As you can tell by the still updated daily pics, yes, I am still alive, but I just haven’t been into spending a lot of time in front of the computer these few days because of my illness. I’m finally better now, and actually went to work today, so things are looking up. I just hate getting sick, and I’m definitely the worst sick person in the world.

The next TOKYO BOY update will be tomorrow, as usual, and will contain some pics that have showed up on this site this week, as well as new ones. I’ll also talk a bit more about the my Resfest experience, which I really did enjoy (and I’m really, really thankful that I only started getting sick the day after).

Also, this week as seen a few good Japanese releases on the music side of things. Thanks to my good friend Patrick, this is what I’m listening to right now:

Fantastic Plastic Machine – “Why Not?”
New single by FPM. Although in general I’m not as big a fan of FPM’s more recent output, I’m enjoying this single (which includes 4 new tracks). Reminds a lot of Towa Tei’s Sweet Robots Against the Machine stuff.

Mansfield – GOLDEN HOUR
A remix album of a lot of stuff from his MANSFIELD POPP album, which was released earlier this year. Includes a nice cover of Beck’s “New Pollution”.

Various Artists – JAMES BROWN ULTIMATE REMIXES
Haven’t listened to this one much yet, but includes remixes by Yasuharu Konishi, FPM, Cornelius and other Japanese artists.

Also listening to:

Katerine – 8e CIEL
New album by Philippe Katerine. Includes a very wacky video of him performing in drag as a young girl.

No TB today as I am really sick. Somekind of stomach virus or food poisoning. I might post it tomorrow depending on how well I’m feeling (meaning if I can stay long enough out of the toilet room).

The new TB is up at the OPi8 site. All night shots of Tokyo streets (and all pics that you’ve seen here this week).

Yesterday I bought some tickets for two programs at this weekend’s Resfest. I would like to see everything at the festival, but time and money are preventing me (and the fact that the scheduling is a bit annoying this year as they are only showing everything once). I did get tickets for the two programs I most wanted to see though, the one covering motion design shorts (probably my favorite program of last year), and the one for documentaries. I might try to catch another program or two on Sunday, but I’m at least certain to see those two.

And speaking of motion design, check out the STAT.IND site for a few cool examples.

A lot of foreigners that come to Japan say that Japanese TV is just insane and that there’s nothing worth watching. Superficially, it’s true, things look quite inane, but there is beautiful madness in there, and I got some more examples tonight. It’s no use really describing what I saw, as I don’t think anyone would get it (let’s just say that it included one of the priceless appearances by one of my favorite comedians that everyone in Japan hates, Egashira 2:50, on the show PuSma). I laughed myself silly, even though I wasn’t understanding everything that was being said (I’m getting good though, and I’m surprising myself by how much I’m understanding a lot these days).

Japanese TV. Beautiful madness. Yeah.

Just posted the new TB at the OPi8 site. A few pics from the Film Marmalade event that I attended last night. It’s a showcase for amateur video filmmakers in Tokyo, and I was actually pleasantly surprised by quite a few of the shorts. A few years ago I had seen a tape of shorts from an organization called Eyesaw, and, well, it was definitely very “amateur”. I did attend a cool Eyesaw event once, it had all sorts of art installations, but haven’t heard anything from them in a while, even though I’m supposed to be subscribed to their mailing list. I just checked out their website (which I had sort of forgotten about), and they still seem to be organizing events, so maybe I’ll check another one out in the near future.

As for the shorts shown last night at Film Marmalade (formely known as Filmbrothel), I especially enjoyed the 3 that were done by someone who was just listed as Takuya. Even though they were all quite different (going from really funny to documentary style), they were all shot in an interesting way, and never lost my interest. One of the funniest shorts there was by Rob Pongi, who has a whole bunch of short videos on his site. The personals are especially funny. And yes, he was wearing the same outfit last night that he wears in all of his videos.

You can also check out the TokyoDV site, which is affiliated with last night’s event.

This is really weird. Someone did a flash ad for the Japanese Kikkoman soy sauce. Lots of in jokes (like the cat from the infamous 2 Channel BBS).

If I was a musician and I was to record an album, I would want to record it at the DELTA LAB.

Funny coincidence. Today’s daily pic on my site is of the cafe/bar Floor, and I just checked Momus’ site to see that his Daily Photo section has a whole bunch of photos of the place. It gives you a good idea of what the place looks like inside.

TB.34 is up at the OPi8 site. A few more pictures taken last Sunday in Kichijoji.

It’s just been a horrible week for me, hence the lack of updates here in the log. Work wasn’t great (some classes that I would just rather forget as soon as possible), and an update to my iMac sort of screwed up things to a point where I had to re-install everything. Beware of the Mac OS X 10.2.2 update! It slowed down my Mac, prevented me from typing in Japanese (or using the character palette), and removed my ability to do copy and pastes across the system (couldn’t even drag anything, like putting songs in a playlist in iTunes)! The good thing to come out of this is that I was forced to finally do a backup of all my stuff in order to completely delete my drive before re-installing OS X 10.2 (an install on top of 10.2.2 did not fix the problem), and it’s about time. I put everything on a DVD, and it’s good to know that all my pics are finally somewhere secure (can you believe that it was the first time I backed them all up – talk about living dangerously for way too long). Everything is back to normal now, which is a relief. I’ve gone through every upgrade of OS X from 10.0 on up (probably around 10-20 updates), and this is the first time that an upgrade does something bad to my system, so I guess I shouldn’t get too upset yet.

The new TB log is up. Describes the laptopper show I attended last night, which was headlined by Momus.

TB.32 is up. Pictures of my outing in Shibuya tonight. I went to a place called Soma, which is a nice place to relax at night. The people I was meeting were later going to the Organ Bar for the Yasuharu Konishi’s monthly event there with Tatsuo Sunaga, but being low on cash these days, I had to call it a night early.

From Japan Today:
“Meet Banryu, the new “guard-dragon” developed by tmsuk Co and Sanyo Electic. The home robot, which was unveiled Wednesday, can move at up to 15 meters a minute and has sight and odor sensors for detecting smoke. It is being touted for home security and will go on sale next year.”

You are now able to leave comments after every entry of my TOKYO BOY log at the OPi8 site, just like you can do here, so feel free to let me know what you think of the TB logs after you visit them.