More Plague

Well, it was only a matter of time before the black plague came for me. Today was largely a blur of passing out on trains, passing out in train stations, and passing out in our new, very modern, hotel. I basically slept all last night, most of today and all of tonight. 

Today was thankfully just a travel day, taking the shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka. Our hotel is nice and modern in the Bentencho area of Osaka. We got settled in, had our first Coco Curry meal together since arriving, and I fell asleep at 3pm. The plague is no joke.

There were a few signs of the expo in Osaka. And by a few, I mean it was everywhere. Every store, every train station. The stations that have the Loop Line that takes people to Yumeshima station where the expo is had signs for the signs for directions. There were station workers at all the main entrances guiding clueless-looking foreigners to the correct platforms, arrows painted on the floor, etc. They did a very good job of making it as easy as possible if you are not familiar with Japanese railways. 

A full map on the floor of Shin-Osaka staation

These were everywhere. That Cthulu-like thing is Myaku-Myaku, the mascot for the expo.
The blue platypus is Ico, the ICOCA mascot.

Since we have nothing today, here are some odd, interesting, or funny things found in our travels this week

A cool-looking moth in our room in Tokyo. That is some camouflage!

Me standing next to our door in Taito Ryoukan. They were all that short.

This is for an oldies concert (Showa era pop and oldies). Why cats? Why not, I guess.

I love that Japan tells their tourists to move their butts.

Hana-Hachijou!

Sumi is finally getting over her illness, and not a moment too soon. Tonight we are going to be having a private workshop with Chieko Kojima! Long story short, Chieko was a member of Ondekoza, the predecessor to Kodo, then one of the original members of the 1981 Kodo and one of the first women to perform kumidaiko by basically creating her own style, as she wasn't allowed to play the "guy songs" (things were even more misogynistic back then). She also wasn't keen on wearing the Kodo outfit of choice at that time: a fundoshi

Basically an adult diaper

That is a very short and pithy way to describe her creation of Hana-Hachijo, a style of hachijo specifically written for a female wearing a kimono to play and very different from other styles of taiko. Tonight, we are going to meet up with Manami and Maika and the four of us are going to have a 3 hour private lesson where we'll basically learn the song and how to start twirling our bachi and hitting with correct style. An intro to Hana-Hachijo.

But first! Sumi wanted to sleep in and make sure she was feeling well for tonight, so I took a solo trip down to Ochanomizu and Meidai Dori, better known as Guitar Street.

Several blocks of mostly instrument shops

There are a lot of guitar shops, but also other instruments as well. New and used gear, recording studios, practice spaces, lessons. It's pretty cool. I spent the morning looking around, trying out a few instruments, and shaking my head at some of the prices. I'm very utilitarian with my gear, so paying for anything other than functionality offends my artistic sense. That said, there were deals as well as overpriced crap.

Some really interesting gear in this place (see below)

The best of all planets

The most overrated of all planets

All the planets!

A good general store

I want a windpal...

There were some interesting Japanese brands that you don't see in the US here. I took some pictures before I saw the sign telling dumb tourists not to take pictures..

Saito makes some decent basses. Neck felt a little chunky for me, but nice tone.

These are not used. They are "pre-distressed". What does it say about you that you will pay $4k+ for a brand new axe that looks like it's been on the road for decades?

There were a few oddities there, and one I'm still trying to get Bill to buy.

A Gibson 12/6 double neck. Sadly, $7500 is a good price for one. 

A hollow-body flying V? Who ever asked for one of these?

A Roland G707 Guitar synth controller. Very rare.

I headed back to the ryoukan, took shower #2 today, and Sumi and I went to splurge on lunch at Mo-Mo-Paradise

100 minutes of all-you-can-eat shabu-shabu. We didn't gorge ourselves, but we did enjoy some decent sukiyaki

Heading over to Shinjuku, we found the rehearsal studio hidden in a residential area of Shinjuku. We were early, so we hung out in the shade for a bit. Chieko arrived about 30 minutes early and was surprised to see us, but invited us in to the studio and we relaxed a bit before Manami, Maika, and Yuuko, the woman who helped us set up the workshop and a taiko player in her own right, arrived.

The workshop was a lot of fun. I was told to use the spread out "manly" stance (literally "otoko-teki") rather than the dainty closed stance that women wearing kimonos need to do. This was good, because a) I will not be wearing a kimono and b) I could get myself lower so I had less chance of hitting the ceiling with my hands, let alone my bachi. The studio is in the basement of the building and the ceiling is quite low. They usually use it for Miyake, which is a very low style, and Hana-Hachijo is not usually played by six foot tall white guys, so I caused several problems this evening.

We managed to learn a lot of the basics in the short time we had. There was a particularly useful and hilarious exercise using a squeaky-toy that I am planning on bringing into Hibiki. It is really something special to be able to take lessons from such accomplished performers like Chieko. Being one of the founding members of one of the most important kumidaiko groups in the world, she has an experience and point of view that is quite unique. Below is a quick clip of the squeaky-toy (harder than it looks) and of Chieko performing Hana-Hachijo with Kaoru Watanabe

Awa Odori and More Plague

 For those of you that don't know, when Sumi wants to do something, it's getting done and something as trivial as the Bubonic Plague wasn't going to stop her from seeing the Awa Odori dance in the Tanabata parade today. So she wiped her lymph nodes with hand sanitizer and off we went to see the parade!

Awa Odori is a traditional dance from the Tokushima prefecture that has become a staple of festivals across Japan. The Awa Odori Matsuri (Awa Dance Festival) is in August, but the dance is also done at other festivals, including the Shitamachi Tanabata festival. The dance has several parts and is quite upbeat, accompanied by fue, shamisen, and taiko as they dance down the street. The dance takes about 10 minutes, and they will dance, then walk to the next area, then dance again, and so on. This parade is a little over a mile long, and they had 14 stops along the way, so they were dancing and walking for almost 3 hours!

The woman in front carried that thing AND danced the whole time!

The police had to keep shooing people off the parade route.
They used the rope to cordon off the dancers and walked with them as them moved.

By the way, THAT is what a real Tokyo cop looks like. To be honest, they have a reputation for generally being useless at anything other than staying in their kobans (police boxes) and occasionally giving directions, so being out in this heat herding slightly drunk fesitval-goers is probably the most work they will do this year. All of my knowledge of Japanese police comes from the Internet, so I am sure it is 100% accurate.

    We followed the dancers down the parade route for quite a ways, then circled back to see the Bon Odori dancers. Bon Odori is another traditional dance,  and I could spend an entire blog post on the origin and significance of Obon, but all I will say here is that each region has its own Bon Odori, and this one was a counterclockwise one and far less uptempo than Awa Odori. It was performed by a group of older women who were all unnaturally the same height. 

There was one guy in a white hat that randomly joined them. He knew the dance, and traditionally anyone can participate. I was a little surprised to see them let someone jump into the parade, but it was all pretty relaxed.

After the parade, we went to Salvatore Cuomo, a local "Italian" restaurant where they made real margherita pizza. Like with cheese and basil and everything. They even avoid putting shrimp on it. It was decent. The best part of the meal was their mocktails. They make a non-alcoholic lemon, lime, and yuzu in seltzer that is unbelievable. One also costs as much as half a pizza, so we each only had one.

If you ever find yourself in Asakusa, have one.

On the way back to the ryoukan, I saw a sign that made me stop and chuckle.

Yakiniku literally means "Grilled Meat". The sign says Tokori Japanese Beef Grilled Meat. (Wagyu Yakiniku). The phrase "Japanese Yakiniku Vegetable" is akin to saying "American Vegetarian Meat Loaf". While I am sure some misguided soul has attempted vegetarian meat loaf, I am equally sure no one ever called that culinary mistake American. Anyway, like many Japanese English signs, it made me giggle.

Sumi still has the Plague. I'm still dreading the inevitable Sharing Of the Plague.

Tanabata and The Plague

 It's finally Tanabata festival time! Hot, sunny, and plenty humid, we left a little earlier than planned to get to the station for some breakfast before the parade started at 11am, so after lolling around at Andersen's for a while, we walked up to the parade route and walked the street, which was already full of people browsing the stalls, eating bad fried food and having beer (at 10am). 

We ended up standing right at the start of the parade route when the mayor and all the other important Old Guys With Hats™ mumbled incoherently into a microphone to a smattering of applause from the onlookers. There was an odd ribbon cutting ceremony where about 20 Old Guys With Hats™ (probably sponsors of the festivities) were handed scissors and they all cut at the same time, leaving lots of short strips of ribbon on the ground. With that thrilling opening, the parade was finally underway!

Now, the parade is really just some grade school and middle school marching bands, but I was curious. As it turned out, the opening group was a private high school's drum corps, and they were quite good. The all-girl color guard uniforms were ripped straight from 1980's anime, complete with go-go boots. In fact, the whole beginning felt like that. The start of the parade was a pair of Toyko motorcycle cops. But they were not only both women (rare in the Tokyo police force), but the exact same height and overall build (hint: not very large) with matching red uniforms (complete with white gloves). I half-expected to hear bad 80's guitar riffs and watch their bikes morph into fighting mechs and take off like an episode of Bubblegum Crisis. But their hair wasn't all poofy and neon-colored (at least that I could see), so we were relatively safe from killer robots this morning.

Pre-parade lineup

Drum Majorette at attention.

Ready to take off into Megazone 23! Wish we had better pictures of the officers.

There rest of the parade consisted of middle school bands. Most were pretty decent and better than your typical US high school. One was very young kids and....they sounded like it, but it was fun and the crowd was encouraging.

As it turns out, that was the end of the day for us. Sumi caught some virus somewhere and was in pretty bad shape. We went back to the ryoukan to be in air conditioning and she pretty much passed out. I did some work and some planning for the next week, walked over to the nearby Coin Laundry Sentacky (a bad play on words in Japanese. Sentaku is laundry) to get that taken care of, and then at about 8pm realized we never ate anything after a few pastries for breakfast. Sumi was still out when I got back from doing the laundry, so I took a walk over to a local eatery alone.

If Sumi reads the blog, this will be the first time she will find out I went to Coco Curry without her :-O

Delicious, but not the same eating alone.

So with that, I headed back to the ryoukan, knowing full well that I'm going to be trapped in a very small room with a very sick person, meaning it is quite likely there will be two very sick people soon.

Taiko Drums and Art

I got up earlier this morning and got out before 6 for running. After a short warmup walk to the Don Quixote

I headed down Nitenmondori towards the temple

and was enough this morning to hear the temple bell ringing signaling the end of prayer as I jogged through the Sensouji grounds on my way to the Sumidagawa path. 

After a few blocks, I hit the river where Sumidagawa Park and the landmark I use to get back are

The path is split into three or four separate paths, depending on the area, for different types of traffic

Lower level for bikes and pedestrians

Upper level for running. Riverwalk path for "strolling", though lots of runners down there, too

There are a number of pedestrian bridges that cross the Sumidagawa to the actual park and shrines on the other side, and you can run for nearly a mile without ever having to cross a street, which is unheard of in Tokyo. After another mile, there is a running/biking path that starts and follows the river for 2300 meters and is on a slightly elevated embankment.

Very pleasant, if somewhat hot and sunny. There are lots of small parks and shrines along the way, and a bunch of cormorants diving and swimming in the river. There is also a large, very nice municipal athletics complex with a running track, tennis, softball and full baseball fields, and an olympic-sized pool!

Butterfly park just off the trail

Too bad I'm not a resident...

Getting back to the temple, the service is over and tourists are just starting to stumble in,

After getting my sweaty butt back to the ryoukan and showering, Sumi and I head out to Ueno station for more Anderson goodness. I make it a point to try something different each morning, so this morning was a different apple pastry and my favorite of theirs, a cheese and pesto bun.

After breakfast, we jumped on the train up to Saitama. Manami and Maika couldn't make the trip this time. They were staying somewhere that would require over 90 minutes one way with a transfer just to get to the station. Half a day on a train to go buy some taiko stuff didn't make sense, so we were on our own! Manami had scheduled a time with Suwakougei for us so they had a driver waiting for us at the station to drive us to the factory. Once there, we picked up our order (new shime drum and stand and tachi-okedo stand) and I tested out some shinobue for Rachel, on of our Hibiki members and through conversation with a Suwa employee learned that there are actually three different types of fue. I knew about the two main types, Uta (mostly standard tuned for ensemble playing) and Hayashi (non-standard tuning with quarter steps for solo festival and Kabuki playing). In recent times, there are also fue designed for standard western tuning. These look like Uta fue, but the holes in the flute are of different sizes, versus uniform holes in Uta fue.

Once we got the order squared away and set up shipping to the airport, we were brought back to the station where we looked for lunch. There was a small shopping mall attached to the station (common for small towns) and in the basement a lot of food, including a Baskin-Robbins?

American ice cream store selling boba

Hidden in the corner of the basement was a small Nepalese restaurant. 

In Japanese, it really is called "Asian Spicy Restaurant Samosa"

They had some great lunch specials, though the names were a bit odd

Why is a two curry and dessert set for ladies? And no baby is going to eat that.

We both opted for the Vegetable Curry set and for less that ¥1000, we had an amazing meal

Fresh vegetables, salad, and naan in a spicy Nepali curry. I was not expecting this in Kounosu (the town where the taiko factory is). We got back on the train and headed back to Tokyo to get ready to go to an art exhibit in the evening. First we stopped at the World Drum Museum above the Matsumoto taiko shop, where you can actually play much of the displays. There is a variety of instruments from around the world, including taiko from various regions. It is small but nice, and being able to hear what all of these different drums sound like is pretty cool.

Sumi didn't really want to see the exhibits. She just wanted to bang on the cool oodaiko 

Now, regarding this art exhibit we went to. There is no way I can describe this exhibit. Even the pictures and video won't really do it justice. It is by a collective called teamLab and they have installations around the world. There are two here in Tokyo, and we went to the original one just outside of Roppongi called Borderless. Before we get to the exhibit itself, let's talk for a moment about the area of Tokyo that this thing is in.

Right next to the imperial palace and by all of the embassies (it's sometimes referred to as Embassy Row) is Azabudai Hills. This is by far the most obnoxiously upscale part of Tokyo I've ever seen. It was beautiful, in an almost dystopian way. The enormous high rise buildings housed offices, shops, restaurants, and apartments for those willing to pay more in a month than some people's annual salaries. The complex cost $5,200,000,000 (that is billion and that is US dollars) to construct, is the tallest building in Tokyo, and has it's own supermarket, multi-lingual daycare and private school, and anything else you can imagine contained inside. There are entire parks, with trees and grass, that are in the complex, above street level. We went to the FamilyMart there to get a drink after passing a cafe that was selling parfaits for ¥4500. That is $40 for a sundae. I saw a family of 4 in there and realized they just dropped $150 on dessert. So we opted for the convenience store. But even that was the bougiest FamilyMart we'd ever been in.

A (sigh) water bar. You can choose your own TYPE of filtered water.

Luckily they did also have some normal fare and we grabbed some drinks and yogurt for before the exhibit. In normal convenience stores, you can eat out in front of the store. That would have gotten us kicked out by plainclothes security watching the plethora of "hidden" security cameras, which were everywhere. So we walked over to one of the parks that had a lot of tables and chairs and relaxed a bit.

This is all part of the building

When it was time for us to go to the exhibit, we walked down to the ground level and got in line. The teamLab installations are interactive and procedurally generated areas with projection, LED lights, mirrors (LOTS of mirrors!) and more. There are a number of rooms that you can discover as you wander through the sensory overload of flowers, waves, parades of frogs and rabbits?, and birds. It is very difficult to express just how cool the whole thing is. You can be in a room for an hour and see completely different things, depending on what is happening in the room and the adjacent rooms. This is because what is being projected constantly changes and morphs based on where people are in the rooms and what they are doing. Below are a few pictures and movies that Sumi took that give an idea of what it's like. I highly recommend going to one of these if you are in a city where there is one.

It was a completely unexpected and very interesting exhibit. I'm very glad we went. After we were done, we headed back to Asakusa for a much more caste-appropriate dessert for us serfs and got some crepes at the Marion Crepes stand by Rox and sat around the fountain to eat them

Exhausted after a very full day, we made the short walk back to the ryoukan and crashed.