![]() ![]() ![]() Nook is my personal corner of T_’s flat, which is on the eensie side for five people plus visitors to share for 10 days and, given its substantial distance from public transit, not easy to leave. Here, in his embrace, I will spend the plurality, if not the majority of my time in Japan. Davies and Osamu Ikeno (hereafter, TJMUCJC), and a small towel I use as a pillow. Nook is just big enough for me, my duffel bag, my sleeping bag, my copy of The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture by Roger J. Nook is a slightly less than six-by-two-feet space I have staked out beneath a spiral staircase at the apartment of T_, Y_’s bandmate. Though it shares a name with Barnes & Noble’s e-reader, the Nook I speak of is not an electronic device. Or the words for “hello” or “goodbye” or “excuse me.”īut this is not Racism. Example: Y_ can help me borrow a guitar strap, even though I don’t know the words for “borrow,” “guitar,” or “strap” in Japanese. Indeed, I’d bet that most Japanese citizens speak better English than most Americans. Y_: Yes, I see him when he plays Japan.īut please know that, by recounting this nonsensical repartee, I am not presenting Y_, a gracious person I greatly admire, as a bucktoothed Oriental caricature à la Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Reader, kindly note a neutral, nondiscriminatory observation: Japanese folks, or at least those I expect to meet on tour, speak little English. Once through customs, we are met by a goateed man wearing an Ignition shirt. We are tourists, we say, a designation that, if legally inexact, is accurate given the unlikelihood that this trip will break even. Friday’s twilight immediately follows a long Thursday during which the sun never seems to set. To see more of his photos, visit .įlying to Japan with Backup Singer, Bassist and Drummer: Thousands of dollars in airfare, two planes, 16 hours, one Ambien, two-thirds of Saving Private Ryan. “Sleep all the way in the airplane to save your energy for tour!”ĭuring E.D.Sedgwick’s tour of Japan, drummer Sam Lavine took photos of new friends, unsuspecting strangers, and backstage scenes in between power naps and 7-Eleven runs. “It will be a long way to Japan,” the Importer-Exporter wrote on the eve of the tour. You could Pull It Off.Īfter months of negotiations: Ten days. The Importer-Exporter knows Some People On The Ground. The Risk would be yours, but we could Facilitate. To which the Record Label had said: You could. And I, bald for a decade and five to 10 pounds above fighting weight, had Had a Child.Īnd there was no way around it: After a muted reception to our 2012 LP, two middling tours of Europe, not-so-great East Coast weekends, an underwhelming SXSW jaunt, and a bummerish West Coast trip, our band had needed to Try Something New. Like our peers-The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, the Pixies, Dr. Potomac Conservancy Report Reflects River’s Significant Progress, Improved Health Grade
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