My new favourite band

Whenever I go see a band, I always know what I'm in for: I'm there because there's a band I want to see, I know their songs and I know when in the set is a good time to pop out for a toilet break. It works and it doesn't work; I get to avoid seeing crap bands and I miss out on seeing great bands I weren't aware of. That's just how the cookie crumbles I guess.

Though on the other night whilst I went to check out johndickheadhunter3, I caught the opening band, Civic, and my luck of catching unknown bands that turned out to suck, changed for the better.



Bokku no nikki



Monster



They ticked off a lot of boxes on "John's Superficial List of Things to Check out in Bands and Muso's":

* Good choice in guitars; in this case, Epiphones. Bonus point for black bodies with white plate.
* Their channelling of shoegaze, ala Jesus and the Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine.
* The "cool as fuck" drummer and the bassist with backing vocals that provide an etheral presence to the songs.
* The aforementioned drummer and bassist being cute. +1,029,628 points.

I picked up a demo CD of theirs and I haven't been able to stop listening to it, let alone listening to it in its entirety! I think the last time this happened was sometime last century. They seem to play pretty often albeit 'round Tokyo. Which is a good thing since I can easily turn into a groupie for them.



Just not a groupie for the 2 male guitarists.

Music In My Head: Civic - Lemon

Death is not on this week's schedule

It's been a strange couple of days. With Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett passing away round the same time of each other, the idea that bad things happen in threes began to rear its head again. Working in conjunction to this were two seperate students who both came up to me and said "you should die!".

Usually I do try to satisfy my students' needs and wants but this time I asked if I could take a rain check on this dying thing, since y'know it is my birthday this week and it'll be ironic in the Alanis Morrisette sense, if I died as per suggestions. "It's like rain..."

I turned 28 today and I woke up to find 3 partially naked men sleeping in my room. One of them was scratching his balls as he slept； he must've been dreaming that he was a dog.

Going through the posts for 26 and 27 I realised that I'm currently living what I had been steering myself towards. I wouldn't say I had "planned" or "aimed" all this since both would require concious effort. Still it's nice to say that my current situation was not a spur of the moment thing and there's primary evidencd to prove that was the case. No doubt said evidence will be studied, analysed and debated in years to come by historians and academics with names like A.P.P Paterson-Wilkonshire or Stirling Exetor.

This is the first summer birthday that I had in 25 years. But apparently the other times don't really count since I was only an infant at the time. Considering that for one birthday I had one of the worst fevers I ever had kinda makes summer birthday a nice changeover winter ones. Add to the fact I spent last night chillin' at home over a gorgeous bottle of white, sharing plenty of bum notes and shit jokes with many a kind folk and being horrorfied, mortified, petrified and stupified by recounts of anal sex all whilst a gentle night breeze was a constant companion, and I think I know which hemisphere I prefer to have my birthday in.

This year also brings mecloser to the real time I was born: I was born in GMT＋8 and now I'm in GMT＋9. I guess that's kinda of significance if I was concerned with which star was dominant and if Saturn was rising during the day of my birth.

Being utterly creative and original, the catchphrase "28 will be great" has been banded around a bit.

I guess it's a good start to things with me participating in nationwide celebrations for my birthday, in Tokyo, one of the best cities in the world. Though the label "アラサ"（around thirties）that is now applied to me feels like a crown of thorns and messes up the hair that I spent 2 whole freakin' minutes styling.

I remember when I turned eighteen 10 years ago, I had 2 gin & tonics to celebrate. I think I'll be doing that again. And it'll make my heart go all fuzzy wuzzy if you can do so too. I also went and watched "Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me". Somehow I don't think I'll make such a mistake again. Nor do I hope to repeat other mistakes that have been made in the past 10 years （going to a bachelors party on a school night was a classy move）. Having said all that though, "Transformers 2" does sound awfully tempting...

Music In My Head: Civic - Tensai

I wish I dreamt of you

To the 12 year old me, beating M.Bison/Balrog whilst using Zangief was impossible.



Or maybe it wasn't that hard.

Still, something that's definitely hard is old habits dying. So I found myself napping after work again. Late nights bring on tired days feeling like crap which leads to after work naps and results in late nights again. The cycle repeats itself and someone will soon pay for it. I have my bets on that someone being me.

There's no point in this post really, other than to post the Youtube video of Street Fighter II (oh Super Nintendo, how you stole away my youth in pleasurable ways) and to mull over the fact that I dreamt of snow the other day. It must have happened since I was going through some relatively old photos from winter and it freaked me out to see how different things were back down with everything under feets of snow. If you were to ask a Macedonian (which I did for no completely logical reason), said Macedonian would tell you that

you dreamt that it was snowing .......if you were maco (Macedonian) that would mean that you are going to have many problems...and hard time in your life is ahead of you....thats what it means according to my religion ...lol

Yes, "lol" indeed.

Last I checked I wasn't Macedonian (though I have my suspicions). Still, considering how things started out, I'm happy that the forecast for the second half of the year is warm and fuzzy.

At the very least, I now know how to beat that mo-fo M. Bison. Smug dictator.

Music In My Head: Love Love Straw - Every Single Day

Another day

Right after this incredible and equally infamous game between South Korea and Italy at the 2002 FIFA World Cup, my friend sent me a message (on ICQ!) asking if I had watched that game that had stunned everyone.

My reply: "Ah yeah. But my grandmother just died".

On this night seven years ago, my grandmother died. She died in Hong Kong and I never knew what she died of. I asked my sister (she was in Hong Kong a bit before my grandmother died) and she said it was inconvenient to ask what my grandmother was dying of. I didn't attend her funeral as well as I had university exams during that time. Whilst that was true it wouldn't have made a difference since I was failing all my courses that semester. On the day of the funeral, I walked out of my exam 10 seconds after I was allowed to leave. In my own way of mourning, I went and bought a pair of shoes. I never knew when she was born. Mum always said that she was around the same age as the Queen so I figured that's a good enough year.

Seven years had passed and besides the first year, it's kinda been any other moment in life. This year though, I nearly forgot about it and when I accidentally remembered it, I couldn't remember the date. I actually had to wiki the game between South Korea and Italy to find out when my grandmother died. It distrubed me that I could forget something like that; I'm usually good at remembering things like people's birthdays.

So tonight I shared a drink with her and the grandfather that I had never known.



It was one of the many half empty bottles that I seem to somehow accumulate and upset the balance between food and alcohol in my fridge. The balance has been restored but my possessions are causing me suspicions but there's no proof. Though the smell of kimchee still lingers...

I've been lucky in that death in general hasn't affected my family that much. But I know that that luck will wear out soon and it will hit one day like the proverbial shit and fan.

"Everybody wants the same thing,
to see another birthday.
Look at all the pretty numbers,
scattered on the calendar".

The Finn Brothers - Edible Flowers

Another way to die

I've been sitting at my rather nice desk for nearly the past hour just twiddling my thumbs, youtubing my life away and just generally ignoring my daily fruit intake, my weekly shower and the fact that I have to wake up early for work tomorrow. It's normalcy round are way. Though for the record the washing and vacuuming has been done.

So to balance out such crazy amount of work, I've decided to take a step back, relax and enjoy it all: I'm going to climb Mount Fuji in a month's time.



The guy with the cap and glasses and keeps on going "20 minutes!" like it's the funniest thing in the world is actually my predecessor whose teaching gig I took over. I'm also sleeping in his bed, that for some reason is rather soft. Don't look at me.

Anyway, after surviving an afternoon where I nearly got run over at least FOUR TIMES by people pulling out onto the main road and decided they did not need to pay attention to me, I think I can survive climbing Mount Fuji. But then again, I did predict that no one in the world would want to read about a boy who has a facial deformity, become a wizard, go to some daft magic school and save the world. Who would buy into that load of crap? Seven books and 6 films later, I'm still not sure who would buy into that crap...

Analysing Japanese Rock

The other day, Nonaka sensei explained the players in 90's Japanese rock that I had to know. All of this was done in under 10 minutes and with a piece of scrap paper.



Forget about your Mr Children, your B'z, your X-Japan and Glay; Number Girl (and it's various off-springs), Supercar and Qururi is where it's at! And you gotta mention a band with the name "Blood Thirsty Butchers". I'm not sure if I will be tested on it.

On the other side of this seemingly ordinary piece of paper but which would soon be filled with musical history and wisdom, he outlined how the songs of his current band, johndickheadhunter3 can be placed into 3 categories:



In between this, he had me "correct" some new lyrics that he had written. I loathed the idea to change his style and I was even more reluctant to "correct" the lyrics for one of his old songs "Snow" which he had recorded and released with his old band, "Love Love Straw". The temptation was there to change a piece of 90's Japanese rock history with the words "your dong is not so long/Chan Cheung Lee Choi Wong" but I restrained myself.

Only just.

Music In My Head: Frank Zappa - Chunga's Revenge

Drink of choice

"You drink 24/7".

Pinky Wu, 2009

I have no idea why Pinky, or any other person for that matter, would think like that about me. Ahem.

But it seems that I fair better than the others that share the town with me.



The other Sunday I caught the train to harass folks living west of me. Surprise, surprise, I manage to snooze through all 4 of my alarms and just made it to the station.

It was early so I decided to get some healthy liquids into me...



...whilst others were already cracking one open. Or two. Or four.



At least they looked like the folks on the beer commercials: drinking beer, having fun and with nice hair. Can't say that my Vitamin Water can give me nice hair.

Music In My Head: Radiohead - Let Down

Black dog

So it's been more than a fortnight since I returned home after going back home. And then right after I spent a week at home. Actually I'm as confused as you are about this home business.

Anyway.

So it seems that the idea I had about the computer chair I had back in Sydney serving as some sort of blogging Muse for me does seem to have some leg. I did buy a work chair to sit on (I finally own a chair!) but it remains to be seen if the bargain price of ￥1,390 will provide inspiration as well as lumbar support.

Whilst not punching at the dirty keyboard, I've been trying to figure out something that came up whilst I was back home (whichever one that is). Having spent a week in Sydney and Hong Kong was short, too short in fact. But then it seemed to be enough before I got too comfortable. There were moments in Sydney where I got back into the groove of things too quickly; nearly cancelling a lunch appointment because I couldn't be bothered getting off the couch is a clear sign in anyone's language. And being too comfortable meant that I wondered why I had to come back home to Japan (well besides the contractual obligations). The loving, the old life and the cast of thousands that features in all that made Japan seem unnecessarily...unnecessary.

Just before my bus pulled back into Aizuwakamatsu, I actually dreaded going back into town in fear that I would suddenly hate and/or loathed all that I had learned to love over the past months. So far, such a thought has been proven to be irrational. And with summer coming up (Fireworks! Girls in yukatas! Drinking!) and bits of 2009 circled with glee in my Chip 'n Dale diary, I think I'll be fine.

But then the thought exists now in my life as a Black Dog.



Music In My Head: Foo Fighters - Everlong

I like your new memories better than your old ones

Every time when I think it's safe to head to Hong Kong for a "quiet one", it always somehow ends up to be filled with lots of bum notes and shit jokes. Whilst it's hard to compare each experience and visit, the sack of memories just keeps on getting topped up. There weren't any superstars this time 'round. But there were enough folks that made me feel like my Kingdom of Aizu had expanded to include Hong Kong.



Folks like Djana, an old colleague and her legendary boyfriend, Mark. Legendary in the sense that everyone knew so much about him because when they were living on different sides of Australia, all she would go on about was Mark: "Mark this", "Mark that", "Woo today I jizzed in my pants when I said, 'Class, we're going to MARK the tests!'". Mark has an awesome job writing reviews of bars and clubs for Time Out Hong Kong. Some people just have all the luck.



Apparently some people call him "The Big Brother" but I just call him Justin. Since most of my friends have to work, I'd thought most nights out would be quiet and early affairs. But Justin and Kendra (the latter who "doesn't have to work", as kindly pointed out countless times by Justin) proudly made it their goal to make that prediction wrong. I was pleased to see these 2; my liver not so much.

I did make a decent effort at eating all different dishes whilst I was back home that I've been hankering for. And I was also going well at avoiding Japanese food. That is until Anderson, he of the famous blog which features nothing but him and his girlfriend eating, took me to eat Japanese food. Ramen. Which by the way my town is famous for. Clearly I was impressed.



Nice and caring, that Anderson.



On my watch, there's been 2 major weddings on my mother's side of the family and so far, there hasn't been any major family dramas during the weddings, like the kind that you see in movies. In fact, things have gone smashingly well, especially on the family bonding front. Initially by default, I spent a lot of time with my cousin and cousin in-law (?), doing our bit help out with activities. In the end, the time was well spent and what began as small talk of the catching up kind became dialogue that only members of the same family could carry. When they're not fighting, of course.

And in the end, I was in town for a wedding. It had its own things: gangster-esque groomsmen, fat maids of honour (uh...but since when are they not fat?), breaks in tradition. Ultimately though, we all wished Cheryl and Ivan the best, chowed down the surprisingly good banquet and drank the night away.



I've been to my share of weddings and this was the first time I thought the bride looked beautiful. Shame she's my cousin.

Music In My Head: Qururi - (It's Only) R 'n R Workshop!

Synchornisation

I've been back in town for nearly a week now and yet I still don't feel I've got back in synch with things. Having been in a different country each week for the last fortnight doesn't help. An altered work schedule for the week does help easing back into things but then it just throws me off a bit more when I'm seeking normalcy. And then having to hide behind a mask for a week whilst everyone suspected you of having swine flu generally makes things worse.

Having unpacked, cleaned and given out most of the souvenirs to various folks, I'm slowly heading towards getting back into the swing of things. But, having cooked my first meal since I came back (the "breakfast" meal that I had for dinner the other night doesn't count) probably will do the trick. And, I did do what I was told and kicked back with a beer on the first weekend I had (and will have) to myself for a long time. So thanks for the tip, Justin. Though it kinda ruined my detox programme for the week.



My liver says thanks as well.

Music In My Head: Massive Attack - Protection