Japandamonium!!!

Just got back from a night of "jazz" at a neat hidden kind of ritzy club on the outskirts of Imabari. It was a trio of drums, guitar and a vocalist, and if they were kind of a one-trick pony they still sounded pretty great. The singer had a great voice, she really did what she did really well, but it wouldn't have been that captivating without the free-drink vouchers that came with entry (and amongst their ten kinds of liquor they had Bailey's to make me very happy and classy feeling). But it was a really fun night. Shalini, my downstairs neighbor, and I got picked up by Hiroka, a woman we met at the Imabari-shi gaijin welcome party last week. She knows Neil pretty well - he's my new Irish friend - because he does a radio show, and she helps run the station. So I told Neil how cool I thought it would be to do a radio show, and he passed it on to Hiroka, and it looks like come October I might have my very own block of broadcast time! If knowledge is a virus then suddenly I'm transmissible by airwave my friends. Who knows what kind of trouble I can get myself in now. I'll try to record the shows onto MD so I can send them home. Hey, maybe I can do a podcast! The opportunities for mischief go fractile.

The club was neat and hidden in a darkened hillside near a school and behind a project, and was super classy and filled with all kinds of trendstery people, most of them 30's or later 20's, but because we were with Hiroka everyone was excited to meet us and really happy to have us there. Right as we were handing in our tickets at the door a guy with a TV or high-style video cam came up and said "Camera! Ok? Ok!?! Please!" Sure! Of course it's okay! So he pulls the ticket reciept and drink stubs out of my hand and gives them back to the woman at the table and gives my ticket back to me, and pointing the camera at our hands, says "Ok! DOZO! GO!" And we hand in our tickets again. And get our stubs and vouchers. And wave once at the camera. But the cameraman was really happy.

A good time with Neil, who may well become my close friend in JAPAN. A cool guy, very relaxed but smart and interested in things, and funny and raucous without being a gaijin party-kid like a lot of folks seem to be that I meet. Our best moment tonight came when the singer lady took up one of those little egg-shaped maraca shakers to accompany a song and held it facing her body, with the back of her hand and three fingers turned out towards the crowd and her pinkey and thumb totally hidden behind the egg. After the first minute of the song, I lean over to Neil and say, "She looks kind of like a velociraptor." He almost breaks down laughing, and says he was thinking the same thing but never imagined anyone else in the world would agree with him. Velociraptors remained a discussion point for the rest of the evening. Did I mention how classy this place was? Very classy.

Allison gets not one but two honorable mentions this evening, first for calling me from the street in Himeji while I was in the Jazz club and shouting, "Can you hear this??" It was the Mario Brothers music, being played in what may have been a spontaneous outburst from a street performance trio. Second for telling me when I'd gotten home and was feeling kind of at a loss for myself to go take a bath and read a book, which is what I'm about to do; the bathwater's been filling while I've been writing and now it's probably nice 'n' steamy. I'm going to be especially naughty tonight and just go right for the bath, barbarian style, instead of scrubbing down first. Take that civilization! I can bathe like a barbarian!

Okay, I go bathtime now