I saw this report on Christmas Day, but I’m only getting around to posting it here.
Fuji Fabric lead singer Shimura Masahiko died from yet-unknown illness on Christmas Eve, Bounce.com reports. He was 29 years old. Shimura was the last remaining original member of the band, and he was responsible for all the songwriting. An announcement on the band’s web site states Fuji Fabric’s remaining members will announce later if they will continue. The band’s upcoming performances at RADIO CRAZY and COUNT DOWN JAPAN 09/10 have been canceled.
I’ve been meaning to get Fuji Fabric’s previous album, TEENAGER, and I forgot to pick it up while I was in Japan. Haven’t yet heard CHRONICLE. I’m not the biggest Fuji Fabric fan in the world, but I did like Shimura’s voice. It reminded me of a less-polished, more-charming Kishida Shigeru. He’ll be missed.
One day of the trip was set aside for my brother and me to do our own things. He opted to explore a region outside Kyoto. I wanted to shoot a music video.
I brought a tripod, and I walked around the Higashi Honganji temple, taking random shots of the courtyard and the trees, which were yellowing in the autumn weather. I also spent a few hours lip-syncing to my cover of "Hallelujah", till the hotel staff had to clean the room.
I took a few more exterior shots, then went back to the inn, only to find the room still being made up. So I spent some time in the inn’s salon, where they had a modern version of a player piano. I tried to get through the only three pieces I knew, and the staff members who were eating their lunch at the time asked me if I was a professional musician. Just a hobby, I answered.
I was wearing a suit for the video shoot, and when I saw the staff was done with the room, I decided to head out to lunch in the suit.
Having grown up in Honolulu, I ought to know a tourist trap when I see one. The French Quarter in New Orleans is designed to be a tourist ghetto. Times Square in New York City used to be just tacky, but now it’s a fucking amusement park. I’ve never been to Las Vegas, but I’m already judgmental of it.
It wasn’t until I realized I hadn’t set aside a budget for admission prices that I concluded Kyoto is a tourist trap — a very beautiful and appealing tourist trap, the kind of tourist trap you from which you would happily part with your money.
Kyoto’s main industry, according to teh Wikipediaz, is electronics, but with so many national treasures in one city, tourism is not far behind. Kyoto was once considered a target for the atomic bomb. The world owes a debt of gratitude to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson for stopping that from happening.
My brother prefers Kyoto over other cities, and most of his stays in Japan use Kyoto as his base.
My brother reserved our seats on the Shinkansen from Hiroshima to Kyoto in the evening, but we found ourselves with time to kill before then.
After two full days of walking, neither of us seemed all to keen to maximize our time in Osaka.
My brother had asked me repeatedly what I wanted to see in Osaka, and I had no clue aside from the Dotonbori. By the time we got back to Hiroshima, I was too tired to add anything else to the Osaka excursion, except for the Umeda Sky Building.
So we decided to set out relatively late — 9 a.m. instead of 6 a.m. — and we wouldn’t stay out later than 4 p.m.
The Osaka excursion would be the big shopping day, where we would visit Tower Records, the primary reason for my heading to Japan in the first place.
I held back pretty much all year, not buying anything through the mail, knowing full well I could just get them in one fell swoop. And the trip to Osaka would take care of it.
"If a city was dreaming … then the city is asleep. And I do not fear cities sleeping …. Sleeping cities are tame and harmless things. What I fear … is that one day the cities will waken. That one day the cities will rise."
World’s End, Neil Gaiman
I wanted to mention something about cities having their own character, and I thought of that dialogue in The Sandman. Cities are living things — they have their own character, shaped by the people inhabiting them, by the events happening within them, by the geography surrounding them.
Austin couldn’t be mistaken for Dallas, even though both are located in Texas. New York City couldn’t be mistaken for Honolulu. Hell, Honolulu couldn’t even be mistaken for Kahului.
The cities I visited in Japan are no different. Kyoto reminded me of Honolulu. Tokyo reminded me of New York City or Los Angeles. Osaka — definitely Austin.
Hiroshima is world-renowned for one of the most shocking events in human history. But what else could be said about the city? In terms to its size relative to the likes of Kyoto, Tokyo or Osaka, Hiroshima would be … Galveston, Round Rock, Oakland.
The flight from Honolulu to the Osaka-Kansai airport lasts roughly nine hours. When you’re stuck on a plane for that long, service matters, something Japan Airlines understands.
My brother and I sat in an emergency exit row with a pair of flight attendants seated across from us during take-off. When the two ladies bowed to the cabin before take-off, I had a sense this flight may actually be … nice.
They served food. They served drinks. They even handed out hot towels toward the end of the flight. Flights from the Mainland to Honolulu offered that level of service once upon a time but not anymore. I actually managed to begin and finish Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink on that flight.
A co-worker would later tell me Japan Airlines isn’t doing well financially, and that level of service is pretty anachronistic. But the Japanese market demands it, and I was glad for it.
Little things really tickled me. The video for the emergency procedures was completely animated, and they broadcast the take-off and landing on the video screen. In fact, all the seats in the main cabin included video monitors, allowing you to choose your own in-flight movie, headphones included.
(Ed. note: This entry is cross-posted from my Vox site and was published on Nov. 26, 2009. I planned on writing more entries about the trip there, but I think I’ll do that here. I’ll cross-post there later.)
It’s done.
The trip that has caused so much ambivalence has been completed. I can now say I’ve been to Japan. And yes, I would like to return.
I really only wanted to go there to shop, and shop I did. I didn’t want to go with inflated expectations. Too many people think Hawaiʻi is all grass huts and hula skirts, not realizing Honolulu is a major city like any other city on the Mainland.
I had some notion of what the topography of Japan would look like from media — music videos, anime — but I kept my mind open about everything else. And I’m glad I did.
When I discovered my own subscription plan would be shaved from 65 to 37 tracks a month, my initial reaction was, "Where’s the cancel button?" Of all the major labels with which eMusic could team up, Sony is relatively milquetoast. I would have been far more impressed if they snagged Warner Music Group, or even EMI. But when I think of indie music — even major label-subsidized indie music — Sony is not within the solution set.
But I use eMusic mostly for classical music. And the merger of Sony and BMG back in 2004 meant the consolidation of two of the deepest classical music catalogs. The Sony partnership will reportedly add about 200,000 tracks to the eMusic catalog. It can’t all be Kenny Chesney and Alicia Keys.
So for the time being, I’ll be sticking around eMusic to see how the classical offerings turn out. If I’m not impressed, I’m out of there. Hopefully, Lala will still be around.
Still got nothing. Still listening. Still letting the backlog grow. So how about some pictures?
One of the birthday gifts I gave to myself was a score to George Crumb’s Black Angels. I’ve only ever seen an excerpt of this score shrunk down to fit the size of a college textbook (the Norton Anthology of Music, to be exact.) I’ve never seen the actual score.
