First Show in Toe Key Oh!

First of all, I need to clarify that every time I make a post, I am only able to give the tip of the tiniest ice-berg. From the moment I wake up, to the time I lay down (in my little room - picture below), I am constantly bombarded with new images, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings. I am only saying this as an apology, because there's so much I want to share, but its an information overload, and my mental-CPU is running MS-DOS...the machine with the floppy disk drive...the real floppy disks.

So today was nutty, nutty...and also nutty. First off, I organized the debris that was my luggage, and made my room into a solid little living space...when I say "little," I mean just that. You think freshman dorms are small? This is my room, and this makes it look large.

After that, Eric and I took care of some business with Sakura House (our landlord agency). Then, with Lewis, we hit up some crazy stores. I don't have a photo of the electronics store we went to, but it had everything from vibrating sex toys, to wireless mouses, and probably 300 types of each. The store was 5 floors, and every one of them was a miniature maze, filled floor to ceiling with gadgets...there was literally no wall space showing.

From there, we returned to Yoyogi station and hit up a grocery store near our place. We're gonna be cooking/eating at home a good amount of the time, so we wanted to stock up on some essentials. Here's a photo of my non-refrigerated purchases. You'll notice the cereal box has a brown bear on it. This is why I bought it. There's also a bag of rice, a small loaf of bread, some intense Ramen bowls, Japanese spicy cracker mix, and Pocky. Good ol' loveable Pocky...Mmmm...

After cooking a dinner which involved pork dumplings (12 for 136 yen ($1.20)), and shrimp and sprouts in noodles, we headed to our first show in Tokyo. The band we saw was called Suishou No Fune, and they play really intense ambient rock. Their songs last for a while, and they're almost hypnotic. The venue, MuRyo Ku MuZen, is one small room, which fits about 15 people max, and people sit on little boxes on the floor. We filmed the 2-song set and then talked to the band for a while afterwards. Here they are...

As you can see, this place has a lot of character. The walls are covered with odds and ends that the owner has collected over the years. It's like the chaotic counterpart to the busy-but-somehow-orderly city outside. There's so much going on that it's hard to actually focus on one subject, but when you do, you find something funny and/or interesting. A metaphor for life perhaps?

Anyway, here's a production still of me filming the show courtesy of Lewis. The making of the making of the movie, in the making.

Tomorrow, we'll be doing interviews and filming shows of two bands, Elevation and The Fadeaways...

Until then...peace from the East.