weekend exploits: okayama bouken

i occasionally have a friend who plays her guitar in a small enclosed storefront near ECC. she calls herself robin but spells herself "lovin" (l's and v's don't exist in japanese, so they are acceptable phonetic/spelling equivalents to r's and b's, respectively). she fills her enclosure with full-voiced reverberations of sad soulful songs and minor key melodies. she doesn't speak much english, but can write anything she wants to say. so, we’ve had a few conversations over guitar and pen. i made her a cd of music i love and she gave me a ticket to see her at an acoustic showcase @ "desperado". i had my street pal ayako draw me a really bad map!

i went directly after work thursday, but missed her set. i hung out anyway and watched the following acts. i couldn't understand what they were singing about, but decided that no lyrics, no matter how poetic or perfectly timed, could have saved these guys from mediocrity. no matter, after the show i found myself at at the grown-up table. the artists were all somewhat acquainted and we all ate and drank together. robin wrote short translations for me when she could, but for the most part i was just smiling politely and enjoying myself. i felt bad that i missed robin's gig, so i bought a ticket from her to see her band, suashi (barefoot), at "crazy mama 2". i had one of the musicians draw me a really bad map on the other side of my map to desperado. (see next blog: rock and roll?)

friday night was one of those lonely nights that found me out in front of takashimaiya with guitar. i met new friends there and was swept off to a karaoke nomihodai (that's all you can drink, holmes). the english catalogue was small, but amazing! it looked more like someone's personal collection than a statistical sampling of western top 40. to name a few, there was an unfairly represented weezer collection and hedwig's "the origin of love". rocked, i rolled to off to see street dude jeanjacque's art exhibition, "air" at a chill cafe' called cheri. the owner is a cool pakistani guy who is fluent in over 7 forms of communication (he shared a shocking number of other qualities with c3po too). i finished the night off with a late-night guitar jam with 3 dudes who were sharing robin's enclosure. i have a lot of fun for a guy with no real friends..

saturday was an ecc christmas consolation prize. the real party was cancelled due to low sign up, so a mere 25 of us went to an indian restaurant that lola recently found (she easily sways the will of the many). the food was awesome and i got to know some of my students a little better. we ate and drank and after partied at the daikon. (not my favorite place, but these days i'll take any social distraction i can get).