oooooh the bass, or, my first dubstep night.

these peoples played-click image for homepage

rebel familia-click image for bio and homepage

so,…

its been said that you wont really appreciate a dubstep until you hear it on a big system, for it is then and only then that you get it.

unless you happen to be loaded and have a huge massive club like sound system in your den, even the best speakers simply cant convey the pure physicality (?) of the low frequencies emitted by the bass heavy dubstep.

for past year i have been lurking on the dubstep forum, fascinated by the ecclectic sounds and the ultra low frequency bass that you can on some of the dubs and mixes on that site.

saddly, being stuck in a desert with no venues meant that the closest thing to experiencing a dubstep night was purchasing a pair of sony in ear headphones. so yeah i got my bass fix by jamming those earphones as far as possible into my ear canal that the sub bass notes would vibrate my brain. thankfully they were pretty good earphones so i didnt have to jam them so far as to induce bleeding.

the first thing on my list of things to do in tokyo was a dubstep night, but life got in the way and i didnt make it until Goth-Trad’s Back to Chill night on the 5th of February.

the venue was club asia in shibuya.

“ahh many bitches”

“really?”

“so, so,…. meato marketo ne”

hmmm,…. not a good sign i thought.

and i was going on my own since my friends were all working, the next day being friday, oh and they’d never heard of the genre. so yeah, que endless jokes of picking up someone so i would have something to do while waiting for the trains to start in the mornings.

forunately, club asia is split into 3 levels. the pick up meato marketo bit was down stairs in a bar type setting where there was a mix of locals and foreigners bouncing on a mix of billboard top 40, j-pop and hormones. not that theres anything wrong with that, just not my thing. the second floor was another bar type place, but with an open floor design, playing hip hop. it was rather deadish.

the dubstep took place on a 3rd level which was midway between 1 and 2 and slightly to the back,… so it could have still been on the 1st floor actually.

this was a pure stage and audience/dance floor layout, and it was one of the most chilled out dance floors i have ever seen. not dead, there were quite a few people there, but just very chilled people. even when the rebel familia played their flavour of drum and bass, it was hyper but not agro as can sometimes be the case.

and ooooh the bass!

i scanned the layout of the speakers as i walked in and i picked what i thought would be the best spot. later i would realise that this was a wasted effort as the venue was quite intimate for a club and as such the bass just flooded every single spot.

and omfg the bass!

with some forms of music, the music is there and its up to you to make the effort to dance. with this, the bass is such a powerful physical force that it almost feels like its moving your body for you, encourageing you, until you simply succumb to the sub frequencies, and any self conciousness, and you start to ride the waves of pressurised air. the sound has been liked to being underwater, or being in the womb, and i really cant describe it any better than that. if you have ever been in the ocean, or a wave pool,… its like that.

so yeah it got my feet tapping something wicked, and at one point i thought i was getting too old for this stuff as it felt like my heart was double timing,… only i wasnt out of breath, and since dubstep is hardly “fast” music, i really shouldnt have been tired at all. it turns out that it was the bass of a particular song which kept time with my heart, but half a beat behind making it feel like my heart was doing double duty.

and yes the bass gets that deep inside you.

i think i felt my pancreas vibrate.

since i like my jeans on the relaxed baggier side, my jeans vibrated.

i havent had my head shaved in a couple months, so i could feel the bass vibrate my hair.

and even though i’ve lost a bit of weight, the bass reminded me i still have some flab to lose by vibrating my stomach fat.

i could feel the jiggles.

and it makes me wonder what it would be like to be obese and at a dubstep night,…. you know more surface area for the bass to impact on and all that.

the best thing about that night though is that, had it not been for the drum and bass and the sometimes shrill high frequencies that come with that sound, i would have walked out of the club with my hearing intact. as it was, i could hear much better than if it had been a regular night of any other music, you can even talk to other people without screaming your head off. and recovery time for my ears was swift,… they were pretty much back to normal the following evening. the focus on the subsonic frequencies means you can turn it to “melt a kitten” loud and all it would do is make the bass stronger.

it makes me think actually,… there are many directions for dubstep to go into, and it is splintering already, and the formulaic stuff has already started to establish itself, both amongst punters and producers,…. but i wonder if perhaps one offshoot of dubstep might be a branch that emphasises the subsonic even more. like even less hi to mid frequencies, just enough to prop up the rythm, but much much more sub,  so much so that one might even question if it may be classed as music any more.

hows this for a quote:

the future of music is subsonic.

or this:

high frequencies bore me.

shit i have been waffleing for much too long.

so to wrap things up,…

dj 100 mado was/were wicked, rebel familia i wasnt expecting, but they put on an amazing show, and goth-trad,… man nothing compares. greg g spun some jungle which was great and really took me back.

and in japan,…. when it says that a dj will go on at 2:50am, they do literally beging their sets at 2:50am, on the dot. i’ve never seen musicians or dj’s who could actually compete with japan rail in a punctuality contest.

if you get the chance, go to a dubstep night. even if you have to travel, if its your first time, it will be worth it.

and dont worry about being an old fart, i was delighted to see that i wasnt the oldest basshead there like thought i might be.

if youre deaf, and youre reading this, then definately go. i remember reading an article during the early days of hip hop about how deaf kids really dug hip hop cos of the bass. well hip hop lost its bass years ago, but my god have i got the perfect replacement for you guys.

the izakaya katoriya

once in a while, you come across a little gem of a place that flips your preconceptions 180 degrees, and gives you a nice new perspective on this odd world of ours.

“lets go to katoriya tonight!”

“ok, izakaya right?”

“yes but this one is unique”

ummm ok,…

i’ve been to izakayas before, you know those little places that serve you a couple of drinks and grill any part of a chicken that you happen to have a hunger for,…. except maybe for the drumstick of thigh or breast. other than those, which i dont think i have ever seen anyone eat, they have every other part of a chicken, a few choice cuts of pork and or beef offal, and a few veggies.

preconception 1: katoriya sounded more like “quattoria” or some sort of “pseudo-spanish-italian language name-murdered-by-the-japanese” name, like a mutated “trattoria” of sorts.

preconception 2: so if i’m right, it might be a fancy shmancy izakaya, like an “izakaya-starbucks” or something, complete with easy listening music.

this is one of those times that i love being wrong.

just round the corner from jyugaoka station on the toyoko line, is this:  KATORIYA.

see literally ka-to-ri-ya,.... so not pseudo-spanish-italian after all

phewww,….

so not a starbucks izakaya then!

but then, it kinda just looks like a regular one,….

these guys are refered to as "masters" like any other izakaya.

as it turns out, this place did do chicken breast…….

well “do” is putting it loosely,… they basically just cut it up and you get chicken sashimi.

raw fish, pffft, childs play,…

raw beef,… i like my steaks to still have a heart beat, sitting in a pool of blood and gravy on my plate,….

raw chicken?

umm salmonella?

i hadnt realised until then just how programmed somethings can be,…. living in the west, we are programmed not to under cook chicken, to wash the knife and cutting board after raw meat, especially chicken,…

so this was the first thing in japan that i actually had second thoughts about trying,… ( normally anything edible is half way down my throat before they finish asking if i have ever eaten so and so).

you basically dip it into karashi, japans yellow mustard which is like english mustard, and there you have it, chicken sashimi,….

and it was quite alright actually,…

not something i would go out hunting for again,… but atleast my salmonella hangup is apparently now at bay.

as i write, there is a story about salmonella being found in peanut butter,… hmmmm,….

the various "bits" of various animals you can order

its hard to convey in writing what it was that made this place “special”.

but it was basically the choice of music, which in any establishment sets the mood and ambience of a place.

and the master just happened to have a thing for both american country and western and some golden oldies from the 60’s and 70’s,….. i think i even heard some from the 50’s.

and thats not all,…

if you happen to be american and over say 40, then i’m pretty sure you’ll recognise some classic advertising jingles as well. and while i am neither american or over 40, even i recognised some from the movies i’ve watched over the years. in between johnny cash, and the carpenters, was an old heinz ketchup jingle followed by the theme tune to hawaii 5-0 and dallas.

“wtf” indeed, but it did make the place very special.

its the kind of place you might see inthe next tarantino film.

infact, if i ever write or direct a film, there will most certainly be a scene at katoriya.

the menu

you can either order specific things, or just have the master give you whatever he wants. kind of like telling the waitress to “surprise you”, probably where the master nic comes from.

deep fried, then grilled tofu covered in spring onions and a bbq sauce

grilled chicken skin,.... my mouth jumped for joy,... my arteries, not so much

now lets see, gizzards, skin, heart, intestines, liver, kidney, stomach, didnt have the brain cos i’ve had brains of other animals, lungs, colon i think, beef heart, chicken pancreas i think, their mobile phone dictionary didnt really translate too well, oh and some bell peppers and onions.

yup i think thats it.

oh and we asked the master what was behind the name,….

he didnt know, and he’s been working there for 25 years.

and as usual on the weekend, we ended the night at nakamura ramen, only this time i had the ketsumen, which is ramen noodles in a bowl which you dip into another bowl with the flavouring.

its hard to believe, wha with japanese food being so healthy, but i think i could get very fat here.

so its a good thing that i tend to get lost and wind up walking for hours on end.

mmmmm cables,.....

nakamuraya: the best ramen in tokyo, and dumplings.

just on the edge of the neighbourhood i live in, on a little patch of land next to highway intersection that leads you to meguro, is a little tiny shop with the best ramen in tokyo, if not the world.

Nakamuraya seats, at most, 8 very thin people.

and is run by 3 guys.

but not 3 at a time,…. oh no,… this place is open almost roun the clock,… they take a little break before the breakfast rush i think, which means its 1 guy running the show at any one time.

so this guy takes the orders, cooks up the ramen, serves it, takes your empty bowl and washes it and then tells you how much you owe him.

anywhere else and this would be a job for atleast 4 people.

oh and he also does the thing you see in the bowl up there,….. its hot chilli power in hot chilli oil,…. heaven on the palette, hell on the digestive system.

your average ramen costs about 600 – 700 yen which is about US$7-8, cheap and good eats in tokyo, and definately the best ramen i have ever had. the char siu pork and negi(spring oinions) ramen is absolutley gorgeous, and i will take a picture of it next time,…. if i remember….

and then they have this jumbo ramen challenge:

5 ramens in one bowl and 30 minutes to finish it. if you dont it costs 2,000yen or about US$22.

no, no t-shirt or anything, just your name on the wall.

and yes, i was stupid enough to try it.

and yes thats a regular pair of disposable chopsticks, so you can see just how big the bowl was.

“wow, this is turning out to be a very stupid idea” i heard myself murmuring when i saw the size of the bowl.

and no i didnt make it.

and one week later i think the roof of my mouth has finally healed from the 3rd degree burns i put it through.

the thing is, it is absolutely scalding hot, half of the ramen stays under the soup so continues to soak up the soap and get heavier, and the shop is so hot and tiny that i came out of there drenched in sweat.

i made it half way thru though,… so 2.5 bowls of ramen.

i guess it doesnt help either that being in japan for a couple months has shrunken my stomach some what as well.

ah well, there is always next year.

the next day, i could still feel the ramen in my gut expanding,… it truelly was a stupid idea.

despite all the food consumed so far, dinner was pretty cool.

we went down to kamata, which to all you flashy tokyo urbanites, is where your 7-11 check out girl lives, where your cab driver lives, where your office cleaner lady lives.

we hit this chinese restaraunt, which was the first chinese restaraunt i’ve seen with actual chinese people eating,… always a good sign, and always something i look out for when sourcing not so local food in a new city.

they speicalise in gyoza, or fried dumplings, such as these:

300 yen for 10 of them,.... so yeah we ate a helluvalot

mmmm, i should go back there for dinner tonight,...

packed with pork and chinese cabbage, they were ridiculously juicy,…. so much so that if you do go, and order them, i wouldnt dig into them as soon as the waitress puts them down,…

you are liable to squirt the soup inside all over your trousers if youre not careful.

i wasnt careful.

exact address? no idea, but head to kamata, and you’ll find a lil shopping arcade.

its in there, the one with the lil old lady in the window making dumplings.

some of the guys i stay with didnt make it that night so we will definately head back there again.

the view from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office

hows about a touristy post?

as with any city with a halfway decent underground railway system, its easy not to appreciate the true scale of a city.

Tokyo is massive,….

actually, no, tokyo is “massives” bigger brother.

now you could go to the tokyo tower, and pay something like 1,500 yen or about US$17 to go up and take a few pictures,….

or you could go to the tokyo met govt office in shinjuku and go up 2 towers for free.

i likes me free stuff, and apparently the met office is higher than the tokyo tower so it was pretty much a no brainer.

there are 2 towers and you can go up both.

take the one on the left its normally less crowded, i forget if it was the north or the south one, but its the one on the left when you get to the doors.

see, it just goes on and on,...

look real close, the lil' blue things, its a homeless villiage with blue tarp.

and its so dense that the sunlight shimmers on rooftops like it would on an ocean

someones head,....

fellow gawkers

designed by tange, the details were stunning

machinelike? very much so, but beautiful nonetheless.

i'm pretty sure i've seen this view in a movie somewhere

chillin’ around kyoto

ahhh kyoto,….

you read about how it used to be the capital and how the geisha train here, and all that conjures up images old world charm etc, etc,…..

but the minute the step out of the station it looks prety much like any other grid based town. and you would be forgiven for thinking that you might have gotten off the train at a wrong “kyoto”.

but trudge through the urban grid, (not that urban grids are horrible, i actually prefer them) and you’ll get to old hilly and twisty pathways that will give your boots a challenge.

the green "WALK" light is accompanied with a peppy little tune to carry you to the other side.

"hungry hippos" anyone?

just outside the grid

and here come the shrines:

Sanjusan gendo – perhaps the coolest buddhist temple/hall type thing i have ever been to. inside is a massive 1000 hand statue of Kannon, a representation of buddha,….. not that the statue actually had a thousand hadns i dont think. but it had a helluvalot.

the most impressive bit was that it was flanked on either side by smaller statues, angels i believe, and there were 1,000 of them.

its a bitch that they didnt let us take photos cos with the sunlight diffusing through the paper walls, the lighting was dark but incredibly spiritual and i would have loved to have gotten some pictures.

and then off to Kiyomizu dera:

the japanese equivalent to “its all or nothing” or “GERONIMOOOOOOOO!!!” refers to this place, as in:

“johnny really wants to get that job”

“yeah i know, hes jumped off the Kiyomizu deck”

it loses something in the translation,….

geronimoooooo.......

the decking's structure

and then it was time to stalk some maikosan aka geisha:

of course my travel buddies had to go and burst my bubble by saying that they probably werent real maikosan,…. just chinese toursits,….

which frankly should have occured to me.

bugger,….

old school kyoto once again:

snack time:

tako yaki, doughy balls of octopus yumminess,... i ate one before thinking of taking a picture.

we spent the night near kobe

residents of japan seem to really dislike the wires and cables that you see everywhere.

i really love them.

where ever you go there will always be this one little thing that is evocative of the place, sometimes a smell, or a sound, anything, something that no matter where you happen to be, takes you back to where you once were.

stepping in dog shit anywhere reminds me of paris, where 90% of my explorations had my eyes glued to the streets watching for particularly pungent bogeys.

the smell of yucky oil takes me back to england and the fish and chips and stodgy heavy english breakfasts at greasy spoon cafes, the kind you always regret during you shit the next day.

new york? thats easy, the smell of pretzels and steam from the gutters.

the middle east,…. hummus and almost anykind of grilled meat.

japan,… the wires.

its like wearing your veins on the outside.

in a sense i suppose the illicit the same sense of fascination as the first time i heard of that mad german doctor that stripped dead peoples skins and put them on display,… theres something about seeing the life lines of a nation or a city.

on a recent walk in daikanyama, it was all flashy but it felt very dead,… i mean flashy yuppie places are always kinda dead to me but mainly it was because they tuck their cables away neatly.

what a shame.

and the other thing,….

this and every light like this that has multiple settings so it can dim like this.

last time i was in japan was well over 20 years ago and i was little kid, so i dont recall hardly anything,…

until we lay down on the tatami that night, said our oyasumi’s and pulled the cord so turn off the light.

thats when i remebered seeing this as  a kid.

kinda deja vu but not,…

and no it didnt bring back a flood of memories,….

it was more like, ” ahh! that thing!!!”

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…………….

prayers at meiji jingu

so a friend of a friend got back to japan on the 1st and still hadnt done his trip to the shrine thing yet, so a visit to the meiji jingu (shrine) was in order,…..

just around the corner of harajuku is where meiji jingu is located,… altho you would never guess it if you were only there to visit harajuku. you have to love meiji jingu and harajuku can co-exist in the same space. you could quite easily be in one and not be aware of the other.

barrels of sake,.....enough for everyone to have a bloody good year.

barrels of beer,... i think,.. well it was alcohol of some sort.

the first tori / gate

these lanterns had company names on them, presumably as a thank you for a very nice donation.

seriously, advertising in japan of one form or another is on a whole other level.

meiji jingu traffic report on a massive screen

consideration,...

or your new year might not be a very happy one

it wasnt too bad.

it took about 20 minutes of shuffling to get to this point

chuck cash,.... pray,...

i cant quite decide whether this guy has a great job or a shitty job.

on the one hand, youre doing a great deed working for the shrine cleaning up all the money being thrown into the pit.

on the other hand, as you can see, you have to wear a helmet. a high velocity 500 yen coin is no laughing matter.

even more disconcerting, people doent just throw one, sometimes its a handfull of coins of varying weight and denomination,… imagine that flying at you!

the collector

i think next year i will buy my local cash collector a hockey mask.

imagine that,…. new years eve prayers and you come face to face with jason.

you tie your fortune on the fence on your way out

New years eve and new years breakfast in Tokyo

New years eve and new years day in Japan are both unlike anything i have ever experienced before.

It is much more of a family holiday than anywhere else I have been, and it usually begins a few days before when enough food is made to last the first 3 days of the new year. Basically its a time saving thing as new years normally involves alot of visiting of friends and relatives, leaving little time for mum to make lunch and dinner. But it pretty much involved into a whole new years traditional, to the point that the food made is mostly old school traditional japanese food.

So instead of getting drunk, as is the custom elsewhere, the family chills at home on new years eve, perhaps watching a special new years eve singing contest on NHK.

Then shortly before midnight everyone heads to a temple or shrine to usher in the new year with prayers to the gods.

the path to yasukuni shrine

it looks like aot of people, but traditional japanese orderliness made sure that we got to the front in under 15 minutes, and i dont think i was pushed or nugded even once.

almost there,.....

with a bit of spare change (130 yen ~$1.75) and a prayer for not so crappy markets, I waited my turn.

after my turn, other people also praying for not so crappy markets,... i think....

freezing boy scouts, you would think they would have let them stand closer to the fire

grilled seafood snacks on sale

its a plum on a stick i think, covered in various sweet thingies, kept chilled on ice blocks

then breakfast the next day:

no coffee for breakfast, instead it was a shot of sake to start the first breakfast of the new year, i could get used to this hehe...

I have no idea what most of these things were called but it was all absolutely delicious!

Happy New Year everyone!

On onsen

Public bathing has never been something I’ve really ever been taken with.

Quite the opposite actually.

We didn’t have showers in high school, so movie scenes of communal bathing always seemed to freak me out on some level. Not a major freak out mind you, but a freak out none the less.

One weekend it was announced that we would be heading up to the hills at Hakone, perhaps have a stroll, go hiking, oh and there’s this great Chinese restaurant on a hill that makes great mabo tofu ( a kind of asian bolognaise sauce, only with tofu added).

Whoohoo!

Fresh mountain air and great Chinese food,…. Who wouldn’t want to go?

Half way up the hill: “ …and they have a great onsen, have you ever been? No? ahhh so this will be your first time,…. You will enjoy it,” said a guy I had only just met 30 minutes ago.

I will?

Cue slight freak out.

Luckily, my first onsen wasn’t busy at all.

But as with many other first times, you’re too busy having a mild anxiety attack to really take it all in. Not that there was a lot to take in:

1- Wash yourself while sitting on a stool.

2- Get into hot as hell water.

3- Refrain from staring.

That’s really all there is to it.

It’s the “in-betweens” that trip you up as an onsen noob.

You’ll be given a towel. Well not really a towel. It’s made of towel material and looks like a towel,….

It just happens to be about the same size as a handkerchief.

And yes, you’re expected to dry yourself with it afterwards. Unless you brought another bigger towel, in which case you can use the smaller one as a loofah, or pop it on your head to cool yourself down while your lower half boils.

You’ll either get a locker or a shelf,… or a shelf with a basket. What you do with the first two are pretty obvious, you dump your shit there. You also dump your stuff into the basket, but the idea is that when you’re done, you turn the basket over to a) let the next person know that you’re done and its free, and b) you haven’t forgotten anything in the basket.

I would imagine that most people reading this will be used to showering while standing. And come to think about it, there is generally more standing in western culture than there is crouching. I think.

My travels throughout Asia tend to suggest that crouching is actually quite popular, and Japan is no different from the rest of its Asian neighbors. A lot of crouching goes on here, traditional Japanese toilets being the first obvious example. But open your eyes and take a good look around and you’ll see quite a few crouchers in everyday life and in Japanese popular culture, open a manga or watch a movie and I’m pretty sure you’ll see a lot of crouching going on. It seems to be the physical equivalent to the term “non-chalant”.

So get good at crouching before heading to an onsen. You don’t have to be really good at it, so heavier readers can relax. You just need to be good enough to lower your ass onto the plastic stool at a decent velocity so that you don’t tip over backwards,…. Or worse, miss it completely, but, manage to recover before falling by doing some odd contortionist routine while frantically trying to locate the slippery plastic stool underneath you somewhere, with one leg in the air.

Landing on my ass would have been less of a spectacle.

But don’t worry, after your second or third onsen, you wind up developing “ass radar” and subsequent landings are usually not as eventful as your first couple of times.

You could always decide to go hardcore and just crouch without a stool if you’re particularly good at crouching.

You want to soap up every part of your body and then rinse it all off before hitting the bath. The “bath” is for bathing and not washing so the washing occurs outside the bath.

Everything above applies to both the mens and the womens section.

Since women don’t really have dangly bits to worry about, any female readers can skip the next bit.

Us guys have one more issue that needs to be addressed, that of onsen navigation and tackle etiquette.

Onsen normally have atleast two pools or one big ass pools that you need navigate your way around.

Since most guys, straight or gay, would rather not have a stranger’s junk inches away from ones face, and since finding a suitable spot will mean walking past guys who are sitting at penis eye level, there are a number of options:

1- The towel block puts that little handkerchief to good use, making sure no unwanted flopping occurs.

2- The hand block does the same in its simplest form, with your hand in the form of a karate chop saving the seated from an unwanted dick exhibition. In its slightly more complex form, this can be converted into a “cup” if you so wish,….but that just didn’t seem right when I saw it happen. Don’t get me wrong, I was greatfull,….but it seemed slightly off.

3- The ass display,…..how much better this is compared to a full frontal unblocked display I suppose is a matter of self preference.

4- Finally, there is the traditional “bowed and hand chopping the air” move that is practiced everywhere in Japan. You can use this as well, and I personally prefer this as the handchopping distracts ones attention, while the bowed posture obscures and limits any flopping-ness.

Other than that, all you have to do is get over the fact that you’re in a big bathtub with a bunch of complete strangers and then you can start to enjoy the experience.

If your apartment comes with its very own onsen, then you might just get addicted and decide to skip your morning shower in favor of a morning shower at the onsen, most of which are open round the clock (except for cleaning time). Winter times are especially great as the hot steam in the onsen beats a cold bathroom any day.

One of my all time best ‘Japanese experiences’ has to be the onsen in Hokkaido, not so much for the onsen, as there was nothing particularly special about it, except that they had an outdoor pool.

So I was sat in a boiling hot stone pool,……outside,……watching the snow fall.

If you happen to be in Japan in the winter, then a trek up to an onsen in snowy Hokkaido is a small price to pay for the most Japanese of Kodak moments.

All I was missing was a red assed saru monkey.

Asakusa at night

Most people go during the day, but i find night time in Tokyo to be much more interesting,… and i had a dinner appointment in one of the back alley restaruants that line the streets behind Asakusa.

it is alot quieter at night. the place actually kinda dies around 7pm,… which was when i got there, unfortunately. my dinner companion kept commenting on how empty it was but it looked like enough people were there.

"empty" by japanese standards,....

which i suppose is true when you consider the sheer amount of people that were at the kyoto shrines,…. to be blogged about later,….

these drew just as much attention for being retro as the shrine,.... they were pretty hi-tech for something so retro

and the restaruant was somewhere down these back streets,….

assisted GPS on a keitai can be a wonderful thing when neither of you know where youre supposed to be going.