RECENT PHOTOS

I’ve just shoved a bunch of me finest images taken over the last few months on my website here – get ‘em while they’re hot!

A little taster…

LITTLE PISTOL FINGERS

In an act of blatant self-promotion and with delusions of grandeur way to the fore, I present to the general public my first attempt at music video production: a little YouTube effort to provide visual stimulus to the melodic techno track “Little Pistol Fingers,” by my own one-man band Easter Islanders.

The video was mostly filmed around Hiroshima using the limited HD video capabilities of the Nikon D90 DSLR, and edited on Apple’s basic iMovie programme.

The music was recorded in my own home studio on Logic Pro 9, and is extracted from the album “Souvenirs from the Surface of Last Scattering,” which can be purchased securely here. Go on, treat yourself, you know it makes sense…

More info on Easter Islanders can be found here.

UJINA SHOOT

Just posted nineteen pictures to my marvellous website taken on February 21st at Ujina, the port of Hiroshima in a spontaneous photo shoot.

Once again the mighty Nikon D90 and my equally epic imagination get together to transform the fairly mundane into trippy psychedelic art – get ‘em here…

THE ‘KABE’ RUN

Took the little folding Dahon bike up to Kabe today on a sudden impulse. I hadn’t been out for a few weeks, and this morning the weather looked somewhat dodgy, but I really needed to get out and do something physical, and seeing as how neither Gurdijeff nor Ouspensky were around to hand me a spade, the bike was the natural choice.

The Kabe run, one of three I have developed, is flat and scenic. No sweaty panting up inclines wearing stupid-looking helmets, no, it is casual and easy. I ride down to my local station, fold up the bike, then get out at Hiroshima, from where I proceed north along a rather pleasant river valley to the town of, er, Kabe. Pleasant by Japan standards, I mean. So the frequency of vending machines slightly diminishes, some green hills emerge, and the tonnage of concrete within the one’s vision is marginally reduced.

This time I made a nice discovery, and went past the town itself into an even narrower and rather charming valley following the old disused railway line, circling back a few kilometres later to drop in at my customary pitstop Mosburger, there to fill my gut with all the calories I’d just burned off in the form of fish burger, fried chicken and chips.

Then back along the same route, hitting Hiroshima station at 4pm after a ride of 54km all told. As luck would have it, just as I was turning into my road, I spotted the Delivery Man at my gate, and grabbed my Apple store package containing Logic Pro 9, the latest software for my Mac-based recording studio – huzzah!

 

 

KANSAI CRAP #1

Every year I exit Hiroshima during the ‘Golden Week‘ holidays of early May to escape the foul artificial frivolity of said city’s Flower Festival.

This is where a huge swathe of central Hiroshima becomes a hellish cacophonous mass of screaming infantage while their over-indulgent parents are cajoled by minor mafia members into buying overpriced and unhygienic blobs on sticks for sustenance. Some floats go by, filled with either old crones or tiny girls attempting to perform in the dance medium of their respective eras. Nobody cares.

Oh, so wrong, so horribly wrong...

So, here I am, freshly arrived in Osaka for a 4 night stay, and what an amazing contrast! The streets are lined with poplar trees, bluebirds sing and not a soul impedes my pedestrian’s progress through the thoroughfares of Umeda, the northern hub of Osaka.

Alright, so that’s not strictly true. In fact, it’s just as much a crowded noise-filled hell-hole as Hiroshima, perhaps even more so, but at least it’s alien and anonymous. The fact that it’s not Hiroshima is an attraction in itself.

And here’s a charming little first observation from this non-Hiroshiman conurbation.

Ever seen toilet paper in public lavatories with adverts printed on it? Me neither, but that’s just what I found in Umeda‘s ‘Ing‘ department store.

Osaka's Umeda area - there's a department store called 'ing' in there somewhere...

That’s right, as I pulled off a few sheets with which to clean the appliance in a pre-defecation anti-swine flu manouver, I gasped to discover some commercial slogans emblazoned upon the poo-paper in bright red ink.

Hmm…how to feel about this latest corporate act of shame? Be outraged that the free market has penetrated one of the last bastions of privacy? Or just laugh at the thought of reeking bodily effluent defacing company logos in a gloriously appropriate fashion?

Poo-paper fresh from Osaka

COMPOUND INTEREST

I’m off to Osaka tomorrow.

Now I said to myself that this summer I would eschew my usual ‘week out of here.’ This is where I bugger off to either Tokyo or Osaka/Kyoto straight after classes finish at the end of July, for no real reason other than to escape the often claustrophobic feeling that the humid weather brings to Hiroshima‘s village-like ambience.

But not this year, I vowed. You see these last eighteen months have seen me shed wads of cash like…er…something that sheds something very often and in large amounts. So, in the interests of financial rectitude (more tea, vicar?) I vetoed my wanderlust and spent the last month skulking around various local shopping malls in search of free air-conditioning.

And yet now, here I am, about to thrust a few socks into a haversack and hit the road for Osaka. Why? Ironically because of money!

It’s a long story, for which a future post has already been composed, but the bottom line is, I have to haul my bottom to the British Consulate, there to have my visage compared to my visa by the governor-general-consulmeister resplendant in his tropical suit and pith helmet. Once gold has crossed his palm, a parchment of authenticity will be issued which will enable me to unlock a treasure chest of dubloons a gang of pirates in the Channel Islands have been ‘looking after’ for me.

I told you it was a long story.

Well, and so it seemed daft to go all the way to Osaka just to spend a few minutes inside the sandbagged compound of the British Consulate and then bugger off straight home, so I decided to spend a couple of nights there, to sample once more the cultural delights of the Kansai region such as the Apple Store in Shinsaibashi.

As luck would have, my fellow Hiroshima rogues the notorious Williams brothers will also be in town, so what better than to hang around with my old pals, get irritated by their unreasonable behaviour, shout at them and then go and do my own thing?

J-COPS

The police in most countries are pretty scary, right? I remember when I lived in Munich – whoa, thems were some nasty-looking upholders of the law you wouldn’t dare pick your nose in front of.

Even worse were the fabled Transport Police. What they would occasionally do is randomly pick a U-Bahn station (subway, metro, tube or whatever) and form two lines just outside the platform exits.

See, Munich has a ‘trust’ system in place on the public transport whereby there are no gates and no ticket collectors.

Now to make sure everybody doesn’t just ride for free, they have to put the fear of God into the plebs now and again, and hence the draconian tactics outlined above.

What you have to do upon leaving a targeted station is basically run the gauntlet between the two lines of six foot tall Aryans dressed in black uniforms and black peaked caps with silver braid, and present your papers to the officer at the end of the funnel.

Now I’m neither over seventy nor Jewish, but every time I experienced this treatment I had weird and disturbing flashbacks to another place, another time, if you know what I mean…

Japan, well, there’s another story altogether.

Let’s take a look at what happened last Saturday night. I’m hanging around outside Hiroshima Station with Danny Itoh, waiting for the last train home.

Now all stations seem to be magnets for those on the fringes of society, and this place is no exception. Homeless folks, skanks, the destitute, the insane, the inebriated, old women carrying enormous quantities of toilet paper for no reason, they’re all there.

Well, suddenly a ‘situation‘ develops among a group of homeless drunks; slurred insults are exchanged, there’s some pushing and shoving and a generally unpleasant to-do right there in the station concourse incommoding those folks intent on gaining egress to the iron horses.

But soon our heroes in blue arrive in a cavalcade of flashing lights and fluorescent vests. Wow! What an impressive sight! Of the ten or so cops, not one appears to be over 5ft, most of them are bespectacled, and several are of the female persuasion.

Up they come to the group of warring drunks, and brandish not clubs, guns, arrest warrants or handcuffs, but……clipboards. Ah yes, everything has to be properly notated and recorded in Japan.

So what happens? Are the offenders herded into waiting police vans to spend a night at His Imperial Majesty’s Pleasure? No, sir! There is a polite little chat, a few pens jotting on paper, and the huddle of diminutive coppers are on their way again, unwilling or too scared to take action against our little gang of scumbags.

That’s right, no arrests, nothing! And in fact, straight after the police make their pitiful exit, one of the drunks starts haranguing passers-by and gets into a fight with a young lad.

Nice one, Hiroshima constabulary! Thanks for making the streets safer with your wonderful weedy cop/scaredy cop routine…

BIKE – TREE – BOOZE

I hate cyclists. I know we should embrace them as heroic defenders of the planet’s fragile ecosystem, but I say to hell with that. They are irritating buggers, at least here in Hiroshima. Some moan about the Bicycle Police, a group of arm-band wearing middle-aged men employed by the city government to crack down on illegally parked bikes and prevent cyclists from using the pedestrian malls. More power to them, I say!

You see, the fine city of Hiroshima has totally failed to provide the necessary bike lanes that would really help reduce the bike menace. As it is, walking through the central city is like playing some demented video game in which you, the pedestrian player, must be forever dodging the oncoming stream of random old gits and snotty teenagers who come flying at you on a collision course. Some of them actually seem to delight in seeing how close they can get to you before veering off at the last second.

Even worse is when you meet up with a friend in town who insists on coming in on his bike. Oh what joy, to walk alongside a galoot pushing his bike along, the pedals whacking you on the shins, slowing you down to a crawl, then all that faffing about trying to find a spot to tether the beast, while you stand around with your thumb up your arse waiting. Bah!

Now last night as I walked towards the station, avoiding numerous collisions with the aforementioned two-wheeled terrorists, my eyes did spy a wondrous thing that caused the old boat race to crack into a smile. Those in charge of one of the larger office buildings had decided to selectively leave on the lights in various rooms so that the entire building resembled a giant Christmas Tree. Three cheers to the bod who came up with that one, and at the risk of sounding a tad racist, how uncharacteristicly cheerful for the corporate sons of Nippon!

Prior to this I was very glad to locate a tiny little off-licence tucked away in Nakarekawa, the nightlife area of Hiroshima. Here you can find a fine selection of some of the best whiskeys (and I dare say other liquor) of the world at knock-down prices. I noticed that most of the other customers at the time of my visit were barstaff from the surrounding dens of iniquity. I picked up a bottle of that peaty old favourite Lagavulin, a single malt from Islay - and for only 4,600 yen! Consider that in D-Bar a shot of the same will cost you 1,500….

WHEN THE MOON SHINES ON THE COWSHED…

The drums are beating in the distance and the little park just down the road from me has been miraculously transformed into some sort of ethnic happening which I suppose is connected to the Obon holiday season. What is Obon? Buggered if I know, as I’m rarely in the country during this time, but I think it’s the Japanese equivalent of Halloween.

I mention this because the goings on in the park seem so rustic and alien, and believe me, Hiroshima is a rustic place. I suppose it’s the equivalent of Somerset or Wiltshire in the UK, both locations which are mocked for their dialect and alleged backward inhabitants. Apparently that’s the way Hiroshima is viewed by much of the rest of Japan, although I’ve never really noticed it before.

A lot of foreigners complain about Hiroshima being boring, but I’ve never felt this way about the place. Certainly it seems a lot smaller than the city of 1.2 million souls which it is, but recently it has become stuffed full of trendy cafes, all manner of eateries and all the nerdy electronic stores you can ask for – perfect! Added to this the surrounding mountains, inumerable rivers and the sea, and a city centre small enough to walk across, and you have a fairly livable place.

However, I’ve just been in Tokyo for a week, and I really did notice a difference in the people this time. No getting around it, Tokyoites seem a lot more sophisticated, better dressed and far less peasanty than the creatures I regularly meet on the local trains in Hiroshima. Nobody was staring at me as I meandered around the capital and I felt comfortably anonymous, something that is difficult to feel in Hiroshima not only because of its size, but also because of the propensity of some of the poorly-educated inhabitants to still be freaked out when they see a gaijin.

Here’s the kind of calibre of folk we’ve got here in Hiroshima: yesterday at the station as I waited for a train this slightly odd-looking dude actually had a small cockroach walking around on his floppy hat! Today I took the bus into town and this homunculus occupying the seat in front of me kept smashing its limbs against the side of the bus and mumbling incomprehensibly, while another gentleman at the back talked loudly to himself and occasionally emitted the most explosive sneezes I’ve ever heard in my life. And the dress sense of the older folk here, Jeez!

Yep, Hiroshima really is an overgrown village after all.