Hola. So Giita and Iris jetted off to Scotland on August 1st and on to Iceland two days later. They were due to go to a summer house today to laze about! After they went off, Colin (who was visiting) and Cormac and I wandered about a bit before Colin went for his train, then I had my last Kujira gig. Lib Apathy, Cormac and my recent favourites, were playing too. They didn’t quite meet our expectations, but were still enjoyable as only a garage rock band with a bald shouting Einar Orn-style figure can be. The Kujira gig was our best yet and the following day we went into the Rock Commune practice room and Naoki recorded our ten songs. We got the live tracks done in 90 minutes, then added guitar and ad-lib vocals and all was done by mid-afternoon. Here’s our final picture after all was finished.

 

The following day was Cormac’s birthday. He was supposed to go to Hiroshima but a typhoon warning put paid to that, so we spent the afternoon in town and went for lunch at Cafe Sugary, which was, predictably, filled with delicious treats.

That evening was the departure to the mountains of Nagano for the Rock Commune gasshuku (training camp) which turned out to be a very Japanese affair. We assembled at college at 10pm with our instruments and boarded an overnight bus. Japanese people can, as I’ve mentioned before, generally sleep anywhere, but for me this wasn’t a good start. Still, Naoki gave a cap as a present, as worn by a favourite ex-Commune drummer of his, and got one for himself.

We arrived at our destination in the Kita Shiga Mountain area of Nagano prefecture at around 7am, a big rambling minshuku (cheapish Japanese inn, like a ryokan with worse food and dust) called the Resort In. One N. We were assigned rooms, some people went off to rehearse and I went to bed. The inn is a ski resort in winter and in the summer is set up for bands to rehearse. The main part has a big dining room and reception, then two floors of tatami mat rooms. Then in the basement is another big tatami room and male and female communal baths with hot spring water in them. Then, down a corridor, is a big damp room filled with insects. Off the big damp room are 4 practice rooms with amps and drums that are even damper, and there are a couple more upstairs. Here’s a view from the front.

At midday we assembled in the dining room, where the neat-haired old man who ran the place, aided by the ladies who remained almost out of sight, had laid out our food, with one veggie plate laid on for me. The usual custom in Japan, as at home, is to wait for everyone to arrive for food. However, when everyone had, Naoki (as leader) instructed us all to put our hands together and say itadakimasu (giving thanks for the food) together before we could begin. This is how every meal began. When everyone was finished (no scraps to be left! Mottainai! (Wasteful!)) the names of the bands taking part were called out and they could choose a practice time. There were something like 40 bands, almost all cover bands, due to play and I was in 8. The rest of the day was spent practicing, with food at 6. I finished my practice at 1am but some people went on far later.

At 8am the following morning, some lilting, melancholy and very bland piano music was piped throughout the inn, and the owner’s voice gently intoned over the top that we should make our way to the dining hall for breakfast. This also happened every day. I went to watch him do it twice and he clearly took great pleasure in it and didn’t let any of the ladies steal his thunder. And his hair was very neat. Then the gentle music would continue for the next 2 hours, in styles ranging from bland/melancholy to bland/jaunty and back again. In between that day’s rehearsal I went for a walk in the forest nearby. The place was teeming with insects and they gave me a good biting. Nonetheless, it was very pleasant aside from the constant clanging of guitars and bashing of drums. It seems that not only the Resort In, but every hotel and guesthouse in the area opens it’s doors to the hairy Japanese youth from music circles. I should have known that this place was too obscure for us to have got there by chance. It later turned out that the Commune had gone to a place 10 minutes down the road last year. After walking through the forest, I found myself on a hillside plain with snowlifts with the sounds of brass instruments in the air. I thought at first they were playing something avant-garde, but on closer listening worked out that they were repeatedly playing the ‘are you lonely just like me’ bit from Pretty Woman entirely out of time with each other and getting many of the notes wrong.

When we first came over, Giita read that Japan was an insect-lover’s dream. We couldn’t imagine that there really were insect lovers, but apparently so. They sell enormous bugs at festivals and when we went to the Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum there were pictures he had drawn of his favourites. Giita was less impressed a few weeks ago when a 4 inch cockroach appeared in our living room. Saeko too seemed less than pleased when I returned from my walk and threw my empty bottle into the bin, prompting a huge cricket to jump out, but I managed to coax him into a bag and put him outside. Here’s a photo of Atsutoshi, my roommate, proving how fond he is of insects.

I wasn’t speaking that much and really struggling with my Japanese, which only seemed to come together on the last day, but since most of the time was spent practicing, it didn’t really matter. I had been supposed to play drums in a Drive Like Jehu copy band, but it didn’t happen due to lack of interest, so I checked the guitar parts for a song on the internet on my phone, it didn’t seem too hard, so I tried singing and playing guitar, while Naoki drummed and Gaku from Kujira, an avid Jehu fan, played bass. It wasn’t great, but it was loud!

That photo is from our afternoon-long gig with all of the bands on the last full day. The other ones I played in were Recycled Rune (Rune with Saeko on drums, me on bass, both of us singing, while Miki played glockenspiel), Can (me singing on a song from Delay, which I messed up a bit), Cardigans (backing vocals), Yoeko Kurahashi (a big band styled song, drums), Joss Paradise Orchestra (the name wasn’t my idea - a 5 minute unrehearsed jam thing), Hanshin Tigers (Atsutoshi’s Emo band, drums) and Deerhoof (drums), which was the final band of the day. An Arab On Radar copy band was ditched at the last minute because it sounded awful. Typically, within 10 minutes of the 2pm start, some people were drunk and misbehaving/falling over/asleep, but the whole marathon was pretty fun. We finally finished at 8 or so. Here’s Miki, Naoki and I after our Deerhoof songs that ended with Naoki falling over the drums and being caught by me.

Then there was a wee fireworks display, after which most people stayed up all night playing video games (Super Smash Brothers on the N64) or talking, other than me, who feared the mammoth bus ride the next morning. Predictably, the others all looked ruined at breakfast. We had a quick and very sweaty 20 minute game of football, before assembling in the hall to bow to the owner. People were sneezing and coughing from a combination of sleep deprivation and the chronic damp smell in the basement, and there was total silence on the bus home as everyone other than Naoki and I went to sleep. And here are the sleepy assembled after we got back to Ritsumeikan at 6pm.

So that was my last Rock Commune do, although Naoki and Atsutoshi have organised a goodbye party for me on Saturday, which will have lots of Communers and recent graduates at it. After getting home, I met Cormac for some okinomiyaki. He’d spent the previous days in Hiroshima, Osaka, Kobe and Tokyo, getting the last shinkansen home every day. A little less fancy was our trip to Arashiyama the following day, where we walked around sweating.

As the temperatures have reached 40 degrees, that’s more or less what we’ve been doing since. Anyway, my internet cafe bill is running, so I’ll end here. Cheerio!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 8:46 am and was written when Joss was feeling jumblings, sad, smiley, music.