Vietnam: August 2nd Hanoi

Not really sure that this constitutes a real view over the Old Quarter, but that wasn't such a big deal anyway since I'd come here to look around Hanoi rather than gaze longingly from a window. The breakfast wasn't that great either, but again I wasn't complaining ~ I just wouldn't come back here later in the trip. After the rain let up it was time to go out and explore Hanoi for the first time.

At 8:30 in the streets were bursting with activity and bikes were streaming through the streets making crossing the road a somewhat perilous experience. The few junctions that actually have traffic lights have seemingly little effect on what happens on the street, so you have to step out and weave your way between the oncoming bikes and hope for the best.

After I initially spending some time getting my bearings, I decided to head for Hoan Kiem lake, passing the Martyrs' Monument on the way. Hoan Kiem is one of the most famous landmarks in the city, and the paths around the lakeside are filled with tourists and Hanoians taking a leisurely stroll as well as numerous locals trying to peddle goods or run a tourist scam. In the northern part of the lake is a small island which houses the Ngoc Son Temple, and the view across the lake and the city is quite spectacular from there.

Entrance to the Ngoc Son Temple.

Looking over the lake to the Old Quarter.

Looking south over the lake.

The bridge to the temple.

Vietnam: August 1st Tokyo-Hanoi

After some last minute preparations it was off to Narita mid-afternoon to catch the early evening flight to Hanoi. It was a blistering hot day in Tokyo (with the rainy season officially declared finished at long last), and yet I was heading off to a country in the middle of their wet season. I was wondering if it could actually be more humid than in Tokyo.

The flight was very smooth arriving on time. After a very thorough passport check (mine is neither biometric or machine readable, which is actually something of an inconvenience these days), I was quickly through customs and into the arrivals hall where I quickly found the pick up driver booked by the hotel. Contrary to what was suggested in my guidebook, the airport wasn't crawling with dodgy taxi touts (though maybe that was just because it was quite late).

The driver was, I later found out, a typical Vietnamese driver, driving with one hand firmly on the wheel and the other hovering over the horn ready to klaxon any second. Junctions were dealt with by ever-so-slightly lifting the foot off the gas and with one hand repeatedly sounding the horn as we sped through. Overtaking was done in a similar fashion ~ driving right up the exhaust pipe of the car in front horn blaring and flashing his headlights until the driver in front was sufficiently intimidated or irritated to move out of the way.

After approximately half an hour of this he drew into the Old Quarter of Hanoi and headed to the Hotel Camellia 4, a budget hotel that looked fine enough from its website ~ cheap and clean looking spacious rooms and the promise of a view of the Old Quarter. Seeing that it was after 11pm by this stage the view would have to wait until the morning.

Par Avion

Soild Air - John Martyn
I Must Confess - Everything But The Girl
Bossa Tres Bien - Quartette Tres Bien
Oneself-likeness - Quasimode
Par Avion - Marco Di Marco Trio
1974 - Jukka Eskola
Colours of Sea - Joe Haider
The Suspension Bridge at Iguaza Falls - Tortoise
Radio - Our Theory featuring Erik Truffaz
Are You Ready? - Aloe Blacc

Hyakannon Kentoue

Sunday evening in Nakano-ku and I was at another very different kind of festival-type of event. Unlike many other festivals which have food and beer stalls nearby, this was a much more sombre and sober, though equally enjoyable event. A temple in the neighbourhood has a garden with over a hundred statues of deities. Usually this garden is closed and you can only view the statues from outside, but every year, for this event, the garden is opened and you can wander around and look at your leisure.
Priests from the temple performed some kind of ritual in front of the largest of the statues and people queued to take part, though I'm not entirely sure what it was all about.
Normally, according to the signs, you aren't supposed to take pictures of the statues, but since everybody else was, I decided to follow suit.

For 500 yen (proceeds to Unicef) you could buy a candle and place it near a statue of your choosing, so that as night falls, the garden becomes bathed in candle light.

Outside the garden in the shade of some enormous trees, there was also a performance by an Indonesian-style gamelan orchestra, together with dance. Their soothing, exotic sounds together with the backdrop of the garden of deities among the trees made it easy to forget that I was actually in the centre of Tokyo.

Less than ten minutes after the end of the performance, the heavens opened and there was a huge storm, sadly extinguishing all the candles in the garden, and everyone ran for cover.

Kagurazaka Matsuri

Late July in Japan is matsuri (festival season) and numerous places around the country have their own festival centred around a local community, temple or shrine. Coming out of work on Saturday I caught part of the Kagurazaka matsuri. The narrow street was packed with people watching the dancers perform awa-odori (I think) and slowly make their way up the slope towards the large shrine (the name of which escapes me right now). The first part of the dance parade featured children from local elementary schools, and later it was the turn of the older dancers. I only stopped by for a short time, but it as with many other festivals, it was an enjoyable experience.

Books: Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

The Fourth Bear is the second hilarious installment in Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime series. We rejoin DCI Jack Spratt (who never eats fat) and his side-kick Mary Mary in the Nursery Crime Division at Reading Police Headquarters. In this latest adventure, Spratt and his team are looking into the disappearance of newspaper reporter Henrietta 'Goldilocks' Hatchett, a hard-working journalist (fussy in a not too hot, not too cold, not too hard, not too soft kind of way) who was looking into a story about giant cucumber contests at the time she went missing. Add to the mix psychotic murderer Gingerbread Man, who has escaped a high security institution, curious goings-on at the soon-to-be-opened theme park SommeWorld and a missing eccentric nuclear scientist and you have all the ingredients for a hilarious and very clever mystery. Fforde's puns and references to various nursery rhyme characters (Persons of Dubious Reality) come thick and fast, and this together with the occasional situation where both Spratt and Mary are aware that they are characters in a novel makes this book a good, fun read. Highly recommended, along with its predecessor, The Big Over Easy.

Behind The Blue Curtains

Ignition Heads - Sleepwalker
Melancholy - Alvinn Pall Sextet
Behind The Blue Curtains - El Michels Affair
Kryptonite Smokes The Red Line - Isotope 217
Made In Japan - Super˜Stars
Del Fuego - Fat Freddys Drop
Cuba Libre - Jazz Quintet '60
Universal Four - Timo Lassy
Dangerfield - Grimace Federation
Listen Love - United Future Organization

Books: Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino

Following the success of Out, the latest book by prize-winning crime novelist Natsuo Kirino to be translated into English is Grotesque. The story centres around the murder of two prostitutes in Tokyo – Yuriko, who worked in the trade since her teens, and Kazue, who had held down an office job by day, but moonlighted on the streets at night. The novel is not really a ‘whodunit’, but more a ‘howdiditallhappen’.

The story is told by an unnamed narrator, who is the bitter older sister of Yuriko and ex-classmate of Kazue. With her narrative interspersed with diary entries of both victims, the reader gets to see the story from different angles as well as an insight into the main characters’ minds. We see the background to the main characters and their striving for success while at an exclusive all-girls school in Tokyo, and then, some twenty or so years later, we see how the lives of the women developed. Kirino doesn’t just tell a good crime story – she also offers some social comment in her novels (in this book the ultra-competitive world of the Japanese school system comes under attack) as well as addressing some of the main issues of modern life, such as the felling of the need for success and acceptance in society .

One thing that bugged me about the book, however, was the poor editing in the translation. On a couple of occasions there are examples of poor English (just when do way say ‘take a leave’ to refer to time off work?), and there are also hints that the translator had run out of ideas for translating a certain phrase and so instead resorts to repetition (‘horn in on’ someone’s business crops up several times in short succession, which was noticeable since it’s not that common a phrase). However, this is not to take away from what is a compelling story. As you might imagine from the title, it doesn’t make for pleasant reading ~ it’s not full of violence, but it is incredibly disturbing to see how the main characters head towards their tragic fate.

Election campaigning in Shinjuku

With Upper House elections taking place on July 29th, the politicians are now out in full force on the campaign trail, and in front of many stations around the country you can see politicians on top on minibuses giving speeches to the passersby. Like Britain, Japan has its share of novelty candidates, and celebrities such as professional wrestlers have taken seats in parliament in previous elections.

This guy, who, it seems, goes by the name of Mac Akasaka, and looking somewhat like a camp daytime TV aerobics instructor of years gone by, was campaigning and dancing in front of Shinjuku station on Sunday.

Street art in Nakano

The James Brown mural I snapped in Nakano a few months back is no longer, and has been replaced by this image.

Music is Ruling My Life

Start to move - Elizabeth Shepherd Trio
Ugetsu - Jabberloop
African Rumble - Timo Lassy
Disposition - Nils Krogh
Dangerfield - Grimace Federation
Light Up My Life - Spacek
Music is Ruling My Life - Kutiman
Go Je Je - Antibalas
Gimme Yaya - Kokolo
Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth - 24-Carat Black

Cafe near Shinjuku Station

A yawn a minute ... or your money back.

Street sounds

This band, by the name of Re-Trick, were laying down some pretty heavy jazz-funk grooves last Sunday afternoon outside the south exit of Shinjuku Station and drawing a reasonable crowd.

The days of the wandering troubadour with a battered acoustic guitar seem to have passed. These days a large number of Tokyo buskers have amplified sound and sell their own CDs.

Y-shirt shop

When in Kanda you can get your Y-shirts from this guy with a dodgy skinhead. Not sure why they're called Y-shirts exactly, but to people outside Japan they're simply shirts ~ the more formal work variety. T-shirts get their name from their shape, but for the same to be true of Y-shirts, you'd have to wander around with your hands in the air all the time.

Favela Chic

Gang of Boys - Matthew Herbert
The Gigolo - Lee Morgan
Retribution, Reparation - Nate Morgan
Wind - Sleepwalker featuring Yukimi Nagano
Mama Don't Ever Go Away (Mama Digna Sara Ye) - Dee Dee Bridgewater
Favela Chic? - Orgatronics
Beaten Metal - Antibalas
Oscillations - The Souljazz Orchestra
Leave It All Behind - The Superimposers
Willing - Damon Aaron

Shoe shine ladies

Outside the west exit of Shinjuku Station, some elderly women offer a shoe shine and repair service. I wonder how many years they've been working there.

Hydrangea festival at Toshimaen

The rainy season in Japan is the best time to see hydrangeas in full bloom, and at Toshimaen in Nerima-ku there is the so-called annual Hydrangea Festival. Toshimaen is a large park-like space home to an amusement park, multiplex cinema and resort spa. Part of the park hosts a garden space full of hydrangeas (more than 10,000 blooms according to the flier) and you can either walk through on foot or take the miniature train.

A walk through the park followed by some sushi at a restaurant near the station was a nice relaxing way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Creeps

Beaten metal - Antibalas
Makoomba - Nuspirit Helsinki
Sticks and Stones - Connie Price & The Keystones
Cleopatra in New York - Nickodemus
I'll Be Your Wings - The Invisible Session
Equinox - John Coltrane
Ai No Umi - Sleepwalker
Creeps (Booty Cologne Mix) - Camille Jones
It'll Never Happen Again - Tim Hardin
All I Need - Damon Aaron

Tetsugaku Koen

Tetsugaku Koen (Philosopher's Park), situated in the north of Nakano-ku, is a great place for a stroll or to simply sit and relax. It's set on a hill and has some sports facilities near the top, a field that is used for hanami in the spring and a grouping of old-style buildings related to learning, (though I'm not sure quite what their history or significance is) and a riverside path and pond near the bottom.

The perfect place to sit and read ~ as long as you have your bug spray!

10th Anniversary

It's now exactly ten years since I stepped on the FinnAir flight from Heathrow to Kansai, marking my arrival in Japan. Quite incredible really.

When I first arrived, Blair had just been elected, and now he is preparing to move out of number 10. The Spice Girls were huge in Britain, and the nation's sporting heroes were Tim Henman and Damon Hill, with Glen Hoddle's England looking forward to going to France '98 with an exciting new striker by the name of Michael Owen.

On arriving in Japan I was totally thrown by being in a county where I was totally lost when it came to trying to communicate. Not only was I unable to speak the language, I was also totally helpless when it came to reading too, unlike in other countries I had previously visited. I was also surprised on entering convenience stores or izakayas (a Japanese style beer hall with food) at first, wondering if the staff were shouting out because I'd committed some heinous faux pas, completely unaware that it was a standard welcome. Nowadays I barely notice it.

Back in 1997, I remember that Ichiro was an exciting new baseball player and the football heroes were Kazu and Gon Nakayama, with some people thinking that a young midfielder called Nakata looked quite useful too. Namie Amuro was the pop diva of the moment and a girl group of teenagers called Speed were popular too.

On TV, you could see the boy band SMAP every Monday night, the comedian Sanma hosting various shows and a variety show called Hey! Hey! Hey! hosted by the comedy double act Downtown. Bizarrely ten years on, TV is still the same, and these celebrities as popular as ever.

The ten years to date in Japan have been great fun, and there is still so much more to see and do. Whether I'll still be here ten years from now or not is a different question all together.

Bar in Nakano-Higashi

Closed this afternoon. Guess I'll have to pop in another time.

Hydrangea season

It's June, and so many gardens have hydrangea bushes in full bloom. Riding around Nakano-ku today I was struck by the amount of blooms I saw. Also, for some reason, most of the ones I saw today were blue.

Hats! - 12

Simple black summer Kangol number

Street art in Nakano

Down by the side of the railway tracks at Nakano.

Fair trade in Nakano

A little north of the main shopping area in Nakano is a great little shop that I love to look browse around from time to time. Lampada is a shop selling mainly zakka, which is a term that more or less means odds and ends for the house. There are ornaments and furnishings as well as other knick-knacks from various parts of the world as well as a small selection of organic food, with the vast majority of products being labelled as fair trade products.

Recently I bought a tote bag there that I use for shopping. I was amazed at the amount of plastic rubbish I was throwing and realised that the majority of the rubbish was plastic bags from shops. Now I'm making a conscious effort to refuse plastic bags in shops and use the tote bag instead.

Under pressure ....

7th Feeling - indigo jam unit
Sad, isn't it - Karizma
Self portrait - Thief
Labalaba nfo - Adubiifa 67
Under Pressure - The Strange Fruit Project
Walking - Cornish Waters
Oscillations - Souljazz Orchestra
Jane Jane - Grand Union
Woman to man - Tony Allen featuring Ty and Damon Albarn
Slaughter suite - Soil & "Pimp" Sessions

indigo jam unit @ duo

Four months on from the previous Tokyo appearance last night saw another 'indigo jam room' event at Duo Music Exchange in Shibuya.

Again Takeshi Yoshimura was the warm-up DJ, and after the venue slowly filled up, it was time for the opening act, Native (bottom picture), to take the stage. They played a solid 45-minute set with songs from both new and old. The band play good cafe-style jazz and are a very tight live unit. This was the third time I've seen them and probably the best of the three in my opinion. 'Drum'n GO GO', 'Step it' and the set closer 'Diva' seemed to go down particularly well.

No sooner had they played their last note than the incredible percussionist Tsuji Kosuke started drumming up a storm at the back of the auditorium on bongos and djembes. For this event there was purely percussion rather than violin/effects accompaniment in January. Personally, I found that this set was much better, and the fact that he was playing down with the audience rather than up on stage made the atmosphere really electric. For the latter part of his set he was accompanied by Shimi of indigo jam unit on drums, and they worked the crowd into a frenzy.

Finally it was time for indigo jam unit. They opened with the superb 'Sakura' and kept the pace going, with a one of my favourites 'Scene-Cartaincall' coming a couple of tracks later. They performed a couple of new songs, and delivered strong performances of 'Giant Swing' and '7th Feeling' mid-set. Bassist 'BJ' was on form with his witty patter between songs and the climax of the set came with a three track segment comprising of 'Spiral Waltz', 'Alert' and '2x2'. After a short break they were back for an encore of 'Ka I Ka' and 'Palette'.

On the whole I enjoyed last night's event even more than the January one and will certainly be looking forward to them returning in September.

Just how badly do you need that doughnut?

It would appear that there is something of a dougnut war going on in Tokyo these days with different shops vying for first place. At the moment there appears to be a clear leader in the field, with Krispy Kreme being the doughnut of choice. You can see people wandering around Shinjuku with their de rigueur Krispy Kreme bags filled with dozen boxes of doughnuts. Though you have to be prepared to sacrifice part of your day to get your fix.

This was the queue directly in front of Krispy Kreme the other week, and there was a sign saying that it was an hour and a half from the end of that queue to getting served.
To get to the queue in front of the shop, however, you had to join the long queue trailing back over the bridge to Shinjuku station, as seen here.

Of course, the queue at another shop might be a matter of minutes, but that won't do, because it's not Krispy Kreme.

Now if only I could hit upon a sure-fire winner for the next food/fashion/gadget fad ...

Road map

Ordinary Joe - Terry Callier
Closer - DJ Day & Aloe Blacc
Shuffering and shmiling - Fela Kuti
Anytime, anywhere - Jimi Tenor & Kabu Kabu
Forty days - Sound Directions
The Grifter - Fast 3
Pluto - Soil & "Pimp" Sessions
Matsuri - Jaz'presso
Road map - Damon Aaron
Ridin on down - Big Bill Broonzy

Soil & "Pimp" Sessions at the Hibiya Park Open Air Arena

Just got back from Hibiya Park where I saw Soil & "Pimp" Sessions in the rain. This is the largest venue I've seen them at so far, and despite booking tickets online the day they went on general sale, I was quite near the back on the 3000-capacity arena.

Even though it was windy and pouring with rain at the start of the gig, and the stage crew had their work cut trying keep the plastic sheeting in place, the band gave a performance as lively as ever to an enthusiastic crowd almost all clad in plastic raincoats. There was a very strict no camera policy, with any transgressors quickly being stopped, so unfortunately I don't have any shots to share.

The two-hour set was a mix of older well-established songs such as "Suffocation", "Summer Goddess" and "Sahara" and a large part of the new album Pimpoint, with "We Want More!!!!" and "The Party" going down really well. As ever Shacho was on form with his chat between songs and the chemistry between the musicians electric. If you haven't seen them already, I strongly recommend them.

After they complete their Japan tour, they're off to Europe in June and will be playing at Glastonbury and also the Jazz Cafe in London.

Some pictures are available on the band's website a the following link:

http://blog.jvcmusic.co.jp/blog/soilpimp/

A wander around Daikanyama

With the fantastic weather continuing on Friday, I decided to go and look around the Daikanyama area of Shibuya-ku. Starting from Shibuya station, I stopped on the way at the Marble Cafe for some lunch. I opted for some spaghetti genovese style, but made with shiso (perilla) rather than basil which was pretty tasty. The cafe itself is a typical fashionable hang out with nice decor and murals on the walls (part of which can be seen below).

Outside the cafe next to the menus in the window is the following sign, which was without a doubt written with the (misguided) assistance of translation software.

After lunch I spent a couple of enjoyable hours looking around the various vintage clothing and interior goods shops dotted around Daikanyama. In the streets away from the main road it's difficult to imagine that you're in one of the world's most populous cities, as it's really quiet.

Street art in Daikanyama.

Is That Enough?

Is that enough? - Marvin Gaye
Feelin' good - Nina Simone
Barabajagal - Donovan
Lucien - DJ Day
Dancing girl - Terry Callier
Road map - Damon Aaron
Stoned Part 1 (session version) - Lewis Taylor
Accordion - Madvillain
Uprising - Antibalas
Vera Cruz - Jaz'presso