Flying visit to Japan: The awesomeness!

It's whilst I am sat at Charles De Gaulle airport waiting for my final connecting flight back to the UK that I can reflect on what has to be one of my maddest, craziest, most awesome of weekends to date - and all without the elements of intoxicating substances (by that I mean alcohol of course), parties or festival shenanigans. 

A round trip from Cambridge to Tokyo in 5 days to support and work my representative magic with Wolfgang Flür is an opportunity I will never forget.

Arriving early evening on Thursday, I was pretty apprehensive about finding myself in one of the worlds most hectic cities, & especially without an escort from the airport. But immediately I felt a sense of calm and safety after arriving by coach to Shinjuku. Asking a few people for directions to the Ibis hotel was so easy - everyone was really approachable. This clip was literally my first impression and experience: https://www.facebook.com/misschivers/videos/10153200995175733/

With the jet-lag working hard on my brain, I stayed up & walked around the district from 3am to try to catch the sunrise. But in such a built up area, this was pretty impossible!

Friday we had a day to relax and myself, Wolfgang and his wife Zuhal went for lunch at the incredible national park, Shinjuku Gyoen. There is a distinct lack of open space in Shinjuku but this oasis was just bliss - the smells and the lush greenery seemed a world away from the fast-paced normality that is Tokyo.

I then dedided to mark this once in a lifetime trip by marking myself - which is the most spontaneous thing I have done to date. Don't get me wrong, I am an avid tattoo collector already, it just normally takes me months if not years of procrastinating before I decide on a design each time. I had no time here, and rather than tourist tat as a souvenier, I got an actual tat instead :-) 

Wolfgang had his gigs at Marz club on the Saturday and Sunday evenings. The fans were mental (in a nice way!) and were so excited to have him there. Some were shaking so much when he did a signing session after each performance! The sets were great as usual and it was such a pleasure to be there with him. When I work out how to directly upload videos to the blog, I will add cuts from the gigs! For now, here's a pic and also one of the tracks he included:

http://youtu.be/3KgTZbJrt5k

Although this is one of the slower tracks in his set, the rest is pretty much banging techno of around the 140bpm vibe!

Apart from the gigs and having a business meetings with Wolfgang about his forthcoming album as well as him requesting a remix from me (GET IN!!!) the rest of the time was spent just immersing myself in this perculiar yet comfortable place. Saying that, the noise and the constant bombardment of advertising does get a little overwhelming!

I don't tend to do the tourist trails when I travel, I just like to take it all in... And I certainly felt that I accomplished that in Tokyo. 

Flying weekend visit to Japan: Jet-lag Diaries

I'll quickly explain the mental reason why I am here - Little old me is lucky enough to be the agent for Wolfgang Flur (ex-Kraftwerk) & I added myself as crew onto his two date Japanese visit with all expenses covered. Get in with that one! 

So... I'll start with the actual sleep/awake patterns, so that I don't interject the actual awesome stuff with comments of huge sleep deprivation moments of not being able to talk properly (English, Japanese, whatever, it was gobbledegook) and eating dinner at strange hours:

Wednesday 13.05: flight left at 8pm UK time with a transfer at Paris.

Thursday 14.05: arrived at Tokyo around 6pm local time (that'll be 8am UK time).

My major school girl error here was sleeping a solid 9 hours out of the 11 hour flight from Paris to Tokyo - without meds - how the hell did I do that?!

Thursday night I couldn't sleep a wink, so ploughed on through.

Friday 15.05: things started to go a little weird around 3pm, so I went for a "nap" at 5pm. A lovely Scottish lady at the hotel gave me two sleeping pills with the advice "only one will do the trick lovey"

Saturday 16.05: woke up at 4pm - WTF??!!! (I may have taken both sleeping pills) - then headed to the gig venue.

Saturday night I couldn't sleep, so trundled on through, again.

Sunday 17.05: took a 4 hour nap at 1pm, and headed to the venue for 6pm.

Which brings me up to date - it's 2.15am and I can't bleeding sleep again! I leave the hotel at 7am for the airport bus, so once again, I'm riding this one through.

But when I add it up, over a 5 day period, I've slept 36 hours. It makes perfect sense, my mind never left the UK time zone!

Bridging the past 6 months

In order for me to catch up on my blog I'm just going to summarise the last 6 months, so that the next "present" post makes more sense. If just to myself than anyone else.

In fact I have no idea who reads this, or who will read it in the future. For me, it's not a cry for attention through the World Wide Web or an attempt to log my mark on the world... If anything it's just a way of getting things out of my head & will be a very good way of remembering what on earth I got up to in my younger years when I'm old and decrepid! Although not *everything* - other bits and bobs would have to be recorded in an alter-ego pseudonym blog :-) 

Now there's an idea...

So, the last 6 months, short & sweet:

- Sorted out my working life so that I enjoy it & it's pretty much stress free whilst also keeping the bills paid (see my profile for a run down). Finally I am focusing on a few things instead of trying to do too much.

- Went on various weekend jaunts with my favourite people, for work and pleasure (a regular occurrence which will continue throughout the year and beyond), including an ace PR stunt for Electronic Sound magazine where I met some of my electronic music idols.

See the madness here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA0mpvvA2LZWXV-Je6TabAMbbQuxLSekH

- Actually started to nest build and turned my flat into something amazing to relax in (the rare times I am at home), but all through the help of my late grandma & what she left me. She had this all planned out no doubt! 

- Managed to not go stir crazy mad by developing some of my ideas into actual things that work, including getting a fab sponsor for B-Side Project which will launch again in September this year internationally:

http://www.b-sideproject.org/

(Website needs to be updated for this year!) 

- Made sure I keep on the charity and voluntary work but not so much so that I don't have time left for me. It's one thing realising that although I have RP (Retinitis Pigmentosa, a genetic degenerative eye condition) there are far more people worse off than me, but there's another thing actually realising that speading myself too thinly is going to be counter-productive.

- Getting to work with the legendary Wolfgang Flür who weirdly rates my work so much that he upped my percentage from the standard 15% agent rate to a larger fee :-)

Done.  Which leads me to the present day and the introduction to my next post from Japan :-)

It's taken a while...

...to write the final piece for the Peru trip, which literally peaked at a height of around 4,600m over The Andes, after which I took in the magnificence of Machu Picchu and the Sun Gate.

It was the most incredible experience, not just the finale at seeing one of the worlds wonders, but the entire four week journey.  What I underestimated was the journey I was mentally making too - I started something in Peru and it's taken me until now to finish the process as well as to appreciate what it did for me. 

This is why it has taken so long to write this post. I realised that I was going in a direction I had no control over, and with my diminishing eyesight I realised I needed to follow this mantra: "never get so busy trying to make a living that you forget to make a life"

Here's a video link which sums up the trek: https://www.facebook.com/misschivers/videos/10152774347870733/

Upon my return I closed down two limited businesses, one of which wasn't doing so great after 5 years uphill struggle, and one which never really got off the ground due to lack of support. I also *gutted* my flat, which could be seen as a little mid-life episode. And when I say gutted, I mean all the furniture went and the carpets, and I spent a good few months with just the bare minimum bean bag chair and futon mattress. Starting from scratch, quite literally.

Of course I went to Peru to raise funds and awarness for deaf-blind children & young adults in the UK and Peru, and you can still donate here, and a music release is planned this year to continue the fundraising: http://goo.gl/aHBYt6

I know the funds will have a direct positive effect on the work of Sense UK and Sense International in the projects I visited; I just didn't realise at the time what a profound effect it would have on me too.

In the last 6 months, purely simplifying and taking time to appreciate everything has worked wonders. It just took me seeing a world wonder to get there.