Scenes From Tokyo: Day 1

By Ben Liew  •  in News
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Konichiwa! It’s not everyday that a jaded Malaysian music writer ends up across the northern hemisphere to cover a Digital Broadcasting conference. But thanks to the mighty fine people at Multimedia Development Corp (MDeC), Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) and JUICE, here I am – battling cold weather and rubber monsters.

Today is my first day here and the conference (DigiCon 6) is scheduled to start tomorrow (Fri 20 Nov), so it’s been pretty much free and easy, minus the jetlag.

Upon arrival at the hotel, the TBS guys tell me that “today is the coldest day of the year so far.” Luckily, I had foreseen this though my special Gaijin-powers and had tapau-ed a bottle of duty-free whiskey at KLIA. After hitting down a few, the body warms up and the mind is ready for action!

Together with the Team Leader from One Academy, Koh Chong Cheng (aka Double C), who will be attending the conference with me, we braved the freezing winds and ended up at Shibuya. I’ll fill you in on Double C’s short animation film (that placed him in the run for an award from TBS) soon.

Now, Tower Records might be in the dumps back in KL, but over here, it’s 7 floors of music heaven! And it’s really funny to ACTUALLY find all the music I’ve been reviewing on sale here. It’ll be months until these titles arrive in KL – if ever. Kinda puts things into perspective. Am I writing about music that no one cares about back home?

Whatever I’m in Tokyo, biatch!

On the way back, I heard some drumbeats that can only be described as Dave Grohl-loud. Lo and behold there’s a band jamming on the sidewalk. The Bae are funky, wild and definitively J-Rock. Not 15 minutes into their impromptu set, a policeman stops them. Surprisingly, the cop only wants them to move to the other side of the pavement (about 3 metres away) because they were playing against the closed shutters of a department store. What? No public disturbance saman?

I can grow to like this place.

Oh yeah… and over here, Tommy Lee Jones is the Boss. Who’d have thunk? Ben out.

For more on The Bae, checkout their myspace.