Our good friends at San Jose Taiko team up with bay area DJ group Bangerz for a song about robots!

Okay so usually I would NOT turn OnEnsemble.org into an advertisement for anything but I feel compelled to let you all know know that I found something I thought I would never find: mainland shave ice that doesn’t suck!  For years and years I’ve been wondering why it’s so hard to make shave ice like Hawaii’s famous Matsumotos or my personal favorite Waiola’s.

When I lived in Hawai’i going to Waiola’s was a religious experience.  Inspired by chado I sought perfection in the ritual of my own shave ice ceremony.  To arrive fully with all of your senses in a single moment to enjoy the pleasure of a lychee shave ice is to attain some kind of modern day enlightenment.  Of course there was a practical element to this as well.  I was broke.  To be specific I was trying to save money to move to Japan while living in Hawai’i and making about five hundred bucks a month on the various taiko gigs we’d get.  I didn’t want to get a “real” job because I wanted all of time and energy to go into pursuing my art so I came up other lifestyle solutions.  Like “spending less is the same as making more” and “natto is the most protein you can buy for your dollar” and “if you cook with habenros you eat more rice get full faster and spend less on food”.  But my best solution was the shave ice ritual.  Even on my extremely tight budget I wanted to do some fun things like get shave ice every single day. I figured if I could compress seven units of shave ice eating enjoyment into a single shave ice it’ll be like I had shave ice everyday but would only have to buy one a week.

Fast forward ten years and these lifestyle choices have led to a few unintended consequences. I’ve become a food snob.  I used to think “I’m not a snob I just care a lot about food/music/etc” but it’s a slippery slope to snobdom from there.  Soon you find yourself thinking “this shave ice isn’t worthy of my ritual” and frustrated that nobody on the mainland can seem to make shave ice!  I mean it’s not like building a robot or discovering the cure for cancer it’s ice…  that you shave… and put syrup on top…  why oh why doesn’t anybody take this seriously enough to do it right!!  ARGHHGHGHGGHGHGHH!!!

So when my wife suggested we try this shave ice place that she saw at the Glendale Americana I was very skeptical.  Imagine my delight when the beautifully shaped shave ice gave way perfectly to the slight pressure from the spoon.  When the fineness of the ice was like cream…  A shave ice worthy of the ritual.

(but don’t get the mochi…  they use the super salty lame ass pink berry mochi…  life is too short for lame mochi but that’s a topic for another rant…)

Overall we had a great time in New York. We got to perform at Carnegie, we met new taiko people, taught some workshops and played with some great musicians. We also got to do lots of great eating, saw some great music and got to cheer the Lakers on to victory in a bar full of Celtics fans! Maz and I have to give a huge shout out and thank you to Eric Whitacre and DCINY for bringing us out to NY to be a part of Paradise Lost : Shadows and Wings. Also a mega huge shout out and thank to Kaoru Watanabe and Mari Nakano for being such great hosts and for organizing our workshops and performances while we were out here.

I found that many times after an initial interest my mind would start wondering about the historical context of the piece or what the artist was like, what their personalities were like, what their inspirations were etc. etc.  Then I would find that I was having an internal conversation with myself and no longer really seeing or experiencing the piece.  But there were two pieces I found while wandering the halls of the Met that were so striking I felt like I could spend an eternity before them completely absorbed in the experience.  The first was a painting that was displayed right outside the modern art wing.  It was a bold abstract painting done on a black canvas that was very evocative.  The way the artist had approached abstraction was not a way I had ever seen before and I was immediately fascinated with it.  It had such a strong personality and I liked it right away so my first thought was “Is this the work of a modern master that I’m not familiar with?”  It turns out it was painted by a young aboriginal artist named Daniel Walbidi.  I hadn’t noticed but there was a small bit of label copy on the opposite wall that explained that the eight or so painting displayed between the modern gallery and the art of Africa and Oceania galleries were all contemporary aboriginal artists.  I liked the other pieces as well but it was really Daniel Walbidi’s painting that resonated with me.

The second piece was a dazzling golden fabric beautifully contorted on a wall.  At first I was just struck by its beauty and then upon closer inspection you could see that the fabric was woven out of some kind of golden metal.  Then upon even closer inspection you could see that the metal was actually flattened bottle caps.  The label copy went on to explain that they were discarded liquor bottle caps that the Ghanian artist El Anatsui had gathered from the roadside.  I was struck by the layers of meaning and the amazing optimism from the piece.  I sat down in front of the piece and it felt like the powers that be were telling me “Don’t worry Shoji, there is still deep hope for humanity”.

After I got back to the apartment I did a quite google search and found these two videos of Daniel Walbidi and El Anatsui.  The video of El Anatsui actually features the piece from the Met.  Gotta love the internet!

Yesterday I taught a workshop to Kaoru’s taiko center and we rehearsed for our upcoming gig at DROM.  I’m planning on spending the next couple of days seeing as much music and eating as much good food as I can.  Kaoru and his wife Mari have also got me hooked on Lost.  Though they are at the end of season 5  and I can’t really imagine anything being more confusing than starting to watch this show from this point.  I spend every episode confused beyond imagination but find the whole experience oddly compelling.