Black Rain
I’m back in Tokyo and it’s fairly dark, overcast and rainy. We’re also staying in Shinjuku but at least we aren’t being chased around by the Yakuza like in the classic Ridley Scott movie above.
Because I’m on this trip with a bunch of good friends who aren’t exactly into Japanese indie/underground music I won’t be going to too many shows this time around. The day we arrived group_inou, nisennenmondai, Ogre You Asshole, OWEN, and Gellers were playing at O-East during Nest Festival 2012
Our flight landed at 3pm @ Narita Airport and if I ditched my friends and rushed it to Shibuya O-east I might have made it just in time to watch some of group_inou’s set but that would have been completely bastardly…. even though my friends said they totally wouldn’t mind if I did.
But of course I didn’t. I’ll be seeing group_inou plenty of times in Canada in May but it would have been cool to have my friends tag along and get a sneak preview of group_inou.
Even though my friends don’t listen to Japanese music, if you’ve gone to the shows in Toronto you might recognize them since they’ve helped out at all of the NMFT shows so far.
Han and Keleng were the sexy doorpeople at the Rivoli, Velvet Underground and Whippersnapper Gallery for most of the shows (except when we collabed with Indie Week).
Han, Keleng, Larry and Bernard and I went to a wicked Kyushu cuisine restaurant in Shinjuku 4-chome called tometeba. They’re best known for their tebasaki wings… the juiciest, largest chicken wings you could ever eat!!
The two domo-kun figurines belong to Han and Bernard and their names are: Robert and Kiwi. Don’t ask me which ones which!
After we ate at Tometeba. Larry and I went for more food at a ramen place called Kohmen.
Larry had the regualr tonkotsu ramen and I went for the tantan-men (Taiwanese spicy style) with goma (sesame seed).
Hopefully I’ll be able to post some music-related stuff. Otherwise there will be lots of food and tourist-y posts. But I will definitely keep you guys updated on NMFT vol 4 info since that’s part of the reason I’m here.
Going to Omotesando/Shibuya/Shimokitazawa/Nihonbashi!!
Comments
“Because I’m on this trip with a bunch of good friends who aren’t exactly into Japanese indie/underground music I won’t be going to too many shows this time around.”
-> nonetheless there’s one thing I’d highly recommend: attending a saturday or sunday midday/lunch-live at mona records (Shimokita). It’s really nice there, usually starts around midday and you can order lunch with your ticket. Music wise it’s more on the singer-songwriter and indie-pop side but there’s also rock, folk, and so on… most of the time locals bands that are pretty unknown. I’ve been there every weekend when in tokyo – really relaxing stuff… And even with “newbies” to the scene I think you can’t go wrong there, it’s not the usual livehouse-feeling, its more like bands playing in your living-room.
Don’t know how long you’re around this time, just check out the schedule for macrch; http://www.mona-records.com/live/2012/03/
greetings, and have fun! =)
@whitegrey: yeah, mona records is a very nice venue, I´ve been there today to see Goomi play live. They were pretty exited when they learned that I know them from their Next Music From Tokyo shows, haha.
Leave a Comment