Fish, Friends, and Sitars

I know a great many of you out there enjoy random and unconnected updates, so Phill's here once again to please the masses with an arbitrary listing of some things he's done in May and June of 2006.

As the pictures to either side of this text show, one thing Phill took upon himself to do this spring was enrich the souls of passers by on the bridge in front of the Hanshin Department Store [right outside Osaka Station]. People often play on this bridge, but those people are rarely foreigners and rarely accost other performing musicians [such as Mr. Sitar here] to play with them. Also the musicians on the bridge tend to be... well you know... musicians. Not just Phill with a tambourine making up the words as he goes.

Despite not fitting into the normal profile of street performer the 3 musicians did manage to get a half dozen or so people to stop and watch them play [let's ignore for the time being the thousands of other people that walked by without so much as a glance in their general direction]. One of them was named Eda [he can be seen in the picture above and to the right. He's in the top left hand corner of the picture] and he was rewarded for his time with a song about him. The lyrics are a bit of a blur, but perhaps something like "Eda cried for his mommy, cause he eats Edamame" or something like that [to those non-Japanese in origin out there, Edamame are soybeans and a common snack in Japan and yes I realize that even with that explained the lyrics still make no sense]. Anyway, that was one more thing Phill could check off his list of ridiculous things to do while in Japan.

Something far less ridiculous, but every bit as exciting was getting to meet his longest running friend from the great O-State, Lori. She and her friend game down to Osaka for a couple hours and we all went to eat Okonomiyaki [which Osaka is famous for along with Takoyaki] and it was a fantastic time to be had by all.

Phill would like to take the time here and now to thank Father Evans for recommending and sending him a DVD of the movie Grizzly Man. It was a great movie (and if you're reading this and still aint seen it, then do yourself a favor and you know...) and Phill felt the need to share this movie with the world around him. So he had a Grizzly Man night complete with Pizza and.... uh... homemade sushi?

Bears like their fish fresh and so do people who enjoy movies about bears. So one of Phill's new friends caught some fish up in Kyoto, brought them over to Phill's place and then made Phill chop off their heads with an incredibly dull kitchen knife.

Two things which is not commonly known about sushi are:

1.) It's necessary to lick the fish after cutting it to ensure that it's fresh as a sunrise.

2.) Sushi tastes absolutely terrible on top of pizza, no matter what Matthew Morgan says (right).

So until next time Phill would like to remind you all to keep your sushi and your pizza separate; your guitars and sitars in tune with one another; and your good friends as close as humanly possible.



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