End of a Relaxing Few Days

Well, Its Sunday night here and a pretty relaxing weekend is coming to a close. As stated earlier, last weekend was one for the recordbooks, and as such, I decided to take it easy this weekend. Shree called me on Friday night, but I was kind of sick so I decided not to go out. Then she mentioned that she and a bunch of people were going to do an all-nighter in Osaka on Saturday, and she really wanted me to go. See, this dutch guy ruined a weekend that she had planned with him so she decided that she was still going to have a good time even though he ditched her. I told her I would go, but the next day I was still kind of out off it and knew I couldn't do an all-nighter this weekend. She understood, and we will probably do dinner with some people latter this week.

So I woke up Saturday and wanted to do just a little workout since I wasn't feeling all super duper. I went to go do some judo at the city gym in the afternoon for a little while. The city gym is this place thats right by my house thats sweet because it has a (crappy) weight room and tatami that I can use for only a buck. I go to meet Myles at the gym, and there are two Japanese guys training when I get there. Myles introduces them to me. One was a bigger guy with a neck the size of a tree that was a wrestler, the other is in MMA that just took fourth in an all Asia tournament. So basically they beat my ass and then I went home with a sore body.

That night, since I couldn't do the all nighter, I ended up going to Yokkaichi, I believe its called, for a little guitar show. My buddy from down in Otsu, Mike Bass, was playing a set. Mike, who is from Okemos, Michigan, gave me his cd, so I have been listening to it for a little over a month or so. He has a webpage at the aptly named www.mikebassmusic.com. Scott and I decided to go to the show. At first we were the Only ones there, but then Kiera(I think thats how you spell her name) from Ireland, who lives in Yokkaichi showed up. First it was mike, who played by himself. He was really good. His CD is also good. You can by it in Lansing.

After him were two girls from Kyoto. They... well, they were interesting. One of them played the guitar while the other kind of just shook around and banged on a drum or a tamborine. They weren't bad at all and even did a Japanese pronounciation rendition of "Blowin' in the wind". If you want, you can check out Chiemi and Emiko at www.omoware.com. Take a look, granted, its all in Japanese, but hey, at least Kurt can check them out.

Next up was the reason mike had the gig in the first place. His name is Yousuke Tago. His father is the music teacher at Mike's school. He is an amazing guitar player. His dream is to go to Ireland and lay there. If you can find any of his stuff on the net then I highly recomend it because its really good. www.geocities.jp/mankitideca/. After that, Mike and he played together. They did a couple of songs like "black bird" and "fire and rain". It was fun.













The last band was i believe called kanade. They were this crazy band that all had on wigs in honor of Mike's being foreign. They had like seven people, sing alongs, and baloons. All in all a nice little evening.
Today was pretty nice as well. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. I woke up and took the silver fox over to CoCo's curry-ricefor a lunch type thing. Curry is damn good. It is definately one of the most scrumtrulecent meals on the face of the earth and the U.S. would do good to open up numerous chains that serve it. After I got back to my appartment it was like 11:30, and the weather was so nice that I just opened all the windows, made a pot of Sunday coffee and laid on my couch. I figured out how to use my iTunes to get pod casts of NPR, so I listened to a couple episodes of "wait wait don't tell me" and drank my coffee. They don't have "Prairie home companion" or free "Car Talk", so I make do but it would be nice for some Lake Wobagegon news. Around 3, the cleaning began. I am proud to say that three of my four rooms are now clean as is my laundry. I then sat down to eat dinner while seeing what the bi-lingual movie was this Sunday. Well, the jerks at the Japan TV place decided not to play one tonight. Luckily I had rented a flick just in case. I rented "Kiss kiss bang bang", and since its coming to a close, I am ready to go to bed. Good night.