 Okay - here you can find my blog entries. They're likely to be about most anything, especially life on the road, touring and the manic, random musings of an idle mind while driving thousands of miles in pursuit of a living. I have had the fortune to travel for a living and to see many places I only dreamed of as a kid. And all through this thing called music... It's been - and hopefully will continue to be - a most interesting life. Here, I share some of that with you... |
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Tokyo Japan
 One of the few perks of being a musician is that on occasion, the rewards are worth the effort and sacrifices it took to get here. I find myself in Tokyo, Japan for the first time and it is a truly remarkable place. As a westerner, and especially an American, it is a very different mode of life. Not in a better/worse kind of way, just different. As a friend once told me, "when you have the opportunity to travel on someone else's dime, you're a fool if you don't go." I agree; I definitely agree. Since I was old enough to get kicked out the back door of the house as a kid, somewhere around five years old, I have been a wanderer, and still am a wanderer at heart. I'm always curious what's out there to be discovered and what fun adventure I can happen onto today. Tolkien said it best: "All who wander are not lost..." Traveling as a musician opens up so many doors into the culture and social structure of a city or country. You meet so many diverse and interesting people that it is always enlightening and stimulating. (The beer helps, too...) I feel very lucky to have succeeded to the place that I get to do this for a living.The first thing that strikes me here in Japan is how efficient everything is. Orderly, clean and precise. Everyone is rather courteous if hurried, the city itself is amazingly clean and free of trash for a city of 12 million people, and you could set your watch by the trains and metro. An entirely different mode than New York City. Even though, as much as Tokyo is great, I'd still rather be in NYC.The number one priority beyond a clean, safe place to sleep is food. Very few things take up as much of my day as searching for good, healthy, fresh and affordable meals. That is a tall order to fill in most any city, much less when you are halfway aound the world in a truly foreign place. However the food's been very very good. Besides excellent typical Japanese fare - including the best sushi I've ever tasted - I have dined on excellent Italian, Indian, Turkish and French cuisines. Being a truly metropolitan city, I hardly find it surprising that Tokyo has so many many excellent "ethnic" restaurants but the high quality all around has been a pleasant discovery.The exploration of a very ancient and rich culture had also been its own reward. Travel throughout Tokyo and you can find hidden gems of magnificent historical significance. Not to mention also traveling to Nikko, Kyoto, Hiroshima, or Mt. Fuji. Probably the most fantastic thing I did while in Japan was to climb Mt Fuji. By far, the most difficult physical task I have ever undertaken, but the rewards of watching the sunrise ABOVE the clouds and hearing the mountainside erupt in a chant welcoming the new day was just awesome and a wondrous, once in a lifetime experience. Was it worth the physical exhaustion and mental fatigue? Absolutely...I met and spent time with some truly wonderful people and experienced a culture truly divergent from our own American familiarity. The rewards really are worth it... if exhausting. 
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