A trip to Momak

[imomus]

Hisae and I spend Saturday in Kyoto, attending a presentation at Momak by montage photographer Beate Gutschow and seeing the "German Photography Now" show there.



Osaka to Kyoto is a bit like London to Brighton, a commuter trip you can take in under an hour, for under ten pounds. Such a short trip, though, produces a big change of atmosphere. Kyoto is up in the hills, colder than Osaka (it was snowing when we arrived). There's something spiritual there, with the mountains and the temples, but also a cosmopolitanism (so many gaijin everywhere, and look, here's Mama Zappa, a restaurant David Bowie favoured when he lived here, and which has kept his picture in the window ever since!). There's a real vitality in the narrow streets of Kawaramachi. And so many friends; Sparklig, Joopy, Midori Hirano, Berlin DJ Bym of Bym Music, my Mixi friend Mosko.

We bump into Mosko at the Cafe Independent, and she encourages us to gatecrash a super-boho Kyoto wedding party at which the bride looks to be at least four months pregnant, under layers of white shawls. Sadly we have to tear ourselves away and catch a late train back to Osaka.

Comments

[jozefpronek.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link to the exhibit! I was also in Kyoto yesterday, but around DaitokuJi and RyoanJi ... quite the opposite side of where the museum is! And yes, Kyoto has an unexpected cosmopolitan flavour...

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

In case anyone's wondering where sparklg is in the bottom photo, he's behind the lens!

[blndsnnts.livejournal.com]

Reveal thyself!

[seanthesean.livejournal.com]

nice suspenders. you're looking very nazi in that last picture, it's the hairstyle with the eyepatch & brown trousers with suspenders.
"here herr momus meets with the japanese to discuss arms trading."

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if Canterbury wouldn't be a more favourable and accurate comparison to Kyoto than Brighton?

[(Anonymous)]

Also costs more than a tenner to get to Brighton...

[rroseselavyoui.livejournal.com]

Yay for joopy and her acid mustard shirt!

[joopy.livejournal.com]

I bought some winter-appropriate tops today!  Yay for not having to wear the same shirt in every picture!!

[rroseselavyoui.livejournal.com]

I think I've only seen one other photo of you wearing that shirt. Besides, I really like it.

I think it's funny that I met Nick at an in-store performance in a teeny tiny record store in LA and years later I met you on the streets of downtown Ventura and now I am looking at a picture of the both of you in Japan.

The internet is so cool!

[joopy.livejournal.com]

Thanks!  And yes, isn’t it weird?  Hopefully we’ll be able to hang out again some day, too.

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

I like the photo in the upper right. Electric transformers on a pole taken from a low angle with a starry sky behind them?

If you squint just right it looks like it could have been taken in space. A space station or some bit of cosmic debris.

[(Anonymous)]

Cafe Independent has to be one of the coolest places on the planet. Kimho-Mori is quite a charming fellow. Oh man, Im getting mysty-eyed...-Jed

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That be not stars, that be snow!

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

That would explain why some "stars" appeared to be in the foreground.

Your Haircut

[(Anonymous)]

I can't agree with the gentleman who thinks you look like a Nazi. I think you look much more World War I-ish, a period (to my knowledge) that you haven't really explored musically. Will this show in your new album?

Re: Your Haircut

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't know, "Maf" off Stars Forever is very Edwardian, and an American take on the period is provided in "Milton Jacobson". There's tons of vaudeville in my work, which takes us back to the WW1 period. And don't forget "The Ultraconformist", which claims to be recorded live at the Cockney Cabaret, London, "on or about December 1910". "Morality is Vanity" also references the Vorticist cabaret The Cave of the Golden Calf, "Eleven Executioners" references the Elf Scharfrichter cabaret in Munich, etc etc.

[sakushamishou.livejournal.com]

Aah, I miss Japan. My time there was brief, and because of that, my draw towards it tends to be brushed off as "vacationer's syndrome", but I honestly feel drawn to it, I honestly felt like it was home. Posting more pictures of those lovely back alleys would make me pleased as punch, or something very simmilar and slightly more trendy. I would love to have a little plastic container full of onigiri from a corner store right about now. I couldn't find anything more delicious at 5am.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the "Zappa" in "Mama Zappa" isn't a reference to Frank Zappa but it got me ZAPPED!

[ratz.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine last night was trying to explain to me how Osaka is the Detroit of Japan and Kyoto is the Philadelphia of Japan. And here you start making other references.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Your friend is silly, it's obvious to anyone with sense that Nagoya is the Detroit of Japan and Kyoto is its Salt Lake City.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

I've always thought the appropriate American analogy would some hybrid of Berkeley and Boston.

Politically it's always been one of the few strongholds of the JCP , and was always one of the strongest centers of student radicalism, with massive unrest from the early 60's onwards. Kyodai is the nation's #2 university but its graduates tend to be more independent and creative than those of Todai, which trains the beaurocractic elite.

Culturally, true locals are fairly bluestockinged and socially conservative Brahmans, concious of ancestral history: the quiet girl you met the other day can tell you from which Heian-period family she is descended.