So, firstly, I'm back from Japan. I had the time of my life over there.
It truly is a wonderful place. Got shitloads of CDs, and saw an Opeth
gig. That was one of the more bizarre happenings. I'll go into detail a
bit later. So, half of this post will be my ravings on Japan, the other
half will be musical.
So...
Japan
It was fun. The weather was intense. When I got there it was about 40C. Try carrying 40kg of bags around a city you've never been to before in that heat when you've just got off an 11 hour flight. It hurts, is all I can say. The flights were awful, I'll add. I'm never flying with British Airways again. Movie selection was shit. I watched House of Flying Daggers up until Zhang Ziyi got naked, then turned it off. Listened to Sigur Rós to try and sleep. Unfortunately it didn't work. The midnight sun over Siberia was a nice sight though.
Anyway, first day in Japan consisted of navigating through Narita airport, catching the Narita Express to Shinjuku, and trying to find Sakura House (the people who do accomodation for foreigners in Tokyo). Found it pretty easily. Shinjuku station is huge. Took me a while to find the damn exit I needed (there are rather a lot of exits). Shinjuku itself was fun. Got everything sorted, and got on the Yamanote line. This was where my Japan journey began. The Yamanote line was possibly the most inspirational thing ever. Similar to London's Circle Line, it just does a loop of Tokyo taking in all the big stations: Tokyo, Shinagawa, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro and Ueno. Unlike the London Underground, it's clean, nice, and aboveground. Best way to see Tokyo on your first day. Anyway. My apartment was in a place called Kameari. It's rather famous for being the site of an extremely long running manga, which has an insanely long name and is thus just called Kochikame whenever it's called anything. There are statues of the main character both sides of Kameari Station, just in case visitors don't realise this.
I spent 2 hours trying to find my apartment. It was extremely hot, I was tired (hadn't slept on the plane), and my sense of direction was shot. Eventually I got there, after asking a few people for help in my rather bad Japanese. Cue me collapsing as soon as I got through the door.
The events of the rest of the time aren't quite as eventful. The first two weeks were bright, sunny, and hot. The second two were wet, flooded and hot.
Highlights:
- Harajuku. Everyone should go there, just to be able to say "I went to Harajuku". It's not the nicest place, but the fashion there is cutting edge. There's a large forest that houses the Meiji Shrine (where Emperor Meiji is buried). It's a pretty walk. There's also lots and lots of Gothic Lolitas and Cosplay-zoku hanging around Jingu-bashi, which is basically the entrance to the forest. They pose a lot for photographers, and are very fun people. I saw a few people cosplaying as Malice Mizer. The shops on Takeshita-dori are insanely bright, colourful, and marked by just about everyone attempting to hustle people into them. The thing that shocked me most was when a group of black guys came up and asked me to shop in their boutique, and offered me his fist (fist-to-fist bashing or something). I was quite shocked, as I thought this was one of those "Black American Only" gestures. Maybe in Japan it's a "Gaijin Only" thing, alike in our non-Japanese-ness. Or something. Maybe it's just cool.
- Shibuya. Shibuya Shibuya Shibuya. Epic. The Crossing (capitalised because of its awesomeness) is fun. Tower Records pissed me off on the first day in went there (day 2). The top 7 floors were closed. I went back that weekend though and scouted out just about every record in existence. HMV was also pretty good. Had some great fun with my Japanese friend finding and pointing out good bands. Oddly, I knew more Japanese Metal than she did. She was pointing out mostly Finnish stuff. She's a Children of Bodom fangirl though :P
-Shinjuku. Nice place. Kabukicho (the redlight district) is much fun. Did the unthinkable for a metalhead here, and went to see a Japanese-language version of the Rogers and Hammerstein Cinderella Musical featuring members of the J-pop Idol Group Morning Musume. OH NOES!
- Ikebukuro. Boring.
- Ueno. Some crazy lady tried assaulting me. She had huge glasses and a towel on her head. Dunno what she was on.
- Roppongi. Honestly boring. Far too touristy. Prices are insane. Elsewhere in Tokyo, a beer will set you back about 380-440 yen (around £2, $4). Roppongi were charging 880 yen (£4.40) for a crappy imported Grolsch. Suffice to say I scampered pretty fast.
- Akasaka. Fun, crazy place. Looks more like a fashionable European capital of fashion than anything else. There's a Bugatti garage there and everything. Saw Opeth here. Was expensive, 7500 yen. They played for 2 hours though. Lotus Eater was fun. Oddly, it seems that the only place Japanese people can speak English is in Metal gigs. Only other place I heard it spoken so well was at hotels near the airport.
- Tokyo. Not interesting.
- Odaiba. Quite amusing. Rainbow Bridge was fun to cross.
- Kameari. Fun. Great Indian place there. 3 McDonalds within about 400m of each other (wee bit silly), and some truly crazy stuff. Also, the cinema there was good. Saw the greatest movie ever, Detroit Metal City. Ignore the fact that it has Gene Simmons in it and enjoy.
- Akihabara. Best place in the world. Seriously. If you want anything electronic, go here. If CDs and DVDs are your bag, then Shibuya's the best, but Akiba's the best for everything else (except maybe prostitutes. The girls in Akiba are slightly 2D). Most memorable moment of Akiba was going into a Maid Café. It's embarassing to say the least. The girls are cute, wearing maid outfits, but it's overly cute. They draw hearts and kittens on your food in tomato sauce. Slightly scary... Fun though.
Outside of Tokyo (travel plans were a bit smaller than I hoped due to the bad weather):
- Odawara. Nice beach.
- Nagoya. Tokyo's evil twin. Walk 200m away from the trainstation and there's no one around. The buildings look modern and fresh, but unlike Tokyo, there's no cleanliness about it. Rubbish was everywhere. Horrid place.
- Nara. The park is nice. The big wooden buildings are nice. Was way too hot for much though. I think my film melted in my camera.
- Kyoto. Didn't spend nearly enough time here.
Anyway, that's it. Fun. Got hooked on lots of Japanese TV shows. They're brilliant. Also found a respect for J-pop and Visual Kei. I'd recommend for everyone to go. It's very fun.
Anyway, enough rambling.
Elemental
Yay, we're going to fix it. Basically, Void has been deleted, because it's useless and I can't be bothered to have it on the album anymore. Earth, Air, Fire and Water are getting re-recorded with Cubase programming. Air and Water will finally be complete. Light and Dark are good enough without re-recording, Ice sounds shit but I don't care, and Continuum is fucking stupid, so re-recording it is pointless. We're adding a couple of "Bonus Tracks" to it, to add extra time, and because they don't fit the concept. There's going to be a Metal version of Water, and a Dance version of Water. The Dance version is pretty good. There may be some others, but I don't know yet. Should be recorded in the week 26th - 31st October.
To Sever Ties With All Of Mankind
This has been ready to go for ages. Still need to put the finishing touches on Faith in Fated Fey. Will also try and get Chris to see if he can make Night of Samhain any better. If not I'll probably get rid of it. We'll probably work on making Ghostly Notes a real song. I'm also deleting Grim and The Screaming Banshees, because they're pointless.
Metal Opera
Still the same. This won't be ready for ages. a) Because it needs some serious writing work, b) because we need a cast, c) because we need more contacts to get what we need. So, after TST there will be...
Other Projects
That's right. Due to the fact that there'll be a large gap between TST and the Opera, we've decided to keep ourselves busy. Most of them involve covers.
1) Final Fantasy Metal. Chris is going to metal up some Final Fantasy tunes. Black Mages have done it already, but Chris wants to too.
2) Metal Mozart. Chris is going to metal up the entire Requiem.
3) Final Fantasy Remix. Chris again, using the skillz he developed in Music Technology classes.
4) Beethoven Remix. 9th Symphony, I think.
5) Metal Musume. Basically, we're going insane. We're going to turn Morning Musume songs, and songs by several other artists from Hello!Project (Matsuura Aya, W, Milky Way, probably some others) Metal. We've both been bewitched by J-pop, so now we're going to corrupt it. Much fun will ensue. This will be huge, I think we've scouted around 80 songs to cover, so there may be rather a lot of discs if we do release it.
6) Musume Mix. Chris again, remixing Morning Musume.
7) Cobranaconda. Yes, my old psuedonym resurfaces. Basically, I'll probably do a solo project of all the weird stuff I've come up with in the past few years. Experimental. Of course, it won't be solo at all really, but oh well.
8) HV Presents JAPAN! Due to my adventures, I got really inspired. This will be a compilation album presented by us with many different bands all formed of me and Chris. Playing random stuff. First song was "Going In A Circle On The Yamanote Line". I wrote it 2 days ago, and recorded it yesterday, and uploaded it today. It's quite punky, enjoy. It's about the JR lines. Yay. Other songs may be completely different genres. We don't know yet. It's going to be haphazard. This is just silliness though.
So, there you go. Lots of randomness.
I'll next update this thing when we release Elemental. Dunno when that'll be. Might get it CD-fied, might not.
So...
Japan
It was fun. The weather was intense. When I got there it was about 40C. Try carrying 40kg of bags around a city you've never been to before in that heat when you've just got off an 11 hour flight. It hurts, is all I can say. The flights were awful, I'll add. I'm never flying with British Airways again. Movie selection was shit. I watched House of Flying Daggers up until Zhang Ziyi got naked, then turned it off. Listened to Sigur Rós to try and sleep. Unfortunately it didn't work. The midnight sun over Siberia was a nice sight though.
Anyway, first day in Japan consisted of navigating through Narita airport, catching the Narita Express to Shinjuku, and trying to find Sakura House (the people who do accomodation for foreigners in Tokyo). Found it pretty easily. Shinjuku station is huge. Took me a while to find the damn exit I needed (there are rather a lot of exits). Shinjuku itself was fun. Got everything sorted, and got on the Yamanote line. This was where my Japan journey began. The Yamanote line was possibly the most inspirational thing ever. Similar to London's Circle Line, it just does a loop of Tokyo taking in all the big stations: Tokyo, Shinagawa, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro and Ueno. Unlike the London Underground, it's clean, nice, and aboveground. Best way to see Tokyo on your first day. Anyway. My apartment was in a place called Kameari. It's rather famous for being the site of an extremely long running manga, which has an insanely long name and is thus just called Kochikame whenever it's called anything. There are statues of the main character both sides of Kameari Station, just in case visitors don't realise this.
I spent 2 hours trying to find my apartment. It was extremely hot, I was tired (hadn't slept on the plane), and my sense of direction was shot. Eventually I got there, after asking a few people for help in my rather bad Japanese. Cue me collapsing as soon as I got through the door.
The events of the rest of the time aren't quite as eventful. The first two weeks were bright, sunny, and hot. The second two were wet, flooded and hot.
Highlights:
- Harajuku. Everyone should go there, just to be able to say "I went to Harajuku". It's not the nicest place, but the fashion there is cutting edge. There's a large forest that houses the Meiji Shrine (where Emperor Meiji is buried). It's a pretty walk. There's also lots and lots of Gothic Lolitas and Cosplay-zoku hanging around Jingu-bashi, which is basically the entrance to the forest. They pose a lot for photographers, and are very fun people. I saw a few people cosplaying as Malice Mizer. The shops on Takeshita-dori are insanely bright, colourful, and marked by just about everyone attempting to hustle people into them. The thing that shocked me most was when a group of black guys came up and asked me to shop in their boutique, and offered me his fist (fist-to-fist bashing or something). I was quite shocked, as I thought this was one of those "Black American Only" gestures. Maybe in Japan it's a "Gaijin Only" thing, alike in our non-Japanese-ness. Or something. Maybe it's just cool.
- Shibuya. Shibuya Shibuya Shibuya. Epic. The Crossing (capitalised because of its awesomeness) is fun. Tower Records pissed me off on the first day in went there (day 2). The top 7 floors were closed. I went back that weekend though and scouted out just about every record in existence. HMV was also pretty good. Had some great fun with my Japanese friend finding and pointing out good bands. Oddly, I knew more Japanese Metal than she did. She was pointing out mostly Finnish stuff. She's a Children of Bodom fangirl though :P
-Shinjuku. Nice place. Kabukicho (the redlight district) is much fun. Did the unthinkable for a metalhead here, and went to see a Japanese-language version of the Rogers and Hammerstein Cinderella Musical featuring members of the J-pop Idol Group Morning Musume. OH NOES!
- Ikebukuro. Boring.
- Ueno. Some crazy lady tried assaulting me. She had huge glasses and a towel on her head. Dunno what she was on.
- Roppongi. Honestly boring. Far too touristy. Prices are insane. Elsewhere in Tokyo, a beer will set you back about 380-440 yen (around £2, $4). Roppongi were charging 880 yen (£4.40) for a crappy imported Grolsch. Suffice to say I scampered pretty fast.
- Akasaka. Fun, crazy place. Looks more like a fashionable European capital of fashion than anything else. There's a Bugatti garage there and everything. Saw Opeth here. Was expensive, 7500 yen. They played for 2 hours though. Lotus Eater was fun. Oddly, it seems that the only place Japanese people can speak English is in Metal gigs. Only other place I heard it spoken so well was at hotels near the airport.
- Tokyo. Not interesting.
- Odaiba. Quite amusing. Rainbow Bridge was fun to cross.
- Kameari. Fun. Great Indian place there. 3 McDonalds within about 400m of each other (wee bit silly), and some truly crazy stuff. Also, the cinema there was good. Saw the greatest movie ever, Detroit Metal City. Ignore the fact that it has Gene Simmons in it and enjoy.
- Akihabara. Best place in the world. Seriously. If you want anything electronic, go here. If CDs and DVDs are your bag, then Shibuya's the best, but Akiba's the best for everything else (except maybe prostitutes. The girls in Akiba are slightly 2D). Most memorable moment of Akiba was going into a Maid Café. It's embarassing to say the least. The girls are cute, wearing maid outfits, but it's overly cute. They draw hearts and kittens on your food in tomato sauce. Slightly scary... Fun though.
Outside of Tokyo (travel plans were a bit smaller than I hoped due to the bad weather):
- Odawara. Nice beach.
- Nagoya. Tokyo's evil twin. Walk 200m away from the trainstation and there's no one around. The buildings look modern and fresh, but unlike Tokyo, there's no cleanliness about it. Rubbish was everywhere. Horrid place.
- Nara. The park is nice. The big wooden buildings are nice. Was way too hot for much though. I think my film melted in my camera.
- Kyoto. Didn't spend nearly enough time here.
Anyway, that's it. Fun. Got hooked on lots of Japanese TV shows. They're brilliant. Also found a respect for J-pop and Visual Kei. I'd recommend for everyone to go. It's very fun.
Anyway, enough rambling.
Elemental
Yay, we're going to fix it. Basically, Void has been deleted, because it's useless and I can't be bothered to have it on the album anymore. Earth, Air, Fire and Water are getting re-recorded with Cubase programming. Air and Water will finally be complete. Light and Dark are good enough without re-recording, Ice sounds shit but I don't care, and Continuum is fucking stupid, so re-recording it is pointless. We're adding a couple of "Bonus Tracks" to it, to add extra time, and because they don't fit the concept. There's going to be a Metal version of Water, and a Dance version of Water. The Dance version is pretty good. There may be some others, but I don't know yet. Should be recorded in the week 26th - 31st October.
To Sever Ties With All Of Mankind
This has been ready to go for ages. Still need to put the finishing touches on Faith in Fated Fey. Will also try and get Chris to see if he can make Night of Samhain any better. If not I'll probably get rid of it. We'll probably work on making Ghostly Notes a real song. I'm also deleting Grim and The Screaming Banshees, because they're pointless.
Metal Opera
Still the same. This won't be ready for ages. a) Because it needs some serious writing work, b) because we need a cast, c) because we need more contacts to get what we need. So, after TST there will be...
Other Projects
That's right. Due to the fact that there'll be a large gap between TST and the Opera, we've decided to keep ourselves busy. Most of them involve covers.
1) Final Fantasy Metal. Chris is going to metal up some Final Fantasy tunes. Black Mages have done it already, but Chris wants to too.
2) Metal Mozart. Chris is going to metal up the entire Requiem.
3) Final Fantasy Remix. Chris again, using the skillz he developed in Music Technology classes.
4) Beethoven Remix. 9th Symphony, I think.
5) Metal Musume. Basically, we're going insane. We're going to turn Morning Musume songs, and songs by several other artists from Hello!Project (Matsuura Aya, W, Milky Way, probably some others) Metal. We've both been bewitched by J-pop, so now we're going to corrupt it. Much fun will ensue. This will be huge, I think we've scouted around 80 songs to cover, so there may be rather a lot of discs if we do release it.
6) Musume Mix. Chris again, remixing Morning Musume.
7) Cobranaconda. Yes, my old psuedonym resurfaces. Basically, I'll probably do a solo project of all the weird stuff I've come up with in the past few years. Experimental. Of course, it won't be solo at all really, but oh well.
8) HV Presents JAPAN! Due to my adventures, I got really inspired. This will be a compilation album presented by us with many different bands all formed of me and Chris. Playing random stuff. First song was "Going In A Circle On The Yamanote Line". I wrote it 2 days ago, and recorded it yesterday, and uploaded it today. It's quite punky, enjoy. It's about the JR lines. Yay. Other songs may be completely different genres. We don't know yet. It's going to be haphazard. This is just silliness though.
So, there you go. Lots of randomness.
I'll next update this thing when we release Elemental. Dunno when that'll be. Might get it CD-fied, might not.
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