as promised, here are some photos. they're tedious to re-size, so i'm going to be sporadic with this.



here's chris and kenta on the street in fukuoka right before the quake. pay special attention to the starbucks sign.


this is where we were when the quake hit. see that table in the foreground? i jumped under it.

that's what happened to starbucks.

yup. more later.

'like a monster coming out of the sea to attack a child', says aram arslanian.




"gotta stick together
gotta stick together
gotta stick together
gotta stick together...
gotta stick together
gotta stick together
gotta stick together
gotta stick together
like glue
like crew
like glue"

http://lonelybullet.com/oleary/01-ssd-glue-rh.mp3

ok... today is tokyo, last day of shows. we're in shinjuku, which i guess is a sort of seedy nightlife/fashion area.

yesterday we drove to yokohama in the worst traffic ever. the time from getting off the expressway to getting to the show was 4 hours. 20 kilometers in 4 hours. we left from saitama at about 11am, we arrived in yokohama at 7pm. it should have been a 4 hour drive.

i met up with the amazing shogo hikosaka yet again, he flagged me down in a shinjuku intersection - and that's crazy considering the population here.

yeah... tomorrow i'm off to hamamatsu to visit gillian and then tuesday i'm off to korea...

ok. i'm in hiroshima now, and i have a few extra minutes at a computer that i'm actually paying for, so here's a real update.

we've played in nagoya, fukuoka, okayama and kyoto so far. the hiroshima show is tonight.

every show has been really good, lots of kids singing along and going nuts. the japanese love their stagedives and circle pits for damned sure.

we're travelling with three japanese dudes named daiki, kenta and hiro who are really cool and helpful.

here's a better explanation of the earthquake event for those of you who seem convinced that my life is in danger every time i cross an international border (dad)... we were in kinko's doing basically what i am doing right now, internet nerdery. i was just chilling in the middle of kinko's waiting for the others, and suddenly the building starts shaking. like really shaking, side to side. to me it felt like we were being shook about a foot from side to side. suddenly debris from c. 1950 brick buildings across the street started falling. bunches of bricks the size of 3 of my shoes were dropping to the sidewalk below. i promptly jumped under a desk while the rest of the guys tried to assess what was going on. as soon as it started, it was over.

starbucks across the street was fucked - all their merchandise was on the floor, a huge plate glass window was broken and there were huge holes in their awning from falling bricks.

once again, i was fine. me, like the scared-ass chickenshit bitch i am, hid under a table for the duration of the quake. a wise choice. what was unwise is that chris had his camera on its video setting for the whole quake, and was walking around shitting his pants, but didn't have the good sense to get a little video of the shit. damn.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/03/20/japan.quake/index.html

what was most important to us was the fact that the freeway was closed for about 4 hours while they assessed its damage. i read somewhere that fukuoka gets a quake like this every 100 years.

yesterday was probably one of the most amazing days of my life. i took off up the hill behind the club (called 'whoopee's') into the old city of kyoto. it is now my well thought-out opinion that kyoto is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and needs to be seen by all people. there's this place up on the hill where you can actually walk into these houses - where descendants of ancient kyotans still live - and check out how things were 100s of years ago. all with an amazing view of the city.

as well, i got to see real live geisha and drink green tea. it was beautiful.

today we got to hiroshima, it was raining like a bastard, and we went to visit the peace dome - a ruin of a prefectural assembly building that was the only thing standing in its neighborhood after the bomb went off. it has been preserved and the intention is to keep it standing in its ruined state, bricks and all, for eternity. there are also before and after photos of the neighborhood, mostly an art/theater area. sounds like a strategic target to me...

when you consider that macarthur was considering dropping a whole lot more of these on the korean peninsula to cripple the communists, things seem pretty... uh... fucked?

yeah.

the show tonight is in a sketchy club. the promoter was drunk when we showed up at 4pm. it should be fun.

during this trip i've been considering the differences between korea and japan. here are the basic ones:

korea - lots of english signs and english speakers.
japan - almost none.
korea - broken ass sidewalks, open sewers, pollution
japan - clean air (i have yet to see tokyo), no open sewers, sidewalks one could actually skateboard on
korea - rude people who don't want to meet you
japan - friendly people who do want to meet you
japan - 10-20 dollar meals
korea - 5-7 dollar meals

i am, yet again, weighing my loyalties to the interesting yet fucking insane little peninsula i have called home for the past year and 4 months. japan is really calling me right now... but the language is so intense to learn.

we'll see...

day two - fukuoka

after an interminable drive in the most uncomfortable van seat ever manufactured, we arrive in the beautiful - and i mean beautiful - city of fukuoka, on the southernmost tip of japan's mainland.

we arrived in an area called kyushu, which seems to be a nightclub/upscale urban young folk kinda area.

the show again was packed with earnestly polite japanese hardcore kids.

i ate bibimbap in a korean restaurant because jim is a vegetarian and can't speak japanese... so i spoke korean. that was a trip, coming to japan to eat korean food.

went to a pachinko/games room, truly a hypnotic, robotic and weird trip.

now it's morning and i'm feeling rested for our trip to tsuyama okayama.

day one, nagoya japan.

the worst turbulence i've ever experienced. seriously, there were points during that flight that felt - well, you knoｗ when you:re descending in a plane and you can actually feel yourself going down? i'm feeling that but it seemed way faster than it should have been. it was like the pilot truly had no control over how quickly the plane was going down. at one or two points i said something like 'damn, this could be it'.

but i made it. in one piece.

as soon as i walked out of customs 'sean!' shogo hikosaka, of hamamatsu city, is there to greet me. hamamatsu is about 2 hours from nagoya, so he took thet shinkansen (bullet train) down to meet me. stoked, since the signs on shit here are only about 10% english rather than the 50% you see in korea.

we make it into osukannon, the neighborhood where the show is. a joyful reunion with a bunch of friends, and a japanese hardcore show. very surreal. what's different about japan? pretty much everything except for the fact that smoking is a rule rather than an exception.

there is a photo on shogo's camera that features me singing SSD's 'glue' and aram says it makes me look like 'a monster coming out of the sea to attack a child'.

yeah. more later. we're going to fukuoka today.

so it's one full day before i walk out of my door for roughly six weeks. i will be updating from the road, there will most likely be stories. i just hope the japanese PC rooms are as cheap as the korean ones.

good things:

i take possession of this guitar on april 3. 1970 les paul standard. thank god for (attractive, kind and intelligent) ph.d. students who need tuition money!


the man in the photo is aram arslanian of vancouver (calgary-yeesh), who has been its steward these past months. well not steward, tour guide. the fucking thing's been to more countries than i have. last time i saw a photo of it it was in austria. jerk.

i have a new battery for my canon s50 therefore you will be inunfuckingdated with new photography as the travels commence.

my new downstairs neighbor is the legendary hannah calder of vernon BC via kent, england. she's here for 6 months, holdin' it down limey-style.

if i hadn't reserved that ticket for canada (which may end up being free if i play my cards right) i was considering a trip to north korea - travel agents who book shit for north korea have special trips from beijing to pyeongyang, baekdusan and other NK sites. of course the tour would be closely monitored and escorted, but it'd be me in the last stalinist dictatorship in the world. who the hell could say they've been to north korea? i suppose vietnam is enough communism for me, but north korea, dude...

the only thing i'd have to do then is go to cuba. then my "places that are enemies with the US but are not directly threatening to one's security in a robert young pelton kinda way" list will be complete i think.

going to canada is more appealling, however. the idea of being followed by a chaperone is a distant second to sitting on the dock on okanagan lake with a cooler. cultural differences, i guess.

but i can just see the border guard's expression when i cross from vancouver to blaine. "whaaay dew you have a nawrth kaw-rean and a keeuban stamp on yawr passpawrt? are you a cawmewnist?"

the "yes, well, a socialist with libertarian and capitalist tendencies" reply he'd get would likely make the poor dude's head explode. i don't want blood and cerebellum on me... therefore... a holiday in canada it is!

samsung life insurance's new slogan "bravo your life" has me completely preoccupied lately.



it's best when someone says it to you and you come back like hulk hogan or something... "no... bravo YOUR life!" right in their face.

i booked a plane ticket yesterday.

well 3... one to japan and back...

one to vietnam and back...

and another one that sees me in vancouver july 23 and back in seoul august 1.

the characters across the top:

the one that looks kinda like a devil with an upside-down 'T': Bo
the one that has an upside-down 'V' with two lines: Shin
the one that looks like a capital 'E' with a circle underneath it: Tang

BOSHINTANG. this is the first place i've ever seen it actually advertised.



for you landlubbers - boshintang is that dog meat stew/soup i talked about last summer. yuzza yuzza!