Geek Up Your Ass Gently

I just caught the last few songs at this guerrilla gig under Shibuya station on my way home tonight. Awesome good sound. will buy their new album released today. www.geeks.co.jp

Update: considering they were playing by the side of the road in the middle of Shibuya the sound was pretty good and very very loud, which was what attracted my attention while walking through the station upstairs.

Their "First Debut" album is called Magical Vox Paranoia. "The best rock album of the year" they claim! It looked like they have a loyal fan base that were out in force to support the four lads. They had fliers which I have scanned for your delight :





There were a lot of people taking video and photos so I hope I can find some to share.

Windows 7 Advert

I know I said I would not cover Windows 7 but this advert on the Yamanote this evening caught my eye:

Meet the Korean Government

I've not blogged much about Korea these days. It's been over two years now since we left, but I still have fond memories of the year we spent there. The launch of Windows 7 tomorrow reminds me of how I covered the launch of Windows Vista in Seoul. I won't be covering the launch of it's replacement in Tokyo. All I can say is, I hope the latest version works with the Korean websites.

So while Korea is a distant memory I still notice news items about the country. [And of course I can hardly forget North Korea which dominates the news at least once a week with some sort of crazy or interesting antics. Here is just one of the two examples in today's paper alone.]

So I was intrigued by the advert on the back page of the Economist this week : "Business Round table with the Government of South Korea". Restructuring South Korea's economy for a post-crisis world. Register now at www.economistconferences.com/kr09. Turns out it's only 1,990 USD and no onerous requirements. Sounds like a bargain to me. Go and heckle some of the ministers at the grand Hyatt Seoul on Nov 4th? Sadly I won't be able to make it. Perhaps we could put together some suggestions for those that do. What do you think?

Ojarus, Strange performers. Ueno

These street performers at Ueno were quite amusing.



They've travelled widely in Europe too with their performance ojarus.com.

Typhoon rail disruption

Typhoon 18 (Melor) caused a lot of wind and rain last night peaking at 3am in Tokyo. The worst seems to be over now but I have never this many impacted rail lines on the status screen before.

Here's the latest view of the storm's progress from the Japan Meteorlogical Agency

Latest news from Yahoo

Happy Sake Day

I just discovered that today, October 1st, is Sake Day or 'Nihonshu Hi' as it called here. There's a Publicity page in the Japan Times with three articles extolling the virture of the traditional brewed beverage. ( Update : The supplement is now available as a PDF from their website: Sake Day Special).

One of the items is from Timothy Sullivan of UrbanSake.com who was on my blog roll for a long time. He lives in the US and is one of only 17 Sake Samurai in the world. Probably the only other Gaijin Sake Samurai is John Gaunter of Sake-World.com whose sake course we went on last year. ( The pictures are on flickr.com but my account has expired and you can't see them at the moment! )

There's an article about Born a brewery in Sabae, Fukui prefecture. They offer a range of high quality brands available in many countries around the world. Also included is a piece from Yoshimore Tomi in California, owner of the Japanese restaurant Sushi Ran. He will be celebrating Sake Day with an outdoor kagamiwari :'sake-barrel breaking ceremony', which sounds like fun.

Where ever you are in the world, have a drop of decent Junmai Daiginjo and toast with me 'Sake Day'.