Toomin Now Believes in God, or Karma at Least

So, back in high school, I used to work in a pizza shop.  It was part of a major chain (won’t say which one), so let’s call it Major Pizza Place.  While working at MPP, I tried to make sure that I was always working as hard as I could because hey, if you can’t be proud of your job, at least be proud of the job you do, right?  Right.  So, after about a month, I had the respect of our managers and drivers and in-store employees (read: phone bitches).  After about two months, I had been given full authority in the store, allowed to do any of the standard managerial duties if called for.

After a few more months, I was nominated for an assistant manager’s position (due to the leaving of our current one).  Corporate stepped in and decided that an 18-year-old who had been with the company for less than half a year was not suited to be in management (also cuz I’d probably be off to college soon), so they sent in their own new management staff to replace our current lineup.  I wasn’t that terribly disappointed, since it wouldn’t have changed my job all that much.  Mr. P, who took over for Mr. N, was our new general manager.  He was very efficient and very hard-working, and respected anyone who worked in the same manner.  No troubles there.  Our new assistant manager, however

 

The Story So Far

So, I guess I have to do some quick re-capping since coming home from Japan.  Disclaimer: my life is very boring, which is why I tend to try and surround myself with as many interesting people as possible.  So far, I think I’ve done a good job.

After getting home from Japan at the beginning of June, I had about 2 days to recover before being whisked away to

 

A New Direction

So, I had been hoping that after getting back from Japan, enough interesting things would happen to blog about, well, once every week or two, maybe.  Clearly, this has not been the case.  Heh.  At any rate, I have decided to take this blog in a new direction.  The title here is “Relative to what?” with the tagline: “perspective changes everything.”  Yes this is a horrible joke because I’m a physicist, but even moreso, I would like to embody this a bit further in future posts.  And so from here on out, unless something particularly exciting goes down in my life (don’t get your hopes up…), the primary purpose of this blog will be for the sake of reviews, opinions, and editorials.  In paricular, I’d like to be able to talk about one of my favorite topics, Japanese music.  I’ll be covering a range of mediums, including (but not limited to): live shows, DVDs of live shows, album/single releases, and any particular news that might be interesting.  Please make the distinction that this blog will not be for delivering the latest news about my favorite artists (as I could never hope to compete with Dlyan’s speed), but rather instead just give a bit of insight into what’s going on and share some ideas with all of you.  Please be kind and receive me well!

Regards,
Toomin

 

Tokyo: A quick recap

So, our time in Japan is finally over, and it’s been a hell of a ride. Since there were no incidents which were exciting enough to constitute an entire post, here’s a general recap of the past week or so (besides concerts):

Day 10: We used our free day between concerts to explore Asakusa a little bit. Saw a few temples and shrines scattered around, and Talone wanted to find a good Japanese kitchen knife. I went to an old used kimono shop and actually found a really nice silk set for around $90, but I just couldn’t justify dropping that kind of money on something I’d never actually use. Oh well. That night, we hit up Akihabara, the electronics district. Japanese tech is crazy. I have very little more to say on the subject.

Day 12: Harajuku was a neat area to visit; very fashionable. We walked around a lot and didn’t honestly see much that was that crazy. Though, we did go into a kid’s store, just for kicks. Man, Japanese kids have some seriously FUCKED UP toys. Before going back to the hostel, we stopped at Meiji Jingu, which was really neat. Pictures will follow.

Day 13: Actually our last full day in Japan, Talone got up mad early to go check out the Tsukiji fish market, and he said it was crazy there. I’ll get permission from him to put pics up. Later on, we met back up with Shea and walked around Shibuya again, hitting up a few neat stores before heading back to the hostel to pack up and chill at the bar with fun other people for a well-spent last night in Japan.

Day 14: Sayonara minna! This country was quite good to us, and it was definitely an experience unlike any other. The flight home was uneventful, but the dude up in the cabin on the microphone on the trip from Atlanta to Philly was mad funny. He was making jokes through most of the flight, and it went by a little faster. Thanks crazy old guy; that was the most entertaining flight I’ve ever had.

End of story folks; expect any further entries to be boring as hell; nothing is quite as exciting as this trip was! I imagine you’ll be seeing a “cultural observations” entry within the next few days to wrap things up. Peace out, rock on, you all know the drill by now. Later people!

Also, the pictures are finally being uploaded.  Check them out in the Picasa feed to your right!

 

[Request] Concert Comparison

So, upon the requests of several of my readers, I have for you here a fairly thorough comparison of the three concerts we went to in our time in Japan. It’s been a pretty wild time, so to quickly recap: first was the ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION Tour 2008 ワールドワールドワールド. About half a week later we went to the L’Arc~en~Ciel Tour 2008 L’7~Trans ASIA via PARIS~, shortly followed by YUI’s 3rd Tour 2008 “oui”~I LOVED YESTERDAY~. Between the three shows, we hit all ends of the spectrum in terms of size, intimacy, and sheer insanity. Let’s go in order of show date:

 

Live Report! YUI – 3rd Tour 2008 “oui” ~I LOVED YESTERDAY~ [6/3]

So, there are certain facts that we hold to be true regardless of scenario and situation. The sky is blue; the ocean is salty; Canadians are awesome, and YUI is incredibly cute in both appearance and attitude. We know this to be true. We’ve been seeing it for years. What we didn’t realize is just how much so.

We found our seats rather quickly and waited for the show to get started, and we were not disappointed when YUI and her contingent came out on stage and immediately exploded into Laugh away. In the way that YUI can explode into song and still look just obscenely cute. The audience clapped along, which we found they would do during almost every song for the night. At the last chorus, the band cut out to let YUI sing with just the audience clapping behind her. It was a really great way to start the show off.

My Generation was up next, and I was

 

Live Report! L’Arc~en~Ciel – Tour 2008 L’7~Trans ASIA via PARIS~ [6/1]

You know, I was told a while back that Japanese fans are absolutely crazy, and my time spent at the Hanshin Tigers baseball game and the ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION show last week are a really good indication of that. As expected, one of the biggest shows of the year drew one of the most out-there crowds I’ve ever gotten to see. We got there about an hour and a half before the doors were supposed to open (which was 2 hours before the show was supposed to start), and just went around taking pictures with all the crazy cosplaying fans. We saw some seriously impressive costumes actually, including a number of various girls dressed as hyde from True era (and reborn during the 15th L’Anniversary live) and two very nice chicks in the Nazi costume from the Awake tour back in 05. I basically played tour guide for my three friends by pointing out what all the different costumes and acts were, since they’re not as familiar with L’Arc as I am. There was a full troupe reminiscent of the group from the Lies and Truth PV, a number of people carrying around SMILE boxes (that would later go over their heads), and even a pair of girls dressed as tetsu from the I Wish 2007 P’UNK~EN~CIEL PV! The pictures (that I swear will make their way up eventually) will tell more than I can, so I’ll leave the job to them. A little while after the doors opened, we made our way in with the crowd and found our respectives seats. We were on the third base side, so over by tetsu, which is great since he’s my favorite in the group. I’ve breen looking forward to this for a long time.

So, L’Arc~en~Ciel. One of the most famous Japanese Pop/Rock groups of all time. They’ve been around the world more than once, especially during this tour, in which they hit a series of different venues around Asia and even one show in Paris, France. The theme of tonight’s show was

 

Day 9 – L’Arc Live and Toomin Finally Tries Real Japanese Karaoke

So, the utter insanity that was today. Starting from a nice, relaxing morning (after getting to sleep in a bit; so nice), we went back to Smile, a hostel in Asakusa area over the bridge from here to meet up with our new buddies Shea and Dan. Both from North Carolina, they’re two really cool guys that we met when we stayed at Smile last week after the AJIKAN concert for the night. They’re basically exactly like the two of us, with Shea being really into the same music as me. At the time last week, I took advantage of the opportunity to see if they were interested in going to the L’Arc show with us, since I still had a pair of extra tickets. They were glad to buy them off of me, and I’m glad they got to. It was an excellent show; I would say easily one of the better ones from L’Arc, but I’ll be putting up a dedicated post tomorrow morning with all of the gory details for you.

@Dlyan: It was entirely different from the show in Paris and I did not expect most of the songs or routines. You will be quite jealous when you read the full write-up.

At any rate, the show was fantastic, and we went from there with Shea and Dan back to their hostel over the bridge and rounded up a few (by which I mean a metric fuckton) of people to join us for karaoke at a place not too far from Asakusa station. We asked a few people at the bar that was on the first floor of the hostel and literally the entire bar wound up going with us. It was fantastic. We had about 13-15 people by the time we got there, having picked up one extra random person on the way. The final country count went as follows:

• 3 people from South Jersey
• 2 people from Belgium
• 2 from Calgary
• 2 from Japan
• 2 from North Carolina
• 1 from Montreal
• 1 from London

It was a good time. All classic fan favorites were hit, including Don’t Stop Believing by Journey and Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi. Shea and I did L’Arc’s HONEY and 1/3の純情な感情 from SIAM SHADE. The chick from London cut us off during MY HEART DRAWS A DREAM, which was NOT cool, cuz I like that song. But after she left I got to do AJIKAN’S アフターダーク with Talone and ループ＆ループ by myself. I couldn’t even remember all the songs we did, and we were out till close to 4 in the morning. I closed the night with the all-time Japanese classic (which I’m told no Japanese karaoke party should end without): さよなら by オフコース. It was very nice in the end.

That’s all I’ve got for you now folks; I’m gonna go pass out now so that I’m coherent for a little while longer. Expect a full write-up of the L’Arc live tomorrow evening. We’re probably gonna spend the day exploring the Asakusa area on Paul’s suggestion, and maybe hit up Akihabara before the day is through. Rock on minna!

 

Day 8 – Goodbye to Kyoto, A Fellow Yagyu, and Toomin Finally Gets to Explore Shibuya

This morning, we got up mad early to check out a few temples and/or castles in the area before checking out from our hostel and managed to get inside and walk in and around Nijo castle, which turned out to be a good choice. It was really interesting and quite beautiful, even if the weather wasn’t really in our favor. In the end, however, it all worked out pretty well, and after checking out from the hostel, we made our way back to Kyoto Station, where we proceeded to board our last shinkansen bound for Tokyo, from where I’m writing this part of the entry.

After getting off where we needed to from the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line, we made our way over to the next hostel on the trip, where we’ll be spending the next 4 nights. On the way, however, we passed a small restuarant that bore the Yagyu family crest and

 

Days 6-7 – A Brief Respite

So, after an absurdly busy first few days (featuring what could be the greatest highs and lows of my life to date), we took our time in Kyoto to relax more than anything else. We left our hostel after getting some sleep to recover from the AJIKAN show the night before and took the next available shinkansen to Kyoto Station, where we transferred to a local line and got off in the Uzumasa area, where our next hostel would be. Having been told by Haru, the very kind gentleman who ran the guest house, that everything to see in Kyoto was pretty much closed after 17:00, we decided to take advantage of our time to not take advantage of our time. That is, we utilized the quiet neighborhood in which we were staying to just enjoy a nice, relaxing night, which we haven’t quite had since this trip started.

We also finally got to try real ramen! I ordered