Konichiwa from Fukuoka, Japan

13th November 2005
11:10hrs
Dream Kawabata, Fukuoka

SQ flights are always the best, fantastic service, online check-in, great food and of course a personal in-flight entertainment. One of those rare moments I love about Singapore.

We reached Fukuoka at around 0800 hrs,Kenjiro-san was there to fetch us from the airport, weather is good, not so cold. They have put us up in a nice cosy apartment not far from the Asian Art Museum. I have yet to see the city, but I don’t think it is as busy and chaotic as Tokyo.

Once again, ‘Wish you were here’ is playing at this moment while I am typing all these. Well, knowing me being such a klutz, I have yet to find the bloody water heater, so I took shower with super cold water. Yes, I can be a dodo sometimes.

The apartment, it is a typical Japanese loft with everything, a mini kitchen, washing machine, a toilet bowl with those little buttons that whenever I use it I feel so lost. Like when you have just finished up your business, it will assist you in cleaning up the mess you have made.

We will be meeting Norico Sumiyama, the dancer from Dumb Type for a get-together-session, hopefully things will work out well the next couple of weeks as long as the heater is working in the apartment.

13th November 2005
23:10 hrs
Dream Kawabata, Fukuoka

I took a power nap while waiting for Ka5 and Citra, at around 1pm I woke up and realised the hunger was screaming out of the domain of tummy kingdom. There we were discovering Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.

The museum is located in a big super bourgeois mall, we were searching for a quick and cheap meal before the meeting, and there we went around Kawabata area. Well, finding a nice place to eat was not easy especially when everything was in Kenji. We decided to settle for a sandwich, yes, there was a photo of a fresh sandwich outside the shop.

The meeting went well, Norico san arrived with her costumes and we had a good 2 hour discussion about the show together with Kenjiro san and the help of American accented Kaori san.

The evening we met up with the director of Singapore Art Museum, Kwok Kian Chow aka KC for dinner who is here for a meeting with the museum. Well, like they say who can resist a good dinner when you are in an expensive country. Free loaders or bang loaders, it doesn’t matter, we had a great meal at this restaurant with 2 ships under one roof. There you have the opportunity to fish at the same time, me being a non-fisherman, decided to give Edwin a friend of KC, a Singaporean who is working here in Fukuoka to give it a try.

We managed to catch a good fish, and the food was luxuriousy fantastic, a good start for the first day I guess.

Then after the we-can’t-afford-that-kind-of dinner, we decided to go for the public bath or also known as Ohnsen. For the second time, one can never resist the experience of a public bath in Japan, it was mind-blowing for myself I guess, they have like assorted Jacuzzis for different parts of the body.


15th November 2005
01:01 hrs
Dream Kawabata, Fukuoka

I woke up late for rehearsal late today; my clock is still in Singapore time format (shit). The apartment is so cosy, that you don’t realised that its already late morning. Reached the museum with everyone on their laptops checking their mails. We had a session of mapping the whole show, which is confusing at its best. As usual, what is KYTV performance without its confusion?

Norico san our reliable collaborator/translator for food brought us to a coffeeshop where I had soba and tempura. The standard price for lunch is Y450 which is SGD$6 - $8, so there is no point figuring out how much is this or that or else, you will starve to death.

Japan is definitely more expensive than Berlin surprisingly, in the afternoon we were invited to a Fukuoka Fashion Show where there were a large number of trendy young Fukuokans straddling their style.

Joyce Fang, the head curator was there as well, so I had a nice time talking to her while walking to the venue. The fashion show was ‘ok,’ as it was the first time I was ever in a fashion show, I almost fell asleep but struggled hard to keep myself awake because we were given a complimentary sit at the front row. The admission fee was not cheap; it was about close to $30.

We had our first real rehearsal session, myself, Citra Pratiwi (Indonesian collaborator) and Norico Sumiyama. Norico has been performing for 20 years, so a very much respect to the performer who has performed with Dumb Type. Citra conducted a Balinese dance workshop, well I haven’t been doing real dance exercise, it turned out pretty alright, well my movement was stiff and rigid, but I believe things will get better as we go along.

In the evening, we met with the rest of the workshop participants, it was a mixture of young and old, as usual, we were lost in translation, that is the best thing about being in Japan, you just get lost in communication and the message that is passed through can sometimes be accurate or just misinterpreted.

After the meeting, we were brought to a nice restaurant, which of course (er hmm), we had to pay our share that I wouldn’t want to mention the price. But we had sashimi and other raw seafood delicacies, I am not big fan of raw food but I will only do this in Japan apparently.

I realised something, never wear your socks with holes, because most of the eating place require you to take of your shoes most of the time. If you think you are so rock n roll, spare the embarrassment and get a nice looking socks (hee hee).