Spring Break!

It's been pretty busy around here, lately; really busy, in fact. Not at school, though, not there. In fact, since the sannensei left, my job has become incredibly boring, sitting at my desk for five out of eight hours trying to come up with creative new ways to keep myself from nodding off. I'm usually at least semi-successful.

Outside of work, though, things have been busy. Last weekend—last weekend, was it? I think so. It seems like forever ago now.--I went down to Hamada with some friends to get bus tickets and check out a rock festival that was going on in town. Nothing special, mostly local groups, but what spurred us to attend the event in the first place was the fact that one of these groups—the infamous “Terrordactyl”--was actually a group of Hamada ALTs. It's important in those kinds of situations to show up and represent, yo.

Terrordactyl was pretty good, although I'm not sure their audience—mostly Japanese teenagers—really got it when they started their set with “Earth Angel.” Strange, seeing as how Back to the Future seems to be one of the few American movies that every Japanese person seems to know. In any case, my only real disappointment with the performance was that they failed to follow up their opener with “Johnny B. Goode.” If you're not gonna do that, then what's the point?

This Thursday saw me at another music festival, this time in Masuda. It was called a jazz festival, but I found once I arrived and the performance began that it really was just swing music, which suited me just fine. In fact, I probably enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the rock show. In the great scheme of things, I don't think I like jazz any more than I do rock, but the difference between local amateur rockers and skilled, professional jazz musicians is pretty severe. There are apparently going to be a few more jazz acts coming to Masuda this spring, so if the price is right, I may check those out, too.

This Tuesday, a couple friends and I will be trekking out to Osaka and Kyoto for a week. I'm looking forward to that, especially after getting to be in Osaka for such a short time in winter. I'm excited to see more of the city this time around. I'm assuming Kyoto should also be suitably awesome, but I've never seen it before, so I don't really know exactly what to expect. I'll try to get some photos and video from my exploits in these fine towns, so expect some stuff next week.