Today was simply fantastic. Even though we were late for the Stratovarius concert, it was so far the best concert i’ve been to for a very long time. Songs like Rest in peace or Higher we go (just to mention the first two that came to my mind now) made me shout at the top of my voice (i was actually surprised i could keep up with Kotipelto’s range), so after a gig it was pretty hard to talk, but it definitely worth it, this concert would’ve worth quite much anything! My first really good metal concert for a year, and this one was simply ecstatic. Because we were late (so sorry about that) i don’t know if they played Dreamweaver or Hunting high and low, my two favourite songs, i can only hope not—i could hardly forgive myself for being late then. The concert was for short: perfect. It was finally not overamplified like most of the gigs i’ve been to in Japan. And i had a great experience… After the last song, Kotipelto asked if we could count to four in Finnish, for them to bow after that. Naturally silence among the japanese, when i realised that i could count to four in Finnish! “Yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä!” I went shouting out, visibly surprising the band, but then they saw that i was “apparently a westerner”. So fun! I want to learn Finnish! (And i think that’s the only language i ever wrote with a capital letter here in the blog.) (If anyone interested, i learnt the numbers from my father and the Nils Holgersson book, where the geese were named with Finnish numerals if i remember right.)
Dead man lives on
Today i cut the one week constant coffee overdose, and had none, and plan to keep this up for 11 more days. The reason is that i had three dose coffee every day except for sunday, which is there with only one in the morning, thus i had two extra each day, which is 12 coffee over normal. That is twelve days of coffee gone for “nothing” in one week, so i won’t have coffee for that long so i’ll be at zero. Today was the first, so 11 more to go.
I was surprised i could stay awake at all. Yesterday evening that caused trouble, even though i had the triple dose in me… Apropos yesterday, in the evening i went to the gym, and had fun there for an hour. Results: arms not aching anymore, but in exchange my legs started.
Today i managed to get out of bed a bit late, but i had time to do anything and was from late even less than usually. School was as if it wasn’t at all, the economy movie we had this week was better than expected, math was challenging, the last economy was dead boring, even though two of us made presentations.
Now the plan is to play guitar or do something, just something so i won’t be so tempted to “lay down for a moment”. I have to leave the computer because i’ll be downloading the last Haruhi episode of this season (too bad it’s not available on YouTube now), and with torrent, curse me if you want. I guess direct downloading eats more bandwidth then my tuned and limited torrent.
Bits version 2.0
2.0 Yesterday ended up totally differently. I couldn’t go to pingpong training because i had an appointment about homeworks that time. Anyway i’m not sure if there was any, as i got a mail from them saying something about a tournament yesterday (i didn’t struggle to understand it). At least this way i could go to the guitar class where i learnt a lot of new things and that’s good. Included a few more ways to pick and the first two chords (C, G7). Will have to practice till next week.
2.1 The old alarm clock, the only alarm clock i ever had, the alarm clock my sister gave me sometime i couldn’t even remember properly, has problems with its voice. Tuesday morning it fell to the floor and since then its beeping got very quiet. No other injury. I’ll look into the problem (literally) when i have time and dare to.
2.2 Disappearances occur around me. First my student id got lost, no idea how, but it did, so for a week i was entering the dorm the tricky way, until yesterday i applied for a new one. My grammar exercise book disappeared as well, so i couldn’t do homework for the past week (i felt so sorry), but i got it back today so i’ll have to write all that stuff tonight (i really am sorry about that).
Progressive live 2009, yesterday
In Kichijoji’s Silver Elephant there’s a series of concerts every year, titled Progressive live. In may i went to a concert there, which headlined the same band as yesteday’s: TEE (The Earth Explorer), a japanese flute-fronted progressive rock band. Yesterday the other two bands were the japanese Baraka and their friends from France, Eclat.
TEE was as good as expected, they played a new song as well, and they had the only vocals on the whole evening, in Col de l’Iseran (though not much of lyrics, but vocals anyway). Baraka was a surprise for me, i expected something louder and wilder than TEE, but instead got a really quiet, more jazzish, more Pink Floydish music. Eclat were really as pro as Yoneda Katsumi, the guitarist of TEE said they would be. They had a lot of fun on stage, they played great and longer than i’d have guessed from the japanese standards.
Naturally the whole evening was just as over-amplified as expected in this country, but after stuffing half a tissue in my ears i could avoid permanent hearing impairment (?). This evening definitely worth the money and the time – great concerts.
Sabbath
Not Black, though music. On saturday i managed to wake up in time, so i got there in time to my first concert in the autum term (秋学期), a jazz festival in the Tokyo Forum, to be precise, its Groove part. The reason for me going was without question the concert of the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, a fantastic japanese ska-jazz group. There were three more performances as well, two more or less traditional jazzish ones and one i couldn’t categorize—but more about that later.
The Tokyo Ska was fantastic, and fantastic, and fantastic (apparently lost for words, i am), just to mention a bad point as well: short. Not a whole hour, i’m afraid. But the quality and the atmosphere worth it. All. They played a lot of songs i knew and a couple i didn’t, and i got to like them, their style and their music even more.
About the others: Abraham Laboriel, who played together with Akira Jimbo was precisely how i’d imagine a traditional black jazz musician. Fantastic style. They were visibly playing for fun, and that’s great. The second ones, John Scofield and the accompanying band… the music was great, but the feel was missing. Then the last, George Clinton and the Parliament / Funkadelic. That was crazy. I didn’t really like it, though i enjoyed it (paradox)… Very tribal, very chaotic, very difficult to enjoy, very strange. Somehow the kind of performance i can imagine from rastafarian jamaicans to do after smoking a 2g ganja per person. Not really my type.
Then i came home, though i listened for a few minutes to a jazz band playing in front of the Forum on some Japan-Netherlands something, they were really peaceful after the all too long (almost two hours, gosh) Clinton performance.
At home the usual: we grabbed a few beers with Rado and sat down talking with the others, eating fruits as well and stuff like that. Got to bed around three…
Homework
Now that’s what i’m definitely not going to write about now. I think that i don’t have any, except for those i’ll have to do by next week, so now slacking. To be precise, doing webdesign (i’ll show it upon request) and browsing last.fm. Today i bought some concert tickets. To be exact, four. Thus the schedule becomes: this saturday, a Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra (et al) concert on the Tokyo JAZZ 2009 Groove section (from 13:00 to 19:00). The next one is the Stratovarius gig in Kawasaki Club Citta—my first concert in Japan where i’m not going alone: Tung from Vietnam is coming as well (his’ the fourth ticket). The last one i’m sure to attend will be a HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR gig in Shibuya’s Lightroom. Knowing the band, this one will be a lot of fun as well. Can’t wait!
Celtic punk
I’ve been looking for celtic punk bands for a while now. The first one i stumbled across accidentally, Dropkick Murphys made me fall in love with the genre. But it’s not easy to find ones i’m really looking for. That is, ones more punk than folk, so with amplified guitars and stuff. Many of the “celtic punk” bands, for example Greenland Whalefishers, The Mahones and The Tossers are nice, but i miss the power (not the speed) from it. On the other hand, Street Dogs lacks the folk elements to make it special, the accent of the singer (who was the vocalist of Dropkick Murphys) is not enough. Blood or Whiskey is a difficult question, because it’s very, very close, but still miss a bit of power on the guitars (good point, they have four full songs on last.fm!). Even though as of now it could seem that i couldn’t find what i was looking for, i could. Three at least, and there’s still way to go among those “similar artists”. The three i really liked were: The Real McKenzies, The Bloody Irish Boys and Flogging Molly. (Flogging Molly is really close to Blood and Whiskey in sound, but it seems to be on the right side of the hedge…)
Tired
Impossible, that i have no post titled “Tired” here, but the dropdown of Firefox didn’t offer it. Whatever. In the morning i set my alarm clock to half past seven, just to start getting used to school from next week. Well, i was surprised when i opened my eyes around ten, without a ring from the clock or anything. Scary, i say. Had breakfast, then fetched the vacuum cleaner for obvious reasons (not those mentioned by a hungarian punk band). Then i was forced to realise that i’m running out of toilet paper (at the best time as usual, lucky i have a spare roll in my backpack all the time (“always” would have been quite misunderstandable in this context)), so i went to the kombini to buy that and milk, which i also used all yesterday. There (in the kombini, not the milk) i met a senpai from pingpong who told me there was a training today not on the schedule. So i went there, although i had no lunch then. Expected two or three hours, ended up four, and after almost a whole month’s break, i must say it was dead tiring, especially in this heat. (Tomorrow if everything goes well we’re going to the shop, in my case to buy a racket.) Then i came home, starving, but i didn’t eat more than a sandwich because Tung (from Vietnam) invited me (among others (it’s scary how good the japanese of those who spent the summer here got)) for a vietnamese dinner they were making. Delicious and filling, i must say (still, i had a banana and a mug of cocoa just to help me sleep). Huyen brought us cookies as souvenir, and i also got a lovely chopstick holder kitten. Thanks! Nya!
Dead man tells no tales
And i’m dead right now, at least dead tired, furthermore today passed without any major event, not counting my cleaning of the room (which indeed took some effort and determination) and cooking myself lunch, which was some meat with a pile of veggies and (naturally) a splash of wine (as for now that’s the only fluid i can use for making the stuff a bit more saucy, as i have no yoghurt nor the intention to use water, or orange or grapefruit juice) and a pile of rice. Ended up nice, loads of onion and spices. Wanted some flavour…
Then maths, without any real success, i realised that i wasn’t as stupid as i thought, it was just my usual nice little miscalculations, and this teacher seems to try to prepare us for university, since he gave no points for a solution with a mistake only in the very last line. With those i couldn’t solve then (a trigonometric problem, one of coordinate geometry and a quadratic inequality (this word was the first i had to reverse-lookup: i knew the japanese but not the english)) i still couldn’t cope, so i’ll have to ask someone, possibly a science student, to help. No fun.
And although the only after that was going to the hyakuen shop to get some drinks (the aforementioned orange and grapefruit juice), i’m totally and utterly drained now. (So was i back then, i almost fell with the bike a couple of times…) And my net sucks as always (on high heels), so i’ll be happy if i can post this at all…
Already
Scary that i’m here for the fourth day now and i still haven’t taken the trouble to throw out all the junk. I’ll have to soon enough anyway, as it’s difficult to get about in my room with the floor covered in bags and stuff…
I have accomplished nothing. Though i only have one chapter of grammar homework to get done, there’s still the more fun parts to go: maths and actually learning the kanji. I’m done with the written parts, but that’s nothing compared to the learning itself. I plan to start that today as well—unusually, i could get myself out of bed before ten, though i don’t know how i managed.
I dreamed, and it was a mixture of the seventh Harry Potter, which i’m reading now all my free minutes, just opening it randomly and reading on and on and on… So it’s a mixture of that last Harry Potter and my life. Scary how well my own experiences and the people i know fit in some of those situations. JKR really managed to knock me off the broom with that Harry/Ginny stuff, those half sentences splattered all over the book.
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