shobus diary

japanese people, who are supposedly nature lovers, let the engines of their car or truck run while they're sleeping on parkings

lozi likes to listen to high piercing tones as music while he's driving, and yuko likes to sing along with them

we had a tire explosion last night, and we had the wrecked tire replaced at 6 this morning, yet no one was injured

the mountains around here (we're still driving through all Japan towards Yamaguchi) remind me of Elico's improvised lyrics during our improvisation session the night before yesterday in Iamas (she singing and playing the piano, davide, stephane and me processing it all in real-time with our patch and PAs):

to oku no yama ga moeteru

a oi sora no shita moeteru

moeteru tori ga todekita

ta chisu kuma kimini moeteru

i think it's about a moutain on fire

props to that guy who designed the softopia headquarters, here in ogaki.

kind of rob mallet-stevens related, but not quite

IAMAS & OGAKI closeups and non closeups, misc.

we bid farewell to tokyo this morning at 6, after one last night of war with those bloody mosquitoes - i really was on their side reading you bright and risen angels, but really can't cope with their pernicious moves to drink my blood when it's so damn hot and so damn humid - which actually woke me up at 4.30, all drunk with eagerness to leave when the others really had a hard time getting out of their steamy beds. now we're chilling in iamas, ogaki (well, kind of chilling, as it's even hotter and more humid than tokyo), it's almost two in the morning, i'm typewriting in iamas' garden, using wifi on davide's powerbook, and mehdi and stephane are drawing the drafts for mehdi's fresque on our mighty bus just a few meters before me. yeah, it's here, standing just in front, and it's still hard for me to believe that this has all actually come true, only the swarms of mosquitoes, which keep coming as agressive and pernicious than ever, seeming to keep it real for me. today was all day-dreaming anyway, as my good friend, lovely elico reappeared all too ideally as a student on the campus and we wandered with mehdi and lozi in the supermarkets of ogaki searching for acrylic painting and stuffs or played fake fusion jazz with two guitars with stephane as the afternoon was dying from that nice atelier on the ground floor of the school. i barely slept two hours last night, won't probably sleep much more tonight (the draft thing is just beginning), and i never want that half-asleep, half-dreaming feeling to stop, never want to recover from that numb state which makes everything resemble the soft radiance of a streetlight in the hot ogaki night.

oh, and something really strange happened. just a few minutes after we arrived, as i was roaming on the campus, i saw some little girl playing in the stairs just outside, next to the main entrance, and wondered what a little girl of that age was doing here, in that deserted school. a little while later, as we were having lunch in that very nice restaurant not far, mehdi told me that one of his first concert ever was actually in iamas, in some supposedly haunted room of the building. it used to be an elementary school, or so he said, and some old time story has it that some ghost of a little girl still inhabits the building and sometimes appears to the super learnt students of that super-advanced school of media arts and sciences. oh well. if i am ever to see a ghost in my life, it might as well happen here, and now.

very little time for a proper update yet - but the pics from yesterday's summer session on the roof of plop's building in shibuya-ku are coming. armed with little casual instruments, we played with david and kobayashi, two musicians I really greatly admire, as well as yoyo and ji-ji, and somewhat managed to forget the mighty mercilessness of that nasty Japanese summer sun. nice chat with david, as well, even if timing was way too short. see you in monozokuri school at 5. and don't be late, kiddos.

Nice afternoon of mayhem making in Shinjuku for our second attempt to play outdoors with the portable PAs. First we played a few minutes in a semi empty metro on the Chuo line, but nobody really responded in any way (some girl kept staring at us with her headphones on, kind of missing the point). Then we tried a rather crowded row just near the east side of Shinjuku station and were asked to stop by a shoe shop owner, just as we had forecast ("we're just ramblin' boys, ramblin' around and making noise", as Mister Guthrie would have put it). Eventually, we reached Shinjuku Dôri, which was appropriately closed to traffic, and walked along with the PAs blasting for full effects, dwelling among passers-by and amateur bands and fucking 'round with their own leakings of sound. We ended playing with some cool dancers, their manager kind of forcing us into it, but it was really fun, and got no hostile responses, apart from one seemingly frustrated juggler who threatened me to call the police if we didn't stop and kept poking me in the arm for no decent reason (I'm a very flexible guy, I said to him). Very appropriate apéritif with Yo-Yo chan too, on the top of the Isetan building, to end the session.

nb: the setting really works better when we are either walking in queue, or all in line, as a kind of marching band, and really not working when we are closing up onto ourselves, as an excluding, nerdy cicle. we really ought to work on that. scenography can really be a crucial thing out there in the streets.

Nick and Jean are mentioning us in their respective journal. thanks to them. also, to all people who want to join in the noise making, we will be around shinjuku with the portable PAs all day and evening. we are quite easy to spot. also, for friends musicians and all, we really hope we have time enough to catch up with you before we're leaving for nagoya on wednesday. if we don't, we'll be back in tokyo at the beginning of september.

Amazing Hanabi evening in Oshiage, and all around, yesterday. We understood that the two-hour one we saw is actually the biggest one of them all, which explains the amazingly crowded streets, but also that between Tokyo, Yokohama, Nakano and all the towns around, there are more than 100 during summer. We walked around with Ji-Ji and Lozi, and found our friendly hosts from the factory, who took us to the best of spots - an endless tatami of people, food, and happy, happy faces. Oh yeah, happy. I think that besides the lovely fireworks booming with no interruption between skyscrapers in the clear sky of Tokyo, what we really enjoyed the most was the true, first degree, plain happiness that we could read on people's faces. Cliche n° 678756: people here seem to be enjoying special events in such a simple, almost childish, naive way, it's really a blast for us cranky French people to enjoy their shere enjoyment with them.
We then all headed back to Yahiro for a special private session of home-style hanabi, crab chasing and shoboys improvisation with the sounds of the party (which didn't turn too satisfactory in the end, but that's really not a big issue here) by the river.