February 24 

I awoke and checked e-mails.  A friend had written about what she was giving up for Lent and why.  After a week of at least two alcoholic beverages every night I spontaneously decided to give up alcohol until Easter. 

I took off for Tokyo after saying goodbye to Ola.  I didn’t envy him his flight from Tokyo to L.A. and then on to Chicago.  There are better ways of doing a round-the-world trip. 

Actually, I detoured through Shinonome to drop off the booth key I’d inadvertently taken with me on Friday.  The surprise on the employee’s face when he saw this gaijin in his seventh-floor office in an industrial zone was well worth the time spent. 

In Tokyo I bought things useful (socks), useless (Anpanman DVD), and overdue (electronic dictionary), leafed through Tomohiro Sekiguchi’s new book on his train trip through Switzerland (meaning the Alps), then set out on my actual mission: to find my friend’s friend Maria Kunii.  She had left Catharine with an address in Komae-shi, west of Shinjuku on the Odakyu line. 

Before I set out, I ate a snack from the combini while watching a young drummer perform in front of the new South entrance.  I read the sign in front of him, which said “Happy drumming!” and a lot of Japanese stuff, and asked him why he was drumming here.  He said because he’d felt like it.  The car behind him blocking the taxi lane was his, and he’d come all the way from Nagoya with his drum set to play for about a week in Tokyo.  Yesterday he’d been across the street, but there the police had shooed him away after five minutes. 

I took the train out to Komae, past the incongruous mosque at Yoyogi-Uehara (if the Japanese can allow a minaret, why do we in Switzerland have such problems?), and walked in the direction I remembered from map.yahoo.co.jp.  Of course I got blown off track, so I turned around and asked at the nearest combini (convenience store).  I remembered the number of the block (addresses in Japan work via numbering increasingly smaller partitions of land) and soon found a humongous apartment complex, probably the largest building in all Komae.  I looked at all the mailboxes and then the entire directory by the elevators, but no Kunii lived there any longer.  Asking the combini lady wouldn’t have helped, so I gave up and strolled back to the station, stopping on the way at the Moriuta record store and bought a few CDs from the “Wagon Sale” (a.k.a. we-can’t-get-rid-of-it-let’s-wait-till-Stephan-comes sale).  With the Dodekachordon CD, these new records, and the free downloads from Katy Wehr‘s and Marc Andre‘s sites, I have enough to keep me going for a while. 

Anyway, if for some reason you know Maria Kunii and where she lives, or if you are Maria Kunii, Catharine wants to get in touch with you, and you can get in touch with her through me. 

What I thought would be an early bedtime turned into a late night packing session.  I needed to get everything ready to make it on an early train and breakfast before that so I stayed up past midnight and when at ten my hunger became ravenous I bought a double cheeseburger menu in the McDonald’s (Makudonarudo) below. 

After the final day of the exhibition we took down our instruments in just over an hour and headed for the hotel.  We intended to eat at the Chinese restaurant, but the queue there dissuaded us and we went again to the Japanese restaurant on the 21st floor.  Even that was on the full side – poor Björn had to accept eating at a non-smoking table.  Both Björn and Ola had a set menu, Ola heating his soba noodles and adding soy sauce to most everything, which made Björn and me cringe at his flagrant breaking of Japanese “rules.”  He liked it his way, though.  I had raw shrimp (ama-ebi), something else I don’t remember just now, and what I thought the waitress said was a grilled fish head, but turned out to be the bit behind the head.  It was the only shioyaki (salted and grilled) item on the menu, so I went for it and rather enjoyed it not being the head. 

I left early, because I intended to attend the second set of the group Dodekachordon, playing at the Rakuya club in Naka-Meguro.  I knew of the concert because way back when I stayed in Futtsu, I attended the Chiba Bay Side Jazz festival and heard the saxophonist Kazuhiro Takeda in another formation, QUADRA, and still get concert announcements from him.  Two years ago I got to hear QUADRA again and still marvel at the precision and rich sound of four saxophones playing together. 

The Rakuya wasn’t hard to find: a short walk from the Naka-Meguro metro station along a narrow boutique-lined street and there it was, on the right.  Inside a waiter informed me I could choose between a seat at a table where someone was already sitting or one at the bar.  I picked the table and got lucky: the other person was Tomy Tsuzzy, who had illustrated the Dodekachordon CD.  Takeda-san was talking to him and introduced me; I gave him a Patent Ochnser Wildbolz & Süsstrunk CD in exchange for a Dodekachordon disc.  I wonder if he’ll like the Bärndütsch? 

Soon the lights dimmed and the musicians got ready for the second set, all four of them sporting some variation on a goatee.  They sat on the stage in front of a wall-to-wall window opening onto a courtyard with bushes and some fluorescent light illuminating a back exit.  Small spots dotted the ceiling that made me wonder why ceilings in clubs are always ugly, even when the rest of the decor is tasteful.  Here candles on the tables and washi paper covered cubes standing on end along the wall allowed the patrons to read menus and find their drinks.  The curtain of Christmas lights bordering the top of the bar rounded off the lighting scheme. 

I had expected jazz; the sign outside said world music; the genre when I loaded the CD into iTunes said “Holiday.”  The latter does the music the most justice, because the only common thread through all songs is the relaxed enjoyment the musicians obviously take from playing songs that take cues from Klezmer, Dixieland, Flamenco, Funk, Calypso, Blues, Mariachi, and other genres.  They had already established a rapport with the full house in the first set and kept up the light-hearted joking and lengthy facetious introductions between songs to laughter and claps from the crowd of about 40.  In one of the announcement Takeda-san even mentioned the traveling microscope salesman from Switzerland, but nobody mentioned it to me afterwards.  I guess nobody knew they needed an atomic force microscope.  The music exuded excitement and unforced playful energy, and with the whimsical humor of their compositions I half expected to hear a song combining riffs on the jingles the train stations play when the train is about to leave.  While the bass and guitar mostly supplied rhythm and the saxophone and trombone smooth harmonic melodies, all players got chances at soloing and usually drew laughs from the band members sitting out.  The songs swung from sparse, dry bass-guitar interplay to full-on horns and a driving rhythm, making for fun listening. 

Last time I’d attended a QUADRA concert, they played happy birthday for a member of the audience.  This time, when they introduced the band members, instead of introducing the bassist they played Wagner’s wedding march and announced his recent marriage.  The crowd got most excited when the bride was pointed out.  It fit the general atmosphere that the bassist himself initiated the rhythmical clapping for an encore.  I returned to the hotel tired but content.