> Tohoku is a very proud,
>historical
>area with a deep tradition. Good people up there.

Glad you got up there... the whole area is so little regarded there, culturally or even geographically, and the scenery can certainly compete with anywhere else in the country. I remember reading a Japan Times article calling Morioka a small backwater... it had 350,000 people! I got MAD. Maybe perspective has changed a bit since last year. Still breaks my heart.

I did a post on local music & dance traditions from Tohoku after the tsunami last year - oni kenbai, shishi odori, sansa, taue odori, kagura, stuff like that. I was also involved in the taiko scene up there and it's a lasting regret that our group's supplier refused to take me on as apprentice after my JET term expired.

>Yeah, I'm a record guy, but I totally understand why people
>switch
>to the compactness of CDs (even more so in Japan where lack of
>
>space is a huge issue).

I have a nice vinyl collection, and I lived in a big house (space is at less of a premium in the sticks), but being on JET I was there for three years, lugging vinyl home wasn't going to be an option.

>CD prices have come down quite a bit since I've been here.
>Even Japanese stuff. Yeah Chuukou is where its at.

I used to shop at I think it was Phalanx? when I was in Tokyo. They had a few stores and a boutique punk label that was putting out lots of the ska I was digging.


>When were you over here lonesome? I've been here since 2007.

Ha, I missed you by a good bit. College 92-93 in Osaka-fu, then on JET in Iwate from 95-98. Hard to believe I've been home so long - it still feels so immediate to me. I would gladly have stayed on, but I'm not a city person and felt like I would have had to move somewhere bigger to get a long-term kinda job.

Musically, the stuff I went for (and still love) tends to stick to the roots-rock or world-rock formula that had a resurgence of sorts there in the early/mid 90s, but was never really mainstream except for 'shima uta'... I have a few jazz albums as well, and still have a very soft spot for the Japanese ska scene from that time as well. Used to post about that stuff all the time back in my early days on here.