but my sort of proper ones taken on film. natura classica wins hands down - 1600 film was really made for it, but confuses my nikon slr in the daytime, creating grainy pictures.
outside em seven in koiwa, where pex, chris & stina played their first gig. only starting to realise how bloody hot the japanese summer is.
kenta filming seven that spells; there should be an age limit on these machines.
the whole crew - stina, pex, scott, chris & kenta. and me somewhere behind the camera. actually my mother was wondering where all the pictures of me were - but i take pictures mum, i don’t like posing for them.
i’m sorry i disturbed your water drinking, but your orange spotted face is too funny! (cat spotted in the back streets of minami-senju)
chris waiting around during soundcheck at penguin house in koenji. the japanese still seem to have a thing still for the late keith haring - i think there were some t-shirts in uniqlo too featuring his artwork?
with reo (ex-drummer from ni-hao, and now in nasca car), and cuckoo (psychedelic desert). we were all excited after seeing a wild set from nasca car.
i have stacks more, but these are just the ones i managed to scan last night. i still have 72 frames of a half frame camera to develop as well. my brain is full of library agendas and planning - if i can just finish this working week…
suzuki emi - popular model, started out modelling for schoolgirl magazine seventeen, scarily thin, cute (but not really the kind of girls i like, which is irrelevant).
born in shangha… wait, kyoto? half chinese and japanese… but her management agency page says nothing about this? yet everyone on the net insists she has chinese blood. surely she must if wikipedia says so…
see, even the overseas chinese page says the same thing
and what’s more, we will assimilate you!
suzuki’s management agency, stardust, has never dismissed or confirmed the rumours: that she was born originally with a chinese name in shanghai, attended school there until the age of twelve when she moved to japan, naturalized her citizenship to japanese, and supposedly gained the name ’suzuki emi’ and absorbed the japanese language within a year. hey, even if the latter were true, that’s damn impressive for anybody.
the english wikipedia article cites its original source as this japanese page, which states the “facts” but hasn’t any forwarding proof. the site, yamaguchi.net, is a ‘knowledge base’, sort of like a wiki, but with a more organised structure, and only the site owners can edit articles…
but of course anyone can edit a wikipedia entry. the japanese suzuki emi wikipedia entry is sick of being changed constantly, that it now states at the top that only the name ’suzuki emi’ can be used, and only the birthplace of kyoto, japan is to be stated as her birthplace. but in the past history of the notes, a user with a very chinese handle of ’sizhao’ keeps insisting that she’s ‘not born in kyoto, but shanghai’ and so on. but that doesn’t appear in the current version of the notes section, since deleted. thank goodness for a logged history of everything on wikis.
but if she can speak chinese, does that reveal a possible chinese bloodline? in an episode of long love letter, suzuki teaches her classmates a few words in mandarin. her pronnunciation isn’t bad, but not perfect either (scroll towards the end of the clip) …
japanese fans say that her parents were only working in china. some other rumours say suzuki is full blood chinese, and the kyoto birthplace is just a coverup, which one might do if they want to be accepted into japanese society. the cynical side of me says that chinese people like to claim everybody as their own, especially the good looking ones, and start funny falsehoods (but did they really start this one, or merely jump on the bandwagon?). but showbiz in japan has a funny way of suddenly revealing their secret ethnicity, like wada akiko being forced to admit she was of korean origin after being ‘outed’ by a magazine.
the internet: a place where a bunch of people can post unsubstantiated things, and this makes them facts, obviously. and then after which you can have a jolly old time slagging off each other as to who is right, racist, or a shithead on whether suzuki emi is chinese, japanese or both, in youtube or a forum until the cows come home.
ringo10th.com opened today. i think that makes it a tin anniversary…
ten years (27.05.1998) since the debut single of a girl with the stage name of shiina ringo.
in that time she was married, had a child, and divorced. she released four solo albums, and three with a band. she removed a mole from her face, and turned it into a premise for a concert! for better or worse, the precocious third finger raising teenager has turned into a kooky fashion plate. in the last few years, the solo act has given way to a band, tokyo jihen, but for all purposes is still dominated by ringo.
i haven’t shared all ten years with ringo, only the past six, marked by the lull after the double cd cover album, only to shock us with the musically complex karuki zamen kuri no hana (kzk) in 2003. i had only just begun to know the slip and tiara wearing rocker of her youth when a kimono wearing persona appeared with jazz rhythms and traditional instruments layered one over the other.
i live somewhat vicariously through ringo. i send myself hoarse singing her high pitched scratchy songs at karaoke. i bought a vivienne westwood knuckle ring, which is sort of a shorter version of her armour ring and wear it everyday. i try and learn a cover to play in my band. my band is named after her. kzk raised my expectations forever of what music should be, and her debut album still moves me to action.
i don’t know what the future ten years might hold, though i know my expectations are unfair. forgive me, because her music makes me think this way!
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