Alex Brooke

My life used to be an extended vacation. Now I’m working like everyone else it’s always a struggle to find time to do the things I want to do… In the meantime here is an update on the various goings on in this corner of Tokyo…

Guitarists I’ve been listening to

Recently I’ve been pretty inspired by Toronto based guitarist Maneli Jamal. He has a great youtube channel with videos of him playing his own original compositions.

I was intriguied to learn that he is selling  MP3s and the accompanying music scores and guitar tab if you are up for the challenge of attempting these pieces. I was thinking of doing some online guitar tutorials. However I like the idea of publishing one’s own original works as opposed to just guitar lessons. It stamps one’s unique creativity on the whole endeavor.

Great stuff, check him out and watch this space for some original compositions.

Places I’ve Been Eating at

Thanks to the suggestion of my friend Kelly from Tokyo Weekender, I have discovered Frijoes, an awesome restaurant that does deli-style burritos and other kinds of wraps. It’s super delicious and they do cheap lunch sets which is pretty special for the Azabu-juban area. If you are a hipster I am told it is just “Juban”.

I got talking to the manager, a cool Japanese guy who had lived in San Fran for a long time. He came back to Japan and opened this place just recently. It’s a damn good wrap and I might go and stuff my face today.

Ch-ch-check it out kids.

Music I’ve Been Listening To

I’ve been listening to the Japanese indy rock band Natccu pronounced Nachew. Great energy, arrangements, melodies and guitars. I featured them in the last Learn Japanese Pod Fun Friday Podcast.

They’ve been touring all over the place in recent years including their UK Debut last year.

I managed to find these cats through my friend Ethan who writes the Tokyo Werewolf blog which covers the underground Tokyo music scene. Ethan also happens to be one of the masterminds behind Pongzilla which is Tokyo’s first beer pong event.

Wouldn’t be cool if Ethan could get Natccu to play at one of those?!

And…

No that’s it. I haven’t got anythign interesting to say. I guess when I can pull another 10 hours out of the day with my magic hat I will be embarking on changing this site to have a more guitar oriented feel. It should include guitar tutorials and my own original pieces.

Oh yeah, and then there’s my Flash tutorials…

Let’s slow the earth down so we can have more hours in the day…

I read a great one today on twitface (oh you kow what I mean). “The king of pop is not dead, Mark King of Level 42 is alive and well”. But that hasn’t got much to do with todays post.

Recently I have been wondering about what direction to take my Learn Japanese podcast. At least I know crappy, semi pornographic anime isn’t my thing.I started my Learn Japanese podcast to be a resource for those wanting to study the language and learn about Japan and it’s culture. However, I get the feeling that most people are more into the podcast for the entertainment value. And that’s fine with me because it means I can turn up the goofing around and turn down the overly serious gramar lessons. Plus, I never really learned to speak Japanese from text books, more from falling off bar stools in izakayas across Tokyo. So one way we depart from the normal language podcast is the Fun Friday episodes we (try to) put out every week. They feature, news, views, Japanese bands and general banter related to life in Japan. We just put up the latest episode which features music from Natccu and Yugo Sato two awesome acts from Japan. Incidentally I was introduced to Yugo by a good friend and general music know-it-all who runs the Tokyo Werewolf website which covers the underground music scene in Japan. Ethan is a talented guy, someone, give him a job, please!

In the future I’d like to concentrate more on the music scene here and interview artists and play their music on Fun Fridays. You never know, we might even learn some Japanese accidentally during the process.

Another project I am working on is a new website called Blow Your Speakers. I am doing this with a good friend, DJ, master brewer and all round talented fellow called Stone. We dig around dusty records, make mix tapes and stick them on the site. This site is dedicated to Stone’s talent for finding awesome music and me pretending to be a DJ when really I am an HDJ, hard disk jockey.

So check out Blow Your Speakers and our latest mix tape.

The picture above is of my trusty iPod digital recorder and a Ramune flavored Kit Kat. If you want to find out more you’ll just have to listen to the latest Fun Friday.