Nerd Alert!

I'll do another a proper post about Japan probably next Monday. I had to work today, Saturday, and I also have to work Sunday so I'm far too lazy now to write about anything in depth. So here is a mindless post about World Of Warcraft. Enjoy:

After getting home from work today I really got the urge to play some World Of Warcraft, however I canceled my account months ago because I don't really have time for it while I'm over here. Before I came to Japan, I took a couple months off of work just to relax and spent most of this time playing WOW. It's mostly just a waste of time, but probably best way to waste time ever. And I mean a lot of time. I would wake up in the morning and make tea and play till the sun went down...and there would still be more stuff to do in the game.

Here is a picture of my main character, a fire mage named Chipdipson.

I was only a couple days shy of making it to level 70, which is currently the highest you can go. After awhile though, the game started to become too much of a grind. I'm not sure if I'll ever reactivate my account though.

Whatever. Theres that. Props to everybody in my old guild Phoenix Wrath.

In other news I've been slowly but surely writing some new songs. Now that I finally got paid, I'm going to look into getting some mic stands so I can properly start recording some stuff. I've also been catching up on old Lost episodes and getting over a pretty nasty cold.

As promised, I should have a proper post about Japan on Monday or so. Later.

Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool

China Protest Video

Here is some video that I took on May 6, 2008 in Ginza, Tokyo. Sorry in advance for the noise, but it was very loud and theres isn't much I can do about that. I was told it was a protest about China and the upcoming Olympics. About the only words I could even make out when I was there were "Chu-Goku" which is China and "Hantai" which means opposite. Enjoy the video.



Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool

Weekend In Tokyo

Friday after work I took a quick nap and then headed up to Shinjuku to meet Eriko again. I ended up being quite late after taking the wrong train for part of the way. We went to get some Katsudon and then took a walk around Shinjuku at around midnight or so. We went to check out Korean town and then a store called Don Quixote, or Donkey as it's pronounced in Japan.

It was a pretty interesting store with a wide variety of items from ultra-kawaii (cute) home furniture to groceries and sex items. Kinda of like a Spencer's meets Wal-Mart kinda thing. It's certainly a good time but most of the conversation went down like this:

Eriko: "Ahhh, kawaii!"
Me: "Yup."
Pause for 30 sec...
Eriko: "Oooo, kawaii!"
Me: "Uh-huh."
Etc.

The next evening I met up with Eric and we pre-gamed for awhile at the train station while waiting for some other friends to show up. Surprisingly several hours flew by as I'm sure both of us were just happy to be able to speak English for a change. By the time everybody else arrived, the trains had stopped running so we took a cab over to Roppongi to go clubbing. We went to a bar first where we only stayed for a few minutes, but long enough to see some craziness go down.

If you're at all unfamiliar, apparently Roppongi, which means "Six Trees," is famous for foreign guys picking up Japanese women. Well after only five minutes in this bar, Eric went to use the bathroom and heard a German guy getting his groove on with some woman. Within minutes a crowd formed outside the bathroom and security busted up the love fest. The Japanese woman looked completely ashamed and left while the German dude just laughed it off and went to the bar to get another drink if I remember correctly.

From there we went to a dance club with about 3 or 4 floors that looked exactly the same. I got separated from the group for quite some time which wasn't very fun. Finally we met back up and danced to some decent music for awhile. Being a music fanatic, I get kinda picky when it comes to music selection. All in all, we busted some moves and had a good time.

We left the club at about 5am or so and I took the train back to Shinjuku to go to Eriko's place. Friday night however I forgot to charge my cell phone so my battery was dead and I wasn't too sure about where she lived and knew I couldn't even enter the building once I got there because of the security code. After wandering aimlessly and occasionally get hassled by creeps if I wandered down a bad street, I finally met a dude and his girlfriend who helped me find the apartment. After we finally got there, I had to yell "Eriko!" at the building until she woke up and was none too happy about me making the noise. Whatever. We all hung out for awhile at Eriko's place and I played some guitar for everybody as best I could at that hour without any sleep.

On Sunday I met up with Dewi and a cello player and we practiced for the show in June. It should be pretty interesting as it's classical music and I haven't really played much serious music live before. Later on I finally arrived back home exhausted and slept the rest of the day.

This coming Saturday is Sport's Day at one of my schools and then another cookout at Enoshima which should be pretty fun.

Laterz - Brad

Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool

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Now playing: Kid 606 - GQ On The EQ
via FoxyTunes

The Tuesday Typhoon

On Monday afternoon another English teacher casually mentioned that a Typhoon was on it's way in and that it would rain the next day. Little did I know that I was in for one of the most difficult walks to work ever.

From my apartment, I have about a 20 minute walk to the train station. When I arrive at my stop, I have another 20 minute walk uphill, with no sidewalks, fighting my way through foot traffic while trying not to get hit as the cars pass. Also, on Mondays and Fridays I have to carry an extra pair of shoes with me to wear in school. Most days it's no big deal as you can get used to just about anything, but that day looked like something from the News when they send the rookie weather reporter out to interview the storm during hurricane season.

The wind was far too strong to use an umbrella most of the way, so I arrived completely soaked to the bone in a three-piece suit. Later that day, the weather cleared up completely with no trace of what went down that morning.

Whatever.

Brad

Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool

Shinjuku Weekend

It's Monday again and I'm coming back to reality after a busy weekend in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It's pretty far away from where I live in Yokohama so it's always kind of a shock for me to come back to the semi-countryside that I call home. Another big part of it is the usual lack of sleep that I get on the weekends. I usually remain pretty lazy during the week as a result.

Friday, after decompressing from the work week for awhile around the apartment, I hit the train up to Shinjuku to meet Eriko. She doesn't really speak English often which gives me plenty of opportunity to pick up some more Japanese. I'm starting to get to the point where as long as I know the words I want to say, I don't have to think too much about sentence structure. Of course, there is still a seemingly endless amount left to learn.

I went up pretty early so I could check out the town since the lights looked so inviting last time I was there on a weekday. I ended up not even really seeing the town, and just hanging out around the front of the train station watching band after band of street musicians do their thing. I watched one jazz group with some very talented musicians, but they lacked soul. The drummer however was incredible.

After that, I watched a pop-ish kind of group for a long time. When they finished up their set, we talked for awhile about what it's like to perform in the street. I bought one of their CDs and talked about maybe playing sometime together. I think Sunday I'm practicing for the show in June and we're supposed to hit the street afterwards to play. Should be pretty fun.

Saturday evening Eriko and I met up with Eric and his girlfriend. We got some drinks around Shinjuku and then headed over to Nana's place in Gotanda. It was a pretty regular evening; just hanging out around the apartment. Eriko and I barely caught the last train back to Shinjuku and then we went out for my favorite food here: Katsudon.

I've been a little homesick as of late. I was riding high for the first couple months here but some of the newness is starting to wear off. Since I'm not really a teacher by trade, I feel some pressure to get back to the US and get a proper job in the music industry again. Some days all I'd like to do is hit up the old bars in Nashville or Annapolis where things always seemed to make sense. On the same token though, I certainly needed a break from the monotony of a regular 9-5 job.

I think there is certainly a lot of both good and bad things about living in such a different environment. I probably won't get into the bad things now since I'm sure nobody wants to read about that sort of thing. I will say that I've been in Japan for several months now and I haven't seen one damn robot. As far as technology goes, I really haven't been amazed by too much here. It's just frustrating rules about your shoes, no paper towels, and the occasional hole in the ground for a toilet. You can however drink anywhere, anytime. Perhaps it all evens out.

As for other stuff, I just got the new Portishead record and it's pretty cool. What I've been listening to the most is The Best Show Of WFMU and Uhh Yeah Dude podcasts. I highly recommend them. I have some quick video that I shot with the digital camera thats laying around now so hopefully I'll get around to editing that for YouTube this week.

Laterz - Brad

Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool

Language Limbo

Even though I had another insane weekend with Rory turning the town of Fujisawa on it's head, I figured I'd write about something simpler for now. The English and Japanese languages.

One odd thing about being in Japan is finding the balance between still being able to spell basic English words and learning Japanese. While this may sound a bit odd at first to anyone not here, imagine not watching TV, listening to the radio, reading newspapers, seeing advertisements, or taking in a number of any kind of media in your native language. Add to that, only being to speak with friends in English once a week if your lucky. The end result is that I can feel my written English ability slipping away faster than (insert awesome metaphor here cuz I can't do it).

When students ask questions about how to spell certain words in English, I find myself constantly second guessing how to spell simple words like "Couch" or "Twelfth." Without the help of spellchecker I have no idea. I can only hope for their sake that they look up the proper spelling later. I have heard some accounts of Americans speaking much slower English than ever before as a result of coming to Japan, but luckily I think my East Coast upbringing won't let that happen.

I'm frantically studying Japanese, mainly kanji at the moment, every chance I get in between going out and work. So far it seems to be going quite well, although I'm not really expecting to attain fluency. If you ever have any time to kill, studying kanji is one of the best ways to do it. As a result, I usually keep a notebook with me at all times in case I end up waiting for something / stranded. If you're interested, all you really need is a pen, notebook, and this website. Just be sure to change the Romaji to Hiragana as you go.

In other news, I just got done watching the Rambo movie from last year and it was pretty cool. Also, I've been listening to a ton of Imaginary Baseball League lately. If you've never heard of them, they have lots of free mp3s on their site since they broke up. I've been a fan for quite sometime, and it makes for great quiet music while waiting for the first train of the day at 5am.

In my music news, I'm still working on new songs. Sometimes it feels like work which isn't any good. Hopefully it'll just come naturally if given enough time. I'd really like to put a new record out by this November.

Before I go, I'll leave you with another picture from the Enoshima cookout.

I'm going to Shinjuku this weekend. If I don't write before then...Mata ne!

Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool

The Chigasaki Adventure

As usual, Rory and I started our night in Fujisawa. We saw a Japanese Beatles cover band and afterwards headed over to Mattari's. It seemed like a normal evening out, so much so that I almost took the last train home. Little did we know we were in for 24 hours of pure madness.

While at Mattari's, a 61 year old woman walked by our table and instantly took a liking to Rory. They exchanged cell phone numbers to go "fishing" sometime and I used weirdness as an opportunity to meet some new friends, Mitch and Ria. We all laughed as Rory worked his magic on the blue-plate-special-adult-diaper demographic. Later they invited us to the Enoshima Cookout and we talked about women for quite some time.

Mattari's finally closed at around 2am or so and we began to wander aimlessly around the streets, talking to any girl we saw. We later saw two hostesses getting off work so I asked them what was fun to do in Fujisawa. Somehow I don't think that kind of line would work in America, but perhaps because of the niceness of the Japanese combined with the novelty of a white dude speaking Japanese, it makes for a pretty good ice breaker. The two girls told us to wait for another hostess who spoke English so of course we did.

The next girl asked us if we want to meet girls, which seemed very shady to me. I thought we were going to get into some kind weird prostitution thing, but before I knew what was going on I was in a van with Rory, the hostess named Mai, and a silent male driver. As we barreled down the streets, the hostess kept talking and driver never even looked at us. After a few minutes we were in Chigasaki and went to a tiny bar where we stayed until 5am.

Everything was cool there. They had a guitar which I played for hours. There were a couple guys who were totally sauced, and one girl who I later learned quit school in Middle School because she didn't like crowds. An interesting crowd to say the least. The dude in white shirt from the above picture sang the hell out of some weird traditional Japanese song and then passed out. I shot a video.



At about 5am we were about to leave when a huge fight broke out between three new people who came in. There were chairs and glasses thrown, some very informal Japanese that sounded Spanish, and lots of hair pulled. Rory and the bartender tried to break up the fight and I watched from outside. Every couple minutes things would cool down, only to start right back up seconds later. This went on for awhile and then we went to Mai's house to sleep along with the other girl from the bar.

I was able to get a couple hours of sleep as the girl from the bar watched me all night chain-smoking with a blanket wrapped around her. The next day we hit the beach which was having a big festival. Somehow, we met a ton of new people and went to several bars where we danced in the street to Bob Marley for hours on end.

We then went to another bar where things we a little more chilled out. We listened to some Dub for a couple hours and then I had to leave to go to a date that I was way too tired for. There were some details I may be forgetting but that's mostly it. I'm definitely looking forward to spending some time in Chigasaki this summer.

Brad

Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool

Enoshima Island Cookout

Recently I've been spending a lot of time in a place called Fujisawa. It's the closest large city with a decent amount of nightlife, has a great Katsudon shop, and it's only a couple stops on the train from my station. About a month ago, we found a bar called Mattari's and made it our default spot to go to since it's bigger than other bars, they always play old-school hip-hop, and the drink prices are reasonable. While at Mattari's in Fujisawa the previous weekend, Rory and I met a dude from New York named Mitch who told us about a big cookout the following weekend at Enoshima Island.

Recently the weather has been terrible so we weren't even sure if it was going on. After countless text messages between the crew, Andrew, Eric, and I met at Fujisawa and went to meet Rory who went ahead on bike to make sure everything was still happening. All day, the sky looked like all hell would break loose, but we managed to get through the cookout with no rain.

The food there was great. Even though I love all kinds of Japanese food, it was such a relief to eat proper American style hot dogs and burgers. There seemed to be an even mix of Japanese, Australians, and Americans. It was pretty odd for me to see Americans completely fluent in Japanese. For some reason it just doesn't seem right to me, and in some respect I hope I don't turn into a lifer over here even though it's a great place to live.

If I remember correctly, I don't think that Ria (Mitch's girlfriend) and her friend had ever heard of shotgunning a beer before but they did like champs.

As the beer ran out and the sun set, a group of about 10 of us went to go to Karaoke. The place looked very cool inside, with each floor a different fruit theme with more neon paint than I've ever seen. Most of us thought that the price was 300 Yen ($3) for a half hour and all you can drink, however we soon realized that it was 3,000 Yen ($30) for 2 hours.

After Karaoke, we lost Andrew, Eric, and most of the women. So we headed back to where it all began, Mattari's. As soon as we walked in I started talking to this white chick from South Africa who was kind of cool. Her slightly overweight British friend who claimed to be her girlfriend was not so inviting however. It was quite a shock to me since everybody over here is so nice. It was pretty funny to see actually; they had only been in Japan for two weeks, spoke no Japanese at all, and acted as if we owed them something.

Needless to say, I wasted no time in bouncing to the next table where I met the head boss, or Shachou, of a landlord company who bought me a beer and wanted to me to work for his company. He spoke a little English and wanted me to teach him. The best I put together at that hour was to teach him "Yo, sup man!?" Between the beer he bought me and the English lesson he received, I'd say I got the better deal.

At some point we left Mattari's and Rory and I made the long trip back to his apartment at about 5am. Halfway to his house we met some teenagers at the convenience store who all had scooters. They humored us as we struggled to make conversation and eat our Onigiri and then we headed back on our way.

I'm still recovering from the day and luckily I have today and tomorrow off. I'm supposed to go to Tokyo tomorrow to see Kabuki for the first time.

Laterz - Brad

I may edit this post later to throw up a video link if I can get the files from Rory.

Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool

Shibuya Dance Party

I was pretty surprised to find out that the trains in Japan stop running at around midnight. As a result, if you go out, you pretty much have to make the decision to go home early or party all night. I usually choose the latter. My first time doing this was at Club Air in Shibuya.

I met up with some people from Meetup.com's Tokyo Electronic Music Lover's group one Saturday night and had a great time. From my station, it takes about and hour by train and about $14 US roundtrip. I arrived in Shibuya several hours early just to check things out. Near Hachiko, the famous dog statue where everybody meets up before beginning their evening out, I met a bunch of Germans and we hung out for awhile. It seems to be much easier to meet new friends in Japan than back in America. After asking them a quick question to confirm exactly where I was, we were telling jokes and chain smoking and talking about life in Japan.

I later met up with the people from the group and we headed down several dark streets to get to Club Air. The club cost 3,000 Yen to get into, which is roughly $30 US. We got there at around 11:30pm and the place was packed. The venue was a little too small for dancing and I don't think there was any air conditioning. After a couple hours of trying to dance to some pretty bad trance, we hit the chillout room upstairs for awhile. At around 2 or 3am the place started to clear out so there was plenty of more room to dance and luckily the next DJ played much better music.

We left Club Air at about 5 or 6am when the trains started running again and everyone was completely exhausted. I think the club was in a semi-residential part of Shibuya because there were people on every block for quite awhile whose job it was to make sure nobody talked. Anything above the softest whisper would get you an angry look and a "Shh!" yelled at you by some guy.

We all went to a family restaurant and had some of the worst food I've ever tasted in my entire life. I ordered eggs which came out looking like chunky yellow water. After telling the waiter that my food was cold, he took it away, and brought it back 2 minutes later the exact same temperature. We all made fun of the people sleeping all around us, but shortly after I passed out as well.

We stayed at the restaurant for quite sometime, and then everybody caught their train home. I finally made it home hours later and was completely disoriented from the lack of sleep. My apartment is a solid 20 minute walk from the closest train station which doesn't work out too well during these kind of nights.

Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool

First Night in Yokohama

I flew out of BWI and headed for Narita in Japan on March 15, 2008 I think. I couldn't sleep the whole flight so I watched No Country For Old Men and Training Day on the flight over. I took Singapore Airlines which sounded scary at first but it was great.

I arrived with a pocket full of United States traveler's checks only to find that nobody wants them or US money over here. I managed to buy a pack of Marlboro lights at the airport with $5 US and the change I got back was the only Yen I had to my name. I took the YCAT bus to Yokoahama Station and I was off.

On a side note, they don't really have Camel Lights over here which sucks. They have a Japanese version of Camel Lights but it's way too far from the real thing for me and they're quite difficult to find in the first place. I've taken to Camel Milds which aren't too bad.

I arrived at Yokohama Station with no Yen and my hands full of luggage. I was stranded in Yokohama station and still need to go a couple stations up. Luckily, after some searching, a girl who worked at a soup shop gave me 200 yen since I couldn't change my money anywhere. From there I went to Sakuragicho where I stayed in a hotel for the first week. On my way from Sakuragicho to my hotel I got quite lost, but met some cool people who helped me out, Mamiya and Moki.


They took me out to Mosburger which I had heard of before I came and wanted to try. It's a fast food restaurant but apparently it has better ingredients and is a little more expensive than your average fast food. After the food and many cigs later, I discovered that Moki was into skateboarding so we went skateboarding at midnight around Yokohama.

I haven't skated in years so it was pretty difficult, but it makes for a pretty cool story of my first night in Japan.

Today I'm going to a cookout if the weather clears up. Either that, or I'm going to watch a parade of wet Samurais or some shit.

Laterz - Brad

Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool

Mission Statement

I made this blog to tell my stories about living in Japan, however I've already been here for two months. I'm living near Hongodai station which is Yokohama, Japan. As such, I'm going to first try to remember all of the crazy shit that has happened since I got here.

If I don't post here for awhile, just know I'm having too much fun, or too little fun to get around to posting. Even as I'm typing this there are Skype messages coming in that I have to check, emails that need to be returned, and friends that I have to meet soon.

With that said, I'm going to try to keep posting new stuff that happens and remember what happened before. I also have pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thenationalpool/

Lets roll...

Brad

Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool