musical works and productions by .: insert :.

I recently went to Japan (October 5th - 18th) for my sisters wedding. I had a very awesome time hanging out with my friends and family.

I made a new friend before I even got to the land of the rising sun.

Chiaki was so nice and we seemed to hit it off so she came along for a lot of our trip, which was fortunate since none of us really spoke Japanese. She introduced us to her Cousin Ken who was a really awesome guy. It was surprising to find we had a shared fondness for the hacky sack. Sadly we only learned this our last day of the trip.

The first few days were spent in Osaka, we mostly partied our asses off in the Shinsaibashi area.

My sisters wedding happened the day after we got there. It was a very beautiful and intimate ceremony. I got a little misty eyed even.. The reception was intense featuring an 18 course meal which of course began with some beer

My congratulations to Aki and Nora Tamada, I wish them luck and happiness in their new journey together

After the wedding I went back to Osaka to meet up with Flip, Ken, Jay, Charles, and Chiaki at this gaijin bar called Balabushka. We got pretty smashed and it was good times for everyone

Our journey continued the day after with my friends Flip, Charles, Jay, and my Dad. We took a trip to Kobe which was honestly the least interesting place we visited the whole time. The one redeeming thing was the awesome food at this place

We walked up hill what seemed 75% of the day, trying to find some shrines to visit. Interestingly, we passed a group of guys MCin/DJin, atleast until the cops rolled up

We found a shinto shrine, one that was kinda small

That was basically it for Kobe, we went back to Osaka to party it up some more. Though at this point I started to get a cold, I'm sure some bastard on the flight over infected me :<... Just my luck, I was sick the rest of the trip. I didn't let that stop me from having a good time though. Back out this time to America mura we went to this bar called Ganja Acid, it was tiny, and there was sadly no ganja or acid to be found in this place :[

The next day we were off to Kyoto to check out some temples. Once again the crew consisted of Charles, Jay, Flip, Chiaki, Nora, Aki, and my Dad.

When we got to Kyoto JR station we went across the street to the Kyoto sky Tower and had some lunch at this swanky place

We left from there and headed to the Silver temple which was absolutely beautiful

There was an excellent view of Kyoto here as well

Once we were done here we walked around a bit until it was dark. From there we found a good place to eat some thai food

There were some super hot peppers in one of the dishes, I accidentally ate 3 of them at once, I began to sob :< upon seeing this Chiaki laughed deeming me a total wuss. At which time I challenged her to eat just one. She cried tears of pain and I laughed in an attempt to redeem my manhood. Once all was said and done we headed back to Osaka. We got off in the Umeda district and headed off to ride the ferris wheel at the mall. It was an awesome view but hard to capture on my camera due to the glare inside the ferris wheel. After this night we rested in preparation for our trip to Nara.

Nara was a beautiful place with lots of touristy stuff to see and do. Not just for foreign tourists mind you, but Japanese tourists as well. There were many a temple and museum

I think the main attraction to Nara is the wild deer that live freely with the people in the area, they walk around and seem totally tame. You can pet them and feed them crackers, they will bite your ass if they think you're holding out on them

We saw what was once the largest wooden structure in the world, it housed a buddah that was about 3 stories tall

It's really hard to get a perspective of how big this statue was, you must see it in person to believe it really. Anyways, it was getting late so we headed back toward Kyoto to visit Aki's parents. We ended up going to this big mall to eat dinner and do a little shopping. I bought a coat and some expensive cold sake, but it wasn't long till I was totally exhausted. I think Jay was feelin my pain

The next day we were heading out to Kouyasan, sadly I forgot my camera at home so I didn't get any pictures here. There are some links at the bottom of this post for Flip, Charles, and Jays fotos. Basically to just give a summary, we stayed at a buddhist temple with some monks and enjoyed their vegetarian food and morning ceremony. I met a nice girl named Yukiko Gomi, she was the receptionist there and was really nice. We visited many shrines and walked through the 1300 year old cemetery to the light temple. This was a beautiful sight and I'm sad I didn't see it in the dark, I imagine it would have been awe inspiring. We visited many shops and walked a long way through the small town. We headed back to Osaka after too long so we could get some much needed rest.

I was really sick after my trip to Kouyasan so we missed out on a trip to Kyoto to go to an all night rave. I really wanted to go but I guess it was just not meant to be. I slept a bunch while Charles, Jay, Flip, and Ken got hammered in Shinsaibashi again. Apparently Charles got super drunk and fell down some stairs, got carried back to the hotel and was laid out for a few days after.. Sucked for him!

The next day I made some music in the park near Tanimachi around where we were staying

The track is just about complete, I'm just working out a few things and waiting to record vocals with some friends. Anyways, I'll save that for another blog entry.

Later that night we road about 10 miles to beer fest at the Osaka Sky tower. Me, Jay, Flip, and Chiaki went by bike

We got to the beer fest an hour before it was over, there were taeko drummers still drumming and the most white people I had seen in one place since I had been to Japan

We drank a few beers and headed back to our hotel. In the morning we would be taking the Shinkansen to Tokyo.

We got up early the next day in an attempt to go to a music festival in Tokyo. We had to get our rail passes taken care of first though, that took about 30 minutes so we missed the express there. I blame the man in charge, he should have been drinking more coffee

The view heading out to Tokyo was amazing, we went passed many farms and little villages, and past so many misty mountains

I don't know how they were sleeping through all this

By the time we got there it was about 4PM, it was a bit late to go to the music fest and Chiaki needed to meet up with a friend. We went to eat some Fugu (blow fish) and test our strength and prove our manhood

I guess that wasn't really enough food so we went to McDonalds of all places

After meeting back up with Chiaki we wanted to find the tallest building in Tokyo to see just how big the biggest city in the world is. This building was incredible looking

and I think we would not have been able to see all of Tokyo even from the 45th floor of this building because this city stretches much farther than the eye can see

I would never want to live in Tokyo, people were not nearly as friendly here as they were in Osaka and the other places we visited. Well, we were done with everything we set out to do in Tokyo, or really everything we had time to do for our short stay there. We went for one last meal with Charles since he was leaving the next day, I was pretty much dying from my cold here. All I could think of was how to use the escape equipment in the off chance I had to spew

Fortunately Chiaki took me to the pharmacy and got me the medicine I needed, I began to make an immediate recovery, thanks again Chiaki!! At this point we said our goodbyes to Charles and Chichi and made our trek back to Osaka

The following day, Jay left us to see what Hiroshima was all about, I had no time for this because I was scheduled to be tattooed in Kyoto by my new friend Gotch at Harazanmai Tattoo

The tattoo turned out really nice!

From here we only had one day left (or so we thought), so we went to check out the Denden district of Osaka for dirty manga and the maido-cafe

That was pretty cool, but we didn't speak any Japanese, so the maido cafe was less than a success. That's ok though :), On my last day I split up with Charles and Jay to go to my sisters high school to meet her students

I forgot to take their pictures though, but they were all really nice and cute kids. After school me and Nora went shopping in Namba, we got giant takoyaki (osaka specialty) and just kinda hung out. After Aki got off of work we went for some karaoke and then out for another Osaka specialty, I don't know how to call it though, but it's basically a weird pancake of sorts. We had a really good time just hanging out, they took me home afterwards and we said our goodbyes

The next day we packed up and checked out and hauled ass to make it to the airport, unfortunately we lost Jay in the subway, then went the wrong direction on one of the trains and basically had a really hard time getting back to the shuttle that takes us to Kansai airport.. It was a huge pain in the ass and in the end we missed our flight, me and Flip that is. It cost us 200$ but I think that was worth it since we spent the day seeing the body art exhibit with the posed cadavers, displaying the various systems of function in the body. From there we went to Americamura to meet up with Ken. We had a really good time at this bar called Absinthe. I met some good guys who were both DJs and extended an invitation for me to play next time I was in town. It was really good to talk to some one who knew what the scene was like out here. After a while we left and had a nice game of hacky sack drawing the attention of several groups of girls and some security guards. After being kicked out we caught the last train back to my sisters place where me and flip stayed the night. The next day my brother and sister escorted us to the airport shuttle and we made it back, sadly leaving such a fun and happening place, but with many memories.

I hope to go back someday soon, I highly recommend a visit to japan for anyone.

Here's the links for our pictures
Jay:
http://jay.g-cipher.net/film/2007/
Charles:
http://foosalad.com
Flip:
http://s27.photobucket.com/albums/c157/demonseid/Japan/
Me:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/insert/sets/72157602275781124/