Goodbyes and Hellos

This week was my new co worker, Eduardo's (to be known as Ed or Eddie) first week at the school. As expected he was a little nervous but quiet excited by it all. I tried to help him out as much as I could because I'm a nosy control freak but there's only so much I could do bar teaching all his classes for him. He's really peppy and ambitious so I'm sure it won't take long for him to get settled in.

On Saturday night after work we had our combination welcome/goodbye party for Ryan and Ed. These parties are so much more fun when I actually know the students. It's nice to be able to relax and laugh with the rest of the staff and the students.

Everyone kept asking me if I was drinking a lot because I went bright red. I hadn't even finished my ONE drink yet. So they had a good laugh about that.

I have a Teddy Bopper student called Katsushi, also affectionately known as Elvis. He absolutely idolises Elvis and dresses the part. He brought his guitar with the intention of letting Ryan jam on it. I kept asking him if he was going to sing for me but he kept refusing. I eventually twisted his arm and he serenaded me. It was so sweet. He sang me Rick Nelson's 'Hello, Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart)'.

One of my other student's Hisataka is a masseuse and he treated Ryan to an on the spot massage. Where's mine?

Unfortunately, Ed and I had to leave early to catch last train. I basically had to drag Ed out because he was having so much fun mingling. And he forgot everything so he had to keep going back for it. I guess it was a good thing we had to leave early or I might have ended up carrying him back to the apartments.






Except for the random head that keeps popping up in the background (That's one of the students, Shouji. He's hilarious and always brings in a different weird Japanese drink every week) these are my wonderful co workers.
Ryan's the baby faced boy in the gray shirt. Can you believe he's 27?
Ayako's in the striped shirt, Saori's in the middle and of course, suave Ed in the front.

We Get Around... with Urthboy and Hermitude

There are two things that I miss about Melbourne town (besides my family and friends, of course): live music and cafe culture. There's really not much I can do about the sad lack of cafe culture here. Sigh...Here they consider the souless hallows of Starbucks the only cafes to go to.

But thankfully the live music scene has had its saving grace.

Last Saturday night, I sated my lust for live music at an Urthboy and Hermitude gig. I know, I did a double take when I first heard they were in Nagoya too. I couldn't believe that they were coming to Japan let alone in Nagoya.

I've heard of gigs being intimate but this was something else. As a prelude to the Elefant Traks crew I was treated to some Japanese hip hop. Unfortunately the first crew sounded too much like little boys who'd learnt their first swear words and were trying to use them as much as they could before their mothers heard them and spanked them for it. Luckily the rest were pretty fun to bounce to.

When Urthboy hit the stage I was there front and centre. Even though the place was tiny, the crowd was similarly tiny so I had plenty of room to bounce. There was this crazy Japanese girl, hair like Amy Winehouse, in a bikini and short overalls and enough bling around her neck to fund a political campaign. She was Sydney stomping and went berserk when I joined in. She was hilarious to dance with.

Urhtboy was amazing and because the gig was so intimate he interacted with the crowd a lot. You'll be pleased to hear that I am typing this blog with the hand that was personally high fived by Urthboy. No third hand high fives for me.

There was of course the requisite Aussie fans there. And where you get Aussies in a crowd situation you always have the Aussie hecklers. But Urthboy dealt with yells of 'Get your squid out' with aplomb. Lord, I do love my Aussie hip hop. At the end of his set, Elgusto smoothed in a remixed Mary Mary song and they came on down and had a boogie with us all.

We got a dance circle started. All the fly girls and b boys let rip. It was utterly hilarious. I couldn't dance I was laughing so much.

Then it was time for Hermitude to do their thing. I tore up that dancefloor during that set. I did a Dom and nearly took myself out with my own necklace. Luke Dubs set the keyboards on fire and Elgusto was the king of the MPC. They played a seamless mixture of old stuff and new. I never wanted it to end but of course their set flew by in a millisecond.

After they finished, the Elefant Trak boys just hung out in the crowd and grooved to the Japanese hiphoppers that followed them. I went up to say thanks for the show and ended up chatting to Tim for a while.

Yes that's right, I was on first name basis with Urthboy! It was his first time in Japan and he seemed slightly overwhelmed by it. They'd spent most of their time in Tokyo, had the one gig in Nagoya and were setting off for Osaka at 6am that morning before flying back to Australia. Nothing like a whirlwind tour of Japan surviving on absolutely no sleep, fly beats and beer. He was also really interested to hear about English teaching in japan. Um...yeah it's an amazingly sophisticated and glamourous job.

It was 4am when we finally stumbled out of the club and I was definitely the Nanna of Nanna gigging. But it was so good to feel the sweet ache of a live gig in my legs again. The only thing that would have made the night sweeter was having my Nanna gigging crew by my side.

Me and Tim (aka Urthboy...woo, first name basis)