Miki's Fat City

I don't work with Japanese musicians very often but I worked for a talk sessoin of Carsten Nicolai from Berlin, Germany, and ASA-CHANG from ASA-CHANG & Junrei for a web magazine yesterday. I first met Carsten back in 2001 or 2002 when he came to Japan for the first time to exhibit his works at WATARIUM in Toyo. He is an interesting artist who combines visuals and the abstract audio to complete his works. Actually it is hard to appreciate his works for me because it's too complicated and too abstract. Some people would love to indulge in his unique art world for sure. Amazingly enough, his English became better and better each time I met him since then and once he learned how to utilize his new linguistic tool added to his repertoire, he became eloquent. What a man! I was also assigned for the event at Apple Store Ginza on October 22. We didn't have enough time for preparation beforehand so it didn't go well for me. Carsten seemed a bit nervous. It's differe...

Without my asking him or his asking me, Okami, whose desk is right behind mine in my office, suddenly became my manager just for one day! He needed an interpreter for some face-to-face interviews he was going to have at Loud Park '07 on October 21. I had already accepted to work at an interview with Daniel Erlandsson from Arch Enemy and one with Michael Monroe from Hanoi Rocks before he asked me. Then, he assigned me 3 more interviews. 5 interviews total in 5-6 hours! What an operator he is!! Each one is about 30 minutes, which is shorter than usual interviews, and he thought it wouldn't be a big deal for me. Well, it wasn't actually but I had to skip one of Okami's interviews because it started 30 minutes late and I only had 20 minutes before the next interview. One of my fellow interpreters/translators Mariko was there and we had to ask her to be my replacement. Thanks Mariko! I thought she was perfect for that interview because the interviewees are from England and ...

I took a day off to cure a cold yesterday. All I did was watching TV sitting on my couch slumbering. Plus cold medicine upset my stomach badly and I couldn't go back to sleep around 3am this morning. Then I decided to watch a late night movie or two until I became sleepy. They aired this old American movie "SAYONARA" which I had never seen before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayonara It's not bad - I should say it's pretty good - because the scenery of Japan in that film is from years before I was born that looks very new and fresh to my eyes. First, I thought Eileen Webster was pretty. But I found I didn't think so anymore after I saw Hana-ogi. She is the beauty! Katsumi was an average looking Japanese woman at that time. I don't know how Hana-ogi is seen to Westerners' eyes and probably definitions of beauty are different now. But this movie shows something true about Japanese people and culture in late 1950's unlikely those weird typical ...

It's a great photo taken by Harper. I never saw such a cute lantern! We don't have Halloween in Japan but people seem to accept it as an imported festivity without knowing what it is about. Just like Valentine's Day and Christmas, some companies picked it up as a new strategy to expand their market. Still, there are not many people in this country that actually make a jack-o-lantern to celebrate it. Japanese people, however, tend to absorb something new easily. Once it is accepted and becomes popular, they would soon make unique lanterns incorporating Japanese anime characters. We'll see. It was quiet this week. I didn't have any interview so I could focus on my work at the magazine publisher I regularly work for. Nothing unusual happened, really. Just go to my office, do my work and come home. It's what most of poeple do on weekdays but the biggest difference I have is that my work there is not a 9-5 type of thing. I can go and leave there anytime I want as ...

One of my coworkers Yuko told me today that she uses online translation software to read my blog. I never thought of it and was surprised to hear that. She also said it worked well. She seems to believe it's because my English is grammatically correct. Well, I never liked or studied grammar, so I suppose it's only because I use easy words and my sentences are short enough to be machine friendly. But I thank her for reading such a boring blog like mine :) I always forget to write about a saxophone player I met the other day, Dave Koz. He is really good at doing interviews. He used to host a radio show and knows how to do it very well. I don't usually go see Jazz musicians play live just because I'm not interested in Jazz. But I became curious when I heard that his fans go see his shows repeatedly. I wondered why and wanted to see one of his shows. It was the first set of the first date of his Japan tour at Blue Note in Tokyo. Fortunately he mainly played movie themes...

I got an oil massage yesterday. I found this massage salon nearby a couple of months ago and liked it very much. The massager there is pretty good and it's really relaxing. I wasn't interested in any massage in my 20's and 30's because I didn't feel stiff in my shoulders or back. I knew the word "stiff" and had heard it a lot from people around me but didn't really know as much about it. I was lucky, I guess. I got interested in massage right after I got divorced. I felt so tired that I needed something to ease the pain inside of me. There was nothing I could do except getting someone else's help. There, I found a messuer in a free paper and booked. I went to see the messuer twice a month for about 6 months. It was mainly for keeping in shape but I began to get fatter for some reason. Then, the massager, who I became friends and often hung out with, got into a cult. Her behavior became weird. It was like I got more fat but lost energy whenever I ...