Sunday Photoblogging - Sunday on Tuesday Night
You can usually measure how busy I am by how long, if ever, it takes me to post some drivel about what I did on Sunday. In fact what I did on Sunday caused the delays in this case. You see, I had to go to Osaka for Paul McCartneys birthday party.
Just so that you know, the man himself didn't know anything about it. This was more of a (let's make money out of) Paul McCartney's birthday party. And it ws on the pricey side for an amateur do. 2000 yen in on the door, though it ws BYO. Let me say that again, it was BYO. Bring you own beer. To a gigg.
Got there and these guys were playing. They have many virtues, though, alas, pronouncing English is not one of them.
These guys came in their Japan shirts as japan were playing on this day in Germany. One of the guys came in a blue Seibu Lions (baseball team) shirt. maybe the non-wearing of this one japan shirt cost them the win that might have seen them within a chance of progressing past the group stage of the comp. This one guy... Football knows.
One of the band members was off for some reason. Possibly seeing men with dogs. Anyhow, they had to enlist a bit of help for the last song, shirted in yellow and tortoishell below.
Did I mention you could bring your own drinks? Being as this started two hours away from home on a Sunday at 12.45, guess what I had for breakfast! This is Asahi, liked by many, and Mariko. I prefer Kirin.
The next two bands performed the last rights on not just songs by the beatles,
but also a large number of other groups that had contained Paul McCartney. The guys below could sing but not play their instruments beyond GCSE level.
These guys could play but not sing: They took it in turns to sing. Possibly this was to spread the blame a bit. Diminished responsibility? The woman with the violin base (only one group had the balls not to appear with the signiture axe) sang with a warbling, trilling style more common to the Enka (sort of Japanese folk music) and yodelling than to British rock. ten out of ten for the matching waistcoats, though. When I first saw these guys sitting at the front I though t they had escaped from some kind of rail privatisation scheme.
Finally, my darling love managed to snap off a good one of me, though some of the credit must go to Mariko as she pushed the button. The camera did most of the work, though.
This one comes courtesy of
The Great Andini himself. Enjoy.
Saturday in words - Pictures couldn't describe it
The reason we were there at all was because, sadly, the Great Andini is off back to down under with (how many prespositions, eh?) his missus and this was the last time we would see each other in Japan. Sad days, but happy for him.
This is one of the big things about being an ex-pat about 12,000 kilometers away from home: You can become great friends and fill big holes in each others life, for a time. The lifestyle has useby dates by the ton. There is the need to escape (which I am getting very close to), where you just want to go home. This can vary from two days up to twenty years. I know of one guy who got off the plane, had a look around and decided he couldn't bear it and went home
on the next flight. I reckon, the further away from your own culture the shorter an individual can manage.
There is the "life holiday" aspect to it all, where even though you are not there, your life at home sails on as innevitable as a hard-struck ball for a window. I have four brothers and sisters who basically don't know me apart from an occasional phone call. At least I haven't asked them how school is yet. I do sometimes tell them how big they are getting, just to check if they are listening.
Some people outstay their welcome or run out of potential employers. Especially,the guys have a habit of going out and making beasts of themselves with their students (not the kids, the adults at the language schools) and have to leave. Or turn up for work drunk and late more than is thought normal here. You get the picture, many of the people who come here to teach are hardly professional in any sense of the word. "On holiday with English teaching" sums up about half the language teachers in Japan.
Whatever the reason, you have to get used to saying goodbye to good friends, bye to friends and not a great deal to the guys above. For the brits, it is far from the end of the road. Whilst I am back over the summer I will hopefully see four or five of the good friends I have made over here during my sojourn. For those from Ausatralia, like Anidini, it is more likely to be once or twice more before I die. In a way this last four years has been a bit of a taster for getting old. Of all the people who left my life, only one actually died, though.
So what's the big deal? You only saw the guy three or four times in the last year, online efforts aside. Well, true, once the honeymoon period was over and I had set sail for my new job there was a whole bunch of geography inbetween. The difference lies in the
possibility of catching a train to see the guy and the
impossibility of catching a plane and still being able to afford University in a years time. There was a comforting presence
over there which is very soon going to have gone.
And now when I email and say, "this guy at work fucked-up my class by being an ignorant twat," I will not hear that he gets that sometimes, but that he
got that sometimes. We are no longer in the same boat. Head down and forwards. Two hundred and eighty days to go.
Saturday in pictures - words couldn't describe it part 1
Two hours on the train to see the great Andini in Nagoya. As the big bloke said in that film, "This 'll get messy."
At the local Gaijin bar, The Elephant's Nest, Sakae. Gaijin means "outsider" or in this case, foreigner. This is where we went to watch England beat paraguay, through the bodies and a haze of alcoholist fever. England won, though the cash register came a close second.
Who nailed a bike to this wall I am leaning against heavily? Sometimes I just don't understand this life.
I got a clue watching these guys. They were doing a kind of exhibitionist karaoke. Not bad dancing, though I am only assuming that they are in time to the music.
Drunken drinking in the park, where the bottle of bubbly was actually bigger than the streetlight. This photo was taken with the shutter open for four seconds, handheld whilst drunk. How good am I?
The Tshirt Guy 4 - gotta have a system
or at least, that's what Harry Hill used to say. Jill Dando, Marlon Brando and all that...
the TShirt guy has a "system of the" which uses advanced grammar, spelling and subliminal messages that will definitely have fido hiding behind the sofa. For those of you who can't read / can't be bothered to click on the link, the text at the bottom says, "It is improper if a point from here isn't done by itself somehow. Though it is a little dirty, there is a warehouse in the place where it got out of town." Once again the Tshirt Guy has nailed the issue.
You know - for kids
So the kids at schools here have to learn how to make rice and grow vegetables. This is so - may god have mercy upon my soul - they can stay in touch with their roots.
This is the school field. The signs are from the PTA saying something.
Zoom out and what's this? It is a dingy red and mauve box. There is a tattered curtain flapping in the wind.
Hang on! It says, "nurse, race queen, Body Con." on it. Careers centre?
Let's look inside - It is a vending centre that sells girls pants, condoms, costumes, dildos and porno mags and DVDs.
Presumably the company responsible for this did their, ahem, homework before putting this here. Demographics and all that. Presumably the PTA are aware of it too.
More of my mundane life
Not that mundane today though. For the second time in two weeks I was invited outside to have a look at the problem, pictured below at about 1.30 in the afternoon.
The outdoor pool had been taking a few beauty tips from the paddy fields over the fence. For those of you who haven't seen one, a rice field is a rectangular pool of mud that comes up to ankle. Home of mosquitoes, elderly farmers and incautious drivers. Usually the drivers are in there in the winter when the roads are icy. Often there are no pavements so if you venture off the road then you are going home via the police station, the auto-repair shop, the bank and the farmer's house to apologise with money.
Anywhat - the schools deal with this problem by giving the kids mops and sponges and suchlike. The teachers wander round the sides spraying water round giving the kids conflicting orders. Great fun! Especially with me around to butter the stairs.
This school has a new pool and sports hall recently, so the place is generally in good nick. Certainly better than the other school I work at. The other school has good everything else. The school pictured here has good pools and sports hall, bad everything else. The other school litterally had six inches of thick mud that had to be scraped out and carried to the edge of the school where it was dumped.
Hey presto - I absolutely fucking amazed at how clean they got this baby in the space of about an hour and a half. There is no water in here - that reflection is coming off the bottom of the pool.
What's this? Machines destroying machines? How absurd!
No but really - have a look at
this. You seen Starwars three?
Ten reasons why Belle and Sebastian were worth about eighty quid
As you will have seen, I went to see Belle and Sebastian the other day. It was fairly pricey at 6,500 円 which is about thirty five quid. I also bought a ticket for Candice for her birthday so I could kid myself into thinking that I was too nice for my own good. This is why I paid:
- Belle and Sebastian write good music with strong lyrics and have never, to my knowledge, written a bubblegum song that doesnt mean anything.
- The venue was pretty good and we got to stand really close to the band.
- They played a bunch of my favourite songs off one of their older albums.
- They played for two hours without stopping or sending on a crappy support band.
- They use real instruments. I saw a trumpet, a cello, a violin, a pianica (I hate these but it is a valid instrument) a xylophone, a little battery operated organ and all the usual guitars and basses. These guys do not mess about with synthesizers when they can use the real article.
- The lead singer came out into the crowd to give a prize to a girl for the best dancing. By a staggering coincidence she was also really pretty. I am not one of these people who gets off on touching celebs but we did brush shoulders.
- When they came out to do the encore they asked what we wanted to hear (though they didnt play any of the songs I was shouting for).
- The crowd for this kind of concert are always really friendly. It is something to do with the genre. People who like intelligent music don't tend to like fighting for the sake of it. And anyway, this is Japan and the hooligans tend to stick to riding round on motorbikes without mufflers (not the clothing, the bit of the bike that makes the engine a bit quieter).
- The next time a good band will come to Japan, particularly soewhere close to me, is probably autumn.
- I needed to get back into this kind of thing. next stop UK in festival season!
Thursday 1st of June - Belle and Sebastian at Hatch in Namba
Seventy minutes on the train - how dull. What are we going to do about it Candice?
I know - let's preload on booze and talk shit!
For those of you who are worried about getting your can / bottle in the wrong hole, you needn't. Closer inspection shows that they lead to the same bag. A whole night of lost sleep prevented.
Mio met us in Osaka and nicely booked thje tickets for us. Thanks Mio!
The security guy on the door opened my bag to look for a camera, saw my camera and said, "No camera." You're in charge mate. I managed not to get caught taking any, too. Most of them came out badly though. Not enough light.
This was in the cafe outside - beer and chocolate!
I can't be bothered with any cutting social commentry today, so I am going to direct you all to the
fiction section over the road.
What the concert last night didn't suck out of me, the 5th years leeched out 4th period, so that is it for today. Unless I get ten minutes to throw up some photos of Belle and Sebastian later.
These guys came in their Japan shirts as japan were playing on this day in Germany. One of the guys came in a blue Seibu Lions (baseball team) shirt. maybe the non-wearing of this one japan shirt cost them the win that might have seen them within a chance of progressing past the group stage of the comp. This one guy... Football knows.
One of the band members was off for some reason. Possibly seeing men with dogs. Anyhow, they had to enlist a bit of help for the last song, shirted in yellow and tortoishell below.
Did I mention you could bring your own drinks? Being as this started two hours away from home on a Sunday at 12.45, guess what I had for breakfast! This is Asahi, liked by many, and Mariko. I prefer Kirin.
The next two bands performed the last rights on not just songs by the beatles, but also a large number of other groups that had contained Paul McCartney. The guys below could sing but not play their instruments beyond GCSE level.
These guys could play but not sing: They took it in turns to sing. Possibly this was to spread the blame a bit. Diminished responsibility? The woman with the violin base (only one group had the balls not to appear with the signiture axe) sang with a warbling, trilling style more common to the Enka (sort of Japanese folk music) and yodelling than to British rock. ten out of ten for the matching waistcoats, though. When I first saw these guys sitting at the front I though t they had escaped from some kind of rail privatisation scheme.
Finally, my darling love managed to snap off a good one of me, though some of the credit must go to Mariko as she pushed the button. The camera did most of the work, though.
