Woke up today and realized that it's been a loong time since I've last posted, so decided to make a sort of huge post of what's been going on recently.
(More after the break)

So what have I been up to? First off, new job in the middle of Downtown LA. My commute starting in April will go from a grueling 1.25 hours one way to a breezing 1 hour one way (if I take the metro). Also, hours go from 9-68 to 8-5. So, if any of you are in the area, contact me and meet up for lunch!

Next, the fun stuff. Last weekend I grabbed a few buddies from AX and headed over to the Knitting Factory in Hollywood to go and see Japan Night. Several bands were playing that night, and I managed to catch three of them. The first one was Asakusa Jinta (浅草ジンタ), an Okinawa based band with a distinct almost polka-like feel. They performed a few very nice pieces (only caught three of them, unfortunately), featuring the awesome vocals of their bassist and their sax player. Immediately following them was one of the most bizzare bands I've seen out of Japan in a while: 50RPM. To put it into words, it's like they took the dressing style of AC/DC's Angus Young, added in the facial distortions of the Rolling Stone's Mick Jager, and stuffed that all into a garage band. Still, their music wasn't bad, and it got the crowd fairly hyped up with their energy. Still, reports of people getting hit by their crazy antics still have surfaced...

Anyway, last but not least of what I saw was the Oreska Band! This band is a bunch of high school girls from the Osaka area playing ska music. There's about six of them on the stage at any time, with the leader blasting out on her trombone, the vocals on the bass and guitar, and the saxaphone and the trumpet going wild on the front stage. Overall, these girls awesome on stage, and even the moshing couldn't detract from my enjoyment of their music.

One of the most enjoyable portions of the show was watching the girls attempt to speak English to the audience, as well as try and explain some Japanese concepts (most notably 「おおきに」and 「突っ込み」). Watching the girls point at each other and saying "This is a pen" was adorable and hilarious, and watching the crowd react to them so positively was a very good feeling.

Afterwards we got a chance to talk to the band members before they got on the bus for San Fransisco. All of them look incredibly young, even though they're graduating high school this year, and seem very excited and enthusiastic about continuing as a band for as long as they can. From just that night, I've become a fan of theirs. Check them out at their website: www.oreskaband.com, or their MySpace page at www.myspace.com/oreskabandus