Jenny Jenny spinna spinna

Jenny got adopted by a great family! I love that girl.

I have this tape in my car (yeah my car has a tape deck, what) that I found in my house that someone in the family made. It's probably been around since before Buddha.
It's a mix tape of hits from the early '60s and has a bunch of great oldies. One of the songs is called "Jenny Jenny" and it's by an artist called Yasushi Suzuki.

When I was in Fukushima we would drive around and sing along to the tape. We'd get back to the shelter and we'd sing it to her. We'd sing it and dance around in Yuuko's kitchen.

Jenny was picked up in Minami Soma with her brother Kenny and about ten other puppies that were in the road. 

She's gonna be such a great forever friend. 

cafe shozo nasu

   

We decided to make the trip up to Nasu to see Matt's show there and I'm so glad we did.

Pulling into the town on a crispy fall evening, we found a warmly lit cafe with a rustic clothing shop below. Glass jars of coffee beans gleamed on the shelves next to packets of handmade shortbread biscuits. Once upstairs, we chose a corner table next to a heater in the yellow glow, with pretty lamps and stylish clientele scattered around. The Wien coffee and cake set was delicious.

When it came time for the doors to open, we made our way next door and up the narrow staircase to the venue. A bar was positioned in the back, serving drinks and hot soup and a few other nums. Mismatched chairs lined the area in front of the stage, which was lit by dozens of candles.

This country is filled with the most beautiful of little shops and cafes in the unlikeliest of places. Cafe Shozo in Nasu. 

bar derek and the dominoes

On a small shotengai leading from Shin Maruko station in Kawasaki there is a tiny roots bar called Derek and the Dominoes.

It's small and dark and offers many kinds of whisky and frequent live music, specializing in artists and styles from the U.S. American South.

I saw my friend Matt there this time and Scrappy Jud Newcomb three years ago. You can find the coolest stuff in the unlikeliest and most unassuming of places.

Angel Auction at What the Dickens

The lovely folks at What the Dickens in Ebisu hosted our Angel Auction last weekend, where volunteers put their professional services up for bid. On the block were marital arts lessons, Indian cooking and piano lessons, a tour of the German embassy & meeting with the ambassador, and much more.

Photo by Jennifer Julien

WTD is a great spot even when they're not raising money for a cause, with free live music most nights. They also have nice food - in additon to the standard British pub fare like meat pies and fish & chips, they also have veggie offerings like a cheese & tomato sandwich, hummus, some kind of quiche, and other stuff that the chef dreams up. Plus the whole place is dark and woody with cozy corners and feels like something in Diagon Alley.

ahirihirihiri

On the last night in Oki we caught a festival at Yonabaru town - kind of a summer bon festival, but Okinawan style.

There was wrestling, there was cotton candy.

There was music and dancing, and drumming, and drum-dancing.

My friend S who grew up in Oki said we couldn't miss Eisa - a kind of drum-dancing found at local festivals.

I love the guy who runs around in face paint, looking scary and whistling and messing with the crowd.

I love the chiming in of the singers who sing ahirihiri on top of the main body of the song (these shots/catcalls are called kakegoe 掛け声). I was told it means "I like it like it."

sata-an-dagi and other delights

Thursday morning we gorged on the free breakfast and then picked up the rental car, a boxy little "eco" car (I think it was a Daihatsu Tanto) that had a feature called eco-drive that would cut the engine off and turn it back over seemingly at random. Northward! Onna-son (恩納村 - the "mura" character is pronounced "son" in Okinawa) looks far away on the map but in reality is only a few dozen kilometers and an hour's drive up the coast. There, we went to a "secret" beach recommended to us by a friend who grew up on Oki - beautiful, clean, and deserted.

Who's that asshole on the phone?

On the way back it was still early, so we stopped at Ryukyu Mura, a recreation of a traditional village. The ratty shisa dolls were cool and the pottery factory was rather interesting, but the best part was the live music offered, both in the main atrium adjacent to the food court, and by a guy casually plucking a san-shin and lounging in the doorway to one of the huts. He later came onstage and did a wonderful set, including an Okinawan language version of 上を向いて歩こう, aka The Sukiyaki Song.

He has a youtube channel!
Just north of Naha we stopped in Chatan, at the "American Village", which has a lot of restaurants. We poked our head into a Thai place and I was pleased to find a big fat vegetarian advertisement on the front window. Jai Thai's menu has two pages catering to vegetarians, and they can also make vegan dishes.

Returning to Naha, we hit up Makishi Market, the warren of shops and alleys in central city, starting just off Kokusai-dori. There are stray cats there, as everywhere else on the island. In addition to the trinkets and vegetable sellers and butchers, there are a few vendors hawking freshly-made sata-an-dangi, the local doughnut-style fried goodness in an array of native flavors. My Oki-raised friend has requested the purple-hued beni-imo (taro) ones, and we tried those out - yum. My favorite was the coconut, but the brown sugar, mango, and sesame ones were delicious too. Sata-an-dangi is Okinawan language, but the word sata means sugar, or sato in Japanese. Even though I couldn't understand the native language, I did notice that some words are similar like this.

In Makishi market

Back to the strays for a minute. There are SO MANY STRAYS all over Okinawa. They are a much more common here than on the mainland. Breeding seems to go almost unchecked. There are a lot more stray dogs, too, though they aren't around quite as much as the cats. There is a great organization called Doggies Inc. that works there trying to alleviate animal suffering. Mainly, they pull animals out of Ozato animal control, which is a high-kill shelter where many many strays end up. They then vet and re-home the animals. They do mostly deal with dogs, but they help cats too.  They are a registered non-profit in the US, and they do really good work. I will be transporting a dog to a new forever home in the States for them next month. Check them out!

めんそーれOkinawa

Shisa, the Okinawan lion-dog creature, decorates many houses.

Mensore means welcome in uchinaaguchi, a native Okinawan tongue. It's one of the most common native words a tourist will see around the island, which mostly, at least in the large commerce areas, runs on mainland Japanese.
This was my third time in the Ryukyu Kingdom, the first when I was a kid and the second two years ago. Again, Skymark was the cheapest deal I could find on a flight. Thankfully, no needy seatmates were in residence this time around.

Body-shaming freebie at the hotel

I looked into staying at the place I stayed last time, but the hostel has changed hands and a double now costs about the same as a cheap business hotel - except the hotel has the benefit of a private bathroom. We ended up getting a Toyoko Inn club card (¥1000-¥1500) because at a few hundred yen discount per night for five nights, it paid for itself. In addition to the discount, you get a free night's stay for every ten. Since the card is for life, it also saves me the hassle, at this hotel at least, of being asked for my passport. I always refuse to provide it (I don't travel with my passport domestically, and guests who are assumed to be Japanese are not usually asked for ID), but it saves me the whole refusal song and dance agitation. Getting worked up less often is good.

So after arriving late at night, cabbing to the hotel, and crashing out, we spent the first day in Naha city riding the monorail and checking out the city. At Shuri station, we found the cleverly named 35 coffee, and when I saw they were offering iced coffee for only 100 yen, we got one. 35 in Japanese is san-go, which in a homonym for sango/coral (珊瑚). This coffee company spends a portion of its proceeds preserving coral reefs in Okinawa.

We hit up Vegi Cafe Shanti for lunch, a beautiful little vegetarian cafe offering Nepalese-style food. Some of their sales go to building a school in Nepal. Yum!

These ladies are doing a tea-gathering dance.

We had both been to Shuri Castle before, but walked around the grounds anyway and got there just in time for a Ryukyuan dance performance! We got to see four traditional dances from various aspects of Ryukyu culture, from the courts to the farms. I love the whistling and chanting that goes along with Okinawan traditional music!

View from Shuri castle

On the way back to the monorail station, I spotted this storefront and we stopped, intrigued. NPO Agora is a non-profit dedicated to helping those with developmental disabilities, especially those with mental disabilities. Here they have a cafe and social space, and also sell arts and crafts made by their members. We bought some jewelry. This day left me with the impression that Oki has a higher than average level of do-gooders/socially conscious people.

We also hit the prefectural museum, which has both art and history wings. We chose the history museum, and learned about both the natural and folk history of the island and the archipelago(s). Worth it!

yesterday

with B at Lion
(apologies for my crappy photoshop skillz. i don't get how you can scan something on the same machine, on the same setting, within one minute of the other, and get two different shades like this. pros?)

Your input is greatly appreciated.

Questions for today:

Why are all these people wearing sunglasses at night?
Black eye?
Corey Hart devotees?
Didn't feel like doing their eye make-up?
Stoned?

and

Why can't SMAP sing?

Thank you for your time.

geezer gawk

Ice cream eating, beverage sippin', and kicking it on the curb: it's an excellent season for people watching.

Of course, sitting out amidst the stream of vain and fashionable humanity makes you a target for the more brave and brazen to strike up a conversation. And unfortunately, it's usually the people I least want to talk to that approach.

Last night PJ and I were observing the parade. 'Fabulous hair!" "Is that a dress or a shirt?" "It's adorable when drunk boys hold hands!"

A guy rocked up to us wearing sweatpants and a mesh vest, a green-accented can of beer in his pocket. He pointed to PJ and exclaimed, "Malaysia!"

PJ's not Malaysian.

He was about 50 or 60, wiry, tan. He nattered at us for a bit and I bemusedly fielded his questions. He stopped to shake my hand every sixty seconds. Yoroshiku, ne!

After ascertaining our nationalities and length of stay in Japan (prerequisite information for any conversation with a foreigner, I think it's written in the law), he started insisting that PJ certainly looked like "Michael's" daughter. In fact, was she not actually related to him??

We told him that she was not.

He persisted. But everyone says that, right? Can you moonwalk? He did a little demonstration.

No, in fact, it was the first time she'd heard about this likeness.

Ah, he said knowingly, I've got a good eye. 

He then segued into cadging a free English lesson off me.

"This is a pen!"dayo! I learned it in school! これはぺんですよ、ね。

Then,
"very good", what does it mean?
and,
"come on baby", って、何の意味？

We finally escaped him after ten or so minutes. It was okay for the first few minutes, but then he started repeating himself and the MJ references got tiresome.

Is it too much to ask that some interesting, non-drunk and crazy people would stop and chat once in awhile? As amusing as a geezer moonwalk is.

blue in yokohama

I have mixed feelings about Yokohama. I think parts of Minato Mirai are sterile looking, like the whole area was wiped clean and rebuilt with little trace of history.

Still, it's really pretty, with the wide paths and lights and parks. 

The Red Brick Warehouse/Akarenga is one of the anchoring landmarks of the area, and inside the old preserved building now are shops and restaurants.

Motion Blue is on the 3rd floor of Akarenga. It's a jazz club and restaurant, part of the Blue Note empire (screenshot from their webpage).

Sorry for the crap quality of my pictures; the staff busted me before I could fix my camera settings. Usually the cover charge is about 4,000 yen, but that's a little steep since I'm not a jazz connoisseur.  

But a few times a month, they offer free shows, with stuff like jazz, Brazilian music, Latin, etc. The pair above is Sonho, a Brazilian-style duo.

A glass of wine or a cocktail will set you back about a thousand yen, but it's a fancy, chill place and one of the best deals around for live music. The next one is a jazz duo on April 1st, and then another on the 7th and on the 14th.

lost things

This video is really pretty.

By Angela Kohler featuring Alison Sudol/A Fine Frenzy as the character and musician.
Via Lobster and Swan.

livin' on stew and drinkin' bad whisky

Sorry I couldn't be bothered to post the last few days. I've been busy sitting next to the heater and listening to Gordon Lightfoot.
Luckily, there's a willing guest poster available.

Every shing-a-ling-a-ling (obligatory kit kat post)

Everyone seems to post about KitKat sooner or later, so I thought I'd get on in there.

Apple carrot KitKat: pretty good!It's so fucking cold lately, I hate it. It's dry and my skin is angry. I live in a house, which of course doesn't have central heating, so my heating/electricity bills are astronomical yet it's always freezing in here. Wearing a sweater in the house in winter seems reasonable but a scarf, slippers, and a jacket does not. Dammit.

One slim ray of sunshine in this dark, cold period is the song that the kerosene truck plays. Last year it was always The Carpenters (that Every Sha-la-la-la song) but this year it seems to be song kind of nostalgic kindy tune, with kiddy voices. I like it.

Why are The Carpenters so freaking popular in Japan? It's a mystery.

coin drop

My favorite thing about going to Tokaichiba, the rural-ish town I work in once a week, is the farm outlet produce packing warehouse with a ghost of a storefront. It has just a few baskets of fresh, cheap produce out front, and a jar with a coin slot tied to a string for honor-system payment. I stop in and grab some naganegi or a bunch of greens whenever I get the chance. I rarely pay more than a hundred yen. This summer, I got big bunches of basil there for ¥100 per bag and I made a big batch of pesto.

I was listening to Top 40 on the radio the other day and I heard that Sean Kingston song, Face Drop. I don't really know anything about him, but I kinda like this song, because he says
"'Cause you always try to fill me with doubt
Sayin' that I'd look better if I was thinner
Don't you know you shoulda loved me for my inner
When I left you, yo, I came out a winner"
And I think, though there are lots of songs with females talking about battling body image crap (TLC's Unpretty comes to mind, and India Arie's Video), with the possible exception of some obscure punk/indie stuff, boys don't talk about body image very much. It seems like there's a taboo about guys talking about their body insecurities; it's like they're not supposed to have them. But I have at least one guy friend who's struggled with anorexia, and know plenty of other guys who have body issues. (And I really like the rainbows coming out of Sean's chest in the video.)

I'm pretty tired of hearing about fat Americans and fat in general all the time. It's true that, as a country, we eat a lot of junk food and fast food and should take better care of ourselves. But I'm sick of the way, in Japan, it seems even more acceptable to make disparaging comments about people who aren't crazy skinny. I was reading about some Japanese model the other day who said that she weighed in at 97 pounds during her teenage modeling years, and she was called a fat cow by the other girls. That's just CRAZY talk.

I thought I had outgrown body insecurity a long time ago, but being in this country and some stupid boys have brought it back a little.

Imagine Café

There's a little kissaten-style coffee shop near my home station called Imagine Café. It's a pretty place, of the kind that Beth mentioned: old-fashioned, run by little old ladies and serving menu items like Hayashi Rice and coffee jelly.
The name of the place might tip you off, but they only play Beatles songs on the hi-fi. And Beatles covers. Which can be lame. There was a Japanese bossa nova singer lady they played covering the Beatles in English and it wasn't that good. But the rest was nice.

My friend Danny played live there last week, and unfortunately I missed it. But he's playing there again on October 18th. There are a shit-ton of acts. Entry's free, just buy a drink. If you feel like coming out to Machida, come on out.

We'll always have Shit Axe.

I went to karaoke in Shibuya.
I didn't mean to, but I met up with an out-of-towner at an izakaya there and when I mentioned karaoke, his eyes lit up. He really wanted to go.
And Shidax was right down the street. (Aside: what are they trying to get at with this name? Another friend complained that their branding is bad because unless you know what it is, you have no idea what it is.) As it happened, out-of-towner is an architect, and one of his co-workers designed the first floor of the building, affectionately called Shit Axe by architect and co-architect. Actually, it's a monstrosity, which they freely admit.
Shit Axe had the best slogans printed on the walls of the rooms. And now it will forevermore be known by me as Shit Axe, where the Sloth Floats while the lazy oar plies harder.

I would just like to register my extreme affection for the band name Ogre You Asshole. Their music is pretty good too. They're a little Built-to-Spill-ish.

Matt Sever at Café Goatee

Sorry that it's so dark; this was taken with a point and shoot digicam. The sound's not bad, though.

Matt playing Train with his banjolele.

The aforementioned Matt Sever is playing tomorrow at the aforementioned Café Goatee in the aforementioned Kamakura, along with Scrappy Jud Newcomb. This makes me so happy.