Jimi interviewed by: Toaster

This time, Toaster gave me a big ol' list of questions, and if you make it to the end there's a surprise!

Toaster: What exactly happened after you declined to renew your contract? Did they cancel your visa too or did you find another sponsor? Sorry, I'm not too familiar with all the visa and paperwork stuff since I'm quite young but it gets rather fuzzy after you declined to renew your contract! And how did you find work after the declination?

Jimi: After I declined to renew, all I had to do was move out of my apartment and sign some papers with the board of education. They didn’t cancel my visa, but as I understood it when I talked to immigration people I had a few months of leeway to find a new job/sponsor. This ended up being a good thing because I changed my visa to the much more versatile Humanities visa from merely Education. I’m still not sure precisely how it all works; I just talked to immigration people and my employers on both sides. I did need to get a certification of completion from my BOE.

After I quit, my first order of business was finding a new place. Once I settled in, I started the job search via various sites and the power of googlin’. :)

Toaster: Would you advise foreigners to do freelance translating if they cannot do English teaching for some bizarre reason? Or find some other job?

Jimi: I don’t see what would prevent someone from finding a relatively decent job teaching English, but let’s say that was the case: I would recommend doing freelance translating if you can find the work that pays, and good luck with that. I have no interest in translating anime or video games, nor do I have the patience to handle the more technical stuff. Maybe when I settle down. In any case, you’ll still need a documented job to get a visa, I imagine. I have a non-English teaching job, and while it does require lots of translation and interpreting, it isn’t freelance.

Toaster: What do you think of the idea of a Korean teaching English to Japanese kids and being in Japan in general? It may seem trivial, but since I'm Korean, you may know about how Korea and Japan had really tense relationships after Japan took over our country and killed a bunch of people, burned down our historical treasures, and raped our women. Do you think there will still be tense relationships/racism involved? I know there are still some Koreans out there who still feel pissed off about the invasion and would love to get their hands on a Japanese person's neck.

Jimi: There were lots of Asians in the program. I think the only tense relationships would be among a tiny handful of middle- or old-aged jerkbutt loserfaces. The younger generation is, thankfully, largely ignorant of history and really chill with each other. I know a few Japanese people who speak Korean because they wanted to learn it, or are dating Koreans, or are Zainichi Koreans. It’s all pretty chill, honestly.

Toaster: In Japan, do you survive on combini food everyday or go out often to eat? Or do you go out to the supermarket and find fresh produce?

Jimi: Given my current schedule, I don’t have a lot of time to do any cooking, nor do I really have the energy. I eat lunch with my babies and in the evening I usually grab something with co-workers. When I did cook though I relied on simple Japanese dishes, as the ingredients were far cheaper and at the time I lived alone so I didn’t mind experimenting with ingredients I was unfamiliar with and following recipes to the letter of the law.

Every time I think maybe I’m hittin’ the combinis a little hard, I remember that I know Japanese people who rely on them far more than I. :-P

Toaster: Was teaching kids English really hard/stressful? I enjoy kids 90% of the time, and I'm sure you do too, but they must've given you some hard times, right?

Jimi: Every situation is going to be completely different, depending on the school, the board of education, the main teachers, the students, and even you. My kids were always awesome. The kids that gave me a hard time were the kids that gave everyone a hard time, and in a few instances once I got to know them it was easier to influence their behavior. Really, teaching kids at the age that I do now just means that I get to play with them all morning AND be the boss. :D

Toaster: What exactly do you do for work now? Is it a part-time job? I know that you've said some odd jobs, but may I ask exactly what? And how did you find such a flexible job that allows you to play in a band and what jobs would you recommend for a person who wants to be in a band and work at the same time?

Jimi: Band dudes don’t usually reveal what kind of work they’re in, but I will say that I work two part-time jobs. In the morning I play with babies, and in the afternoon and evening I am a manager at a modeling/talent agency for foreigners. Occasionally, as you’ve probably read on the blog, I actually get to do some modeling/talent jobs myself. I am not very useful apparently, though, as I am not really the “type” of foreigner that gets cast in many things.

As for a job I'd recommend, some places will give you flexible hours, so if you're really serious about doing some other activity too then make that a priority. Just be prepared to not be a salaried worker, probably.

Toaster: How much kanji do you know? How many would you recommend to know for surviving in Japan and any tips on kanji in general?

Jimi: I know, um… there comes a point when you stop being able to quantify it. I think maybe I know 1500 comfortably, if not more, and that’s not counting a bunch of obscure junk I learned through my studies of classical Japanese, incidentally through Chinese, or from music. (In particularly VK, where ridiculous kanji is par for the course.)

Toaster: Ok, now let's go into the VK scene. Are there lots of bands looking for members or is it an incredibly hard feat to find an open band?

Jimi: I just plugged search terms into google. There are plenty of bands looking for members at any given time. I had this devious idea that I’d ride the coattails of some established band, but in the end I’m glad I started out at the bottom all over again. Besides, the established bands looking for members are typically going to look from among their peers at a relatively similar level.

My worry was that it would be hard to find someone willing to take a non-Japanese, but actually very few people seemed to care or even notice.

Toaster: Do bands really have high expectations for new members? Do they want another Sugizo or are ok with the average player? I'm guessing it depends but any info would help!

Jimi: I feel like this question is leaving out the middle; there are plenty of talented musicians around me, and while they’re not Sugizo or anything, I’m more than proud to play alongside them. In a genre like this I think bands are generally looking for a little oomph to make up for it if you’re maybe not a great musician. Charisma, looks, character, stage presence… Being a nice guy counts a lot; the Tora Sky Walkers crew told me some stories and gave me some great advice on the level of tolerance you should have for a good musician who isn’t a very nice dude, and that is very little.

Toaster: About how much money is needed to invest into a VK band? It'll be more expensive with all the hair and make-up and costumes but if I ever wanted to try out for the scene it's better to know how much money I'll need to scrape up!

Jimi: Actually, hair and makeup costs were the least of my worries. Costumes will run you pretty high. I paid about $100 for the basic materials for our costumes, had an acquaintance make them for us for free, and to be frank I wasn’t 100% pleased. But getting them made with a degree of competence and flair of design would have been exorbitant. The photo set was up there too. There’s practice studio fees, equipment maintenance (like, I have to buy a lot of 9-volt batteries, for instance, and then 5-string packs are significantly more expensive than a pack of 4-strings), and finally there’s the pesky matter of being able to get enough people to come see you so that you’re not operating at too much of a loss. Which I did, up until Yue’s last show when we finally made money. Same with the session night.

Bands with a little bit more momentum save up to buy an equipment van, and then of course if you want to make an actual studio recording, just sell an organ.

Just as long as you have a relatively steady income you should be fine. :) Or an inheritance!

Toaster: Do you think that the 99% male VK bands would accept a female member? There's of course cool all-girl bands like Exist Trace and Danger Gang and that female guitarist Koro, but the what do you think are the chances of a foreigner Korean girl with not 200% knowledge of Japanese getting into a band? I know you did it, but I don't know about me!

Jimi: I still don’t know how I did it, but then again, I haven’t “made” it like the bands you’ve mentioned have. There are far more women in the scene than most Japanese coverage of VK would lead you to believe. (At Juka’s live, one of the bands had a really talented female drummer and she was so ridiculously darling and pretty and I fell in love for a little bit.)

I know Miyavi’s part Korean and Intetsu (Ayabie)’s family is Taiwanese, but both of them had the advantage of being born and raised in Japan. Still, surely I cannot be the only one who’s tried this, right??

That said, just focus on your ability to communicate and don’t for a minute let your ethnicity or citizenship be anything but an interesting bit of trivia.

Toaster: What bass do you play? I know you have a 5-string Ibanez but which model? And Ibanez rocks, by the way.

Jimi: I play a 5-string Ibanez Soundgear 305. I can mess around a lot with the tone, and I’m in love with Narciss’s Ampeg cabinet so I get a pretty good sound. Ryota complimented me on my sound when I played with TSW. :D

Toaster: If a person knows how to play their instrument decently but has never performed live, do you think that this will greatly lower their chances of getting into a band? It probably will, but who knows?

Jimi: I don’t think it really will; if I were putting together a band I’d take the guy who could play over the guy who sucks no matter what their stage presence. With someone who can play, that can be developed/encouraged later. The other guy will rarely be motivated to improve.

Toaster: If you don't know how to use Pro Tools or recording inside out, do you think this will affect you greatly too? I'm just a newbie, so hopefully in the future I'll be 100 times better than right now!

Jimi: I have a secret; I know absolutely nothing about MTRs, DTMs, Garage Band, Pro Tools, Fruity Loops, anything. Even though I used to be a keyboardist I have a very weak understanding of how MIDI works or patches or really anything that has to do with a high degree of specialty in modern technology. I want to learn at least how to operate a mixer as soon as possible. I might have to intern mahself with the PA guy to do so.

Toaster: Do you actually know your band members' real names? Do you know Ryota's real name or Yue's? Or you just call 'em Ryota-kun and Yue-san?

Jimi: Of course! It’s on our membership cards at the studio, and on the morning of a live we have to file paperwork with both our real and stage names on them. We call each other [stagename]-kun all the time though. (Although I get “Jimi-kun”, “Jimimi”, and in Masaki’s case “Jimiiiiiii jitsu wa James”. He says this every time we meet up.)

If you think about it, most dudes’ stage names are just some alteration of their real first or last name though. Ryota’s real first name is Ryota, obviously, but in a case like Yue’s, his stage name comes from his hometown and has nothing to do with his name. In my case, I just slapped some kanji on a variation of my first name that I hadn’t gone by until I got to Japan.

Toaster: How many rehearsals does LAVERITE usually do in a month, or week, or etc.?

Jimi: Laverite as a whole tries to get into the studio once a week. This gives us a couple of rehearsals per show, and we go in for about 2, usually 3 hours at a time. For us it was almost more time than we needed, but better safe than sorry.

It’s standard practice for session bands to only go in once or twice before their show. This is because 1) the session is usually decided fairly last-minute, and 2) the set is most usually all cover songs that everyone knows or can easily be given a CD-R, or sent through email.

Thanks for the interesting questions! If any of you have any others, send 'em my way!

And I promised a surprise so here it is,

the surprise is a penguin i made in ms paint

Jimi interviewed by: Kate

This time, Kate asks me about giiiiiiiiiiiiiiirls


Kate - the girls at lives seem really young. how do they act around you?

Jimi - They are indeed quite young. Most of them are in high school, so between 15 and 18. Of course there are quite a few girls in their 20s that come, and then a small handful of older and much older, but most of them are in that high school - to - mid-20's range.

Most of them act shy and nervous and it takes them a huge amount of courage to come up and talk to us or ask to by pictures or ask us to sign something, and I think that's adorable, so I really hope they had a good time. Some of them can be a little bold, but so far I haven't felt uncomfortable or afraid at any moment around any of them. And then of course lots of them don't pay me any mind at all! :D Or I'm just oblivious and can't tell.

Jimi interviewed by: Fuzzurin

Today, Fuzz and I are going to talk about touring and friends.

Fuzzurin - I had a question about the "scene," as well. How does touring work with VK bands and bands in general in Japan? I read a Dir en grey interview once where they were quoted saying that they don't actually travel around in a bus, they fly to each location, then go home, and fly to the next place. Are things like this common?

Jimi - Japan is roughly the same size as California, but it's not nearly as easy to get around by car as it is back in the states. (And I know L.A. traffic is rough, but I'm not from L.A.) A bus would just constitute an 8-hour drive to Osaka overnight, and that sounds horrible.
I'm only a dinky little band dude, and really I shoulda asked Hizaki or Ryo how this all works, but there are quite a few smaller airports around the major cities where bands like Deg play when on tour, so I can only assume they ship the equipment ahead of time and then catch up with it on a plane. I can't really say if it's common, because most bands we play with drive around in their vans and don't go much farther than Shizuoka or Nagoya (if they ever leave Kanto, that is), which isn't a terrible drive. I'm going to have to say that I'll get back to you on this, as a simple phone call could clear all this up.


Fuzzurin - Also, are bands usually close friends in VK bands in Japan? It seems as though most bands in America are like a family, but I've heard that things can be more impersonal in bands in Japan.

Jimi - All my bands back home felt like close friends and family, but that was because we were all still in school, saw each other every day, and generally had tons of free time. Here in Japan, I found the Laverite guys through a classified, so we weren't friends before and had no other purpose than doing the business of making music together.

At first I found this new arrangement thrilling; there was no time wasted during rehearsals, preparations were made quickly, efficiently, and economically, which was a stark contrast to the lazing about that plagued some members of my previous bands.

But the fact that I wasn't friends with Yue and Ryota felt weird. We didn't hang out outside of band stuff. Sure we were friendly in the studio and at lives, but other than occasional emailing there wasn't much non-musical communication.

As we went on some of that changed, and in fact the whole Yue leaving thing has brought us closer and tighter as a band and as friends than we had been before. Ironic I know but whatever.

Still, I am much closer friends with dudes in other bands than I am with my own band members. This is because when you play shows together, conversations flow a lot more naturally in that setting than in the deep thinking of whether someone will work in your band or not. My first conversations with "bigger" names in the scene were much less awkward than my first conversation with Ryota, and I honestly believe it's simply a matter of why we're even talking in the first place.

I understand what you mean by impersonal, but I want to stress that readers should take any negative connotations from it.


If you wanna ask me anything, send me an email!

Jimi interviewed by: Xio

This time, Xio had some questions about the "scene"--WHATEVER THAT MEANS.

Xio - 1. Is there a social stigma around the visual scene? What does the general public think of the scene? Also, how well-known is it among the general public? Does most any young person in Japan know about vkei or is it only really known by people who follow music closer?

Jimi - From what I gather, most people are at the very least aware of the term. Most music-savvy people will be able to recall a few much older VK bands from that boom period--Luna Sea, Glay, Shazna, and the like. If it wasn't hugely major then no one knows. In terms of any social stigma, I feel like it's viewed, on the surface, as a superficial genre of boys with egos putting looks and popularity over musical ability.
I'm going to agree with that sentiment, insofar as I think that myself and the several earnest fellow VK musicians I've had this discussion with are merely trying to put on a good show and help some lost lonely young people have a cathartic experience and make some friends in the process.

Some people will certainly turn up their nose at the mention. I mean, there certainly is a lot to make light of. I know one girl who saw X on TV when she was a small child and they scared her and she just can't view Visual positively. That's fine.

And in any case, even the "bigger" VK acts we think of in today's scene--Nightmare, Gazette, Alice Nine, et al--are still only really known/paid attention to in the visual scene.

I think I'd sum this up with: those who know about it, know about it.


Xio - 2. A silly but popular U.S. fan rumor/speculation is that some of the bigger people in visual kei are actually associating with organized crime. Is there any backing 'yakuza-like' or 'under the table business' support going on with the bigwigs in vkei, that you know of? Or is it just fans overthinking all the scene heirarchy or, in KENZI's case, taking his image too seriously?

Jimi - I have actually never heard anything about this until recently, and even then only from one non-Japanese. I don't think I'd have gone this long and made the contacts I have without hearing at least a hint of something like this if it were true. And since Kisaki got caught I hardly think it was *organized*, har har!

Again, to many non-Japanese peoples' dismay, I know next to nothing about Kenzi, so.

A lot of money does indeed flow in strange ways but I don't know I'd call it shady or anything. but I think it's just becase I'm not used to how business is done, and indeed I had not come this far in bands back home.

Being completely amateur and indies, I can't really comment about any actual business or being on a label or nothin'. :(


Xio - 3. In relation to the first question, is there a social stigma around *foreigners* in the visual scene? Is it simply the language barrier that puts them off wanting to work with gaijin, or is having a gaijin in your band considered risky business at all?

Jimi - If you're asking about being a foreigner in Japan and going to shows, so long as you're a nice person and you speak Japanese well enough, I think you'd just be a minor curiosity. As for actual working in the scene, the language barrier is HUGE. Almost no one on the Japanese side knows English as well as foreign fans seem to think, and while I admire and appreciate a lot of the effort put forth by organizers and people on the non-Japan side of things, there are many who I think are promoting themselves as though they were actually band people "in" the "scene" as well.

And as far as I'm aware, I'm only the 2nd or 3rd foreigner to do VK in Japan with Japanese people. I can see it being risky if they foreigner didn't speak Japanese (sorry, "music is a universal language!" ain't gonna cut it) or if they didn't play their instrument well enough (a low standard, I realize). But Ryota and Yue hardly gave it a second thought when considering me, they confessed.

Japanese people have been much, much cooler about my foreignness than I had originally expected. And while I have so much great support from all y'all readers, by far the meanest/silliest comments have come from the foreign community.

My big revelation is that, despite differences and misunderstandings, once you get to know people as people and not just their language or their country or race or orientation, things like that suddenly become incredibly unimportant.

Xio - 4. Have you met any bands/artists that weren't exactly the friendliest people? Any dirt at all you can spill about anyone in the scene in particular?

Jimi - Haha, I don't know that I would ever spill dirt, but yeah, you learn funny things about people for sure, most of it rather harmless. And in terms of people who haven't been cool, well, I'm obviously not going to name names. But when we first started out and we had a staff girl working for us, there is a band that's no longer around that was very rude to her. And we briefly had a misunderstanding with another band that got smoothed over quickly and painlessly. Ryota and his former bandmates in various bands still have some hard feelings, but then again out of all the people I've ever played with I can think of one or two I wouldn't like to run into again.

So I'm going to answer the opposite! If I've written about them here before, they've been truly wonderful to me. If they weren't, it would just look like name-dropping. And I can't stress how great of a friend Masaki (ex-Sulfuric Acid) has been to me. That's him, me, and Keita (ex-DieLa'Vice) playing billiards in Shibuya after they came to see me when I played with Becca in front of 109. Carmen was there too and snapped a few pictures which are on her bloog.


I hope this answers your questions! If I have not and only brought up more, then ask those! :D

Jimi interviewed by: Lemon

Here are some general foreigner-in-Japan questions from Lemon! I'm going to answer them broadly and not direct them just at him, because I realized that I just wanted to sort of give my advice to a faceless "all y'all".


Lemon - What is the best way to gain Japanese fluency? I'm on my 3rd year of Japanese currently, but I really want to know what the best path is to pursue from there. Is simply living in Japan the surest method?

Jimi - If you're not currently in Japan, I sure hope you have Japanese friends who don't mind talking with you. I would try to be prudent on this one; a lot of Japanese exchange students want to speak English all the time and ignore any Japan talk; others will sort of retreat in fear with other exchange students and speak Japanese exclusively. Try to set up an exchange if you can.

If there aren't that many Japanese speakers around, go for reading fluency first. Get good at being able to gloss over large sections of hiragana (useful for gleaning verb endings when you're skimming) and get your katakana straight: mind your 'so's and 'n's (and your 'shi's and 'tsu's). And finally, DO. NOT. NEGLECT. KANJI. And do NOT trick yourself into thinking it's really really hard. This is the one thing about learning Japanese I have been unable to relate to others with: I have had no problem with kanji and it was certainly one of the aspects of learning the language I enjoyed the most. Do whatever you can to find a kanji learning method that is best for you. Also, don't ever use romaji ever again. :)

Okay, once you've learned a couple hundred of those then I'd suggest listening fluency. The best way to do this, I've found, is to watch a lot of bad Japanese comedy TV. One, because at least it won't be dry, and two, because Asian TV tends to subtitle everything in wacky lettering. So if you can't catch everything going by so fast with your ears, at least you'll be able to see it on the screen. And then your reading fluency comes into play.

For me, personally, I watch the dry, boring news programs, because now I need to learn all the legal, political, and economic jargon that comes with the language of news. I also read newspaper articles on the brief occassion I can sit down and willingly focus enough to make sense of them.

Watch Japanese movies with the Japanese subtitles. Watch Japanese movies with no subtitles at all. Watch some cheesy dramas. Don't watch anime because that's not real and no one talks like that. Listen to music and try to write down what you hear phonetically. Double check it with the Japanese lyrics. Writing fluency? Keep a diary, mixi, livejournal, anything, in Japanese. Keep it simple.

Speaking will come last, as it usually does in language learning. Force yourself to try, if the opportunity presents itself. Do not be afraid to make mistakes or say something silly on accident. Laugh at yourself. Try not to "sound" so "foreign"--when I was a teacher, many of my students asked how they could fix their English pronunciation not to be so "Japanese". The best way to do this, when learning any language, is to over-exaggerate when you repeat the sounds you hear. I encouraged my students to respond to me as if they were "mocking" me. Actors who have had to do diction or accents or musicians (trained vocalists in particular) get this faster than others.

Obviously, the best place to do this is in Japan, as there is no dearth of material. However, I have several non-Japanese acquaintances who have been here for 10+ years and still do not speak Japanese, or vastly overstate their ability. You have to actually TRY to be that bad, so just keep your ears and eyes open at all times and let your tongue be loose. It's sensory overload but it's a good kind of exhausting.


Lemon - Secondly, what opportunities are there for foreigners in Japan to gain some sort of occupation to support themselves while living there?

Jimi - Teaching English, pretty much. That's going to be it at first, and you'd better be willing to stick it out as long as your contract is. I originally came to Japan on the competitive JET program, so you ambitious currently-in-college people should look into that. I did that for one year, and when they wanted me to renew my contract, I declined, and it was a huge gamble. If things were going any worse than they are now I don't think it would have been worth it, honestly!

And then there are of course any other number of eikaiwa. Now that NOVA is bankrupt I don't have to write a zillion paragraphs about how horrible it is, so poke around and see what you like.

The thing is, you'll most likely have to get the job BEFORE coming over here--and along with that, the visa. Even if you come over here looking for work, many jobs want you to already have a proper visa lined up.

I no longer teach Jr. High School English; I do some pretty strange work I suppose. But that's all been luck and talking to the right people. English teaching is in high demand and can pay rather decently.

After that, depending on your Japanese skill you can try your hand at looking at translation/interpreting work, but other than freelance you're looking at stuff in the growing IT field. I gave up looking for work in that field because I just don't know anything about that, and I don't have the drive for freelance translation. I occassionally do freelance interpreting but only when it falls into my lap.


Lemon - and thirdly, are there any opportunities for higher education in Japan for freigners? And what about those that don't have complete fluency?

Jimi - I never did it, but there are study abroad and transfer programs through many universities. Many of my friends who did the year-long or semester programs had a great time and really extended their language skills. I had already done an unrelated internship at Japaanese orphanage, so I felt that I wanted to do the rest of my education back home, but I do by all means recommend it. In the end I think I would recommend doing the majority of your higher education in your home country, but if you can find a good 2- or 4-year program here that does what you want to do then by all means go for it.

A final note: On your own time, by all means study the things that interest you. For people reading my blog and in this scene, that's probably obscure VK bands and random stuff like that. But in conversations with regular Japanese people, try to stay abreast of everyday, normal conversations. For example; not talking about anime all the dang time! :)

And in general: ask people for help. Ask your teachers to point you in the right direction; ask friends for advice; use the guidance of the people around you to acheive clarity on your path. Most of all, stay positive.


LAST THING: If you've got any interesting questions or things about the scene you want answered, let me know and I will pit your questions against each other in a battle to the death!

Jimi interviewed by: Klisk

A couple of weeks ago I got a great email from Klisk, filled with some cool questions, and I thought I'd answer them in an actual post.

Klisk - 1) So in Laverite I noticed that Ryota plays a Jackson guitar, which I think is utterly awesome since it's not the usual fair. But that ties in to my question: Is there no longer a huge emphasis on VK bands nearly 'requiring' to play a Edwards/ESP/Killer/Fernandes/Etc style guitar, and it's more flexible now? Because lately I've seen a lot more variation, whereas in the years prior there was a huge brand-loyalty thing within the VK scene specifically.

Jimi - Glad you noticed that Ryota plays the Jackson; he's a fan of Randy Rhoads and I'm not sure but I recall Mayu of Lareine also playing Jacksons. I wouldn't say there's a "requirement" to play ESP and the like at all; that "brand loyalty" we seemed to see was all about endorsements. A band gets big enough and they'll enter an agreement to use those guitars/pedals/cymbals/sticks exclusively. It's a huge for a company like ESP to make a big deal out of, say, displaying Nightmare's dude's new guitars at their shop. ESP guitars cater more toward that sound so it's a logical connection. I would argue that any tiny little band spending that much money on a guitar without sponsorship is being foolish, though.
And personally I play a 5-string Ibanez. :)


Klisk - 2) When you guys are prepping for a live, what seems to be the most common way to cover up post-shave-beard-shadow amongst everyone, if waxing or plucking isn't an option? Just concealer? Or some sort of powder cover up? The answer to this has always alluded me even though I'm sure it's a pretty simple makeup trick.

Jimi - I think my facial hair is pretty thick, but still, I simply let it grow for a few days and then shave the morning of the show and just throw on my regular foundation (I use M·A·C). Yue and Ryota pluck, but Yue had sort of been letting himself go for the last coupla shows which was why he still looked stubbly! Ryota is like a naked mole rat. My beard is too thick to pluck and waxing sounds out of reach.


Klisk - 3) I'd assume that pretty much all the bands use whatever in-house amplifiers are provided at the live, if not only for ease, but because it would probably be pretty impossible to haul around amps as an indie band in Japan. Plus I think I read that most people use modeling amps at home simply because it's tough fitting an amp into common living quarters. Which is really different from the US, where we're almost always expected to lug an amp to the gig, at least in all the bands I've played with.

Jimi - I use the in-house Ampeg that Narciss and Area have, and I love Ampeg so I ain't complainin'. However, they charge you a tiny fee for "equipment rental" based on how much in-house stuff you use. Some bands want to minimize that cost altogether and will bring their own wireless mics, amps, and most of their own drum kit. This makes the whole place really crowded if you've got a night with like 8 bands and more than half of them are standard 5-pieces. Even Ryota's equipment (Digitech pre-amp, Marshall power amp, digital tuner, wireless, and random useless chameleonic neon light thing) seems like a lot. The only thing I bring with me is my Line 6 X2 digital wireless, which is seriously wonderful. I don't have the money or the space for my own amp, and we have no equipment truck to lug all the junk around, so this will have to do. The equipment fee also feels nominal when lumped in with the price of all the unsold tickets we have to pay for anyway.

Back in my home country when I'd play guitar in bands, I had a Line 6 amp that I'd lug around, and when playing bass I had this deceptively small amp whose brand I forget, but it was extremely powerful for its size. I used to run direct through the PA and use that as a monitor, which I would also trick the PA with because I rarely trusted their management of the bass sound in regards to the space. I learned this from my father the musician.

In both cases, I always had a car or at least a ride, so lugging junk around was never a problem. My drummers always had a van and plenty of band members willing to help load/unload.

As for Japan, most bands do have their own equipment vans, but it makes me nervous. I don't have a Japanese driver's license, and I don't recall if Ryota does. I know Yue does. The parking spaces are tiny, the roads are narrow, and the loading areas tight. It seems like more of a necessary evil than anything.


Klisk - 4) What's more common for effect pedals? All-in-one boards like the Line 6 Pod XT Live modeling board, or the Boss GT-8 board... Or are individual stand-alone pedals on a home-made pedalboard more common? Or is it totally a mixed bag and depends on the specific guitarist? I've found it's a pretty mixed bag with everyone I've played with, so it's another topic that pops up in my mind often enough.

Jimi - Yes, it is a mixed bag. I have seen home-made pedalboards that look like a shoegaze band got lost in what they were doing. Rarely do I see individual stomp boxes, however. Most of what I see, and indeed what Ryota uses, is, if not the Boss GT-8 exactly, certainly a very similar Boss board. He has two; one is a much older model he uses for our studio rehearsals, along with his black Fernandes guitar, and the sleek black Boss for the actual show. I love them and I'm saving up for one. Wish I still lived with my parents so I could use rent money on it! It'd be nice to have a Pod, too, to play around with.



Many of you have asked great questions in comment threads, shoutboxes, and other comments, and I would love to give them a voice on the main page. If you have something about playing in a band, Japan, the music and/or VK scenes I'm involved in, send me an email! I'll put the best questions and their answers up here!

Brian Posehn interviews Dethklok

Posehn, a fellow Northern-Californian, sits down with Brendon Small in character as Nathan Explosion and Skwisgaar Skwigelf. What follows is brilliance.

Brian Posehn interviews Dethklok (The Onion AV Club)

BP: Where's the most brutal place you've been?

NE: San Jose, maybe. There's just, like, Applebee's and, you know, Starbucks and strip malls.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BP: What was the last book you read?

NE: Does blabbermouth.net count as a book?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BP: Who would win in a one-armed knife fight: Bruce Dickinson or Dio? The singer from Arch Enemy or the singer from Krokus? Pickles or Rick Allen from Def Leppard?

NE: Dio is more wiry and very quick, so maybe he would win. But then again, Bruce Dickinson was a master fencer. But then again, I'm pretty sure Dio is a wizard. But he wouldn't be able to use his wizarding powers in a knife fight, would he? Dickinson would win. Or Dio. It would be a tie. Angela from Arch Enemy would win easily. She's hot and tough. She would even kill me in a knife fight. And if Pickles is sober, he'd win, but if he's been drinking, he'd be knifed and bleed vodka and it would be like an open bar.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The parts about the mosh pit and then the tail end of the interview are also stellar. I wish the show itself were funnier, because the fact that Small wrote all the songs and did all the guitars and vocals is seriously mind-blowing.


Also I keep wanting to talk about "The Office" every week but that would be unadulterated gushing. :-*

Japan Times: 'Heavy-metal suicide'

J Times has a cool interview with Marty Friedman, by Japanese subculture specialist (read: proudly self-proclaimed otaku) Patrick Macias. I am totally not at all familiar with Megadeth's body of work, but I am familiar with Marty's presence on Japanese television, so here we go...

He arrives in the plush lounge of the Tokyo Park Hyatt dressed in leather pants, his face framed by a mane of curly hair and with myriad silver "rock star" accessories draped around his neck.

Friedman is the ex-lead guitarist of Megadeth, the all-American thrash-metal band that has sold more than 20 million records. Metal cliches being what they are, you'd half expect him to say "Duuuuuuuuude" and throw up a "devil horns" hand sign as a greeting. Instead, his first words are an extremely polite "Hajimemashite, Marty desu." ("Nice to meet you, I'm Marty.")

Friedman's obsession with Japan runs so deep that he is determined to do the interview in Japanese, even though it's neither his first language, nor mine (I am, however, an old Megadeth fan from their best-selling "Rust in Peace" days, the album that introduced the band to a worldwide audience).

Friedman, a native of Washington, D.C., is used to communicating in Japanese these days; he routinely pops up as a guest on TV shows dispensing humorous and insightful rapid-fire Japanese quips, and he even pens columns about music for a variety of magazines, including the monthly tabloid Cyzo, in his adopted tongue.

"I never really studied Japanese properly," Friedman admits. "I'd just pick things up one phrase at a time while doing my normal music activities in Japan."

In the wake of the global thrash-metal boom that "Rust in Peace" helped beget in 1990, Japan became a regular stop on Megadeth's world tours. "During our visits to Japan in the '90s, I just decided, 'I'm going to do all my Japanese press in Japanese without a translator from now on,' " says Friedman. "I could barely string a sentence together, and my grammar was terrible, but putting myself in the situation of having to communicate in Japanese forced me to improve quickly."

This is the key right here, and actually, having been a teacher in Japan, I wish Japanese people understood that you have to try, try, try, talk, make mistakes, or you're going to study English for 15 years and never be able to communicate, much as everyone laments to me. Same with people who sit there and say "one day I'll learn Japanese", shut up and do it!

All manner of strange things lure foreigners to Japan: jobs, monster movies, anime, nightlife and women, to name a few. But for Friedman, the siren's call came in the form of J-pop and J-rock music. He says, "Toward the middle of my time in Megadeth, like around the mid- to late-'90s, I started really getting into Japanese music. At first it was B'z, Zard, Hitomi, Glay and Ayumi Hamasaki. Every time we'd come to Japan for a tour, I'd go back home with a suitcase full of CDs and listen to them constantly."

You wouldn't normally expect a heavy metal riffmaster to fall for the slick, commercialized sound of J-pop. But for Friedman, Japan offered a picture of musical diversity that he wasn't finding back in the United States.

"I found that you can listen to a J-pop artist in Japan and they might have one really heartfelt ballad and then a death-metal track and then a disco track or a ska sound, but it's all the same artist on the same album, and with good songwriting all the way through. This made me think, 'I wish I had that kind of freedom in the States,' because if you're a metal musician in the U.S., you can't really step outside of that image very much. I love metal, but there are a lot of other things that I like, too, and I found that Japanese artists have way more freedom in that sense."

This is the key here; while I think that while mainstream jmusic's biggest weakness is consistency, it can make up for it in the diversity that Marty mentions.

After Friedman left Megadeth in 2000, he set his eyes on relocating to Japan, which he did four years ago. But making do in the country without the support of a touring machine presented new problems.

"I was worried at first, because when you come to Japan on tour, the record company staff and promoter's staff are always around, treating you like a god, but the second you leave they completely forget about you so they can prepare for their next international artist. So when I started living here four years ago, I knew it would be very different to not have every whim catered to like I was used to."

The worries proved unfounded, as Friedman soon found himself embraced by the Japanese entertainment industry. "Almost as soon as I got here, I met (pop/rock singer) Aikawa Nanase, of whom I had been a fan for years, and we just hit it off right away. She asked me to join her band and it was like a dream come true. . . . Now every day I'm either shooting a TV show, doing radio, recording, doing interviews, preparing for a concert or doing a concert."

Japanese television is notorious for its use of "gaijin tarento" (non-Japanese media personalities), throwing foreigners in front of a camera to provide amusement and literal "color" for the viewing audience. Friedman's previous career set him apart from the pack, but he's quick to admit that doing TV in Japan is a Faustian bargain of sorts.

"I have this personal policy that I'll do anything to get my music to people who normally wouldn't hear it. I've done over 100 TV shows this past year, of all varieties and styles. I did a cooking show with Kurihara Harumi (Japan's Martha Stewart) earlier this year. That's like heavy-metal suicide. I'm sure some of my hardcore Megadeth fans will want to shoot me for that, but I've got my musical goals and I'll do whatever it takes to get closer to those goals.

I can imaging him saying this with a slight roll-eyes. I'm glad he is as diverse a person as the music he enjoys. It's, you know, pleasant, that a metal guy can get along with literally everyone, which is why he is able to make so many appearances and I don't get tired of him.

"As a result of TV appearances appealing to a wide variety of people with a wide variety of musical tastes, not only rock, my latest solo album, 'Loudspeaker,' charted high in Japan. If people call that selling out, then that is fine by me."

If the worldwide demand for heavy-metal music has dimmed since Megadeth's million-selling heyday in the '90s, the genre has, like Spinal Tap in the movie of the same name, managed to find a comfortable niche in Japan. Friedman's recent eminence in the media has coincided with a Japanese air-guitar craze and the rise of all-metal music festivals such as Loud Park.

"In the States, you either love heavy metal or hate it," says Friedman. "The mainstream pretty much avoids it. The sound of distorted guitars turns some people off. But here in Japan, everyone is kind of used to it. In the enka music that older people listen to, there are distorted guitars and twin lead guitar solos, just like Iron Maiden use. But people's grandparents here sing along to it! And there's some metal that goes out to the mainstream, but in small doses. Japanese bands like Orange Range, Asian Kung-Fu Generation or even Glay have riffs that are straightup metal, but they don't overdo it. They take metal but homogenize it in a way that mainstream people can dig it. They take the lameness out of it."

Now that Friedman is firmly entrenched in the Japanese music scene, he's able to explore the kind of music he was never able to make with Megadeth. But it may not be quite what his fans are expecting.

"I just finished a single with a J-pop singer named Kotoko. I wrote the song 'Kirei Na Senritsu' [Beautiful Melody) and it debuted on the charts at No. 18; it's my first top-20 single anywhere. As a song, it couldn't be farther from what my fans think my music is. It's not metal at all, but it's exactly what I myself would go out and buy. It's a very sweet ballad and very, very suited to a female J-pop singer. I'm really proud of it."

Friedman may be a world-class guitar virtuoso, but he doesn't hesitate to show admiration for the likes of Aya Matsuura and Morning Musume — cute girl idol singers who many music lovers are quick to write off as talentless.

"You always think that, until you go behind the scenes into that world and see what's actually there," says Friedman. "There are hundreds of people with talent in specified areas making that final product so incredibly bitchin' that you want to spend your money on it. The top makeup people and the top photographers and the top stylists are all in complete harmony in making that one person look great. Then they have the 20 best songwriters in Japan competing to write the song. Then once the song is decided on, you have the top players put together to play it. And the idol herself may not be able to sing all that well — many Japanese female singers have a voice that seems out of tune half the time — but it's cute because she's out of tune. That adds to her charm as well as her charisma."

Japanese record companies such as Sony Music Entertainment and Avex are increasingly eager to introduce acts on their rosters to the foreign market, but Friedman thinks there are some major cultural barriers to cross before his favorite J-pop acts can scale the charts abroad.

"Here is a point that the West might never get about idol singers: in Japanese they call it 'heta-uma.' It's bad but good at the same time. I love heta-uma when it's done right. Instead of honing their craft to become great operatic singers, it's about having their own personality and having their own voice. They don't have to be the next Mariah Carey.

I actually had a talk with an agent about this very concept; it was fascinating. I still place more emphasis on technical virtuosity but he has a point when he goes on to talk about personality and charisma, which over here seems to be much more of the focus over skill, for better or worse.

"Also, if someone is too good, it kind of makes them seem distant from their audience, which is not a good thing in Japan. If you are at a U2 concert, it's not like you are in the same room with Bono: he's on Mars and you are in the audience. But in Japan, it doesn't matter how big you get, the artists are trying to close the gap between the stage and the audience."

Still, Friedman admits that there is a tradeoff in how musicians are treated in each country. "For better or worse, I think the artist has more power in America," he says. "The press in Japan is generated by the artist's own staff and they can make or break people easily. They could easily make up a scandal and take someone down."

Japan has its perils, but it's also a place where a foreign artist into both pop and heavy metal can prosper, or even become a media star. No wonder Friedman is glad to be where he is.

"I love America and I'm a huge fan of it, but every time I go back, I get bummed out on it as a country. And when I'm in Japan, I'm happy, so it's real simple to say where I'd rather be. I think TV in America is too negative and mean-spirited, and it's also very jimi (dull). In Japan it's very upbeat and colorful and the music is happy.

"The music in America is depressing now. I don't like it when rich people make angry music. It's not convincing to me. One thing that bummed me out about Megadeth was that we were acting like we were angry all the time, and I'm not that good of an actor. I've found that in Japan you can play hard, heavy and aggressive music and it can still be uplifting."

This has been my philosophy since high school, if you leave out the references to countries. I'm glad I'm not the only one who believes it, and glad I'm clearly not the first to have thought of it.


Thanks Mr. Volt for the link!