Johan Sebastian Bach - Tafel Musik Konzert

Tafel Musik Konzert

It is been a while, since I took you to experience some music!
We have experienced live houses with modern music, we have experienced huge concerts of world known bands and Japan's greatest band. Finally I also took you to a club to listen to some pop and disco music. Yet something is still missing: a classic concert with an orchestra.

And that is where I will take you today.
On the same day Hung Lun and I were invited at Satomi-san's parents to experience 茶道 Sadou, the Japanese Tea Ceremony, we decided to go to an orchestra concert before.

Classic Music In Japan

Along with many others elements of European Culture, classic music reached Japan in the 18th, 19th century, when Japan was opening itself to the world after the 鎖国時代 Sakoku Period (Closed Country). Ever since then it grew really dear to Japan and Japanese are pursuing it with burning passion. Composers like Nobuo Umematsu (head of the Tokyo Orchestra) have produced many a wonderful piece themselves (Uematsu-sensei is especially known for his works in the Final Fantasy computer game series) , but they also love to perform great works of European composers.
Also although Japan has its own traditional music with instruments like 三味線 Shamisen 琴 Koto and 尺八 Shakuhachi, the traditional music was always something to accompany a festival, theater or ritual, but never for itself. Therefore classic music was something new and very special, it was the first time, people would go somewhere solely to listen to music. Also it was open to all of the people, which it is why it quickly reached the hearts of everyone.

Tafel Musik Konzert (Johann Sebastian Bach)

Me and Hung Lun were lucky that a German composer was chosen for this day. Not only did we both (and Satomi-san) like Bach's compositions, also the program was in two languages (German and Japanese) and the lyrics of the compositions were in German. Hung Lun was studying in Germany and mastered the language there.

The music was really breath taking, but what really touched me is hearing the Chor and the Solo singers sing in perfect German the lyrics that went a long with the music. From Bach's great repertoire Kantate Nr.29, Nr.150, Nr.120 and Nr.198 were chosen.

時間旅行 Time Travel

The organizer was also a very passionate charming person (and a personal friend of Satomi-san). In his love for the music, he decided to make this day special. Thus for that last piece, Kantate Nr.198, which was written for the funeral of Queen Christine Eberhardine of Poland/Saxony, he asked us to go together with him on a journey through time.
We should imagine being in the Paulinenkirche in Leipzig 1727. In front of us the king and his court were sitting in tears for the deceased Queen, everybody dearly loved. To make the illusion even better, instead of the chime indicating the end of the break, the organ would start playing mourning music. Also for the last piece all the musicians would dress in funeral black. It was really amazing.
More than that he asked the audience not to clap before and after the performance, in remembrance of the Queen, as it has not been clapped back then in the Paulinenkriche in 1727. (that was too much to ask for the audience, they could only resist for a little while and then burst into clapping).

Still whenever I closed my eyes, I was no longer in the Bunka Shikan of Zushi, but in the Paulinenkirche in Leipzig, all the people were dressed in black and in front of me was the coffin of Queen Christine Erberhardine erected for everyone to see.

Music Is Magic,
whereever you go

mika

X JAPAN

X JAPAN

X Japan is maybe the most famous band in Japan with its popularity reaching across the whole globe. They formed in 1982 before I was even born and gradually gained popularity though good music and extravagant appearance. They also led the first groundation for what would later be known as Visual Rock and even later Visual Kei.

X was also the first band in Japan to gain such success while being on an independent label, meaning they basically managed everything themselves. They performed for 15 years until 1997 having their farewell concert. One year later Hide, one of the five members and lead guitarist was found hanged with a towel in his apartment in Tokyo. While police sees the case as suicide certain fans believe it to be an accident. Notably some fans killed themselves in copycat suicides shortly after. Hide's death also sealed the end of X Japan, or so it seemed.

Yet 10 years later at the end of 2007 Toshi, the band's lead singer, announced their reunion with 2 reunion concerts in March 2008. Everybody was really surprised, especially since X Japan is not X Japan without the deceased Hide. Nonetheless the 2 concerts were immediately sold out and they announced a third concert, which was also sold out right afterwards. The place was to be the Tokyo Dome, usually a place for Baseball Games, barely fitting all the fans when completely filling the seat rows and the ground below with chairs.

As you might have guessed by me talking about this, I got the incredible luck of getting one of these tickets. I like the band since it was recommended to me by my good friend Kike from Spain, who also loves them dearly. I knew most of the songs by heart and knew I could really enjoy the concert to the fullest. So I decided to invest a large amount of money and go for one of the tickets.

Even before I entered the Tokyo Dome, I was amazed by the number of fans and especially by the wonderful outfits they have chosen for themselves. A lot dressed like X at the height of their fame and power and thus looked simply amazing and wonderful. I tried to take some pictures of them outside, since the taking inside was forbidden.







Once we entered the Dome, I couldn't believe my eyes. There was a huuuuge stage erected in the rear center of the dome, which split itself actually in 5 stages with 3 catwalks right through the ground audience. I made two pictures of the stage, while the band was not performing, so I hope that is ok to post them here.



the rightmost stage was right in front of us



I did not cease to be amazed, since I then noticed that our seats at section B16 (I went with three dear coworkers, also X Japan nuts) were pretty close to one of the three biggest stages and directly beneath one of the catwalks. Then I rejoiced to meet my coworkers and we exchanged screams of joy. Since we actually had seats we sat down, but of course, once only one chime was to be heard or one shape to be seen, everybody would stand up and scream.

Enlarge and you will find just how close B16 was!

The performance started shortly after 18 o'clock and lasted almost 5 hours until something before 23 o'clock. Inspite of the incredible length nobody got tired of screaming or clapping or singing along with the songs. The concert started with a big boom when huge curtains shading the stage fell down and the four living members of X started playing.

There is one thing about Japan that made this concert possible. Japanese have a very strong believe in deceased ancestors as well as people close to them. So it was natural for them that on this day actually all five members including the deceased Hide were performing on stage. Because of the sheer size of the stadium they had to erect several huge displays to enlarge the tiny creatures jumping around on the stage. Therefor it was easy to split and vary the screens in a way to always show all five members of the band, where Hide's part was constructed from video recordings. Sometimes it really looked like he was there on the stage, when focusing on the screens, it was incredibly awesome but also a little bit scary. One of Juan's friends, who actually had been to all three concerts later told us, that on the concert one day before, she had the luck of standing right in front of the stage. And there she from time to time had to rub her eyes, because she actually saw Hide standing on the stage. Rubbing her eyes it then was one of the other members, but she could have sworn it was Hide just one instant ago.

The first performance came to an end with Forever Love, on of X's famous ballads and a quarter of an hour of silence for Hide. Then Toshi thanked everyone for their understanding and they continued after a short break. At the next song, also a ballad, Toshi actually cried and I am pretty sure, standing close by, that the tears were natural; he was both touched and sad at the same time.

A second huge surprise was when guitarists from Guns'N'Roses, Luna Sea and Limp Bizkit entered the stage and supported X for the missing lead guitarist. (Before their entrance, Hide's part was played back from recordings). The three guys merged perfectly with the four guys from X, while adding their own rocky touch to the performance. Now having seven people including four guitarists on stage, also allowed them to spread across the stages and catwalks, so that we often were really close to one of them.

The third part ended with one of my absolute favorites KURENAI and a short fourth part was a performance of a newcomer band called h.Naoto, with some pretty interesting scary visuals. After that followed a long drum/keyboard solo of Yoshiki, where he was literally floating through the air on top of a isle including his drum set and two keyboards to his left and right.

In the break in between the vast audience would start waved by jumping up one after the other, which looks really impressive with such a huge audience. Also since every fourth person had little light sticks I could just turn around 360 degrees and stare at the sea of light only vaguely guessing just how many excited fans there were in the audience.

Then one more time they started playing two new songs, one only written for the three concerts, there other being the cool Song they wrote 2007 for the SAW IV soundtrack and simply titled it I.V. Then they continued playing some old songs and finished again with one song I had so eagerly anticipated: Endless Rain. I love the song dearly and was so curious about hearing it live, since it lasted for more than 10 minutes on their Live CD, with never ending fan chorals. And my expectations were surpassed. When the song ended all the thousands and thousands of fans continued the song for over 30 minutes never loosing the tune and always keeping the sound wonderful and beautiful. I was deeply touched by the atmosphere erupting from the audience back then.

Not enough I was immediately re-energized when after that the piano solo tunes from Art Of Life could be heared. The solo lasted for over 30 minutes and was elongated to over one hour when Yoshiki appeared after these 30 minutes and took over the second piano. Then after one hour Toshi, Heath and Patta joined in with Guitar, Bass and Vocals and created one composition of a song never to be forgotten making Art Of Life the longest song I have ever heard and fully enjoyed until the last tune.
After Art of Life the performance reached it's finale with one of their oldest sings "X" and everyone doing the X Jump (jumping up while crossing your arms to form a X while screaming X).

We are X
We are X
We are X

The finale again went on for a long long time with no one getting tired. Then X members started throwing stuff into the audience like balls and Frisbees and what else. And finally they procured a huge stuffed Hide puppet hugged it and said farewell to us the audience and finished the third and last of their three reunion concerts.

It was an incredible night I will never forget. And I still cannot grasp my luck to have seen a true legend, who was already said to be dead, back on stage. It was like a time travel into the past with a grip to the present age and stuff for many night's dreams :)

mika

お台場 Odaiba

Woohoo spring is coming! And to celebrate the coming of spring, today is a holiday and we do not need to work. Yay!

So what shall we do? This night Ryan and me are invited to a Live House concert of Psydoll, which we had already seen once before. But before that
we decided to pay a visit to お台場 Odaiba, which none of us had seen before.

お台場 Odaiba

Odaiba is an artificial island in the Tokyo bay. It was formed during the reign of the 徳川将軍 Tokugawa Shoguns and its last use in this time was as a maritime frontier defense station against Americas fearful 黒船 black ships, with whom Commodore Perry arrived 1853 near 江戸 Edo (former name of Tokyo). Therefore the name お台場 Odaiba (kind of stationary cannon).

Afterwards the island was rediscovered during the economical boom in the second half of the 20th century. It was supposed to host gigantic monuments of Japans wealth and power and be a symbol for Japan's status. The whole project would have cost several billion Euro. Yes would, it was never completed, since Japan's Bubble Economy burst in the early 1990s and the plans for the island were discarded leaving an island of mud and incomplete structures.



The Fuji Skyscaper

After the economy recovered, major industries like Fuji started building their own skyscraper on the island and forming it the way you find it today: An island of amazing futuristic structures like the Fuji building or the inverted pyramids.



Come into the real of SEGA









and drive in cars



on half pipes



or try to escape from prision



you can also stick your feet in this machine and let it tell you your future

A place for fun and recreation the like gigantic SEGA Amusement Game Canter "JoyPolis", which Ryan and I visited. But there are also a lot of things to see for little kids (we ran into many elementary school classes), for girls to go on shopping trips and for guys to go on shopping trips.
There are some interesting museums, like the maritime museum and for car nuts (Toyota MEGA WEB).






The statue of liberty is on Odaiba island, in case you didn't know and you can enjoy a nice walk on the artificial beach, in case it doesn't rain, like in our case. Actually in our case it was more a storm than rain, which effectively allowed us to watch people get their umbrellas destroyed by the wind. We even found an umbrella graveyard.



we found an umbrella graveyard



and a guy reporting in the middle of the rain and street







more impressions from Odaiba

Urga / Psydoll

Afterwards we went to the concert and enjoyed five special bands. Each of them were special in their own account. The topic of the day was 機械魔術 Machine Magic (But imo only PsyDoll met this topic).

First was a cool girl in a red witch dress and a black with hat called Yuka playing the piano. For later song a friend joined her for some vocals.



Second was a guy from Czech Republic, who actually lives close to my home town Passau and has been to Passau on several occasions. He played a didgeridoo and made some awesome music with it. Again later he was joined by a Japanese woman for some awesome traditional Japanese vocals fitting mysteriously the Australlian didgeridoo.





Third were a Goth lady and gentleman. She was covering the vocal part, the music was play back and he was dancing and giving roses to everyone. I got
the very first rose :). It was playback, but they made up for it with a cool performance.





Fourth were the Zombie Soldiers. Three guys dressed in military uniform having corpse paint and black paint to make them look like Zombies. Two of them covered the vocals and one was playing the guitar. The rest was playback again. There outfits were awesome, but the playback music average. Yet I let myself go and enjoyed it though!







Finally came the stars of the evening: PsyDoll.
They completely covered my senses this time and made me create a cyber punk story in my head, which went along with the music. The story was very close to Blade Runner. A special detective for dangerous cyborgs got a clue that one of the PsyDoll band members was such a cyborg. So he went to his bike and drove through the dreary futuristic city of Shinjuku to the concert. There he first orderer a drink and then watched the band perform. During the next song he scanned each band member slowly noticing the the guitarist is a fully armed bodyguard type with incredible weapons and armor. Of course the dangerous Cyborg was Nekoi on the keyboard and vocals. After the show he procured some weapons and confronted them. They made for the exit and a bike car chase through Shinjuku began. Eventually PsyDoll's car crashed and it came to a fire fight. After a heavy exchange the body guard went down however injuring the detective greatly. Just when the detective was looking for Nekoi, she appeared behind him and set him unconscious. At the last song he awoke numbed and tied up in Nekois apartment. Then the last song was over and thus the story ended.







Later I had a great time with some friends, which I already met at other concerts and got to new some new guys and some of the bands above. Later we went to a bar and slowly drew to the end of the day.

無力無善寺 Muryokumuzenji

Or in other words, delving into the subculture of subculture until you reach the bottom.

But let's start at the beginning. Yesterday I was almost arrested by a police officer for drug dealing in Osaka and I tell you what, something was in the air this weekend to make strange unreal scenarios blob out of nothing.

My friend Philipp from Germany needed a camera, so we went to Akihabara and got one.

Then we continued two stations with the yellow Chuo line till 両国 Ryougoku, where the 江戸東京博物館 Edo-Tokyo Museum is located. The building itself looks awesome, like a fighting AT-AT walker and its huge! But the inside is also really cool (entrance 600 Yen, 400 for students).





The museum deals with Edo from its beginning after Tokugawa Ieyasu claimed supremacy over Japan until it became Tokyo in the Meiji Era and ending with the great Kantou Earthquake and WW1.
There are a lot of amazing replicas of city parts with little plastic figures illustrating the life in Edo. But also a lot of authentic items, like Japan's first small car type, as well as one oldtimer. The permanent exhibition areas covers two floors, where the second one spins a wooden bridge over the first one, that once stood in Nishibashi and connected two central parts of Edo-Tokyo.























It's totally worth a visit, especially if you have a little interest in Japanese history.

Afterwards we went eating at a nice restaurant (I ate a potato piza ^^) and then on to the bottom of the subculture of subculture. Now with subculture I mean the metal musical live house scene in Tokyo, which is really cool, but concerts rarely host more than 30-40 people in the audience.
And now we go on the next level, the subculture of this further includes maniac one girl/man performances crying into the audience about their hard fate eventually theatrically show-suiciding between the standing audience and a girl talking to her stuffed frog pet, while talking a kind of cabaret like way. All this happened in a place called 無力無善寺 Muryokumuzenji, named like a Buddhist temple, and indeed the owner appears with shaved head like a Buddhist monk. The temple actually happens to be his apartment and during the live music, he simply puts his bed outside the room. That means no more than maybe 20 people fit inside, the beer is in his fridge together with his food and the toilet happened to be beyond the stage, so that you actually have to cross the playing band in order to access it.
The place itself looks like being taken from Alice In Wonderland. It is lit in red light and all kinds of stuff including a lot of stuffed toys, streamers, sakura/cherry blossoms, hanging down from the ceiling. The walls look are further decorated with images and merchandise of Hello Kitty and Gaspard. Between that you find incantations to the Amida Buddha and other Buddhist temple items, which make it a real temple after all.
The Buddhist monk owner with his bald head weared a yellow ensemble and a pink apron. He is talking in a high pitch voice and seem to be a total maniac, but the most sympathetic maniac I have ever met. The girl who operated the sound mixers, if not done by the bands themselves, well it was no girl ok. If you looked at her closely it became a him dressed in this typical french maiden outfits, you see a lot here in Japan. He also looked like a nice friendly fella.
In this combination of ideas from children's fairy tales and horror cabinets combined with an owner who looked a lot like Hannibal Lecter, according to Philipp, we watched...





Well let's start with the music first. We came a little late and missed the first bands. But apart from the performances mentioned above we saw two brilliant metal bands entirely consisting of girls. That is pretty rare in Germany, and the more happy am I that those girls proved they could make cool music just like their counterparts in the other gender.

The first band, is the one we already saw on Friday, Galhammer. Three really cool girls making dark atmosphere music inspired by the band Hellhammer. The second one was also really interesting. They combined metal music with traditional Japanese musical elements, like the very striking way of singing you often her in traditional Japanese songs, as well as in theater performances here. A very interesting combination.









Gallhammer



the other girl band

After that we reached the bottom of the subculture of subculture, when the stuffed frog girl started to strip, revealing a plastic penis attached to her hips and asked the Buddhist monk owner to the stage, which tried to grab it and... Well I hope no children are reading this!
It went on for this for a while, use your imaginations. I think they both had experience in SM. Eventually the suicide lamenting girl also joined in, and the audience didn't know what to do or how to react. It was really strange, but still since it was all part of a half planned half spontaneous performance and all, I think even if many will disagree, I'd call it a kind of art.
The half shocked or at least utterly confused audience, didn't know what to say or do and left after that. It was the first time for most of the audience, used to the first layer of subculture, surely not to the bottom of the second one.









some flash pictures of the place between the breaks

For me it was an incredible evening, and I am not sure if it all was real and doubt that anyone will believe me what I wrote here. However if you doubt my words, I welcome you to accompany you to this temple to see for yourself. Although the performance probably won't be the same. Maybe it was a one time experience...

mika