Day 1 - Flight easy; Osaka HUMID & HOT!!!

A few pics may be posted here.

All pics can be seen at: Japan 2010 | Facebook Pics

Still no sleep. The past few weeks have been hectic to say the least, but all in the name of good family, friends and music. Just finished a 4 day gig with Kid Beyond. Shilo and his gf were also in town for 2 weeks, and we spared no time between activities. I'm bushed! Anyways...

I met drummer Glen Sobel at the gate at SFO. Easy flight- passed out, but still listening to the 12 tunes I have to learn for this teaching/performance run. It's for 2 weeks in Japan- I love it there!

So humid. So hot. 1st stop: RAMEN! You'd think that with the amount of Asians and Japanese in SF I could find a decent bowl- but that's just not the case. There is absolutely nothing like going to Japan and getting it there. Toshi brought us down the street for some ramen and it was slammin. They only had boiled Gyoza- not fried, but it was still the bomb. I ordered a lemonade, which didn't taste like lemonade but tasted familiar. It later clicked that this was the same exact flavor of Big League Chew, except in a sparkling beverage.

Hotel, more cramming of tunes and charting until I passed out. More charting in the am; rehearsal at 11am, teach a 70 min bass workshop @ 1:30, perform 3 tunes for students with ensemble, then watch as about 10 groups work their way through Deep Purple's "Burn" (here I am playing and singing Burn in Sweden) & Chickenfoot's "Soap on a Rope" with varying success. By the time 8pm rolled around it was time for dinner, and the usual Osaka trip to see Yoko & the gang at Rock Rock. My local drunk buddy Hirayama was there, and we joked as much as possible before Glen and I had to split- we were BEAT!

The highlight of the day for me was finally getting to play some of this difficult music with Toshi and Glen. Glen is an absolute monster on the drums- I dunno why he hasn't landed any huge gigs- real pro and slick- def a blast to play with as a bassist- and you know I'd tell ya otherwise! We def all clicked- Toshi and I are already having fun jamming and throwing in similar and complimentary fills during the tunes. SHREDDING!

That's it for now... my sleeping schedule is all f'd up, but it's been like that for a few weeks now. So long as I get enough hours (which I'm not) I'll be ok. G'nite.