Cool people in Takeshita-dori

Takeshita-dori is a small winding street, parallel to Omotesandō, were you can also find a lot of fashion boutiques. The difference is that in Takeshita-dori, a LOT of boutiques sell destroy or extreme Japanese clothes, vaguely in punk or gothic style, but above all Japanese style -which does not need that they sell kimonos). You can see a lot of people going up and down this street: foreigners (though really few of them, as there seems to be NEVER a lot of tourists in Tokyo, except when they are themselves Japanese), women in kimonos, and even young Japanese who try, buy, and wear these strange apparels...

As for all things Japanese, it's not just black T-shirts with regular skulls, or worse exhibition of a red filled circle with a text written on it that says: My brother went to Tokyo and all he bought to me is this lousy T-shirt (this is shit, and for one, I saw no souvenir shops AT ALL in Tokyo). It's... sometimes clothes like this one, with FETISHISM written on it:

or these ones, in elegant destroy style (the term is my invention):

You can also find plenty of the gigantic shoes Gothic girls seem to affectionate here:


OK, I wanted to come back with a Tokyo-only shirt or T-shirt (beware of the Japanese sizes). I also bough a LOVELY necklace with skulls as beads, you should see it, it's cool ;-)
I went in one of these little shops. The woman in charge seemed to be 60 years old or so, with gray hair, and totally unremarkable clothes (I'm not saying they were ugly, they were just not at par with whatever was sold in the shop).
A Japanese punk girl with shaved head and with enormous platform shoes was just quitting the shop after trying some clothes. Conversation was at first entirely commercial and a bit dull, and when I was about to leave... she saw my own T-shirt (which I bought on sales in Paris some months ago, it is a Levi-s T-Shirt made by a Norwegian designer, if I remember well):

She was amazed by the drawings, the contrast between the skeleton at the left and the dark girl at the right. She said the drawing was beautiful ;-)
She tried to decipher the Land Of Dark text above, but it was difficult for her to even spell the letters (though she knew enough English to speak with me). I told her how I bought it, and then talk was on. I don't remember all of what we said, but we talked about Japan and Japanese culture, France, etc... At the end, she asked me to come back to see here in her shop if I come back to Tokyo ;-)
This could happen only in Japan ...

Japan Japan Japan

Eh, eh, I was in Japan from August 3rd to August 16. In fact, you need one day to go back there - 12 hours of direct flight, and more than one day to go there (7 time zones from Paris).

Japan is great, and it is very very different from any European country you can know of. I'm sure it is also very different from any other Asian country too... It is hyper-modern (sometimes extremely), and at the same time it retains a very particular culture and traditions.
For example... when you go to the toilets in Ryokans, or even in some museums, you must use specific slippers, because toilets are considered as a dirty room.


But Japan is much more than that:


You maybe have heard of CosPlay or Gothic Lolita girls. You will find a LOT of them in Japan, and not only in Tokyo Harajuku.

Here you will encounter people going to work in strict costume, people in kimonos,

(or even more traditional than that...)

young women wearing ultra-short skirts,

young boys and girls in school clothes,

and others in the Japanese version of Punk attire (which is not punk)

Here they seem to all live in harmony, as shrines can coexist with giant neon buildings.

No I'm not cheating

By the way, I've finished uploading my Japanese pics. More on Japan later... bet my friends and colleagues are fed up about Japan. I'm talking about it approx. 100 times a day ;-)

First Japanese pics

Hmm, these are the first pics from my Japanese trip. It is some pics from two shows in Tokyo with local Japanese noise / post-rock / punk / hardcore bands. It was great !!

First look at some pics of Oh my God You've Gone:

or this one:


I bet you wish you were there too...

Japan noise

OK, I've not uploaded my Japanese pictures yet (hmm, maybe you don't care..).

Look at this gig video of the Japanese noise band Oh My God You've Gone:

I saw them at Tokyo Antiknock August 9. They're weird (but that's great).

The bassist really looks like a little girl. Her bass is almost bigger than herself, but don't dare to laugh, you should see her using it !! Dressed in white, her hair mostly covering her face, don't you think she looks a bit like Sadako ? Sorry no offense meant.

Like it ? OK, this one is even better:

Back from Japan

Well I'm just back from Japan. It has been one of the most extraordinary travel I ever did !! Visited Tokyo - and I attended to 2 underground gigs there, too ;-), Nikko, Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka (a bit).
I'm going to take the train to visit my family for a few days today, so expect more about that (and LOT of pictures about my travel) end of next week.

He he !!

Some Japanese metal bands

Here is a list of Japanese Black / Death metal bands I will (sadly) not see in Japan in a few days. August has never been the best time for gigs (except for festivals, of course):

• Gallhammer, a all-female black metal band, formed in 2003. Judging by the samples on their myspace page, they seem to be great. Hmm, they will your in Europe beginning on September, may be I will go to see them in London on Sept. 23 with Unearthly Trance and Ramesses...

• Vomit Remnants, a black metal band, formed in 1997.

• Church of Misery, another metal band from Tokyo.


• Sigh, said as one of the first Japanese Black Metal bands

• Sabbat, another black metal band.

Appart from the fact that I will be there in August, the difficulty in Japan seems to find the venues. It seems to be difficult even for Japanese, as the Japanese addressing system is not based on streets, but rather on city districts and blocks. Hence venues put little maps to make it easier to find them. The only problem is that they are almost always written in Kanji...

And now folks, off for Japan !! I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Tokyo, returning to French August showers in approx. 2 weeks.

Mata ato de

Harry Potter will not make it

No, this has nothing to do with the ending of the book. I have just finished the Deathly Hallows yesterday evening, so I will not have to bring it with me in Japan (600 pages heavy hard cover). The book is good, but very, very, ... very dark (don't take this as a hint about the ending).



Instead, I might be able to take Battle Royale with me on the plane Friday. hmmm, hearing Polysics, or even maybe some Black or Death Metal (at moderate volume, OK, I care for my ears, and for those of the people around me) in the plane while reading about teenagers planning traps to kill each other in a remote island... That's grand !!!


And now, something completely different: the One Note Show of the White Stripes during their U.S. and Canada Tour (no, no, they did not ask for money for that, they just did that for fun) .

Just after the (shortest ever) show, people yell: One more Note !!!
They're Mental (he would have said).
A pity I could not see them in Paris in June. That would have been the second time (first was brilliant), but this was colliding with the last rehearsal for a play I was in.

Harry Potter "Deathly hallows" and Japanese trip

Hmmm, a long time since my last post.

First, I am (not so) proud to say that I am now at page 140 of the last Harry Potter (or HP, or Henri Pottier...OK, it's not funny). I bought it on the release night at 3 O'clock in the morning, a the Smith bookshop in Paris.

The first book was sold at 1:01 in the morning (because of the one hour difference with Great Britain). I took some (funny, I hope) pictures of the wizardry crowd around, they are here


And in another very different subject: I am going to Japan for approx. 2 weeks at the beginning of August !!! Cool !!!! Unfortunately it means that I will not be able to attend to Wacken Open Air this year...