Design Festa

Design Festa is a big art expo event that's held a couple of times a year out at Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba. (Like Raleigh's Artsplosure, only indoors, and bigger) I'd never been, but Andre was stopping by to talk to a friend of his who had a booth there, so I tagged along.
And it was totally awesome! Lots of clothes and jewelry and all sorts of neat stuff.
There was an outside stage, where a bunch of bands played.

This is a band called Gwarando, and they were actually kind of ridiculously awesome. Apologies for my lack of video-taking finesse (it's kind of shakey and the sound is hard to hear).
Here's a couple more closeups I took of the guys in the band, cause I mean seriously--they rock!

Here's an overview of *one* of the rooms, this was where the other, indoor stage was.

Some live painting, inside a glass box.

And I just thought these were really cool!

more fun stuff

Osaka was SUCH a blast, omg. and yes, i know I've been back for over a week now and am only just writing about it, but whatever. forgive me.

This is a picture of the shrine right by Laura's house, and I think it's just about the coolest thing in the history of ever. The whole area she lives in is awesome--Namba, for those of you who don't know, is code for downtown, where-it's-at Osaka. It really reminded me of Ishikwa/Isezaki area in Yokohama--really old, boro-boro kind of apartments with a fair amount of sketch, but right next to the major nightlife area. I felt right at home! XD And it's right by the Yoshimoto theater, so there's a bunch of お笑い芸人 who hang around there. as laura put it, it's "Yoshimoto by day, yakuza by night." (see what i mean about the ishikawacho similarity? as far as I saw, there was no 船の休憩室, but other than that the similarities were pretty striking. lol.

We also got to go to a concert! such fun. it was with 4 different bands, so they each played 3-4 songs--and Laura-tachi were originally going to get tix cause the main band playing was flumpool--who of course i know from them doing the Bloody Monday theme song, and also cause they're getting really popular (which ps the PV in the above link isn't necessarily their most famous one, but it's my favorite song).

BUT

the OTHER band that was playing at that concert was NICO!! i about freaked when i heard, soooooo cool! hehe. so i got to see them play for the second time. (and i may possibly have just bought tix to see their june show....)

anywho.

in other news... I went to go see the Cotton USA Awards yesterday. Japan loves to give out stupid awards to celebs, like "best jeanist" (person who looks good in jeans), etc and this one is the Mr/Ms Cotton Awards, to the person who is "natural and fresh like cotton." yeah.

anyway, they have a big press conf to announce the winners and this year it was Kuroki Meisa as Miss Cotton and Daigo as Mr Cotton. and as usual, Daigo was all kinds of lol. I mean, I honestly wonder whether he really is that stupid or not, cause some of the things he says... it's like 奇跡的なボケ level, I mean he's got to be doing it on purpose. ...Right?

we were told before going in to 注目 his 素敵な手袋--cause of course the gloves are his thing, but since he's a "rocker" he usually wears black leather ones. but in honor of winning the cotton award, he specially made cotton gloves for the very first time. and he kept going on about how awesome they were, and how he might wear cotton gloves more often after this (i doubt it).

he's a cutie. tho seriously...seriously...a dumb bunny.

Finally, PV! here's the latest Nico PV--they played this song at the concert last week, which made me incredibly happy. not the best quality video, but it's the only one posted so far. song is called Bigfoot. so of course...they have big feet. lol. and i swear they're channeling The Beatles or something at the beginning.

********************
EDIT: sadly the Nico PV has been removed already, so I've replaced it with flumpool's "Hana ni nare." note--not the same as the PV I link to in the text. "Labo" is my favorite song, but the "Hana ni nare" PV is prettier.

it's the weekend!

Not really, it's only Wednesday, but what with the advanced production schedules and the random holidays (not that I'm complaining) I swear I don't know *what* day it is anymore.
today's showa day (or something) so I've got the day off. In honor of that (and of the fact that I've got to do a bar review for 791) I went out last night. It was really fun, went to this sort of school-themed 立ち飲み屋 in Baba and met up with Yalie/former HIF compadre/current IUC-er Charles, and Neal which was cool cause I hadn't seen either of them since we left HIF.
Gotta go back to work Thurs/Fri and it's gonna be busy, but then I get Mon-Wed off for Golden Week, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm taking off Friday night (straight from work) to catch the Shinkansen down to Osaka. Laura lives down there, and Nermie was planning to go visit her over GW, and they invited me to come along. I'm excited. I haven't really been to Osaka ever, with the exception of when Ross and I went after HIF, but even then it was only like 2 days and we spent most of it in Nara. So it doesn't really count as far as I'm concerned.

OK, guess that's it for now. Somehow I have to finish listings and write a bar review tomorrow. *shudders* but it'll get done, I spose, it always does.

it wasn't me!!

upside:
last night I went out to this photo session thing for Drumline Live, which is a stage show along the lines of Blast! or Stomp. Anyway, they're touring Japan and last night was opening night, so of course they had a bunch of J-celebs show up for it. We photogs were all camped out by the entrance so that we could take pics of each of them as they came in, then we got to go up to the balcony and sit and watch the whole show--and take pictures of the show if we wanted!!--and then there was an interview bit after. So it was all super fun, tho I didn't get home until about 11pm. EX. HAU. ST. ED.
でもね、大体こんな感じだったの:

Former sumo wrestler Konishiki and his wife--believe it or not, this is him *after* having lost about 150 pounds. 

Ai Takahashi, current leader of girl super-group Morning Musume. I was seriously shocked to see her in person, I mean she look like she's about twelve years old!

And Nozomi Tsuji, former member of Morning Musume--only she "graduated" from the group when she had to have a shotgun wedding a couple years ago. Yes, that's right, she's married and has a kid. .......

Not-so-up side:
i sort of kind of broke the flash on the office camera. well, i didn't exactly break it and it SO wasn't my fault! see, it's one of those external flashes that attaches to the top of your SLR, and you flip the switch to lock it in place. well, i did that like i always do, and took my pictures, only when i went to unlock it and take the flash off, it was stuck! the lock is broken or something, and now even when you flip it to unlock, nothing happens. and everything still works fine, except for the teensy minor detail that the flash is now permanently attached to the camera.  and they're not sure if there's any way to get it off again, short of breaking the flash and having to buy a new one!
*cries*
i didn't do it, i swear!!!  -_-;;

in other fail news, clearly I'm not the only one who's having a really really bad day of it. *cough* Kusanagi *cough* I kind of thought the SMAP machine was too big for them to punish him in any serious way, but now I'm not so sure. I mean--making the international news?!--this is getting to be waaaay big. I know lots of people (and lots of people I know) are going to be seriously upset about this, esp if it gets him blacklisted or put on hiatus by the Jimusho, but...I mean really...
The man was found in the middle of a public park at 3am, buck naked, drunk out of his mind and reportedly shouting SHINGO!!! at the top of his lungs.
....it's hard not to laugh.

Lastly, finally and forthwith-- hi mom! I finally got my new twins CD in the mail last night!! with accompanying dvd (said dvd containing the PV for their latest single--finally!!)
also, since Yuzu/Aitai got a bit short shrift cause of this (only 3 days) I'm leaving them up too, as the second song in the playlist.

btw

I've added an RSS feed to the Metpod, our weekly podcast where you can hear the radio stylings of yours truly. Trying to figure out how to add a player here instead of just the feed, but you'll have to make do with this for now.

the wack-ness

So remember back last year when I went to go see the Fuma stageplay? (actually, you probably don't, but I did). anyway. it was absolutely hilarious and the most crack-ed out thing I had ever seen. seriously. and i thought at the time that it wasn't possible to make anything more wtf than the Fuma stageplay. ...oh, how naive I was...
This past Saturday! went with Nermie and Laura to go see two performances of this stage show thing featuring Jealkb (you remember them, right?) and Condors--who I had never heard of, but it turns out are this awesome comedy/contemporary dance troupe. Anyway, the show was called B.L.~Ballad of Lip~ and it was over in sunshine city, in Ikebukuro.
It was ridiculously amazing and hilarious and I am entertaining serious doubts about the mental stability of whoever actually came up with it. There was sort of a plot, all about how because of the Lehman shock, the London Visual Arts Academy (jealkb) and the 近藤建築学園 (condors) merged together and made this new department called the ビジュアル土木課, but of course it's a totally random combination, the teacher can't teach, and they're not getting any new students (就職ないから) so the department is going to be dissolved, and the "students" all band together to save it. Anyway, that was ostensibly the plot. and it sort of went like that, only they kept sticking in all these random comedy sketches and dance performances and skits that were absolutely hilarious but had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with...anything at all, really. The sort of thing that makes your head hurt if you try to hard to understand it, so it's just better not to.
Seriously tho, I was laughing so hard I was practically in tears.

And afterwards... we did purikura! haven't done that in ages... teehee. Me, Nermie, Laura and two of their JAL friends. It was fun times, and they were all going out after, for like drinks and karaoke and stuff, and I really really wanted to go (karaoooookeeeee!) but I'd already made plans to get together with Jason and Felicia over at his place, so I left to go there, which was fun. We ordered in pizza, Jason bought some good Belgian beer, and I supplied Iron Man on blu-ray.

P.S. we also took pics out in front of the BL poster in Sunshine City. got some nice lady to take it for us, as well as got a lot of stares. it's a little blurry cause we had to take it without a flash--the glare from the flash was blanking out Haderu-sama! can't have that ;-P

lastly... PV time! i think this week I shall supply Yuzu's new single, "Aitai." which incidentally is the theme to Nissy's new drama Ghost Friends --which we're subbing. lol. tho by we this time, I don't mean Doremii--or Gekiuma actually--this I'm helping out as a guest trans over at Resie's group, Ikemen. anyway, that's not really the point. the point is, enjoy the PV!

rites of spring

Forget about that flower nonsense--this week, as I was getting my usual Starbucks on the way to work, I ordered my very first iced latte of the year! Now it's official.
seriously, tho, it has been crazy warm and beautiful weather lately. and it's almost golden week... which means vacation days (yay) and also crazy-extra-super-fast-work-so-that-we-can-actually-take-a-vacation days (not so yay). starting next week and for the next three weeks, we're shortening the production schedule by a day every week, with the eventual result that by the time the holidays roll around, we'll be going to print a full three days early. *shudders* i foresee some crazy hectic days ahead. makes me exhausted just thinking about it.
but I've been having some fun, too. on Monday went to interview Nakata Daisuke, professional trampolinist, Olympian and star of Muscle Musical (which is a sort of Cirque de Soleil-esque gymnastics/rhythmic/feats-of-strength type stage show). MM are clients of ours, so Niki-san at work arranged the interview, which'll be a star struck sometime in May. It was a really neat interview, very easy to talk to (Niki was smitten, lol). Even better news, looks like I can score some comp tix to see the show whenever I want! Now, just to find someone to drag along with me...
Then today was the press conference for the new Disney on Ice show that's starting up, so that conf was over in Shibuya (at A-X, right next to the MM theater as well as Boxx where I went to see Dustz show, coincidentally). Of course they brought out Mickey and Minnie, and the obligatory guest tarento was Hirayama Aya, a.k.a. the cute younger editorial girl in Hataraki Man. So that was kind of cool. Will be a Tarento Watch piece in 787, but for the time being see here.
Then I've got another conference tomorrow afternoon, for the opening of the new Uniqlo UT store in Harajuku. *phew* (And I wonder why I'm so busy all the time. actually, I don't wonder, I know)
Oh, and last nite after work I went to the opening of the new Song Bar Street in Akasaka, which is a sort of recreated yokocho style street of bars (i say "street" but it's indoors). sposed to have a sort of nostalgic feel to it. There was a tachinomiya, a new half/owarai bar, an 80s-themed bar, a cool-looking 40s/traditional Japanese bar, plus some others. I wandered around a bit and peeked into several of the places. Couldn't find anyone to go with me, but I didn't mind, and actually ended up exchanging meishi and chatting with several people, so that was cool.

anyway, I should go to bed soon since I have to be like "go! go! go!" all day tomorrow. (thank god it's friday)
PV is Breakerz again, with their new one. It's pretty cool, but I like their old stuff better than what they've put out since leaving indies. oh well, what can ya do.
oh, and speaking of music, Amazon confuses me. I went to order the twins' new album (yes mom, there's more... *evil laugh*) and of course this being japan, there's several versions of the album, some 2-disc with a dvd, some just a cd, varying numbers of songs-- cause (duh) they need to make each person buy as many versions of the album as possible, cause that's the only way you can get all the songs and extras. anywho. i was trying to decide which (one!) i wanted, when lo and behold the CD+DVD version with 13 songs is on sale..... making it actually cheaper than the CD-only version with fewer songs.  @.@  go figure. but hey, i'm not complaining, certainly helped to make the decision-making process easier. lol.