the gigantic update

note: please bear with me. I'm going to update this post slowly- but I need to get at least some of it up to motivate myself enough to finish it :)

Well, that was an unplanned sabbatical. The wireless internet connection I was using at the guesthouse I was staying at mysteriously dropped. I thought it was the guesthouse’s connection since I was getting a 100% signal… but it wasn’t. When the guy at Fontana showed me the place he told me there was a wired connection, but that was a big fat lie. I called them multiple times to come fix my internet jack- which they never did… then I went into the office and they finally told me that they don’t provide internet there- everyone else in the place apparently had their own internet accounts. So I had to go to net café’s which run you at least $3 an hour- but at least they’re pretty cushy. You get a large reclinable chair in your own private cubicle. At the place I frequented you could get unlimited drinks (coffee, expresso, a bunch of different hot/cold teas, slushees, ice cream, etc.). If you don't want to use the internet, you can get a recliner chair and watch a dvd or read a comic from their library.

wing garden "cafe resort" in nakano

So i could get on the internet but it was still a hassle and I had to take care of other things while I was there. Not to mention the Japanese keyboard which rearranges a lot of the punctuations- so if I had done a blog update it would’ve been pretty unreadable unless I took a very very long time to write it. Anyhow, here we go:

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Design Festa.

I went to Design Festa, which is apparently “Asia's biggest international art event "Design Festa" with approx 60,000 people attending & Tokyo's artists stomping ground, Design Festa Gallery”. It was held at the aptly named, Tokyo Big Sight. As I mentioned in a previous blog post about my unfortunate day, I missed the first day of the fest- but I managed to pull my shit together and get there the second day. Unfortunately I did not have any money to buy anything (my debit card got locked over the weekend so I had like $30 for 3 days- not fun.) But I didn’t see anything that was super impressive, which I expected- considering a lot of design and fashion comes out of Tokyo. I saw some crazy stuff there though... like a dragon slayer (complete with gigantic sword- the guy was just walking around, he was just any other attendee, except he was a dragon slayer)...

...the skinniest girl ever (corset wearer)
nude performance artists

random dancing foreigners

...and more. The Wakai Zulu Nation, the Zulu Nation chapter in Japan, had a booth setup with a DJ spinning drum and bass. I was hanging around the booth when I saw a big African guy- he looked familiar…

is that him?! nah…. Then I noticed he was decked out in Zulu Nation stuff so I figured it had to be him. I went up, introduced myself and we had a short conversation. Who was it? The godfather of Hiphop himself (which was totally unexpected), Afrika Bambaataa. I asked him what he thought about Hiphop in Asia and all that, he was a mad cool guy and he was very insightful. I taped it but it was pretty loud, so I hope you can actually hear what he’s saying- he’s all about positivity and he said Hiphop isn’t just Black music- it’s everyone’s music, he even believes that extra-terrestrials will get down to Hiphop- no joke. I was also supposed to talk to Kyle Cleveland, a Temple Hiphop scholar, but he ended up being too busy to talk to me and I never did get to meet up with him. Ah well. Aside from my pictures, you can also check out other people's pictures (since mine are blurry/overexposed- my camera is on its last legs :( ugh)

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Space Bright Anniversary Party

This party seemed pretty random to me- it was a mix of dance performances, pop stars, Hip-pop stars, Hiphop acts, and other randomness. Space Bright is a dance studio in Tokyo, I never went there but the dancers didn’t seem super great based on the performances. There were a few other performers that seemed to have quite a following. One guy got the crowd hype, Twiggy, who did kind of a dancehall/Hiphop fusion style. I wasn’t a fan of the music really and he had a hype man that was basically the asian version of Lil’ Jon… scary. He had an iced out grill and would have his mouth open, half bearing his teeth and half smiling. Of course he would yell the obligatory “YEAAH!!’s”

At least I was introduced to quite possibly the dopest group I've seen all year, Hifana. Hifana is

on W+K (Wieden and Kennedy ad company - the Shanghai branch sponsored the China DMC's) record label.

Afrika Bambaataa

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Suji Tap.

I've recently been really interested in house dance- which i believe derives a lot of its movements from tap and bebop.. so i've become interested in those as well. I've actually wanted to learn tap for quite awhile- after i saw savion glover dance... man. I never had a chance to take it in college though- I was too caught up in african dance and they were at the same time. Anyway, I saw a poster - it said STREET TAP LIVE! Tap + Hiphop = new style?! so it peaked my interest... and it had Sound Cream Steppers (a japanese bebop group) on the bill so I wanted to check it out.

This isn’t exactly a new thing but he did do some interesting things. Tapping with a beatboxer, tapping with a r&b vocalist, Outside of some really old clips and Bring in da noise, Bring in da funk. I haven’t seen much tap in my life. It was basically a one man show for 2 hours… I can’t believe how much stamina the guy had. But he was joined by some of the folks from sound cream steppers (a tapper/bebop crew in Japan)

Tapping is crazy to me- you’re not only dancing to the music but you’re creating music simultaneously. I wish I picked this up when I was little… I could never take the class at Swarthmore because it was always during African dance. maybe sometime...


you can find more about suji "the best tap dancer in japan" on his site, here.

Tokyo Disneyland

Basically they took a chunk of California and put it in Tokyo. Although Hong Kong’s park was smaller, I probably enjoyed it more since we didn’t have to wait in line for anything – so we went on the space mountain ride like 5 times in a row. In Tokyo there was a million people there so we had to wait like 2 hours to go on the log ride. Ah well. They did have the night parade … Stitch (from Lilo & Stitch) was everywhere (Japanese people are obsessed with Stitch because he’s so KAWAIIIIIII!)

Yoyogi Park in Harajuku. I finally made it there on a day where it wasn’t raining. The place has a good vibe, basically anyone with any sort of hobby comes and practices/performs there on Sundays. There was an especially entertaining guy who incorporated painting, dancing, scratching (a cd sample), and audience participation. You can watch him go at it here.

There were the usual million bands outside of the park, the rockabilly dancers, the superfuturistic gothic lolita’s on the Harajuku bridge, African drummers, jugglers,

There were unfortunately only a handful of girls casually practicing dancehall.

Nara – basically there’s a huge park that takes like two days to walk through if you want to see everything- and there are a bunch of dder- everywhere. The deer are touted as the symbol of nara and they are pretty aggressive- you can buy biscuits to feed them, but they stake out a spot near the vendor and basically attack whoever buys a pack of biscuits.

Kyoto, is the place to see everything a westerner thinks of when you say the words Japanese or Japan- temples, rock gardens, geishas, samurai, tea ceremonies, the whole nine yards.

Osaka World’s largest Ferris wheel, Aquarium, Universal Studios,

Puffer fish sushi (which you can apparently die from if prepared wrong… I didn’t know that until after eating it, but I’m still alive!).

Just for the hell of it, we took a train down to Fukuoka in Kyushu- an area famous for their ramen. To get a taste of the ramen, we went to a place where you have to fill out a form specifying the type of broth, amount of green onions, “special sauce”, and the fat content of the pork. Yummy. They take their ramen seriously here- there’s a ramen stadium in Fukuoka and a ramen museum in Yokahama- basically places with a bunch of shops selling different types of ramen from all over Japan. Sadly I didn’t make it to either... but some day. Just a side rant about ramen, You’d think noodle soup would be cheap- but a decent bowl of ramen will run you at least Y1000

I’m on the Shinkansen (Super Express bullet train) to Osaka. Joe Small (Swarthmore Alum ’05) who is doing a Fulbright on Taiko drumming is kind enough to let me stay at his apartment for my time in Osaka. I don’t have much to go on contacts wise, but maybe something will come up- I’ll at least take some dance classes while I’m there, I haven’t danced or taken enough classes over the year. It’s hard to find classes that aren’t too basic and it’s been really hard to find spaces to dance. I heard that many people in Japan dance in front of office buildings that have glass fronts at night (so the windows act as mirros)- but while I was in Tokyo it rained almost everyday so I never saw anyone doing it… until the day before I left. Guess my luck is running out? Haha.

Regretfully my year is almost over. I wish I had done a tad bit more traveling, but what can you do, I wish I could apply for an extension- but I’ve got to go off to medical school anyhow (I’m not dreading it as much, being in school isn’t so bad right? Haha that’s what I say now... but I am dreading the week of July 31-Aug. 6^th as I’m supposed to be in three places at the same time – medical school orientation, Watson Fellowship conference, and my sister’s wedding... it won’t be a relaxing week to say the least) But yeah, speaking of traveling more I may make a stop in Taipei to check out the scene quickly to complete my survey of Chinese Hiphop. I have a friend, Hai Yee, who I went to summer school with six years ago, as my personal Hiphop tour guide (He’s started up a Hiphop entertainment company of sorts over there). Ah, if I had another month I’d check out somewhere in Southeast Asia.