Japan Recap 2-23

Posted by Yuka as Hot Cities, Japan

for the 6th consecutive visit: Did NOT attend a baseball game. This pisses me off. Also, got bad news about my favorite Team name: The Nippon Ham Fighters. It turns out it’s parent corporation is Nippon Ham. That makes their name the Nippon Ham FIGHTERS, rather than the much-more-epic Nippon HAM FIGHTERS.

-Walked around Osaka Castle, which name derives from the site it was built on (1598), which was originally the site of the first White Castle. Or something….most of the signs were in Japanese.

-Ate stuff off a big grill in the middle of the table…basically unsupervised Beni Hana; Big pancakes with spicy mayo; Gooey brown stuff that you would use a little personal spatula to pull bites off of.

-Fun performance on a large Tokyo radio station, where they requested as a bonus that we play our Obama Inaug song, Movin In. We protested that we didn’t know how to play it, then played 10 seconds or so to prove it. That’ll show ‘em!

-Ate other stuff….egg sandwiches! Ramen! Shrimp balls (much bigger than I thought they would be)!

-Naoko from Shonen Knife brought her family to Osaka, and passed out their new album ‘Supergroup’. Hadn’t seen her in maybe 7 years, extracted a promise she would let us sit in on ‘Sushi Bar’ from their Happy Hour record. We sang on it in 1997 while visiting them in the studio in Tokyo, 19997(?). Kazu, Naoko, CB, Aki

-Saw also Aki and Kazuto from Electric Eel Shock. Kazu took me and Andrew around town on our last day.

-Discovered Japanese ‘vodka’/sake alternative: Shochu! I prefer potato shochu as it turns out, and like to enjoy a dozen of them or so after a nice meal.

-Went to two excellent post gig dinners, with lots of plates and cups and bowls and rolls and beers. And Shochu. And Shochu.

-Went to two even more excellent post gig/post dinner bars that were ALL VINYL…Andrew spun the wax at the 2nd one for awhile until for logistics purposes he convinced them to let him plug his ipod into the system. Easier to keep a hand free for Shochu! -Saw our good friends from Sony days, Yuriko and Charlie. Yuriko translated for us during the pre Tokyo press day. Just like old times! Charlie was our product manager back then….when he took us to the first ALL VINYL bar, the owner/DJ stopped what he was doing to pour him a Guinness, and have it ready by the time he sat down. Charlie is a serious rocker, and gets serious rocker props.

ARIGATO!