There was a very elegant Japanese breakfast downstairs, with taped birds tweeting over the sound system in the breakfast room. I hereby anoint anyone who can pick up a cube of egg tofu with chopsticks as a virtuoso. I was saving room, though, because Noda-san was taking us out for eel at 11:45. My brilliant idea still rattling around in my head, I went back upstairs to implement it. Suffice it to say that it didn’t work. And that this is Compuserve’s fault, I’m almost certain, because of their damn proprietary software. I desperately wanted to get an e-mail out to the Journal to make sure my editor Taylor and all were okay, and I also wanted to check the Times on-line. Maybe even the Well. Wasn’t gonna happen.
Neither was Noda-san taking us to lunch: Carl called to give me the plan for the day -- doors open at 6:30, gig at 7, just like Tokyo -- and told me he was kidnapping Noda to set up in the hall. Lunch was still on, though, but it would be other people.
Just who, I never got to find out. I decided to take a walk and let the maids get to the room, and figured out where the castle was. I got there, and there was a good 30 minutes until I had to be back, but better safe, etc. etc., so I turned around and figured I’d use the time between lunch and 6:15, when Yoshiko would be in the lobby to take me to the gig. It was also getting quite hot, which had all happened in less than an hour. Somehow, I did it again, circling and circling and never finding the hotel, which, in my defense, is very understated and subtle. But still, I’d just left and I’d made notes on landmarks, so you’d think I could have found it. By the time I got back, it was 12:15, and everyone had gone.
This has brought up another question I find myself asking myself with increasing frequency: do I want to be here? I’m finding the country, excepting the food, rather monotonous. This makes me feel like a boor, and it’s not completely true, because there are things I enjoy seeing over and over: the little gardens behind people’s houses, where they make a lot with not too much, the crazy pop culture (I saw a girl with a tour t-shirt for the Bape Heads, whoever they are, today), the wild variety of the streets. But the official culture is pretty incomprehensible, Shinto is a total void (and I haven’t seen much Buddhism, although I guess that’ll change in Kyoto), the history is as opaque as anything I’ve ever encountered that wasn’t written by A.E. van Vogt, and some of the social stuff, the position of women being foremost, is getting me down. Plus, with Eric not being around to at least share the confusion in my language and two more weeks of mostly solo touring, how much more do I want to see? If I were back in Berlin, I might be able to get some work drummed up, I’d be around friends and a language I can at least start to comprehend and a culture that makes sense. I guess I’ll just put it off until I get to Kyoto, see if Nick shows up, and decide then. Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to the trip back, nor was I particularly anxious to be flitting around temples and formal gardens while George W was declaring World War III.
Nagoya Castle
So I launched myself out again, to Nagoya Castle, which, its reconstruction in concrete notwithstanding, had well-displayed exhibits and good English documentation, and lost a couple of hours there. Then I found my way back easily enough, and spent some time watching the bilingual channel with ABC News (Carl had pointed out the bilingual button, which, of course, was labelled in Japanese), which, to my surprise, had Barak and that Palestinian woman at the end of a discussion which sounded good. The Palestinian woman was gently chiding America for its isolationism, its refusal to engage much with the outside world, and implying that this was something other countries resented, a very good point. The anchor, though, cut her off, saying he had to go to a local story. Then he said something which made me realize why Americans are as poorly informed as they are: “It’s sometimes hard, during mind-numbing discussions of foreign affairs, to remember that the real story here is the people, and the losses they’ve suffered in this terrible tragedy.” Excuse me? These losses were part of something which is included in the term “foreign affairs,” and if the media don’t make an attempt to explain and give the viewers the larger context, if they’re really going to be that solipsistic, we’re completely fucked. I watched some of the “color,” and then, the Tokyo Stock Exchange having just shut down for the day, they switched to business news. I never thought I’d miss CNN, for heaven’s sakes.
But soon enough, it was time for the concert. Yoshiko met me in the lobby and we walked towards an Eiffel-Tower sort of building, which turned out to be in a small park, the other side of which was the art museum/concert hall. It seemed very sterile, and yet when we got in, it was humming. The small hall turned out to be completely sold out. I was introduced to numerous of Carl’s colleagues from the university where he’s teaching, and exchanged “name cards” with them. One had even participated in the sound-installation event in Berlin I’d missed because of moving five years ago. Eventually everyone sat down and the show began.
“Modulations for Voices and Sine Wave,” by Otomo Yoshihide, was really avant-garde, but I’m not convinced there was any content. Two vocalists, Yoshida Ami and Sagara Nami (the blonde from last night), were up front, and Otomo and Sachiko were in the back. It started so quietly I wasn’t sure it actually had started, and Ami began to make little slurping and kissing and sucking noises. Eventually the sine wave came in, and Nami duplicated its tone, eventually going a bit out of tune with it so she was making beats. I think Otomo was sampling something, but it was hard to tell what he was doing. Eventually it died down -- after about 30 minutes -- and that was that. Then the hyper-efficient stage crew whipped out the desk with Carl’s equipment and a music stand for Hako, his vocalist, to use, and within minutes he was on stage and starting up some samples in loops. I found this piece quite fascinating, since they were feeding back each other’s information without the audience hearing it: Hako was singing against what was going into her earphones, which the audience couldn’t hear, Carl was dealing with it while sending her other samples and providing sounds for the audience to hear. Hako is possessed of excellent technique, doing jazz scatting, weird noises, low tones, and “trained” voice. The audience loved it. There was an intermission, and then Otomo, Carl, and Nami came back for what was essentially a jam.
There was the usual post-concert stand-around-and-wait, exacerbated by the fact that the CD money seemed to have come up short. I talked to a guy from Bordeaux who’d just published a sort of reference book on Japanese independent music of the past 20 years, which was apparently selling like hotcakes despite a pan in The Wire this month. Dang, those guys just don’t seem to get it. Or they’re as provincial as the other British music magazines. (Later, I read the review, which wasn’t nearly the pan he’d told me it was, and, in fact, said that the book was quite useful and the accompanying CD excellent. I still think they don’t get it a lot of the time, though).
We finally all jelled, everybody got their money, and a fleet of taxis went back to the hotel, where we changed clothes and got ready to go out to another izakaya, this one famous for its chicken wings, which they make two ways. There were lots and lots of other dishes: various sashimis, including chicken two ways (one boiled for just an instant), thin-sliced pork with kimchi, those famous pepper-dusted wings, and a beef-and-potato stew (rather sweet) that’s apparently pronounced something like “Mick Jagger.” Nami was astonished that I was eating what I was eating, and she and I finished off with broiled fugu fins in sake, which isn’t as bad an idea as it sounds. Nor as good. Carl, having to get up and teach the next day before heading on to Kyoto, left early, and the rest of us were there til 1. I must say, I slept better than I had the night before, but we had a 10 o’clock call the next morning to check out.
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