The next day was a day off. The whole entourage relocated to a hot springs resort where the main order of business was soaking in hot water. Some of the tubs were outdoor, and there was much talk about how zen-like the experience could be when sitting in geothermally heated spring water while snow fell. […]
The kind of dumb thing about the next day was we took the train almost all the way back to Tokyo, to do a show in Yokohama. I guess since it only takes a hundred minutes by train, it didn’t matter that much, but in my mind that was like playing a show in Boston, […]
We took the train to Nagoya–not the subway train, the fancy, high speed train. The equipment had all gone ahead of us already days before, so we didn’t have that much to carry. By car it would have been four or five hours–the same distance as going Boston to New York. By “bullet” train it […]
In the morning my head hurt from drinking too much without realizing it. But the bigger discomfort in my head was the feeling I’d discovered my entire worldview was skewed. Now that it had skewed another direction, it was like walking off balance all the time. Let me see if I have it right. Buddhism, […]
So the next day was a day for being tourists. As Remo put it, they built two days into the schedule for “Christmas shopping.” I didn’t think it would actually take me two days to do my shopping, so Martin and a couple of the other people from our entourage got together with Rocky to […]
Our last night at Budokan I got around to asking our translator about the magazine thing. He was a kind of skinny, nervous guy with glasses, who I would have described as nerdy in America, but in Japan I think was normal. His nickname was Rocky. I did ask for his Japanese name and he […]
Our hotel was in a part of Tokyo that was kind of like Times Square: a really busy area with lots of tourists and commerce and neon. Only not as sleazy as Times Square. Since I felt like I didn’t have to spend every waking minute rehearsing or learning–only three hours this time with Alex […]
The next night the stakes went up. It was the first of three nights in a row at Budokan. You might as well have told me we were playing the White House, Buckingham Palace, and god’s own amphitheater all at once so far as the mythic-and-important factor went. If you don’t know what I’m talking […]
What book is it that has that “best of times, worst of times” line? I hope it’s a good one because I’m going to rip it off and it’s best to steal from the best. It was the worst show ever and the best show ever. I was not ready to go out there and […]
One of the best things about being a small person physically is that it’s not a big deal for me to spend 18 hours on an airplane in coach. They had booked me on whatever they could get at the last minute, which meant I changed planes in Seattle, and then went non-stop to Tokyo […]