A fake smile is still a smile.

I'm back in Tokyo, which I ran away to Monday night after reading one e-mail too many and being disappointed in my VCR's ability to tape all of mechaike. Sadly, Monday was the first day of the semester, meaning I'm also being a bad student by being this chickenshit. Tokyo has been unexpectedly cold and rainy. With the rain, many of the recently opened cherry blossoms have been washed to the ground (they were set to fall of this week anyway), making a mess that is not a far stretch from the ridiculous waste of both paper and hole punching labor that those mischievous "confetti eggs" at St. Martin's Oktoberfest were when I was a kid. They say tomorrow is supposed to be warm again, and I wish more things had to do with the temperature and amount of sunshine than just the weather; at least the things I like to imagine are connected to it. Because if the weather report is to be trusted then ... haha how are those last few sentences for vague and unintelligible.

I spent the last couple days shacking at Akari and Chiari's apartment, a building whose frightening flimsiness I only noticed for the first time this trip. I'm pretty sure it was built from balsa wood and heavy poster board. Akari and Chiari were wonderful hosts as usual, working around their school schedules to hang out with me and staying up late to talk - which is the reason I came back in the first place. I also spent an evening with Rie, and got to watch a little TV with her at her apartment too, the first time in over a year I really just relaxed with her. Well, yeah, the first time since before all that started. Ha.

Some notes on music this week. First, on Sunday I blindly tripped into a portentous bad mood while doing my laundry that lasted through my outing with Takako + friends (none of whom seemed too interested in talking with me) and adjusted my musical selections thusly. With the developments of Monday those songs of sadness/self-loathing and betrayal/angry declaration (my forte, really) have slid firmly back at the top of the iTunes rotation and were rearranged into yet another mix (this time requested by Akari). This set of songs, which of course has expanded a few numbers since the last time it was in heavy use, is becoming like the old veteran all-star of my musical collection - used in so many different line-ups, not as exciting as those new kids on the team but always a sentimental favorite, and reliably clutch in tight spots.

Previous to the turn in mood of the last few days, I had been listening to this playlist of about ten songs. One of the songs was "Decent Days and Nights" by The Futureheads, which I mainly started enjoying because the video for it is a brilliantly accented performance piece that caught my eye while watching mtv2 in a lounge in High Rise East at Penn. I was never really able to understand the hype of The Futureheads - they seemed like just another British stab at Gang of Four-style danceable rock come too late; heck, they even went so far as having that one guy from Gang of Four produce the album. And I still don't really understand it. But at least Decent Days and Nights is a killer song; well, except for the beginning part, which always sounded lazy and lame too me, especially next to the punchy chorus. And I wished they would recut it just slightly to fix the beginning. And they did - and exactly the way I was hoping they would. It now rifles out of the gate and is one of my favorite songs of the year.

Oh yes, and then Sufjan Stevens. So the guy claims he's working on an album for every state in the union, and has released one so far (Michigan) that was excellent; but come on, that was almost two years ago, so unless he plans on some major medical advances in the next 100 years in the very specific field of "preventing Sufjan Stevens's death", I think he better get his ass in gear. But putting the logistics of it all aside, it was announced that the next state is being released on July 5: the album is simply titled "Illinois" and among some very long, runny song titles featuring ridiculous clauses hastily taped together with commas is track #9, simply titled "Chicago". What is the start date for my job in Chicago? Yeah, that's right July 5. Oh the coincidence.

And then yesterday while waiting for Rie, I was looking around at the Disk Union in Kunitachi and I found an album I've been looking for for about six months now: Night Piece by Tokumaru Shugo, a one man "band" who makes the kind of increasingly prevalent bedroom laptop pop that combines foundsound with some real instruments and vocals. I was pleasantly surprised by what I got for my money. The album clocks in short at under 26 minutes, but the guy shows a tremendous amount of restraint for the kind of music he makes - he actually maintains pop structure to the songs and keeps the songs under 4 minutes. The sound kind of reminds me of the guy I was just talking about (Sufjan Stevens) and also the Books. There's a lot of whispered, delicate singing, sample-looping (or at least it seems like it), clicky perscussion, and guitars/ukeleles/mandolins/etc. As is becoming increasingly common, the sound is not placed easily in any particular genre, and breathes with influences that feel like they range from Japanese pop to American bluegrass to European children's television programs to Disneyland. But maybe I just watched too much Nickelodeon during my summer vacations growing up (do not adjust your web browser settings - that was indeed a thinly veiled reference to David the Gnome). It's a good album, but good luck finding it anywhere. I couldn't find it anywhere and it's a Japanese album.

Whoo. I feel like today I wrote better than I have been writing lately. I guess sometimes bad experiences can pay immediate dividends for some things. Okay, so this blog is a pretty meaningless something, but it's a start right?