Yokohama!

We were flying to Yokohama on Friday, but not out of Taoyuan. Instead, we were departing from Songshan Airport, whose unfortunate call letters are “TSA”. I was able to catch the subway from Xindian all the way to the airport with only one transfer. I hadn’t been to the airport since it’s refurbishing, and it looks cool in a faux-retro kind of way. Either that or it’s actually the original furnishings, just taken out of the cupboard where they were tossed at the dawn of the Age of Crap and dusted off. Our baggage included two tubs and a wooden stick, all boxed and labeled “fragile”.

Another surprised lay in store for us after we cleared customs, where the lines were so short none of us even thought of using the machines that do it automatically: Instead of some dumpy old airplane, we boarded one of ANA’s new Boeing 787s. I admit I didn’t realize it was a 787 until I’d boarded, put my stuff away, settled down and realized that there was seemingly no way to pull the window shade down (the windows are darkened with a polarization thingamabob). Only then did I notice the slightly taller windows and raised wings. When I related this exciting information to Thumper, he also became very excited, going so far as to actually shrug.

The flight was smooth and quick, aided by a healthy tailwind, and we were soon descending through the clouds over Haneda Airport, Tokyo’s “local” airport, which is ever so much more impressive than any airport in Taiwan. We got off and gazed out at the 787, upon which Slim realized that he had neglected to bring his bag with him off the plane. We waited while he went back to fetch it. This would become somewhat of a theme throughout our trip.

After deciphering the plate of multicolored spaghetti that is Tokyo’s subway map, we managed to find the train to Yokohama. When we got there, instead of figuring out exactly where we should head to get to the hotel, we stood around ogling a poster for the Yokohama Jug Band Festival, where we were a featured act. We later regretted this neglect when we found it was raining outside and we had to walk a bit more in the rain than we would have if we’d just looked at a goddamn map.

But we found the hotel, the Hotel Plumm, which features daring shades of purple and green. Our room also had a lot of Shocking Pink. But it was indoors and they had hot water, so all was good.

We’d been invited to a pre-festival party a few stops down the line that evening, so we grabbed some instruments and headed out into the rain again, this time to a lovely little bar called the Blue Corn Cafe, where many talented Japanese musicians were putting on a show. We sat down and listened to some really great pieces, and met some of them as well as the organizers of the festival, including Mooney, Speedy and Tomo. Mooney is the head organizer as well as a musician, and Speedy is one of the best bassists I’ve ever seen. He lives and breathes the songs, and the double bass he plays is like part of him. Tomo hasn’t cut his hair in three years. We sat and ate burgers (though I didn’t seen any actual blue corn on the menu) and drank as we enjoyed the music. It was supremely comfortable, though Japanese people still insist on smoking in restaurants even in this day and age. At one point Mooney saw my trumpet and motioned for me to come up on stage. They were playing a version of “Everybody Loves My Baby” but it had a strange minor section I’d never heard before. “Do you know this song?” Mooney asked. I nodded noncommittally.

“I know…a version of it?” I said, but he was already going, so I did what I could. People seemed to like it, anyway. Conor gave some ripping solos, and Sandman played a bit as well. It was great fun.

The subway was shutting down at 12:30 or so, so Tomo led us back to the station so we could hop on the last train back to Yokohama Station, along with 89 businessmen, two of them in each other’s laps. We cooled down in David’s room for a bit before heading off to sleep.

Breakfast the next day was downstairs from the hotel and next door at a Dennys-esque restaurant called “Jonathan”, with booths and newspapers and decent eggs. There was a Mandatory Jug Band “meeting” at the venue at 11am, but we had no idea what it was all about, so we just grabbed our instruments and showed up, only to find that it was an actual meeting, all in Japanese, and besides being introduced, there wasn’t much for us to do. It was odd seeing so many jug bands in one place, over 60 in all, with accompanying paraphernalia such as buttons, T-shirts, posters, etc.

We had some time, so I walked around the area a bit, along the canals, across some bridges and back. Another performance space lay under a large bridge nearby. An elderly man ventured out of his tiny old building to do laundry on the porch. Trains came and went. I love trains, bridges, and walking around such places, so I was very happy with it all. I browsed cameras at the BIC camera store, where an employee took way too much time connecting power to the cameras, but at least they let you try them, unlike shops back home in Taipei. I got a good feel for cameras I’d only read about, such as the Panasonic LX100 (good features but poor handling) and the Fuji X100T (very nice, lovely optical viewfinder), and the Sony A7II (too big and heavy, I still prefer the small and light A7r).

As I was meandering down a street, wondering what I was doing for lunch, I heard someone calling my name. It was Mojo. She, Eddie and David were in line for noodles at a popular shop across the street, so I joined them. The noodles, when we were finally seated, were very good, somehow emitting a smoked, barbeque flavor, albeit a bit salty. I redecorated my necktie with soup, so it wasn’t too bad. It seemed to be a family business, and it ran like clockwork. I wouldn’t want to be a new employee there. I wouldn’t be surprised if they make you sit and watch for a month before they let you into the kitchen.

Our afternoon show was approaching, so we walked back to the stage, which was on a sloping platform over a canal. We soon noticed that, despite its name, we hadn’t seen any actual jugs being played. Slim felt he might be the only actual jug player at a jug band festival, which would be strange. I also noticed that none of the washtub basses seemed to be able to hit actual notes with any kind of accuracy. A few were ok, but mostly seemed to be used as percussive instruments rather than melodic ones.

It was time to get ready, but as we pulled out our instruments in preparation, Sandman discovered that he had brought the wrong saxophone. It wasn’t a big deal as far as the afternoon show went, but he’d need to find something before the evening show. The sound on the canal stage seemed kind of tinny, and when I told them to put the microphone under the tub, they seemed shocked, as if nobody had ever thought to do that before. But they caught on, and before we knew it, we were playing, several women in geisha outfits, complete with green bottles of sake, dancing next to the stage as we played.

The sun came out in response to Mojo’s bright yellow earrings, welcome after all of the rain and gloom. We put our stuff away after the show, and I walked around some more, enjoying just being in Yokohama. The cherry trees were in blossom, lit up by streetlights as dusk fell and uniformed persons shouted at pedestrians. I ducked into a curry place for an unremarkable dinner before catching another show under the bridge.

They were having a “washtub bass summit” when I returned to the venue. About a dozen makeshift washtub bassists were there, and they were all surprised to find that I was using a chopstick to pluck the string. They all used their hands, some gloved, some bare, on metal of nylon strings. The biggest innovation I saw was one guy who had a notched stick that could be used as a washboard in an emergency.

We all went out on stage, where Tomo was sitting with a banjo. He played a simple melody, and the dozen-odd washtub basses lurched into a rumbling accompaniment. It was a mess to hear. They gave everyone a measure to play individually, but that was fairly meaningless as well. I went through the motions of strumming, devoting most of my energy to avoiding rolling-eye strain, but I guess it was cool to at least see a bunch of washtub basses in the same room.

Steve Gardner was playing before us, and he invited us on stage to play on his last song. It was fun, but the key was a bit odd. I managed somehow, and then it was our turn.

Our show was great, to put it simply. The sound, the audience (except one large woman in the front row who seemed to have fallen asleep or passed out), the energy, the lights, everything was great. The stage was in a bar called the Thumbs Up. Some more bands played after us, but we had the prime spot, and we all got up on stage for a raucous, righteous jam at the end before retiring to the table for beer and sake and plates of food. We donated the tub and stick to an earnest young Japanese washtub bass player named JJ, who seemed to be trying to emulate Johnny Depp’s character in Alice. He was very happy. Everyone was very happy. I can’t remember when I’ve had such a wonderful time. Even though I was exhausted, I took the long way back to the Plumm, not wanting the day to end. Some of the others took this feeling a bit more seriously, as they went out to another place for food and only returned to the hotel at 4 a.m.

We got up a couple of hours later, around 6, in order to make our flight back to Taipei. The day was lovely, brilliant, sunny and warm. I wished very hard that I could stay in Yokohama, visions of playing gigs, studying Japanese and living in a tiny room somewhere around there dancing in my stupid little head, but we had to go. For a moment we thought we might miss our flight when Conor thought mistakenly that he’d left his phone at the hotel, even going back to get it before realizing it was in his bag all along (I told you this kind of thing would happen again). We made the train, however, and though I was told be the rear-train conductor to stop taking pictures of her hands (I wasn’t; I was taking video of her hands), we made it to the airport in one piece.

I spent as much of my remaining Yen as I could on a sandwich, and then it was on the 787 back to Taipei. Flying into Songshan is even more surreal than flying out of it; usually with Taoyuan there is that buffer period between the Outside World and Taiwan, in the form of a dusty, creaking bus, but this sudden transition via the subway was a little unsettling. Thumper took off, as well as Mojo, at the airport. David and Conor headed off back to Muzha. Slim got off at Qizhang, and Sandman at Xindian District Office Station. Then it was just me, hauling my luggage back across the bridge to the Water Curtain Cave.

Most of my stuff is unpacked, the handful of photos and videos copied. And now this account is written. The trip is done. It will take a while to sink in, however. It was one of those trips, a trip I didn’t know how much I needed. Time may tell how much.