Yesterday I went to the bathroom before one of my classes. There was a woman standing in front of the sink and I paid little attention to her. When I was washing my hands, she had gone into a stall, and a second woman had come in. They started talking and I immediately zoned out, because they were not speaking english.
Except about three seconds into their exchange, at which point it was already over, I realized that I was actually following it. It went something like:
Woman 1 inside bathroom stall as Woman 2 enters the bathroom. Woman 2: Aren’t you done yet? Is it #2!? Woman 1: No! I just went into the stall!!
At which point I realized, “oh, that was Japanese.”
This was really great, of course because they didn’t know I knew what they were saying, but also because this ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS with Japanese.
Within the past month, I’ve gone to two excellent concerts. The first was Bright Eyes on October 21.
Some Bright Eyes pictures:
The most fun part of the Bright Eyes concert was that I am part of the group that brought them here (Star Course), so we showed up that morning to unload several trucks worth of band equipment, set up their speakers, the wiring, the stage lights, etc. Then in the evening we show up again to guard doors, watch opening bands, and finally get to see Bright Eyes. Their concert was pretty excellent, and I quite enjoyed the live version of “Lover I Don’t Have to Love,” among several of my other Bright Eyes favorites. However, I felt like, after the concert, that I had previously had a misunderstanding of the tone of Bright Eyes songs. Clearly they are not entirely serious about their songs, but just by listening to their recorded stuff, I always thought they were only about half serious about what they were saying. But after watching them live, I felt like they were maybe 80/20 ratio of serious to not serious instead of 50/50.
This Wednesday was the Mountain Goats @ the Canopy.
The opening band before them, the bowerbirds were pretty good — and indie enough to not have a record label (just making their own cds and selling them). Their guitarist broke a string during the middle of a song, so they had to stop while he restrung it. The singer had to entertain the audience while this went on… clearly a stressful situation. “Does anyone have any questions?” So people asked where they’re from (North Carolina)… and then “What is the meaning of life?” And she didn’t have a good answer, until, inevitably, an audience member or five shouts out, “42!!!” Eventually the guitar was restrung, they made it through the rest of their set, and we got to see the Mountain Goats.
Since their music is so chill, and, if anything, underproduced (almost exclusively the lead guitarist and… his voice) I was interested to see what they would be like live. They actually surprised me, in both how low-key they kept some songs, while being able to completely rock out on others (their drummer is actually really good!) At some points, the singing was so soft that you could hear the people talking at the bar louder than you could hear the song.
The way John Darnielle sings is kind of crazy — if you listen to the intonation of his voice in the recorded tracks you can tell, but he’s just really intense live. And yet, unlike Bright eyes, I didn’t feel any unnecessary or unexpected seriousness to it, despite his evident passion about the songs, and importance of the lyrics.
Based on what he talked about between songs, I can conclude that almost all Mountain Goats songs were written because he was in pain from being very very cold (one song was written during a stay in Alaska… and he had several other examples). What a nice creative motivator, being cold.
Since they play pretty quietly (on some songs), the video I took with my digital camera actually turned out watchable (usually it’s just too loud to record anything well)… so here is a bit of “Dance Music”, the chillest performance I have ever heard. Excuse the strange zooming (we moved closer to the stage later, but here you can’t see much).
So while I have been able to see four great concerts this semester, there are still a lot on my to-see list. Two of which, the Shins, and Sufjan Stevens, are actually playing this winter at the same club in Shinsaibashi, Osaka. How cool would that be?! And, of course, I missed the Mr. Children concert in September (also in Osaka), which was apparently amazing (duh)…but at least going to concerts here is a lot cheaper — it cost about $40 total for my tickets to all of those shows total, whereas one ticket to see Sufjan or the Shins at club Quattro in Osaka is listed as 5800 yen (about 50 bucks). Alas.
As I was surfing the web today during my lunch break (yes, I actually have a lunch break on Tuesdays, hooray!) I came upon this ad — what can be more wholesome than Oguri Shun telling you to eat corn soup in the morning to a Hirai Ken song?
And then I found this which is basically a documentary on 200 days in the life of Oguri Shun. You even see great footage from that octopus commercial I posted on here a while ago. The entire theme of this show is that Oguri Shun is dreadfully overscheduled, and I can believe that. It shows you his calendar, and, well, at least it makes me feel like I have a lot of free time. He also smokes way too much.
