imomus | An hour in Osaka

An hour in Osaka

Someone called Richard Henderson sent me $7 for the radio piece I made in Kurama last week. 'Just getting round to listening to this,' said the Paypal note, 'fantastic, more of this kind of thing, please. It'd be even better with video! You've already got iMovie, right? Drop a few hundred bucks for a used cam on eBay, and you could release a new documentary/lifeblog snippet with a self-composed soundtrack every couple of days!' Well, daily movies might be a bit of a stretch, but Richard encouraged me to make a new radio piece. This time it's an hour-long ramble around Osaka. You'll hear (and see in your mind's eye) an Australian rabbit giving a guided tour of an art centre called Graf, a bunch of funny Jinglish mottos on girls' T shirts, some tips on killing cockroaches, the lowdown on an up-and-coming district, some thoughts on homelessness, and a serenade by a sad restauranteur. All in glorious low-res mono. Come ramble with me!

An hour in Osaka (One hour, mono mp3, 27.74MB)

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Here's info about the Thai art show (http://www.graf-d3.com/soisabai/index_en.html) we visit.

completely unrelated -- i was talking to my friend kent yesterday and your name came up. he sends his regards!

Momus needs his own radio show.

listening to this radio transmission from my old hometown oosaka. nice to hear honmachi eki go bye over the subway PA. i'm struck by how subjective (and alien) your experience of osaka seems to me. i can see, from my memories, exactly what/where you're describing but i think i took completely different things away from it. perhaps it was my pseudo-immersion into the city's financial and linguistic space as a hakujin salariiman. i used to take long lunches and eat spaghetti at the 4nd floor of the gallery (graf) that you visited. even spent a day interviewing a coworker's son about his dialect (for a research project) at the "twisted metal" science museum. its very close to my building in the nakanoshima business district... quite interesting to hear someone say that it's the "new happening spot." i love that town. see nick, i'm trying to be friendly.

ps. interested to hear about your article on "osaka homelessness" in vice. i spent a few days in march interviewing homeless and korean day laborers in shin-sekai (south past tennoji and the zoo-- one of the most interesting neighborhoods in japan) for the previously-mentioned dialect research. standing in the street drinking juice boxes with a korean boxer, construction workers, old chess-playing man and their wives. where were you doing your interviews?

umai-bashi; delicious bridge

I listened to this on my mp3 player while walking around on the street. Mixing two street noises: NY and Osaka. More yelling in the former...

PS Especially liked the bits about the women's legs and bottoms.

Legs and bottoms are my matcha shaved ice with condensed milk topping.

same experience on NYC subway. sounds merging. fantastic. if sometimes a bit hard to make out.

The homonculus is on the loose...naughty little flaneur.

W

Sutee Kunavichayanont's work is wonderful. I love the idea of the viewer contributing their breath to the works.

Hah!

Excellent, thanks Nick.

cheers,
rich

Something I've been curious about: what are you using to record all the sounds you come across in Japan?

It certainly adds a different element to the pictures and text and while not having the full experience of video certainly adds an element of the real to your post.

An element of the real? My dear sir, are you accusing me of 'keeping it real'? Quite the contrary. Audio (recorded with my trusty Fujifilm Finepix F601 (http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/fuji/finepix_f601-review/)) adds, in fact, many new layers of baroque artifice to my mille feuilles of unreliable narration. In short, it provides me with the opportunity to lie in other dimensions. If I were expressing myself with patisserie, would you call it 'an element of the real'? You probably wouldn't, and yet what is reality without patisserie? Mere unleavened dough and wan unglazed casing!

Nick,

When I finally get my dirigible in working order and we have you up for a flight: you don't mind riding in the back, far away from all those 'equally relevant' levers and buttons, do you?

W

Sir, that was never my intention. I merely sought to illustrate that you've managed a way to help us all believe that you're really in Japan as opposed to living it up in the Bahamas.

I've found the idea of adding audio to posts as quite fascinating, adding another element to the reality that the author chooses to construct.

hey nick, eddie tried to reach u by phone,..but the number seems wrong...contact us asap

lik

Hey Nick - awesome walking tour. I love Osaka and agree with you in that Osakan women are - mysteriously - the most beautiful in Japan. I'm not sure why. I've been told many conflicting stories from my Japanese friends as to why Osakan women are the most beautiful. And an equal number of stories as to why Osakan women are not beautiful at all! However, I'm on your side on this one.

Here's a picture I snapped in New Osaka Station, relating to your radio show.

Cheers!

-Keith
Fidgital

Thanks for all of the radio disorienteering postcards.Wish I was there.The low-fi quality adds to the experience. It's better without pictures as it might then become "reality tv" if there could ever be a Momus equivalent. What you have created here is a kind of un-reality radio, which certainly evokes strange images and happenings? There is certain amount of decipherment needed which means replaying certain sections again which adds to the unreliable narrator schtick.

On another subject have you caught any Japanese TV shows ? Your probably too busy. Foreign TV is always enjoyable for the very fact that it estranges in an entertaining way. I am not a big TV watcher but from channel surfing I have discovered the Local Los Angeles Asian channels ( one of the interesting things about being in multi-cultural LA ) . There are two shows that I am enjoying at the moment. Thankfully these are subtitled. They are inventive and give one a good insight into the memes of J-TV culture. One is called DOTCHI NO RYORI SHOW (COOKING SHOWDOWN)

"Changing all the cooking rules ~ They are not kidding we say you'll never look at another cooking show the same way again. It changes all the rules. Welcome to a survivalist cooking game show where only the winners get to eat. Supplemented by on-site preparation with professional chefs, 2 hosts pitch rival menus to a panel of celebrity guests. The side that wins over the most panelists eats !"

This is a celebration of the minutiae of Japanese cooking, and I love the over zealous close-ups of dishes and the obssessive gathering of ingredients . A show to make you salivate..

TRICK

"A highly entertaining drama about a renowned physicist and her magician sidekick who investigate people claiming to have super powers". Its very surreal and stylish..I have only seen one episode so far but very intrigued by it, as it really shows the lack of creativity in US mainstream TV.

http://www.jdorama.com/drama.521.htm

Richard G

Though I'm sure it's 'creative' on a certain level, TV is one of my least favourite things about Japan and I go months at a time without seeing any of it. When I do watch some, I feel a huge sense of emptiness, just as I imagine I would after a night of watching silver balls falling in the deafening emptiness of a pachinko parlour.

But I do like the way the show concepts go just that little way further into daftness than anything we'd dare to do in the west. It's the same with Japanese porn. Consider One Week With Only Semen (http://www.jmate.com/reviews/article_95.html), the concept of which is 'Can a girl live for a week on semen and the eggs a single hen lays? Poor Nanami Nanase must go a week without eating anything but the eggs from one chicken and the sperm of a roomfull of guys.'

Yes, 'creativity' is too strong a word for television and its repetitive formulas. TV and Movies seem to be doing a lot of 'meme-splicing' more out of desperation than any other motive. Outside of PBS, I can't bear US broadcast TV, so anything a little unusual and other in this one track culture can be interesting for what you can glean. Having never seen real J-TV I am sure the tumbling balls analogy of the TV void is true ( sounds like Bingo ! ).

For a while I would boast that I didn't watch TV, as the web became my TV replacement. However for someone whose living revolves around motion graphics design I do need to see where it's at; although most of the 'creativity' is ironically being driven by the web. ( Designing around processing power means that one can't get too fancy. I think this is a good thing, but as with Moore's law web graphics will soon resemble TV eye candy ). I know I am sounding very defensive but I have found that one can't be too dismissive even if all of these things are ultimately empty. Rather like a diet of semen...

For a popstar it's probably like refusing to listen to the top 40 or watch TOTP. Actually once one hits 40 these things are not so important, but ivory towers however refined can cut one off from popular culture in a way that shuts off exposure to current memes good or bad. Maybe this idea fits in with your current musings. So perhaps in pursuing the new and the avant-garde, one needs to maintain a pop or un-pop sensibility. I think you are of course, and your questioning and debating of these thoughts is fascinating. Keep it 'un-real'...

Richard G

I had to comment here: I've been using several of your podcasts as a soundtrack to some nature hikes I've been doing to help keep me fit, and this one in particular is a joy to listen to because it's just so whimsical and fun and entertaining. One of the highlights for me is when you're in that bar and you point out the fact that David Sylvian's "Orpheus" is playing, and it's a real surprise to me to find out you like that song because I never suspected we'd have even one thing in common, and "Orpheus" is one of my absolute favorite songs. It's one of those songs that's so incredibly personal to me, it's got a lot of meaning to me, and is so favored that I named one of my vehicles after it, because this vehicle is so reliable and dependable and "always stays by my side", and because I've played a lot of DS on its CD player. So yeah, I wanted to comment on that, and it's cool getting a picture of that bartender from Perth who enthused over who you were and who taught you proper card etiquette.

Ha, glad you enjoyed the podcast, I must listen to it again!

Take care imposing one acoustic environment over another, though, especially at speed -- that's schizmo-acceleromics!

Oh wow, it's awesome that my little comment would inspire you to reintroduce yourself to something you did awhile back. You know, your voice podcasts have me curious now insofar as your music goes. I'm not typically one for quirky indie pop but if you can make your thoughts voiced out this entertaining, I can't imagine how entertaining your music is.

"Schizmo-acceleromics"! I love that word/word combo. There has to be some way of incorporating that into the modern lexicon. And Mr. Sylvian does help me while I'm driving, either by helping the time pass by or by making it a more tranquil aspect of my day or both.

BTW, I know you're not fond of private transport, but I live in a city where everything's spread out and so even though we have a decent public transportation system, there is no way one can maintain a life without relying on vehicles. Plus, it does make it easier for one to carry with oneself a great many things, thus allowing people such as myself the ability to worry about doing grocery shopping only once a week.

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An hour in Osaka

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