Sons of Loki

Yes, this time next week I’ll be wandering through the streets of Tokyo marvelling at the pretty lights and smiling at the light-polluted orange sky, or else tucked up in bed, paralysed by jet lag. I’m increasingly convinced that I won’t actually notice how close it is getting until Tuesday, at which point it’s a bit late. So. See friends, pack. Board train. Transverse underground. Meet chums. Board 777. Land in Japan.

Today I picked up a big fat wad of yen from M&S, bought a few toiletries and some damn pants and socks* and I reckon that’s about all I need. And I’m properly out of debt (well, except student loan and tuition fees, but I don’t have to worry about that until 2012, and that’s years away!).

*“If you wanna look for me I’ll be in charity shops // I ain’t buying my shirts, I’m buying my damn pants and socks.” — David Peter Meads, “Development”

I love Tokyo. I sometimes wonder if my love of Japan is secondary to my love of Tokyo, because it just feels like the most exciting city on earth, the concrete realisation of the ultra-sprawling ultra-fast city of the future I grew up with as depicted in Blade Runner and Judge Dredd and Akira and Ghost in the Shell. And a city like Tokyo ought to have its own soundtrack. So here we go.

1. “Intro/Tokyo” (from the Lost in Translation soundtrack)
2. Kevin Shields – “City Girl” (from the Lost in Translation soundtrack)

“Intro/Tokyo” is just a rather cool amalgamation of the unique sound of Tokyo that kicks off the LiT soundtrack, the railway jingles, the loudspeaker vans, the constant noise in the street. It segues nicely into “City Girl”, a suitably dreamy love song from My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields.

3. Death in Vegas – “Girls” (from the Lost in Translation soundtrack)

Starts off softly, with a gentle awe that perfectly complements the majesty of Shinjuku’s neon skyscrapers as seen from the isolated cabin of a taxi, then builds into a roaring crescendo.

4. Shinichi Osawa – “Star Guitar”

A cover of a Chemical Brothers track with a genius video, which fits nicely with the Shinkansen.

5. Yellow Magic Orchestra – “Rydeen”

Unfortunately I can’t find this on Spotify, but I have just discovered a bizarre album of salsa covers of YMO songs, which possibly makes up for it. But Rydeen – what a track! Was going to be the Japanese theme in the 1980 Olympics before the boycott, and it’s so fantastically upbeat, bringing to mind serious-looking Japanese superheroes dashing into action. It’s Tokyo in it’s ridiculous 80s heyday, where the streets were paved with gold and Bob Dylan made hilariously bad videos during his shit period creative drought.

6. POLYSICS – “I My Me Mine”

Just a squeaky-voiced Japanese girl going “I my me mine // I my me mine // I my me mine // I my me” for 3m 16s,and yet … so wonderful.

7. Yellow Magic Orchestra – “Technopolis”

Good in the same way as Rydeen, only a little more toned down. You couldn’t go into space on this song, but you could certainly cruise along expressways on a futuristic sports bike.

8. Squarepusher – “Tommib”

After the giddy highs of “Technopolis”, “Tommib” captures the melancholy lows of Tokyo in a handful of notes, when all you want to do is stare out of windows.

9. Devo – “Jocko Homo”

I cannot link this song to Tokyo in any meaningful way, except that I just listened to it all the time when I lived there, for no real reason, and so it strangely takes me back. It sort of … captures the inhuman confusion of the cold, mechanical Tokyo??

10. Bon Jovi – “Wanted Dead or Alive”

It’s tough being a foreigner in Japan. Sometimes you tell the day by the bottle that you drink. Sometimes when you’re alone, and all you do is think.

11. the pillows – “HAPPY BIVOUAC”

And we finish our morning of regret with a blast of full-on J-rock from the Pillows to cheer us up again.

12. Shinichi Osawa – “Rendezvous”

And then a bit of Japanese house from Shinichi Osawa, who DJ’d at WOMB Shibuya round about the time I was there, in a time before I even knew what house was. For a year or two I just liked the design of his album cover on the little booklet I picked up in the goodies bag they were handing out when I left. Then it occurred to me to actually listen to the guy, and he was quite good.

13. Happy End – “Dakishimetai”

Literally “I want to hug”. It’s a Tokyo-daytime, gone-to-get-some-groceries song.

14. Air -”Alone in Kyoto”

Okay, it’s Kyoto (the anagram-lover’s Tokyo) but it’s still a good track, capturing the feeling of a wander through a Japanese garden surrounded by skyscrapers.

15. Jóhann Jóhannsson – “Part 1/ IBM 1401 Processing Unit”

The story goes that in 2006 the composer Jóhannsson discovered some tapes of simplistic music made by his father using the IBM 1401 mainframe computer in 1964 and scored an orchestra to go with it. The result is heartrendingly powerful, the strand of the electronic tones running throughout as the brass and the strings rise and fall.

16. Happy End – “Kaze wo atsumete”

Literally “Gather(ing) the winds”, it’s a song about wandering around, sitting in empty coffee shops, and not getting much done.

17. Ben Folds – “Narcolepsy”

A crashing piano intro and then a clever, catchy song built around the metaphor of how we sleepwalk through the most emotional parts of our lives, as if we had narcolepsy. And, uh, people sleep a lot in Japan. (I’ve got this awesome idea for a music video, where I go around filming people in Tokyo falling asleep in trains and on park benches and at desks and string it together until the final crescendo where I’d flash up loads of clips of people nodding off. It all makes sense in my head.)

18. R.E.M. – “Daysleeper”

This song is dedicated to that unsung hero, the tireless, dedicated Japanese salaryman.

19. David Byrne and Brian Eno – “Strange Overtones” (available free here)

The quiet romance of apartment life/songwriting.

20. Imogen Heap – “First Train Home”

After a year of hearing people rave about Imogen Heap, I had a listen to her new album and indeed, it’s pretty good. I listened to this song and thought “Yeah, this is a Tokyo song.”

21. Jesus and Mary Chain – “Just Like Honey”

Who knew back in 1985 that a racket-making Scottish rock band would create the perfect ending for a film about platonic love in Tokyo in 2003?

So, yeah, that’s the music I’ll be listening to come October. Here’s a Spotify playlist with all the tracks that are on there.

Went to Cornwall on Monday, stayed until Wednesday in a sweet little campsite not far from the ocean ten minutes out of Newquay, and the photos are on Facebook if you want to see them. Visited a cider farm, saw Land’s End (quite a sight, as you can see above), drank some cider with the girls from the tent next door, and on the last morning Scott and Stuart and I forayed into the freezing Cornish seas, wailing and throwing ourselves against the great leaping waves.

Afterwards Stuart and I wandered along the cliffs and found some stunning horseshoe caves (as I am told they are called), great big chasms ate out of the rock with narrow caves tunnelling into the Cornish rock and disappearing out of sight into sheer darkness, water dripping from the ceilings. At one point we found an old wheel literally wedged into a crack, so old it bore the words “MADE IN YUGOSLAVIA” and with no clue as to how it got there.

Oh, and I stood on a bee by accident, fatally injuring it as it stung me. Hurt like a shard of glass. Poor bee.

On the radio, on the way, I heard a news story about how some local education authorities were thinking about changing schools’ spring holiday from being based on Easter (which is hardly convenient, jumping around like that, and not exactly secular either) to just being two weeks at a fixed date. Obviously some church organisation piped up, saying “tradition was being sacrificed in the name of convenience.” What?! I’ll admit some affection for the curiously British notion that the spring holiday should jump around with Easter, but ultimately when the revolution comes my rallying call will be “Convenience, not tradition”.

Oh, and Robin insisted on listening to Jeremy Vine even though he despises the man. Thanks to the sensible, level-headed callers we established that loading criminals on to a boat and executing them with savage dogs is a fine and sensible punishment in our grand, civilized nation.

Today I had the interesting experience of being part of a sort-of-focus group for a Norwich-based web developer who’re doing a LivingSocial-style Facebook books app on behalf of Channel 4. They were good fun, a self-confessed pair of 30/40-something geeks who acted like a stand-up comedy act, asked us for our thoughts on designs and names. Interesting to be able to give some feedback into the design process.

So, yeah, off to Nihon in round about 10 days. I always try to make sense of the time remaining by thinking back to however many days ago it was, which in this case was September 8th. Which actually seems some time ago, so I guess I still have a long time to wait.

Choices, choices.

Two bits of email today: firstly, further information on my JASSO scholarship (confirming it wasn’t a bizarre database fluke). I just need to open an account when I get there – probably with MUFG (which I always subconsciously associate with MUFC, especially given their shared use of red), because TUFS don’t charge a transfer fee with them – let the student finance office know, and then poof, in go the funds. Which will be nice.

Secondly: an email from Professor Mochizuka at TUFS, expressing concern about our private accommodation. Both she and Morimoto-sensei are concerned about it being a good place for study, given its distance from the university, extra cost, and the other residents. They recommend that we plump for on-site accommodation instead.

Now if you’ll remember, TUFS told us (via Leeds) back in the spring that there would only be three rooms for the five of us Leeds students, so rather than flipping a coin to decide, Fran and I decided we might as well go with our coursemates over at ICU and move into private accommodation with them. Which seemed a good idea at the time, and also the only option.

However, on short notice, TUFS have offered us two rooms on campus. I’m a little annoyed they couldn’t have told us earlier, but to be frank the university accommodation is almost half the price, just as good if not better (though the guesthouse has a TV in every room, the uni rooms have a small kitchen area, ensuite, and tiny balcony) and I don’t have to commute to the uni every day. I’ve been in touch with a guy who was there last year and he confirms that it’s a pretty sweet deal.

I’m gonna sleep on it, but I think this is something I’m gonna go for.

A mere 430 hours to go!

That.

Remember?

There are kids of six and seven and eight! who, unbelievably, never knew a pre-9/11 world. Most ten and eleven year olds probably don’t remember it either. They will probably never understand, the way I probably don’t get the full shocking impact of the Challenger disaster or the Zapruder film, because I knew a world where the Twin Towers stood in New York and would always stand, in the same way that the sun will always rise – i.e. not technically a certainty but never actually going to stop happening, surely – and the idea of a Hollywood Michael Bay Roland Emmerich blockbuster unfolding in the heart of America where evil-doers commit an act of unspeakable terror with big explosions and heroic rescues and tragic losses seemed entirely implausible.

I don’t think we can come to terms with the events on that day. 19 terrorists hijacked and destroyed 4 planes resulting in the structural collapse of 2 buildings and damage to 1 other building resulting in the deaths of 3,017 people. That summary, while accurate, hardly reflects the emotions evident in that photograph up there.

What does it even mean? It feels like the trigger in some hack author’s airport thriller – “In 2001, a terrorist attack sent the United States into turmoil. In the following years, the world was engulfed in war and economic turmoil, as a new empire arose in the East and old foes sparked new rivalries…” What a strange thing this 21st century is, where even history is being all post-modern and ironic.

Bad times ahead, then.

"Let's never come here again, because it would never be as much fun."

I love this film. As I tell everyone, I hated it the first time, loved it the second. I love this film because of Tokyo, and I love Tokyo because of this film. I remember someone in Metropolis once called it (specifically Scarlett Johansson) “the reason why we’re all here in the first place”, which is stretching it as a little, but as a stunning depiction of all the glamour of Tokyo and all the loneliness and alientation and existential angst of actually living there I think it sums things up.