Basic Black

Culture Day Dai Rakudakan

   This weekend was Culture Day 文化の日　in Japan, and in Kashiwa, Joban Art Line, a local organization that promotes public arts displays bring lots of interesting performances to Kashiwa and Matsudo cities.

As I was making my way to the supermarket, the Kashiwa Information Center personnel were announcing and martialling people in Howdy Dori (that's what they call the station front street here), and seating was arranged around the street in front of Ito Yokado. To everyone's surprise, 5 gold-painted shaven headed men rushed onto the pavement and the dark ambient feedback noise of guitars underlaid by taiko drums hammered the audience. The five dancers performed for perhaps 10 minutes but the moment felt like forever. What really got me was how the audience reacted. Little kids shouted "Scary!" when the dancers were close, people looked startled, high school boys mouths agape couldn't blink, old people squinted. These five dancers showed us raw power, total transformation, embodiment of animal spirits. They became this undancelike dance, this total expression of themselves.

This is Dai Rakudakan. I looked them up online to confirm what I suspected - this dance company is a direct decendant of Butoh. This performance art, which some describe as not dance, is a form that shows the metamorphosis of the dancer into the thing or creature being danced. Some say this is the meaning of butoh - the dancer becoming. This is a wonderful example for budoka. We can become our budo, pull it out of ourselves, embody it.

Lights and music in Kashiwa and Tokyo

Coming home to Kashiwa Station, I walk out onto the plaza to hear live music - it's time for 音街かしわ２００７, a weeklong music event hosted by Streetbreakers, a local arts group, featuring local musicians. This evening was a jazz trio doing standards, and tomorrow night is mostly solo acts from 5 to 7:30 pm at the east exit of the station.

Kashiwa has long been known for live music, starving artists, high school kids in need of practice, local characters and the ubiquitous two-boys-with-guitar. Kazuya can be found out there some weekends entertaining his loyal crowd of hopelessly single middle-aged ladies, fawning high school girls and assorted friends. It's a fun atmosphere.

Starting next week is the 20th Tokyo International Film Festival. Some things I want to see are Kari Skoglund's screen adaptation of Margaret Lawrence's novel The Stone Angel, Waltz (original title Valzer), a film about a day in the lives of hotel guests and staff shot in one sequence, and Eat and Run (Japanese title 真・女立喰師列伝) about crazy women bikers eating there way through various dangerous scenarios brought to you by the makers of Ghost in the Shell.

Tomorrow night Japan's Mille Miglia 2007 ends in Yokohama's Motomachi. Get this, they drove way out to Fukushima Prefecture a few days ago in a car rally with over 100 vintage cars, foreign and domestic.  Let's see if all of them come home.

The Mouth is gone, but the heart and the word live on

I was cojoled, provoked, prodded into reading at Thundering Word Heard, by T. Paul and Mark, and it was such a release. That must have been back in 2002 when I could walk from the house on 33rd Avenue to the Cafe Montmartre on Main Street. It was a trip to read my short fiction and I had a glimpse into the inspired, passionate world of words that drove T. Paul and his fellow poets. And boy, did he drive when we pulled Vancouvers artists out of  The Living Closet  with a crew of awesome folks who put blood, sweat, tears, paint and staples into the effort.　Ru's put up a memorial here.

I posted a version of the Prajna Paramita sutra last week. Well, here it is again,  Alan Ginsberg's translation and chant. Another bit of surfing took me to Alan Ginsberg live in London, where you can hear sound bites of Ginsberg reading the Heart Sutra. Big heart, light and love.

Podcasting my net for music and news

It's freaking cold today. Agent S and Agent Y of the Educational MiB, and I went to Yurakucho on business, wrapped up in mufflers and big coats. I was happy to come back after our errand and work at the desk under the heater. Not much going on, as my webmail has been down for an hour...Which means that I'm fishing for podcasts which I can download to my machine and take home to listen to in the evenings. I don't have a 'Net connection at home, you see.

So, what's amusing? Our undercover local MiB, Podgy, hosts   Podgy's Tokyo Talk.

There's always Kutaki no Ha, the podcast Obie Shawn hosts with the help of Rob and Syd. Kaz, who plays guitar in front of Bic Camera in Kashiwa got some airtime on the show.

On the Plaza

Yesterday was a slow day at work, as the summer term came to an end and we get a four day break. My energy was pretty low. Sensei said it's always that way - when things wind down, you wind down, too. But training got my energy up again, and after, we walked from the dojo to the station.

We walked over to Kashiwa Station where we sang our guts out with Kazuya as he played his beater guitar. He says he had the day off, so he wandered all over, playing in Akihabara. The rain was so heavy yesterday that, even though he was under the overhang of the building, his pants got wet. A middle-aged lady walked up while he was playing a Killers song, and she sang right along and gave him a posey of roses.

Here's Maren chilling out in front of Bic Camera, the Irishman getting the run down on Sach's day at work. Our low rent evening included canned chuhai and onigiri (rice balls) from the 7-11 in San San Street. I was tired from being woken up by emails coming in at 4 am, so I headed home and crashed out. When I woke up this morning and leaned over the loft railing, I shook my head. Snoring bodies littered the floor of my six mat room (picture not available). Ah, an inhebriated early Autumn evening at The Hub ends at my place, I guess.

Kashiwa Kool

Kashiwa's got so much going for it. www.streetbreakers.org have yet another event coming up July 29th. They're putting on a contest for unsigned bands and artists to perform in front of the station at the east exit. There's a large plaza between the station and the Sky Plaza building where people often gather in the evenings to play.

Sure there are some truly awful performances, kids just looking for a place to practice, but there are also lots of really tight bands, beautiful vocalists, and ethnic acts, and original pop music going on there. Just the other night, there were panpipe playing Peruvians right at the exit, and a few months ago, a group of dreadlocked world wandering djembe drummers (one guy is a Kashiwa native who now lives in Brazil).

I got a notice in the mail the other day for a networking luncheon with Kashiwa International Relations Association. They started a year ago with networking meetings to keep foreigners abreast of disaster preparations, but I have a hunch that it's much more successful in networking the sizeable foreign community in the city.

I'm connecting with my neighbours a lot better. There's the little old lady from across the road. She and I walked down the lane together and saw Maro, the neighbourhood feline bully, sitting in the road. She said to me, That fool cat, he doesn't know what's good for him. The other day, I offered him a little treat and he looked away. Idiot thing. To which he replied with a big howl of indignation. She turned to me giggling, Oh dear! I guess I guess he was listening! Iguess I'm as much a part of the neigbourhood as they are. I help her up the hill by the wedding chapel so she doesn't get mowed down by the Squeeky Bike Kids, and restrain maro when the neighbours walk their dogs in the lane. Maro will go for the throat.

The other morning, I just couldn't sleep, got up at about 4:30 am, put my gaijin card, a few coins and my keys in my pocket and rode around Teganuma. I dawdled, meditated, had breakfast at Matsuya on the Abiko side, came back to the neigbourhood and walked into the 7-11, picked out milk and some other odds and ends, got to the cash register, and then wondered aloud if I had money. The store clerk, an older guy with a lot of metal in his smile, grinned and said to me, Ok, this happens all the time. So how many pockets do you have? So I checked them all, and produced the couple hundred yen. With a big grin he exclaimed, Safe! And i got to have milk in my morning cup of char.

Spring is here!

See my shadow changing,
Stretching up and over me
Soften this old armor
Hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow,
Coming out the other side
Step into the shadow
Forty six and two are just ahead of me

-Tool, Forty-Six and Two

OS told me about this band, Tool, that incorporates Jung's and Al Crowley's ideas into their lyrics. Forty-six and two are said to refer to the chromosomes in human DNA, the appended two representing x and y chromosomes. There are many other possible interpretations of those numbers. And the music is noisy and monotonous metal, just the way I like it when I'm cleaning on a Sunday morning.

The lyrics are about change and growth, too. Spring is a great time for change, too. The school year begins in April, when the cherry blossoms are blowing. There are lots of new things to do -- start projects, studies, adventures.

This school year, I want to start yoga, study for the Japanese language test, and make more time for my friends. All three will be easier to achieve this year, I think.

When you can't have drugs, you can have Brave New Waves

While I'm in the midst of the drudge part of teaching, marking papers, I tune in to CBC, usually Radio Two, because the sound is quite good over our high speed connection at work.

I caught Brave New Waves, the alternative music program, and while surfing some links, something cosmic happened and I slipped into a dimension of sight and sound that I least expected to find myself in at my desk. Waves was airing an electronica performance recorded by some Montreal artists (ah, it went by so fast, I couldn't get them down in text, sorry), I opened the link on their website, which takes you to Stereolab's trippy webpage complete with psychedelic graphics that wiggle when you mouse over them, and the combination of the opening music and the Montreal performance was a happy convergence of jangly 60's synth and reverb noise that caused me to go astral for a few minutes, I was so happy and droolingly blissed out, mousing over graphics to make them dance for me, little pretties.

I poked around on Stereolab's website, and they have a forum, discographies, and extra cool, their own playlists of music by other artists which they enjoy.

Now that I can see through time, thanks to the lovely wiggly graphics and trippy music, I'm going back to marking...

In the Hinterlands with no tv

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.  - Groucho Marx

I haven't had a tv in years, not in Canada or Japan. And I hardly miss it. When I want to watch a dvd, I use my laptop, wherever and whenever. If I want to see the latest world news, I go to BBCNews, for Canada, I have a look at CBC, and for local Canadian news, I check out indy media, like The Tyee.

Lately, I've been listening to streaming radio a lot, because I'm thirsty for English and world music. Japanese radio just doesn't do it for me, because few stations broadcast foreign music, or only as special programming. The few I like are J-Wave, a commercial radio station, and an internet-only group, Samurai.fm, which plays Japanese and world music.

But south of the 49th parallel, there are some cool radio stations, such as SomaFM which Bhead put me onto, and A&A got me listening to Radio Paradise.

And go have a listen at Podgy! You can find him at Podcast Alley.

Send me a comment and tell me your favorite streaming radio station. Save me from hideous Jpop!