Somewhere on a mountain above Osaka. The moonlit night. The white glow of the city.
The moon follows me everywhere on this trip. I love the tree. It somehow makes it clear I’m in an Asian city. Canadian cities don’t look like this from above.
A 5 X 5 (five scenes, five seconds) arrangement of scenes from Kamakura, Japan, filmed in March 2005. It starts with a camera pan through a sakura tree, a view of the giant Buddha, and then scenes of surfers. Kamakura is one of the most popular surf spots near Tokyo, and can be legendarily crowded on certain days.
It’s also famous as the hometown of celebrated Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu.
Hazakura extended
I hear it said that Tokyo looks like the moon. I think the reason this gets said is its abundant silver lighting. Walking through central Tokyo in the semi-quiet middle of the night makes me think of walking through a moonlit forest.
In contrast, Seoul, where I live now, is much more lit by orange lighting. Contrast the Tokyo scene above with the Seoul scene below. I think many people don’t consciously think of it, but it is both the way the city is artificially lit at night and the way the sun lights it (or not) during the day that contributes to each city’s own visual look – but it seems the lighting scheme crosses most of the cities of a particular country.
A 5X5 edit of relfections in Osaka’s Dotombori Canal.
One of the places reflected is the sign for a hotel. Somehow, the scene here makes me think of the sign in Wong Kar-Wai’s latest film, 2046.
scene from 2046
Anyway, I just arrived in Osaka on a flight from Korea. I’m here to change my visa status at the Korean consulate. This canal is fairly close to the consulate.
I’ve bought a Japan Rail pass, so I’ll be spending the next week going here and there in Japan.
the shorter 5-vignette version
the extended raw footage (3-minutes)
We took a one-night trip to the bottom of Wakayama prefecture this weekend. Wakayama is the prefecture south immediately to the south of Osaka. Most of the prefecture is pretty off the beaten track and was even more off the beaten track before Kansai Airport was built. The furthest south most Japanese tourists seem to get is the onsen/beach resort area of Shirahama, about halfway down the eastern Wakayama coast.
We rode along bending, beautiful coastal roads, with sight-lines only marred by a little more coastal concrete barriers than you’d like to see. We took a combination of local JR trains and hitchhiked. Lighthouses, crows, small fishing towns could be seen through rain-streaked windows. I don’t surf myself, but I’ve heard that Katsuura is one of the better surf spots in this part of Japan (as I’ve written elsewhere, I’m always impressed by this patience here in Japan to wait for small waves at crowded surf spots).
We eventually got down south to a small, budget ryokan. The next day we were met by the father of a teacher I work with in Osaka. He is a tour guide in the area. He took us to Nachi Falls, such a beautiful waterfall, where even the moss and the surrounding rocks seem like they could not be better placed. Kumano Nachi Taisha shrine is here – it is one of the first three Kumano shrines, from which 3000 other Kumano shrines in Japan are said to originate. Our guide explained to us that more than a 1000 years ago, Paekche Koreans arrived here. Apparently, in ancient times, there was a concentration of Koreans in the Nara area north of here. Frankly, I couldn’t fully understand the explanation I was hearing as it was in Japanese, and searching for extra details on the net certainly consumes some time.
On the way back to Osaka, we ended up stuck on the side of the highway as it was getting dark. It was drizzling and I began to worry that we wouldn’t get picked up, and it seemed like trains were hardly running. Fortunately, someone picked us up – a man pretty keen to practice his very limited English, and not open to the idea that I might somehow be able to converse in Japanese. Much appreciated ride, though. Saved us, in fact.
Update: I just watched the Cove, the documentary about an annual dolphin slaughter. Many of the places looked familiar. Looking at a map, I realize the Nachikatsuura area immediately surrounds the town of Taiji, where the documentary the Cove (about an annual dolphin slaughter) was made. It’s such a beautiful, spiritual place. I hope the nearby town will find a way to prosper and that the dolphins will be left alone.
Update: It’s early 2010, and I’ve just seen the Cove, the documentary film about the dolphin slaughter. I realized as I watched this film that it must surely have been made in the same area. I then looked at the map, and could see that the Taiji fishing village is basically it’s own administrative zone, bordered on all sides (except the coastal side) by the Nachikatsuura district.
This interview with Cinematic Orchestra was done backstage in Osaka in September 2002. It has been edited down to about 12 minutes in length, focusing on their collaborative work with Fontella Bass, live improvisation vs. studio editing, and their soundtracking of “Man With A Movie Camera.”
The interview was done for my old magazine Space Age Bachelor magazine (space-age-bachelor.com), The magazine had already pretty much faded out of existence before I did this interview, but at the time I was trying to resuscitate it as a DVD magazine. That never took off, and it would be 2010 before I’d get my act together to put this interview out to the public. I really enjoyed editing this, and from my own perspective I think it was worth the wait.
I dug up this footage from my old camera from June 2002 – Wes shot the footage in downtown Osaka after Japan beat Tunisia to advance to the round of 16. The scenes were filmed near Dotonbori bridge, famous for the revelers who often jump off after Japan or an Osaka team wins a big game. Japan didn’t win the next game, so this was really the peak of things as far World Cup 2002 concerned Japan. Would have liked to seen how big the party would be if they went further like South Korea did.
I headed over to Nagai Stadium in downtown Osaka this afternoon where England was playing Nigeria in the World Cup. I hung around outside, amongst random Japanese wearing Beckham shirts, flirtatious and curious passerby. The Japanese media has rattled on and on about the British hooligans and the megaphone posses were there to shout out warnings incessantly – in Japanese, mind you. The game ended in a goalless draw. There’s these Mastercard ad campaigns with the ‘priceless’ slogan – well, for the England fans I saw leaving the stadium, who no doubt racked up their credit cards to get here, ‘listless’ would be a better motto. They had all the vigor filing out of the stadium as a throng of people commuting home to London suburbs after a long day of work.
I like Sylvia Plath’s game summary best with its references to ‘futures where nothing will occur’ and the ‘compelling hero’s dull career’ in crisis.
Arrived back in Tokyo from Okinawa, at Haneda Airport. Rode the train into the city. Coming from Okinawa, I felt so energized, like a different person, I felt my energy would move Tokyo, but it is not so. Nearly every one here looks tired, exhausted, unexcited … oblivious to the changed person that I am, oblivious to the experiences that I’ve had. I can’t move this city.
Part 1 of 2
This interview with David Toop was done in the Tokyo office of the British Council. Toop was in Japan for some lectures and a conference. I was an English teacher in Tokyo at the time, and I did this interview on my way to work.
This is one of the last interviews I did during the era in which I published Space Age Bachelor magazine. As it was, I never ended up printing another issue of Space Age Bachelor. The transcript for this interview ended up being published in another music zine called Sound Collector.
Here’s Part 2 of 2:
