The Day Off and D.V.D.

Wow, I feel like I just wrote the last entry, and it's already been 2 days since I was sitting here doing this. Where does the space-time go?

So apparently, Eric has decided to stop blogging, making me the sole blogger in this Live From Tokyo family. Wow...that's a lot of preasure...I mean what if my photo selections aren't adequate? What if I forget to mention something epic? What if there are tyep-o's? WHY ME?!?!

Actually I don't mind...now I have all the blogging power! I rule supreme...what I say, is. So now you can't go cross checking facts...maybe I'm lying right now...maybe there is no Eric, no Lewis, maybe there is no Tokyo. Who's to say?

Me, or no-one...

Okay, power-trip: accomplished.

So, the last two days have been very enjoyable, from both a R&R standpoint and a work standpoint. Following are some photos I took throughout the day. When we don't have to film shows, I find I am much more willing to pull out the camera and take photos for pleasure.

Yesterday was our first day off in 9 or 10, and it was great. We took care of renewing our leases at the Sakura House office in Shinjuku. Then we hit up this great sushi place we've been to 2 or 3 times before. It has a mini conveyor belt that constantly runs, and you just grab little dishes of the mobile sushi. They have all sorts going around, so if you don't like what you see, you just wait a few seconds. Fun with food! Different colored plates are different prices...but just to give you an idea, I had 6 green plates (usually two sushi rolls on each) and they cost about $1.25 a plate...so for $7 or $8 I had a large sushi meal. Not half bad.

We've talked about trying to put a camera on the conveyor belt at some point, riding with the sushi, getting shots of all the people eating as it passes 'em...we'll see, might be too riskay for the restaurant...

So after that, we went to Lewis' and did some music writing/dailies/photography...nothing too serious...after all it was our day off.

But while were there, a thunderstorm erupted, cutting out the power for brief moments. The thunder was incredibly loud, and the lightning was very frequent...I tried to capture a lightning bolt in a photo, but wasn't getting very lucky...here's a few images that show the intensity of the light flashes. Here's the skyline before and during the lightning:

It's been raining for at least a week straight now, and the forcast predicts at least 10 more days of it. I think it may have to do with the intense humidity here...all that moisture condenses in the evenings, and precipitates as a result. This may be complete BS, but I like pretending to know something about meteorology.

So today was also great. Well, it started abruptly. Despite being woken suddenly from a dream in which I was stashing camera/lighting equipment in my church back home, afterhours, with the lights out in most of the building, the rest of the day was fun.

We got some work done on the new website...

Lemme give you the scoop on the Live From Tokyo website as of now, because a lot has gone down.

So last year, Lewis made a website, which was essentially a blog. That's the website you've probably seen up until now. So a few months back, while we were still in Burlington, a friend of a friend said he'd make our new and improved website, pro bono...

Uh oh... pro bono is a pro no no...

Basically, this guy bailed on us, leaving us hanging with a half built website. So Lewis took over, and has been trying to learn how to be a web designer/computer programmer in his off time.

Needless to say, it's a big task, and there have been many problems. Domain switches, server changes, FTP debaucles, among other problems. Anyway, we are now actually very close to launching LIVE FROM TOKYO . NET 2.0

However, because of our limited web experience, it's going to be going through further changes down the line...

Moral of the story: Check out the website in the next week or two, and feel free to comment on my blog with feedback/ideas, but be aware that we're doing the best we can with the very limited time/experience we have.

Alright, so after working on that this afternoon, we left Tokyo!

Zang!

We took a train to Yokohama (a city that adjoins Tokyo) and then a subway to a stop a few minutes further out. We interviewed D.V.D. and filmed their show at the gg Lock Art Festival.

These guys are so cool.

Probably my favorite show as of now. Not just in Tokyo, but anywhere...I had a blast.

D.V.D. stands for Drummer Video Drummer, and as you probably guessed, there are two drummers and a video graphics guy performing together.

How can I describe them?

They play music, kind of.

They play video games, kind of.

They make art, yeah...but...

They make art by playing music which in turn controls video games, but also they play video games, which in turn creates music, while art is being produced because of the video/audio interaction...YES! That's it! I think...

So the two drum sets are rigged up with electronic sensors for each drum/cymbal.

When one drummer hits the snare, it's like pressing A on a nintendo controller. The bass drum is B...and so on...

So now you've got two drummer, playing beats, which are also commands for a video game. It's like The Grateful Dead meets Atari meets Jackson Pollack meets Chris Karuda.

Holy wow.

But not just video games.

Some of the sequences involve each drum creating a different paint-like splotch on the screen.

Some of them involve a stick figure on the screen whose individual extremities are controlled by each drum sensor. So the beat makes them dance in unison...

Anyway, each song has a different program/video/game...

So after watching them duke it out in pong, and then creating a jam out of the game, they'd move on to pinball...

All of the games/graphics are very cool, not detailed but more geometric shapes. The video guy is also controlling these different games, and I think was playing samples...because there were basslines/melodies going on too.

Anyway, they were amazing. Fun night.

Oh before I forget, we went out for dinner tonight at this nice place called El Secreto (The Secret). It was a classy mexican restaurant. Except only too late we found out what the name of the place meant. The secret is, they serve you the smallest portions ever. $10 for a duck in wine sauce entree, not bad...but then...wow, those little slivers of duck cost about $3 a bite...

So immediately after the dinner we went to an AM/PM which is kind of like CVS or 7/11, and we bought rice balls. These are not like gooballs in a headie Phish parking lot. These are triangular rice patties, stuffed with different unknowns, and wrapped in seaweed. For $1.30 I got a riceball that was larger than my entire dinner, and it was stuffed with tuna. Awesome...

Ok, so that about does 'er...

Sayonara!

Ian-san

Oh yeah...one last thing...apparently we've been invited to film a 2-day festival near Mount Fuji. It's about 2 hours away, and is set on a lake. There's going to be some big names there, as well as a few groups we've had trouble getting in contact with. We've been allotted press/backstage passes...(woo! free music is always a great thing)...but we need to figure out if we have overlapping shoots/financial ability to spend two days even further abroad than we currently are...I'll keep ya'll posted.