Tumbling rain

It rains a lot here. I wonder if it rains more here than it does in Tassie? It's good when it rains because it's very dusty in Melbourne a lot of the time. Washes my car for me. Softens up the ground. Rinses the washing. That kind of thing.

So it's raining again today, and I thought I should probably tell y'all about the last few weeks since our last update. It's been an intense time.

The trip to Tassie for the Zeni Geva show... I hardly know where to start to tell you about that one. I was excited about it, that's for sure. After getting Mr Kishino down before for the July Thrall/KK NULL show, I was super pumped to be playing with Zeni Geva. In the days before the show, things slowly began to unravel. The show was supposed to be on Thursday 30 September. On the Sunday before the show I was contacted and asked to arrange the "backline" (instruments for the touring band to play for those of you who are not touring musicians). It was well hard! I don't live in Hobart any more, and people generally don't have great gear in Hobart. After a few emails and phone calls, I had it all pretty much arranged. Then on Wednesday the promotor said that he didn't want to come down anymore, and could I look after the whole show. I felt like "this is unusual, but OK..." Then I couldn't get hold of him to ask him for the info I needed to take over. I called the venue to ask them what was going on, and they said they didn't know. Whilst talking to me, they managed to raise the promotor on a chat client. The venue guy sounded confused... but willing to continue. But it became apparent as we were talking that the promotor had put a door price of $12 on their website for the Hobart show. I heard it happen, then and there... we were talking, and then there was a pause... the venue knew that it was a Thursday show, where there had been inadequate postering/press, from a relatively obscure Japanese act. The venue had not set the door price, and the promotor had committed the venue to charging $12, thereby making it impossible for venue to make money from the show. And so, the show was cancelled. The promotor had booked the Hobart show - secured us as a support act - but he hadn't promoted it on the ground, and he did not book the airline tickets. It's like he never really committed to the show. He could pull out: after all, he hadn't booked any tickets.

Well, I sure as hell couldn't!

I was furious. Our non-refundable tickets to Hobart, unpaid days off work, all for nothing... it was highly unlikely that we were going to make money on that show, but to have it cancelled and not even get the experience. I felt de-prioritised. Made me angry and indignant the way that the kid who always gets picked last for teams must feel. Just because I'm from Tasmania... grrrr...

We went down to Hobart, regardless - it was a real toss up... stay, go to work, get paid, maybe get to see Zeni Geva at one of the Melbourne shows, or go down, catch up with Trent, touch base about Vermin to the Earth. I felt like I was damned if I do and damned if I don't. So we went. Stayed with Nathan and Sooz (who are both twinkling gems of friends and I'm very excited about their nuptials next year). Saw the besty Rachel, my sister Maddy, Leigh, Elissa, Astro, Christian, Tim P., Mary, Trent, Kristy, Luke R., Gwen, Minnie, Winnie, my Ma, Ross and Tom's Granny and Grandpa. It was tiring, and I was disappointed, so I didn't really feel like I had my best face on. Thank you to everyone who put up with my sour puss. I will remember each of you in my best thoughts.

Back to Melbourne, back to work. Felt pretty good about where I was going with my work. I had been hired to compile nine regional reports to explain some blah blah that Department of Education and Early Childhood Development had undertaken in the last year. There was already a statewide report, so I was charged to make nine regional reports. I thought, well, that they would have wanted me to do nine small reports, with tight, well-collected and verified data. I was a bit concerned that I had not been getting much feedback from my supervisor. Well, to be perfectly honest, I got no feedback at all. The supervisor always seemed busy and unapproachable. When I finally got some feedback, it turned out that the didn't want nine smaller reports. They wanted nine regional reports that exactly mimicked the statewide report. And with one week left until the end of my contract, I managed to whack together one of the nine reports that I should have done. I know, I can't hold myself solely responsible, but I feel very bad about my work. I also feel quite resentful because I don't feel like I was given the tools to succeed by those who should have been guiding my hand. Anyway, last day is on Monday, I will be finishing up that one, lonely report, and turning my back on what has been an awful debacle.

I have been crippled with my recurring knee injury again. Back to physio. I have been laid out in bed for the last 5 weeks pretty much, feeling frustrated like a caged tiger. Getting better is hard work but we're making progress, slowly but surely...

In early October we did a show in Melbourne at the Arthouse. We opened the evening. I think we left people with a very unique flavour - I don't know if people in Melbourne are used to bands like us. Anyway, I thought it was a successful evening for the most part. Leigh came over from Tassie to play, and did an awesome job. Just pounded that bass into oblivion. The other bands that played were 1,000,000 Dead Birds Laughing, Fuck! I'm Dead, and Ruins. All the other bands were ace, and I really enjoyed Ruins. It was great to hang out with Alex properly (a rare chance for we three) and bask in the light of his humour, intellect and enthusiasm. He's a rare creature, our Al'.

In the last couple of weeks Leigh and Elissa had a baby! Archer Lee Wildcat Ritson! What a fantastic handle for a young chap to get. Very excited to get to meet the young man, as I do love prodding other people's babies.

Next we are off to New Zealand for a tour! Meeting up with Sarah and Maria from the Nagoya house promises to be extremely fun, and a great moment to cast my mind over the last five years since we three were all in the same place at the same time. We've also got a show in Tassie on the 23rd of December, so it looks like we'll be in Hobart for Christmas. How surprising! I'm just hoping that we get some work pretty easily when we get back and continue to be able to keep our heads poking out above the water... money's been tight, and I've been feeling the pressure. Still applying for permanent jobs, but no joy yet. I hate job hunting. It's soul destroying. It's been a really tough ride. Jobs, disappointments, injuries...

Hopefully by the next time I write for the blog, the rain will have stopped falling on me.

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.