Settling In

It's the middle of September and we are here in Osaka. It's been quite a full couple of weeks since we got here, with a lot of blogging to catch up on, both from here in Osaka and from the last part of our August travels. It's been basically a great experience moving into our new place here, with one exception. As most of you reading this know, my mom had been ill for several months, and then a little less than two weeks ago I found out that she had passed away. It's been rough going from time to time, especially as it happened just after we moved in here, but I've just been trying to keep busy and continue on this grand Japanese adventure.
In that spirit then, I'll tell you all about an adventure we had last night. It's a story of a late night, good music, and connect four. As part of Rachel's first forays into this year of fieldwork, we headed out to a club in the Namba shopping district for a gig that featured a Peruvian-Japanese group. The gig started at 10, with the first band going on at midnight. In the US this would not have been remarkable, but here the need to catch the last train home means that most music events are finished by the time this one started, even though the bars themselves are open far later. This made for a surreal atmosphere as we made our way from the train station to the club, with all the shops shut down and most people heading home in the opposite direction and pretty uniformly drunk.
The bar itself was small and in the basement - and there were not many people in there. But we were undeterred and ordered our drinks and stood watching the DJ as we waited for the first act. Everyone was pretty chilled out inside, and what might have been a very awkward situation in a US bar (if only 6 people are there for a gig at 1130, it's usually a bad sign...) shifted into a good time with a heavy dose of surrealism. This began with several games of connect four between us and the bartender, who won every time, though Rachel actually gave him some good competition.
The first act came on at midnight as advertised and augmented both the relaxed and bizarre components of the evening. We had actually seen him standing around when we first got there and he looked very serious in a black on black outfit. All of a sudden he appeared on stage wearing sunglasses and conveying a dedicated mix of kakkoi (=ultra cool) and comic as he serenaded us with J-pop lounge song stylings, including an impromptu ode to tequila. Later on we ended up getting flyers from him and taking some kakkoi pictures with him.
His set, however, was only 20 minutes, and a quick glance over at the AV guy's schedule showed that all the bands were only slotted for 20 minutes, with large swathes of DJ-ing in between. This was the reason for the late start: the club has a regular late night DJ event, that only this time had the extra bands.
In any event, the DJ-ing was actually pretty awesome, with lots of California rap mixed in. After the first act though, we were trying really hard to steel ourselves for staying up for several more hours as we waited for the Peruvian band. But time went by fairly fast and before we knew it they were up and putting on an awesome laid-back Reggaeton performance, complete with group dancing. Unfortunately, their 20 minutes consisted of only three songs.
After that we slowly made our way out of the club and into a cab, who got us home swiftly and fairly cheaply after successfully negotiating the narrow streets of Namba (which is no mean feat).
We're heading out again tonight to see some more music, but this time at an earlier, train-friendly time.

That's it for now, but I will try to keep uploading pictures and their accompanying stories as the week progresses. Hopefully the disrupted timeline will not be too confusing...