EnvyはＥｎｖｙ: Interview with ENVY guitarist/songwriter NOBUKATA KAWAI
March 23, 2011 in Interviews, Music, Notes From Japan, With Video
It was a hot day for November and it was the time of year when hotter than average days felt good. At about 4pm, I was scheduled to interview Tetsu Fukagawa, the lead vocalist of the hardcore group, Envy, at Club Upset in Nagoya, Japan, a city of over two million people.
To get to the club from Nagoya Station, one has to take the subway to a little station called Ikeshita station. Ikeshita station is a small subway station that contains a large bus station. That day, it looked kind of dumpy, littered with cigarettes, Styrofoam noodle cups, and rustling brown leaves. Pigeons waddled freely across the bricks, feeding on random morsels of refuse. There is a large mural that is visible upon exiting the subway gates. It is a highly textured, black and brown piece that appears to depict two long-necked birds facing each other.
I walked around the surrounding area looking for the club. During my walk, I saw many cheap restaurants selling low quality chicken and cheap beer. There was also an abundance of adult video arcades and openly publicized brothels. Suited men stood in front of the walls, which were plastered with large numbered photos of the young women working. The defining features of the women’s faces were blurred out.
I eventually found Club Upset, which was located upstairs in a brick building, five floors above a pizza kitchen. Once inside the door I came to a small lobby. The walls were plastered with posters of shows past; almost exclusively Japanese acts. There was also a small ticket booth, but nobody was in it, so I opened the thick black door opposite the unmanned station. There was a small hallway that led to another thick black door; a sound proofing technique used by smaller clubs in Japan to avoid noise complaints.
The club was of modest size with a two-level, black and blue checkered board. Envy’s two guitar players were on stage with their instruments. The people in the room were surprised to see me and nobody seemed to know what I was talking about when I said that I was there for an interview. Finally, after some discussion amongst various folks, the singer, Tetsu came out and said, “Hey.” Then, in Japanese, he explained that he had to do a soundcheck, which might take about an hour, but that I could watch if I wanted, so that’s what I did. Read the rest of this entry →
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Shiro Ameko! (White American)
June 18, 2008 in Notes From Japan
One of the first people contacted after starting MonsterFresh.com, was our writer known as D.W. Patton. It may have been the last time that I saw him face to face when we were sitting at the China Town bar in Olympia, Wa. We traded manuscripts. I gave him a 19 page paper I had written about my theories on time travel and Satan while he gave me a copy of a play that he had written entirely of Elizabethan dialogue involving a half-man/half-woman Brian Bosworth separated vertically down the middle. He is currently teaching children in Japan and has written 3 articles for the site about his experiences living in the Island Country. He has covered such topics as spending the 4th of July in a foreign land, Japanese Porn, and even cultural transplants such as McDonalds. I had hoped to receive more content based around these observations from an outsider and have had occasional emails with Patton pertaining to such aspirations. He had planned to send an article to me about the bar scenes and drinking in his current location but it has yet to happen for one reason or another. There was even hope that I could get the Zomba group to grant him free access to a Backstreet Boys concert in Japan so that he could report on the continued boy band frenzy and the juxtaposition of the two pop cultures coming together, but that didn’t work out either.
D.W. has been very busy with work and other responsibilities as of late. I was recently thinking about him and his work. I had thought to contact him about possibly writing some more facinating content for us when I noticed a message in the MonsterFresh email account. Somehow during a correspondance with a friend of his, their email conversation was accidentally forwarded to me. Although I still hope to receive some material tailored specifically as an article and/or to work with him more in the future in one form or another, I quickly realized that the email that I had in my posession was a genuine article that represented some very deep and honest feelings for him at the time it was typed. It was written from a sincere place of evaluation for both his environment and his place within it. I know that he holds his time and experiences in Japan very dear, and that he truly does have respect for the culture and opportunities that he’s had over there, however, if I plan to print honest unfiltered material on this site, and I do, I felt that I could not overlook what I had read. I contacted him and Patton agreed to let me post his letter without hesitation.
I hope, as I’m sure that he does, that this is read, not as a document of slander for a place and its people and culture, but as a look into the effects of culture shock on one’s psyche and emotional health and well-being. He has confirmed that this letter accurately represents his recent feelings as a foreigner living in a distant and very different land. Hopefully, this will further help those of us who read it, to re-evaluate the way that we too treat and view people around us who have ventured outside of their own cultural safe-zones with adjusted and more conscious approaches to what they may be experiencing. Below in bold type is that letter.
-DEAD C Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: Culture, Culture Shock, D.W. Patton, Japan, Pachinko, racism, Social Commentary, Vinyl Bars
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