, I'm sure. It's all relative. It's all relatively relative, anyway.

So, last post we were just about to go away to Kanazawa for our holiday.

Kanazawa is in Ishikawa Prefecture in the Hokrikyu region of Japan. It is famous for it's pleasant Japan Sea influenced summers, and harsh Siberian blizard influenced winters. We were hoping to see some snow, preferably in Kenroku-en, a famous Japanese garden, rated as one of the top three gardens in Japan.

We left on the 28th in a hire car. It was very nice. I enjoyed the drive. Made one wrong turn and almost ended up in Nagoya for a moment there. But I managed to find an exit and turn around, and all was well. We stopped in Hikone on the way to check out Hikone castle. The sun was being all shiny, and the photos look rather pretty, I think. Hikone castle is the last of the 4 National treasure castles I was hoping to see, so that's that. I have collected the set.

Hikone-jo

After hitting the highway again, the weather turned cold and rainy, and occasionally snowy as we wound our way through Fukui Prefecture. Fukui was cold and snowy, there were lots of tunnels that went for about 2km through mountains as we got closer to the Japan Sea coast. Just amazing scenery. I found it really exciting just to be there.

We arrived in Kanazawa, checked into our hotel, and I almost instantaneously started getting cold symptoms! Eee, gads, bad timing! I shuffled off to the chemist and got some cold and flu tablets and struggled on, almost uneffected. On the 29th we went to Kenroku-en. Unfortunately for us, there was no snow. Our students had been admonishing us for the entire month of December: "Kanazawa is very cold, be sure to wear lots of warm clothes." We get to Kanazawa and the top temperature in Kanazawa that day was higher than the temperature in Osaka! Talk about don't believe the hype!

Anyway, the garden itself is very pretty, and I'm sure it would be even prettier had it been snowy. But alas, it was not to be.

Kenroku-en and Kanazawa-jo

Whilst we were in Kanazawa I bought myself an umbrella for a souvenir. There is a local saying in Kanazawa that states: "Bento o wasurete mo, kasa o wasureru na!" (forget your lunch, but don't forget your umbrella). This is due to the mad weather that Kanazawa often experiences. On our last day in Ishikawa prefecture, the weather turned bad, windy, rainy, snowy, simultaneously, fantastically bad... just what I had been hoping for! But alas, it did so only in time to make my drive home a bit more perilous. We passed about 4 or 5 car accidents on our way, but being the Grandma slow-coach that I am, I didn't manage to be in any of those accidents.

So, in early January, that's when I started getting these mysterious abdominal pains. After 3 weeks, I decided that they were of sufficient quality to warrant a trip to the doctor, who took some blood from me and found some kind of bacteria having a party in my abdomen. Currently got the bacteria whacking stick out to give those unwelcome visitors a good seeing to, and will be back to normal by the end of the week. Don't know what those nasty bacterias were up to, but I'm going to have a full medical when I get back to Australia to see how it is that I managed to get sick like that. Anyway, nothing to concern you all, it's just why we haven't done anything much.

However, after three or so weekends of being indoors, I went a bit stir crazy and this weekend I demanded that we go somewhere to get some sightseeing in. So we went off to Uji city in Southern Kyoto Prefecture to get some sights in. The main attraction there is Byōdō-in. This temple is co-owned by the Jodo-shinshu (Pure Land) Buddhist sect and the Tendai sect. The image of The Pheonix Hall at Byōdō-in is featured on the back of the ¥10 coin. The hall houses an Amida-Buddha statue made from cedar and lacquered in gold of quite exceptional beauty. The roof is carved in a most spectacular style, and there are paintings on the walls of Amida-Buddha and his gang of Bodhisattvas cruising around on clouds, being awesome and stuff. Because Byōdō-in is so old (it was built in the 11th century), the original paintings now just look like some brown stains on the walls, but there are some replicas in the fantastic, modern, architect designed museum next door that give you an idea of what it must have looked like when it was new. The Jodo-shiki (perfection) garden is also extremely beautiful, but my photos look quite poor in comparison to how it looked in real life.

Byōdō-in

Last but not least, I trialed Picasa as a photo uploader for this post, and I think the official verdict is: it sucks. It's compressed my photos so hard, they look like faded prints. I swear, the exposure rate on my camera is set to auto, it shouldn't look that underexposed! So, the next post will be back on the cursed facebook. Facebook sucks, but at least it doesn't render my photos like muck!

Alright, off to work now. We're continuing to try and scrape all our belongings and whatnot together to send home, and get our travel plans in order. We've decided to abandon the original plan to do Kyuushu and Okinawa - it was just too expensive and the cost was stressing me out. So now we're going to just hang out in Osaka, do some hanami time in Kyoto, and make a quick trip back to Tokyo, the city I always wanted to call home in Japan, for one last Sayonara party.

In February we're seeing some bands, playing some shows, and in early March we're going to Hiroshima with Dave and Kerry (who're making it back for a second visit!) so there will be photos to show and stories to tell. Don't hesitate to let us know you exist. We get lonely over here sometimes...