TRAVEL // Oceans & Islands (2006)

In the twists and turns of our life's journey, we sometimes take different paths from those that we might expect to take.

As a result of a couple of trips down to the Japanese subtropical archipelago of Okinawa back in 2004, I had it in mind that my future led me to become a reporter down there, zipping about in the heat in a jeep and interviewing people about fishing yields and the incursions of US military bases. It was a dream prompted by an offer from the publisher of 'Okinawa Index', a guide book I once wrote for.

Ultimately, it was not to be and in time I bedded down in Tokyo and got used to life in the big city, finding plenty of ways to keep myself amused and busy. I ended up producing what I believe to have been the first collection of modern Japanese protest music, which was not an easy task!

I lost touch with the publisher and assumed that I'd never hear from her again. To my surprise, I got a call out of the blue at around the time that the CD was due to be released. She was in town for a party and did I want to hook up again? 'Why not?' I thought, 'you never know where these things can end up.'

At the party and later over dinner, she told me that she was planning another guide book and would I like to contribute again? Although I hadn't been back down there since the last trip, I agreed pretty much straight away.

Grabbing moments in lunch breaks (often how I write in Tokyo), I pieced together an overview of my previous two visits, spiced it up with some of the trips I'd managed after the taste for travel I'd developed since Okinawa, and wrapped it up with my desire to return there.

Once again, even after submitting the piece, I didn't hear from the publisher again. To my knowledge, the guide book was never made, and so the article was never published.

Instead, it makes its debut here and is titled 'Oceans & Islands'.

All photos by Dom Pates.

Oceans and Islands

The ocean has had me under its spell ever since I first laid eyes on it. I was born within five minutes walk from the sea, in the coastal resort of Brighton. It's a little like an English San Francisco - a hilly and cosmopolitan seaside city, full of creative types and tech companies. There is always some sort of a buzz going on but perhaps most impressive is the ocean location. Gazing out to sea always makes your troubles feel much smaller.

A few years ago, tired of England and in need of a little more adventure in my life, I decided to pack up and go to the other side of the world. In a rather bold move and used to a more relaxed way of life, I threw myself into one of the biggest and busiest cities on Earth - Tokyo - to see if I sank or swam. Once I found the water was warm enough, I began to explore the group of islands that I'd landed in.


I'd never lived in such a big city before, so often found need to seek out a little peace, away from the bubbling torrents of the metropolis. A trip to Okinawa needed no passport and was only a couple of hours flight from Tokyo. A little slice of the subtropics to get the skyscrapers out of my hair for a while.

To my grandparents' generation, it might as well have been the moon. They first heard about the place as some exotic location on the other side of the planet where the last land battle of WWII occurred. I, however, spotted it in my guidebook and thought it would be a nice place to visit.

Immediate first impressions were mixed. It was warmer than where I'd come from but seemed old and fading. Then I began to explore and got a little more under Naha's skin; the vibrancy of Kokusai-dori, the traditional treats and gems in the maze of the old market, and the unexpected surprises you can only come across when wandering round a city and following your nose.


One such surprise was the Baobab Bar. Designed inside and out to look like the sacred African tree, I was drawn in. I made a new friend there with whom I set off on an adventure the next day. Our voyage of discovery took us to the tiny island of Kudaka that, unbeknownst to us, was celebrating their New Year that very day.

I experienced things to tell the grandchildren about - drinking, eating and dancing with the villagers, scenes of island life unchanged for many generations, playing sanshin at the house of a stranger who invited me in. I had become an adventurer, with tales to tell of it.


My second visit was at the request of Okinawa Index, after a chance meeting on Kudaka. This time, I got even deeper under the skin of the place and it got deeper under mine too.

The visit came with a packed itinerary too. I tried my hand at glass blowing at the Onna Glass Factory. At Ryukyu Mura, I watched a water buffalo pressing sugar cane and sat at a weaving loom. There was a scenic photo shoot to take in, along a rugged and beautiful coastline that took my breath away. I even squeezed in a visit to the Peace Park that commemorates the battle that caused my grandparents to hear of Okinawa over on the other side of the world.


Since my first forays into the former Ryukyu kingdom, I've become a travelling man. I've seen the Great Wall of China and the Olympic transformation of Beijing; been to the DMZ that straddles the Korean peninsula, one of the most heavily landmined places in the world; glimpsed at the Himalayas from the Kathmandu Valley, during the Festival of Light; taken in an Arabian sunset in a desert just outside Dubai; and lived a month in East Africa, with its safari wildernesses and the splendours of the Swahili Coast. Despite all this, Okinawa sticks in my mind like a limpet to a rock.

After my second visit, I picked up a new project. Following a request for help from a UK-based organisation, I set up Peace Not War Japan. The UK group raises consciousness and funding for the international peace movement by releasing CDs of contemporary pro-peace music, and I started a similar venture in Japan. We released our first CD of Japanese pro-peace music in the summer of 2006. The music comes from across the country and covers a range of genres. Okinawa's influence is felt strongly too. Ryukyu Underground donated a track, a version of the island standard 'Hana'. We also have songs from Soul Flower Union and Kotobuki, two groups very influenced by Okinawan songs and stories.


Proceeds from the sale of these CDs will be donated to Japanese peace groups, so it is a chance for me to give something back and contribute to the growth of peace in Japan.

For the sake of balance, when you take something, it is very important to also give in return. These beautiful islands have given me so, so much already - perhaps it's my turn to give now.

TRAVEL // In Hiroshima - Meditations on Peace and Humanity (2004)

As a child of about 10 years old, I remember having a great fear of nuclear war destroying the Earth. This was during the early days of the Reagan/Thatcher era and a time of Cold War nuclear posturing between the two World Superpowers - the US and the USSR.

I went on an anti-nuclear march in London with my parents, that ended up in Hyde Park. At midday, a klaxon sounded and everybody lay down on the ground, as if to simulate what would happen in the event of a nuclear strike. Somewhere near me, the then-leader of the Labour Party Michael Foot (a committed believer in unilateral disarmament, with whom I would share a train carriage and an hour of conversation on a train back from the Glastonbury Festival many years later), lay down with the marchers.

The march left a deep impression on me and a few of years later, I created a collage of an anti-nuclear protest march in my school art class. Some of the banners in my creation included the phrase I remembered so clearly as having seen at the march - 'No More Hiroshimas!'

As soon as I got my first three day weekend off from work after arriving in Tokyo (about 10 weeks on from my arrival in Japan), I took my first trip outside of the capital. There could be no other place to go for a first trip than Hiroshima.

The piece found below was initially written up in my diary as I sat in the Peace Park (where the epicentre of the bomb's strike was), immersed in my thoughts. I later twisted it around a little and got it published in my trusty outlet, Tokyo Notice Board. Wasn't sure whether they'd take something of such a heavy nature as they mostly published slightly more frivolous articles along the lines of 'Isn't Tokyo funny?' or 'What's different between Japan and my home country'. However, publish it they did.

That visit also laid the foundations for the peace work (Peace Not War Japan) that I later started here too. Personally, I'd recommend that everyone should visit Hiroshima at some point in their life. It shows what people are capable of doing to each other and provides deep grounds for thought and reflection on the nature of war and peace.

All photos shown here are taken from that visit.

In Hiroshima – Meditations on Peace and Humanity

Outside the Park, the city goes about its daily business, the wheel still turning as if it had never been stopped. Modern day Hiroshima looks as if it were constructed from flat-packs, neatly yet hastily reassembled with little serious artisanship. Yet it is testament to the incredible rejuvenative powers that humans possess, the power to rebuild, to start afresh where once there was nothing. Inside the Park, an appropriate oasis of calm in a city with admittedly less of the eye-popping bustle than Tokyo, hordes of schoolchildren pass through. Some draw pictures or recite poems. Others lay wreaths at the Cenotaph. All feel the effects, the traces or the memories left by the fates that befell their ancestral countrymen, women and children.


It could have been any group of people that it was dropped on. Potentially, it could have been any nation that dropped it. Historical circumstances just so conspired that it was America that dropped the Atomic Bomb on Japan. It didn’t cause the greatest number of deaths within that section of that period of conflict. The Americans killed tens of thousands in the bombings of Tokyo. The Japanese themselves, during the Rape of Nanking, brutalised the Chinese in greater numbers than the combined mortals effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hitler’s concentration camps. Stalin’s Gulag. Leningrad. Millions were slaughtered in the name of the growth and eventual decline of the British Empire. But there is just something about Hiroshima, having been victim to the first bomb thus more so than Nagasaki, that represents the sheers horrors and inhumanity of such brazen and naked warfaring.

In the distance, another child chimes the Peace Bell.


Is any one of these children capable of growing up and taking the decision to wipe out such a vast number of his fellow species in one fell swoop (the gene surely cannot be that selfish)? Potentially, although one would certainly hope that a childhood visit to a place like this would leave enough of an impression to last long into later days, and bequeath an understanding of an unknown individual’s right to life. Japan seems quite at ease with its humiliation becoming a focus for tourism. Maybe it goes well beyond such things. It just happened to be Japan that it fell on. Japan therefore has a duty to hold a mirror up to the potentials for human folly.

It rather takes your breath away to walk around the place and think about quite how immediately levelled everything once was.

Then there’s the museum itself, set in the grounds of the Memorial Peace Park, to further knock the breath from your body. It includes an exhibited replica of ‘Little Boy’, the actual A-Bomb that exploded over the city at 8.15AM, August 6th 1945. It’s not much bigger than a Western style bathtub and almost looks like something from a cartoon, an ACME-stamped, Wile-E Coyote number. You just imagine that something that could completely level a city would be a little bigger than that.


What beasts we are. What barbarities against ourselves we are capable of. How tragic that, despite cries of ‘Never again!’ almost sixty years ago, we continue to perpetuate the cycles of violence that deny others the right to live in peace with one another. How right for so many the world over to have protested against last years war, that which we could not stop and it now developing into a struggle for liberation against occupation. How suitably appropriate to have personally bookended 2003 with the march in London and a visit to Hiroshima. Will we ever learn?

TRAVEL // Happy Accidents & Following Your Nose (2004)

Arriving in Japan kicked off opportunities to travel to places I could once only have dreamt of. My very first trip to explore parts of the rest of Japan outside of Tokyo took me to Hiroshima, a city I first became aware of through anti-nuclear marches I'd been on with my family as a kid. It was a profound experience and I was surprised by how normal things looked.

The second trip (and one which also led to an interest in travel writing) was to Okinawa, the southernmost group of islands in the Japanese archipelago - a place of subtropical Asian vibes mixed with hints of a US military occupation due to the vast number of bases there.

Ambling around Okinawa and having my own adventures developed my confidence in wandering around unknown places. It also led to a deep love of the area and the promise of a future down there.

The article found below is the full length piece that I wrote about my experiences there. An edited version was published in two different publications. My paid dumping ground for pretty much anything I wrote about Japan, Tokyo Notice Board, published it in September 2004.

On the small island I visited (Kudaka) that is described below, I also met the Editor of an English language series of travel guides named 'Okinawa Index'. It was one of the happy accidents described in the title. She asked me to write the piece, and it appeared in their 2004-2005 'Okinawa Island Guide', along with some of my photos.

After the grind and tribulations of my later years in England, being in Okinawa was perhaps the first time in my life that I felt exotic - both from the quality of my surroundings and how I was received as a guest.

The same editor later told me that she was considering me for the role of reporter on an English newspaper she was planning to set up. I would have required me to be able to speak Japanese and she needed to find a good Sales Manager before setting it up, but for a while I held out the prospect of leaving Tokyo behind me and heading off for a life of a reporter on a group of subtropical islands.

Never happened in the end and at the time of writing, four years on, I'm still in Tokyo. Nevertheless, it was a fabulous idea that would have taken me in an entirely different direction from the one I subsequently took. In the end, my visions of a Graham Greene/Ian Fleming/Ernest Hemingway kinda lifestyle dissipated in the shadows of Tokyo's towers. But what could have been!

The pictures shown here are also taken from that first trip.

Happy Accidents and Following Your Nose

Life is but a series of accidents, some happy, some sad. History is the story of such accidents, a tapestry of unintentional design. One never quite knows what is around the corner and it is either our fear or our curiosity of the unknown that leads us in different directions.

I’d spent my Christmas and New Year holed up in Tokyo. As much as I might love the place in many ways, it’s still somewhere that the need to escape from every now and again becomes overpowering. The furthest I could go whilst remaining in Japan and somewhere very high on the wish list of destinations to visit was Okinawa. So I gathered up a few days off, boarded a plane and headed south.

Greeted by smiling faces on the people wandering around the airport and with none of the hunched shoulders that Tokyoites worn down by the pressures of life have, I was relieved to be away and keen to explore. With wider streets, palm trees and a temperature that certainly didn’t feel like January, the smile on my face at my good fortune began to spread. A bus took me into Naha, the capital of the main island, which was where my first Okinawan adventure was to begin.

At first glance, the city appeared to me less than striking. But first impressions can often not be lasting ones and I always find that a new city needs to be wandered around a little first. There were hints of how I imagine Havana to look – fading and starting to peel at the edges, with a sense of being somewhere yet to fully catch up with the vagaries of being a modern city. However, there were enough kanji (Chinese characters) symbols, ubiquitous vending machines, neon, street tech, and other assorted ephemera to remind me that I was still very much in Japan.

Shisa, creatures that resembled some crossbreed between lions and dragons, guarded the entrances to buildings and streets, and were everywhere. A range of many other Asian influences converged on every corner, topped off with American twists. Furthermore, there was enough of a hint of the subtropics – colours, vegetation, sounds – to remind me that I wasn’t in Honshu (Japan's main island) any more. The simple, stringed sounds of the sanshin seeped out citywide. Despite Naha retaining the bustle of a capital city, it was clear that island life had a more laid back approach than that of the screaming metropolis that had formed my first impressions of Japan.

My accidents were happy ones.

Whilst wandering through the back streets as I waited for check-in time at my hotel, I chanced upon an African themed bar. It was designed to look like the interior and exterior of a baobab tree and I resolved to return later in the evening. Return I did and I wasn’t disappointed. The barman, a long haired Tokyo escapee, welcomed me instantly and recommended some fine Okinawan food to replenish a famished traveller. A little later, another customer came in and joined me at the bar. He worked for a Japanese NGO and had spent most of his time recently in Iran. I asked him what was his favourite country that he’d worked in, and he answered Tanzania. Having spent a week there myself last year and that being the reason I’d chosen the Baobab bar, we rapped about Africa for a while.

A little later, a couple of guys came in for cocktails and to jam on the bongos, didgeridoos and marimbas that littered the bar. I soon joined them and struck up conversation with the one who spoke good English, a certain Mr Lucky. We drank together, shared stories and jammed on the various instruments that lay around, joined too by the barman. To my surprise and giving me an early indication of the generosity of the Okinawan spirit, Mr Lucky asked me about my plans for my stay and when I told him that I was just following my nose, he offered to take me to another island the next day. It was to become a day that I’ll undoubtedly remember for many years.


He picked me up from the hotel early the following morning and we drove out to the southeastern coast. As Ryuichi Sakamoto played on the car stereo, the city’s outskirts came and went. We passed through sugar cane plantations to arrive at the glittering sea. What joy it was to gaze once again on unfettered ocean. Boarding a ferry for the tiny island of Kudaka, we waved goodbye to the mainland and set off in search of whatever came our way. I received a wide smile from a beautiful girl on the ferry that could have sent me back to Tokyo happy enough. However, there was much more to come.

Another happy accident. We arrived on Kudaka, an island of less than 2 km2 which hosts a mere 112 households and is known to Okinawans as ‘Island of the Gods’. Legend has it that Amamikiyo, the first Ryukyuan, descended from heaven and taught the people how to farm. Kudaka still runs on the Chinese lunar calendar, unlike the most of the rest of the Japanese mainland, and we had coincidentally landed on New Year’s Day!


The islanders were about to celebrate the event with a festival. It was a great surprise and an unexpected bonus for our visit. With the sun on our backs we followed the small crowd that had alighted with us from the boat and wandered through the low and winding streets of the island to arrive at what seemed like a village square. The islanders were gearing themselves up for the celebrations that were to follow. Children in brightly coloured kimonos milled around, sipping from cans of soft drink and welcoming us with smiles and waves. A camera crew from the main island prepared themselves to record the main event. Village officials scurried about, ensuring that everything was in place. The musicians, including two sanshin players and a drummer, tuned up and checked over their instruments.

Lucky and I looked on, awaiting what was to come, and were consequently invited to join in with the celebrations. Here, there was no option to simply be an onlooker, but more an obligation to participate. I was the only gaijin (foreigner) on the island yet I barely noticed that fact. At 11am, we opened our first of many Okinawan beers and began to bond with the people of Kudaka. The music started soon after and before long, much dancing followed. In trying to get a picture of what was happening and what lay behind this celebration, I learned that female shamans named yuta have played a longstanding part in Kudaka’s history and traditions, having once been consultants to the old Ryukyu kings and still play a strong role in Kudakan society. They were mostly kept housed away from the main gathering, yet occasionally came out to dance to the music, a bewitching subtropical sound that removed me even further from any thoughts of crazy old Tokyo.

After a little while, Lucky and I set off to explore. The vegetation we passed was wild, lush and unclipped, differing considerably from the regimented styles I’d come to know from the Japanese gardens I’d seen around Tokyo. We found a deserted beach that gave me more of a taste of what Okinawa has to offer when the climate’s a little warmer. Sitting on the sand and pebbles, any remaining woes fell off my shoulders. As we gazed out across the vast empty expanse of sea, we talked like old friends. Lucky was a sky watcher and he extolled in the joys of life in Okinawa. I told him that I felt like I’d come home. We rested awhile, relaxing and looking at pretty shells, then returned to the party a little while later.

When the locals noticed that we’d come back, we were invited to eat and drink some more, and we sat to enjoy the event. At various points throughout the afternoon, we were encouraged to join in with the dancing. This was no time or place to be shy, so Lucky and I got up and danced, a ritualistic style that involved shuffling on your feet with your arms raised upwards and waving your hands in the air. I felt almost as if I’d travelled back in time, and certainly stood out as the only non-Japanese person present. After the dance, I sat down with some of the locals and was engaged in conversation by an old man. He spoke next to no English and my Japanese is very limited, but he still managed to convey to me that I was most welcome on Kudaka, and that all people lived under the same sun and were thus of the same blood.


On their New Year’s Day, Kudakans open up their houses to all and so a little later I slipped away and followed someone I’d been drinking with to another islander’s home. We sat on tatami (grass mats for the home), drinking green tea and eating sashimi (raw fish). In all my travels and of all the people I’ve met, I have yet to experience such friendliness to a stranger and feelings of welcome than I did on that day in Kudaka. After she left to catch an early ferry back to the mainland, I rejoined Lucky where the party was carrying on at someone else’s house. The musicians from the main event were all there and the merriment continued unabated. I was even asked to try my hand at playing the sanshin.

As the afternoon wore on and started to turn into evening, we decided that it was time to take our leave. Drunk on welcomes, island living and much Okinawan beer, I promised the islanders to return next year.

On Okinawa, I felt like I’d come home. Tokyo was so tough to return to afterwards.

TRAVEL // Czech This Out (1997)

'Czech This Out!', complete with its cheesy pun of a title, was my first published piece of travel writing. It appeared in the University Of Brighton's student magazine Babble. I was asked to write the piece extolling the virtues of the guide book - presumably Rough Guides were sponsoring the page.

Prague is a beautiful city that I was fortunate enough to visit twice. The second occasion I managed to rent an apartment there for a few days, which was an entirely different experience from staying in a youth hostel (and much more pleasurable, I might add).

The architecture of the place was one of the things that fascinated me enough to visit initially, alongside their more peaceful methods of revolution. I discovered that the Czechs had taken the ideas of Cubism that much further than painting and incorporated its ideals into architecture and design during the earlier part of the 20th Century. Clearly something I had to witness for myself. I also found some quite remarkable modern buildings there too, such as 'Fred & Ginger', an office block that was designed to look like a dancing couple.

Another good way to learn a little more about the place and the people is through the novels of Milan Kundera.

Czech This Out!

With our intended trip to New York thwarted, Hazelle and I left England after a miserable wet June fortnight and found ourselves basking in a week of glorious Prague sunshine instead. Every once in a while, and against better instinct, one must resign oneself to becoming a tourist. We decided that we were happy to do just this and set off with a camera in one hand and a guide book in another.

Prague is undoubtedly a remarkably beautiful city. Much of its architecture has survived 600 years of European war and destruction. The city is fundamentally European, yet permeated throughout with a rich aroma of the East. Feeding off the River Vltava, many cobbled streets mingle and intertwine as trams rumble past each other. As befits such a romantic city, the place is awash with (mainly Western) young couples, walking arm-in-arm along the river, or sitting facing each other at a table in a bar or restaurant.

As one of the smaller European capitals, Prague runs at a totally different pace to, say Paris or London. It allows you to slow down to a comfortable walk. West of the river, in the Hradcany district, lies Prague Castle which houses the towering majesty of the Cathedral of St. Vitus (the foundation stone was laid in 1344 although the Cathedral itself was not completed until 1929). If you turn around on the Charles Bridge you'll face the National Theatre, crested with its golden roof. Refused funding by the Austrian State who were partly ruling the lands at the time, the Czech people dug deep into their own pockets to fund this most impressive monument to a long-standing theatrical tradition (the current president, Vaclav Havel, was himself a playwright before the Velvet Revolution of 1989 swept him into power).

In the Old Town Square (one of the gathering places in the city), tourists and 'Praguers' gather on the hour around the Astrology clock, with its metal cockerels, bowing Apostles, and sword-wielding skeletons. The Jewish cemetery is another lure for the hordes of tourists that pour into Prague; it is a smallish area located in the former Jewish ghetto with an estimated 100,000 buried there, some twelve layers deep. The place evokes an awed calm and holds an air of clustered tranquillity. A former synagogue on the site has now been converted into a museum to commemorate victims of the Holocaust.

There are many ways to spend ones time in Prague - plenty of bars and cafes to chill in, museums and galleries to visit, tourist attractions to see. The Czechs have been subject to countless occupations through the ages and can on occasion be rather wary or weary of foreigners. However, most of the ones that we met were pretty friendly and helpful, and I've never felt safer on the streets of any other European city. English is fairly widely spoken although some German can also be useful if you don't speak Czech. And Western money can go far. Our youth hostel was £7 per person per night, and of course the beer is cheap too!

So, was our Rough Guide a little more than just a rough guide? Along with the street map purchased at the airport, it was indispensable, and found its way into our hands on almost every twist of yet another cobbled street. From places to go in the day to places to places to stay in the night, useful phrases or a history of its places, basics to districts - all contained within those insightful pages.

'OK, so we can't find this place. Let's go for a drink instead.'

'Where d'you fancy going?'

'I dunno. Let's consult the guide book.'

And through a process of elimination, somewhere perfect for the mood of the moment can inevitably be found.

I think we'd all rather love to be able to do without such a tool and trek through our travels with an adventurous heart and a desire for self-discovery. We found though that to guide us through the sheer magic of Prague and to be able to get the most out of our experiences, we couldn't have done without the firm parental hand of our Prague Bible.

TRAVEL // Deep Ends (2004)

We get many things from our parents in our lifetimes - from the fundamental life support systems that they bring us into the world with to the prejudices that they pass on to us. They sometimes also pass on the lessons that they learn from their own lives.

One such important lesson that I got from my father, a much more widely travelled man than myself, is that when you visit a new place, your first impressions of it often fade as you become more used to wherever it is that you find yourself. It is therefore a good thing to do to write down those first impressions to preserve them, unless those initial feelings may soon disappear under the blanket of familiarity.

He saw me off at Heathrow when I first left for Japan and those words rang in my ears. Upon arrival, with everything around me shiny, alien and new, I noted all that I saw, observed or became curious by.

These first impressions became 'Deep Ends', the article below. It was also the first time that I ever received a payment for any of my writings, which was a most pleasant experience even though it amounted to roughly £15 (not a great sum by any stretch).

The article appeared in a publication called 'Tokyo Notice Board', a mostly classified ads rag that would pretty much publish anything written in English about Tokyo and Japan (we all have to start somewhere!). I also had the additional pleasure of seeing something I'd written, again for the first time, translated into another language.

Rereading it, in the place that I currently call home and have pretty solidly settled into now, I realise that some of these first impressions have become my firm and standard lines about how I feel about this place. It's funny now though to compare how I felt about the place at first with how natural it feels now!

Just goes to show...wherever you lay your hat, after a while that's your home...

Deep Ends

Deep ends...

At the grand old age of 32 and with barely a trace of preparation or idea what on earth I’m doing or going to do here, I’ve gone and thrown myself into Tokyo. England had become stale for me. So, for want of something else to do, I dropped myself into the last major urban conurbation in the Northern Hemisphere – before the vast sprawl of the Pacific gets under way and the International Date Line starts the loop of time on the planet all over again on another day.

There is rather a ‘last great city on earth’ feeling about it. The creation of this place makes for quite some achievement in the annals of human endeavour. In true volcanic style, Tokyo seems to have started as an ominous urban swelling that then burst forth, throwing up buildings that dwarf even the imagination and truly scrape the sky, with neon and lighting that sear the retinas as one flits past, and such a hugely vast sprawl of people which defy the scale of exposures to previous big cities. It feels like one could spend a number of lifetimes just wandering the myriad of Tokyo main drags, side streets and back alleys, just staring at stuff as the new sights and sounds fill up the mind as a barman would a beer glass.

Whilst not quite the melting pot of a London or a New York – foreigners very definitely stand out here, and for a boy raised on the multiculturalist traditions of the West’s urban hotspots, it feels surprisingly homogeneic for a city of so many people – Tokyo nevertheless makes up for it in different ways, including with its sheer scale of numbers. It should be acknowledged that this is most definitely not somewhere one should choose if opting for a quiet life.

So, why am I here? How come I’ve found myself in this place, of all the places in the world that I could have chosen, when the language can’t even be guessed at? Why, when I was starting to feel a little of the wearying of the years in my bones, come to somewhere that waking up and leaving the house can have the impact of staring into the nozzle end of a garden hose and getting someone to turn the tap on when you are likely to be least expecting it?

I suppose that if you are going to set yourself a challenge, it might as well be one that is going to stretch you. After all, what point progress if baby steps are only ever taken over giant steps? Armstrong’s fears could have kept him in the capsule. It is far better a story to tell to say ‘Hey, sure I moonwalked!’ than ‘Damn, I got there and then bottled it’. And sometimes you just have to tell yourself that you’ve always managed to float or even swim before when out of your depth, so why not this time?

ARTICLES // My Life And Bushido Ghosts (2006)

Probably the most common question I get asked in Tokyo is 'Why did you come to Japan?', even after having been here for almost four years. I sense that were I here for 40 years, I'd still get asked on a fairly regular basis.

It's a fair question to ask, I suppose. During the Edo era (1603-1868), when Japan was ruled by the shogunate and populated by samurai, the country was effectively closed off from any foreign contact. From 1635, the Japanese were prohibited from ever leaving the country and if they did, prohibited from returning. It's not a place steeped in traditions of mixing with peoples from other races.

Nevertheless, here I am. I think that something like 1% of the people living in Japan today were foreign born, so it's still a little bit more of a unique experience living here as a 'foreigner' that it would be in Europe or the US for example.

In 2005, I was asked to write an article for the Hiroshima-based (and presumably now defunct) bilingual magazine 'PEACE'. I titled it with just that same question I am always asked, and it covered not only some of my motivations for coming here but also a little family background (much of my extended family has tended to expatriate themselves or have travelled widely) and the similarities and differences between my life here in Japan and the one I led back in Britain.

The following year, I came across another writing opportunity based on the theme of 'Home and Exile', through my subscription to the Brighton Fringe Mailing List. This time, it was for a new publication being set up in the UK, called 'Don't Look Back'. I sent off the same piece that was published in the Hiroshima mag, and they were interested enough to ask me to rewrite it and submit a new piece. This I duly did, coming up with the piece found below - 'My Life and Bushido Ghosts'.

After submission, I never heard from them again, so I actually have no idea whether it was published or not or even whether the magazine ever went to print. I hope that they did, although it would be nice to know whether my article ever went anywhere!

The title was a Japan-slanted pun on the Brian Eno/David Byrne 1981 album 'My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts'. Bushido means 'the way of the warrior' and commonly refers to the samurai code of conduct. The reference to ghosts comes from my feelings of finding my own 'ghosts', people from my past that kept springing up at the most unexpected moments as I neared the end of my time living in the UK.

In a way, writing the piece itself was an exorcism of sorts. Here in Japan, I don't have so many of my own ghosts and the old ones have lost their spook factor too.

Perhaps next time I'm asked why I came here, I can now just give the questioner this URL and suggest that they find out for themselves!

My Life and Bushido Ghosts

Exiles, immigrants, expats, foreigners, outsiders, refugees – whatever you want to call us, we’re all displaced peoples. The square pegs, the forced out, the seekers and the wandering drifters, each uprooted and elsewhere. It happens to the biggest of us – Napoleon removed and sent to die in Saint Helena, The Stones as tax exiles in fading French chateaus. It happens to the smallest of us too – ghost ships washed up in Barbados, filled with desiccated corpses of young African men, Iraqis fleeing their home tinderbox in any direction they can.

Here in Tokyo, I label myself an ‘expat’. To me, it says that I exercised choice over my displacement. However, to the rest of this still closed global hotspot, I’m just another foreigner and that is what I’ll stay. Always on the outside, looking in. Party perhaps, to the appetiser, but never the full meal.

This is as it has always been. Born in England to an English family, then raised and schooled in Wales, I began with one foot in each camp yet not quite fully fitting into either, ‘different’ from the start. Identity is always so interchangeable and muddled through in the UK that it’s a tough job to convincingly claim to be a nationalist.

About three years ago, I tied up all my loose ends, condensed my life into two suitcases and a laptop and jumped onto a plane at Heathrow - bound for the other side of the world with a blank slate in my head and an empty diary in my bag. Leaving a childhood home or home country, when it’s time to go, it’s time to go.

I’ve often been asked why I came to Japan, but rarely ever why I left the UK. Most people leave home at some point and all have their reasons, whether they walked out with head held high or were kicked out with tail between legs. I did so for two main reasons. Firstly, because the world is changing rapidly and becoming ever more interdependent, I wanted to experience and understand that transition. To taste and perhaps even help shape some of that emerging global identity. To become a citizen of the future, not a relic of the past. Secondly, my ghosts crowded me out.

Even my original and later readopted hometown of Brighton had begun to teem with them after a while. They laid in wait for me on street corners, in pubs and supermarkets, in the books that I read and the songs I listened to, in the successes of others rightfully mine, and the new bonds made that I was excluded from. Most of all, they laid deep down inside of me, weighing me down and forcing me to chase my tail instead of following my nose or my dreams. I ran away to the new world and I ran away from the old one.

Of course, Japan has its ghosts too. A Tokyoite once told a tale of awakening feeling pressured, only to see the disembodied head of a samurai resting on her chest, and his body slumped in the corner of the room. Then there’s Hiroshima’s living ghosts, the hibakusha (A-bomb survivors) and the terrible tales they still tell about one fateful summer day in their childhood and its aftermath. But perhaps as Japan’s ghosts belong to others, I don’t see them in the same way as my own.

Exile, expatriation and exploration seem to run in the family. Both parents are well travelled and weave snapshots of recent human history into the family narrative. My mother, who actually recommended Tokyo to me, spent a little time in Soviet-era Moscow and Leningrad. It can be difficult to visit somewhere that my father's not been before me. He was in Berlin a week before the fall of the Wall. My sisters, fellow siblings-in-exile, respectively live in Toulouse and Dar Es Salaam.

It goes back further and stretches out wider too. On Dad’s side, an uncle in North Carolina, a cousin born in Zambia. On Mum’s side, an uncle who sent himself to Cameroon, and another uncle in Germany, who’d rejected London at the end of the 1960’s and headed off with a camera round his neck. Hitching on some autobahn or other, he was picked up by a busload of hippies on their way to a Pink Floyd show and later married one of them.

Yet further still, the bloodlines intermingle with the bloodshed and fault lines of the last century or so. Another uncle, this time belonging to my grandmother, seemed to have lived the whole Empire boy dream. He found himself in Shanghai in the 1920’s, where he hooked up with a Russian girl he met. She turned out to be a minor royal that had fled the Revolution in 1917, and was now down at heel, selling matches on the street. Together, they fled China to escape from the invading Japanese and on to Batavia (now Jakarta). The Imperial Army had their sights on Indonesia too so they fled again, ending their days in Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was).

Completing the circle, it was a visit to my sister in Tanzania, during the week that the Americans and the British began their assault on Baghdad, that I decided I was finally ready to up sticks, put Blighty behind me and head far East. At the turn of the millennium, the rock ‘n’ roll gang I fronted began getting our first taste of fame by bursting into the national media by accident. Amidst our meteoric rise, however, I was ousted in a coup and thus began my English decline. In time, my senses became dulled by my daily grind and I needed to reawaken them with new experiences. Tokyo lured me with dreams of a high-tech, glittering city of the future.

My life here is both similar and different to the old one in England. I eat more fish than I did before and am also more used to earthquakes, but as I did in the UK, I teach English for cash and occasionally still sing in a local bar band. The all-efficient technology is so pervasive, however, that it’s barely noticed after a while.

My social circle is drawn from a much wider pool than my British one was. A Californian pal tells me tales of living on otherwise uninhabited Hawaiian islands. A Nepalese friend invited me to join him and his family in celebrating the Hindu Festival of Light, at home in Kathmandu. I became the global citizen I was aiming to be.

One part of the story remains untold. As with any haunting, you can only run from your ghosts for so long. In time, if the exile is ever to come home, he must also become exorcist.

ARTICLES // Revolution # 9 (2006)

What does mankind gain from conditions such as war and occupation? It is rare indeed to find occurrences in human history where something positive can be found in the aftermath.

WWI begat WWII, which in turn begat the Israel/Palestine issue. The French occupations of Algeria and Indochina (Vietnam) led to violent and bloody resistance movements, blowing up into an even bigger conflict involving neighbouring states (Cambodia, Laos) and an international superpower (US) in the case of Vietnam. The Korean War led to the partition of the peninsula and one of the most heavily landmined places on Earth. British occupation of India may have produced a largely nonviolent resistance movement, but independence led to further wars and the division of the subcontinent. Issues still remain here, including the Kashmir question and the ongoing rise and fall of the standoffs between nuclear armed India and Pakistan.

The Asia-Pacific theatre of the Second World War was rife with its own horrors, such as the acts committed by the Japanese Imperial Army across East Asia and the American attacks on Japan, culminating in the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese, exhausted by the war, surrendered to the US and submitted themselves to an American post-war occupation.

Yet under American rule, one small seed of hope was planted that laid out a blueprint for all nations to avoid the scourges of war.

That seed was Article 9 of the then newly written Japanese Constitution. Coming from a nation (UK) that seems to need little prompting to engage in warfare (even within my lifetime during the post-imperial era - witness the Falklands and Gulf War I), I was astonished to discover such a feature in national life as I found in Japan. The country forbids itself from ever going to war again or maintaining a regular army.

What an incredible element to weave into the fabric of a nation! Of course, the sad reality is that Article 9 has been under threat almost since its introduction, with the greatest challenges to it coming now under the current administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Learning about Article 9 and the threats to it compelled me to write the piece found below, in the hope that I could raise further awareness of a tool that could benefit all nations and of the challenges that it faces.

The article was first published online here and an edited version later appeared in the Canadian quarterly 'Peace Magazine'.

The Japanese NGO Peace Boat is co-ordinating a global campaign to raise further awareness of Article 9 and the threats posed to it. The campaign site can be found here.

Peace Not War Japan, the organisation I founded in 2004, provides further information about issues relating to peace and Japan, and also has a collection of great peace-related songs by Japanese artists.

Keep the peace, people!

Photo of A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima by Dom Pates

Revolution # 9

‘Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.’

(Article 9, Japanese Constitution)

In the journey through life, individuals maintain allegiances to friends, family, lovers, employers and educators for help along the way. A wider bond is often also upheld – that of a sense of belonging to one’s nation. Of just over 6.5 billion humans on Earth, most would consider themselves as being part of at least one of the roughly 190 nations whose territories (‘countries’) cover the planet’s land surfaces. Members of these ‘nations’ are usually distinguished by at least a common identity, and often a common origin such as ancestry.

A nation can simply be a state of mind. A state, however, is much more tangible. Comprised of buildings, hierarchies and officials it is designed to represent both the nation and the country. Given the immense power held over the lives of individuals by ‘the state’, it is crucial to have a system of checks and balances to ensure that the power wielded is not abused. More fundamentally, it is vital for the interests of the people that are represented by that nation, and peoples of other nations too, to have the principles and rules by which they are governed clearly defined and agreed upon.

A constitution is just that, a system that covers the principles and rules by which an organisation is governed. Certain powers are granted to that organisation on the grounds that it abides by what is set out in that constitution. Most commonly, a constitution is a set of rules that define the nature and extent of government.

The Constitution of Japan was established after World War II and was intended to replace the country’s previous imperial system with a form of liberal democracy. Written under close supervision of General MacArthur and the occupation forces, the Meiji Constitution, the demands of Japanese lawyers and the opinions of pacifist political leaders were taken into account and the document came into effect in May 1947.

The implementation of the Japanese Constitution came during an international trend towards the outlawry of war. For example, Article 12 of the Costa Rican Constitution, put into effect in 1949, stipulates that ‘armed forces as a permanent institution is prohibited’. Since then, Costa Rica has never maintained armed forces.

Article 9 is the unique provision within the document whereby Japan both renounces war and is prohibited from maintaining a military force. It was a strong and clear promise by Japan to the world, and particularly people of the Asia-Pacific region that the imperialistic aggressions acted out during WWII would never be repeated. It also served as a brake on Japan’s arms build-up during the post-war era, which has provided a sense of security for the entire region.

It is the main reason why Japan has been able to live through such a long period of peace and stability, with the country having militarily not taken part in a war in over half a century.

It has made a strong contribution towards attempts at the resolution of international problems of disarmament and the abolition of nuclear weapons. A UN General Assembly Special Session on Disarmament in 1978 declared the desire for complete disarmament of nations. The Hague Peace Conference of 1999 stated in its final document that every national parliament should adopt a resolution that renounces war like Article 9.

It is no less than a blueprint for how to save future generations from the scourge of war.

The previous century was the bloodiest and most violent in all of human history. It contained two world wars, three decades of arms-fuelled tensions between the world’s superpowers, and hundreds of genocidal purges, civil wars, armed invasions, military coups, revolutionary struggles, border disputes and localised conflicts, and led to the deaths of over 100 million people. As the new century gets underway, prospects for major downturns in this trend are not looking too good.

Article 9 is under serious pressure and has been since its inception. Even whilst Japan was still under US occupation, moves were made towards creating some sort of military organisation. Thus the creation and development of what became the Japan Self Defense Forces (SDF), which has seen constant court battles between government and critics over its legitimacy. Extensions of Article 9’s ethos, such as Japan’s non-nuclear principles and ban on arms exports, face strong and active opposition from those keen to remilitarise the country.

The US has continued into the 21st Century to encourage Japan to abandon what it adopted after WWII. The Japanese military were dispatched to assist the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and utilised for refuelling U.S. and British warships. In July 2003, Japan's parliament passed a law authorizing the use of Japan's SDF in Iraq, as long as they were confined to conducting humanitarian missions.

While some consider the removal of Article 9 as a natural stage in the evolution of post-war Japan, this would undoubtedly have a serious effect on the foreign policies of Asia’s most powerful states. If Japan were to again become a military force to contend with, it would undoubtedly reinvigorate China’s push for a powerful military. Russia could see an increasingly powerful Japan as a possible threat to its territory and interests in East Asia, and North Korea could feel itself backed even further into a corner. Memories of Japanese wartime aggression are still fresh even in South Korea, and the normalisation of good relations still has a long way to go.

As the prospects rise of a future with more wars over ever dwindling energy supplies, a world of environmental refugees fleeing within their own national borders, nuclear proliferation across the planet and the unravelling of the meticulously constructed systems of international law and order, it is vital that the signposts and beacons to a better and more peaceful future that we currently have within our possession are upheld, maintained and built upon. In the interests of a peaceful future for Japan and the rest of the world, for today and long into our distant tomorrow, Article 9 must be maintained and its principles spread.

ARTICLES // Season Tickets (2006)

I got my first cover story in 2006.

After attending the inaugural Reggae Snow Splash in Nagano (the location for the 1998 Winter Olympics), I wrote a review of the music and sent it around a few people.

The editor of the bilingual Outdoor Japan, who was also at the event, liked the piece and asked me into the OJ office to discuss writing the main feature for their Summer Music Festivals issue. Although I went to almost every UK summer festival I could in the first half of the 90's, I'd never actually attended a Japanese one.

Still, not being one to turn down a good chance, I agreed. After much intensive research (not exactly easy as much of the information available online was in Japanese), I came up with the article found below. To be honest, I was quite astonished at the number of outdoor music events actually held in Japan - seems it's a summer festival goer's haven.

We decided to take the 60's theme and I ran with as much psychedelic imagery as I could. The Beatles and Magical Mystery Tour, Alice In Wonderland, Ken Kesey & The Merry Pranksters, The Who's Magic Bus (also based on Kesey's one), The Grateful Dead...what a long strange trip it was!

The piece was published as 'Let The Good Times Roll' (originally 'Season Tickets') and came with a whole array of wonderful and trippy graphics and illustrations by OJ's chief designer. Title aside, it's presented here as it appeared in the magazine, edited slightly differently from my original submission.

The trouble was, I unearthed so many great sounding events and in the end I wasn't actually able to make it to any of them! Never mind, perhaps one day...

Cover design by Craig Yamashita.

Season Tickets

Roll up, roll on up—step right this way. Welcome aboard the OJ Magic Bus for the 1st Annual Summer Musical Mystery Tour with stops at the funkiest and grooviest places to kick back and dig the hot summer sights and sounds in Japan.

Events up and down; here, there and everywhere beckon you to step off the big wheel, get out of the board room and into your board shorts to breathe in the refreshing air, soak up rejuvenating rays and fill your head with music to invigorate your soul.

Ken Kesey’s coming along with his band of Merry Pranksters. John’s here, Paul, George and Ringo, the Walrus and the Carpenter, too. Drinks served by Tweedledum, snacks by Tweedledee. We’ll see if the Mad Hatter can pull out a rabbit or two. Everybody in? The journey is about to begin…

Down South

The sun first rises in Japan down in Okinawa upon idyllic beaches and tropical rainforests filled with island rhythms. It the perfect place to start the tour, so grab your flip-flops and get ready to work on that tan.

The first, and southernmost, event is the Miyako Island Rock Festival featuring the Orange Range and Bennie K, among others. The Tug of Rock ’n’ Roll, on the main island, brings together known and unknown acts to Okinawa and has previously featured Bump of Chicken, Shakalabbits and the High Lows. Just watch out for those yellow submarines!

Get on board the ferry; after the boat party we’ll arrive in Kyushu. The steaming volcanic landscapes and ancient forests are a wonderland to behold any Alice. Don’t miss the Aso Nature Festa or the Beach Café Sunset, which has been bringing ska, reggae and beach culture to Fukuoka since 1993.

Higher Ground ’06 is a large outdoor event in Fukuoka, sponsored by AU and including Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Puffy and Flow in the line-up. Jamaica Mura V.10 in Oita adds some more Caribbean flavor to the southern isle.

Next, the bus hits the main island of Honshu and rolls into peaceful Hiroshima. One of the biggest outdoor events, Festa de Rama, is held at Setoda Island Beach and features Little Tempo, Miceteeth and Sake Rock.

We then go lunar at the Miyajima Full Moon Party, held on the sacred island just off the coast.

Out West

Once again we’re island-hopping to Japan's fourth largest one, Shikoku, to visit the fiends at the Monster Bash 2006, then boogie down at Disco Inferno ’06. The former includes Imawano Kiyoshiro and Beat Crusaders, and the latter is described as “The Hottest Party of the Summer!”

The Magic Bus then returns to the mainland and goes urban in the teeming cities of Osaka, Nagoya and Kobe, and then hits the cultural heartlands of Kyoto and Nara. Flagging already? Try a little of Tweedledum’s special Kool-Aid to pick yourself up.

Osaka, Japan’s second largest city, has plenty to keep us entertained. Summer Sonic is held over two days and with a mighty rocking line-up that includes Metallica, the Flaming Lips, Deftones, Massive Attack and DJ Shadow before it heads to Tokyo.

Another massive event, Udo Music Festival 2006, runs over two days and expects a crowd of nearly 100,000. Rush Ball ’06 then fills out Osaka’s party schedule.

The A-Nation juggernaut, a national touring event with some of today’s biggest J-Pop stars, rolls through Aichi and Hyogo with Ayumi Hamasaki, Ai Otsuka and Ami Suzuki on board.

Hyogo also hosts the 35th Annual Takarazuka Bluegrass Festival, one of more than 30 bluegrass fests in Japan. The event features a multitude of first-rate Japanese bluegrass bands.

Urban Kanto

Somebody wake the dormouse; we’re back on the bus and heading east toward mighty Tokyo where millions of people party to the break of dawn. Like the melody from the Pied Piper, the air will be filled with enchanting tunes to draw the natives out of their caves.

The Excite Music Festival brings some exhilaration to Yoyogi Park with the likes of Toshinobu Kubota and Ayaka Hirahara. If we hang around, we’ll also catch Sonarsound, featuring some of today’s most cutting edge electronic and experimental musicians.

Perhaps you’re looking for high culture to tickle your artistic taste buds. Tokyo Summer Festival runs over five weeks at various concert halls, temples, shrines and parks. On a different tip, wily cats will want to keep an eye out for the Herbie Hancock-curated Tokyo Jazz, a hip date on any calendar.

Down in Kanagawa, the Yokohama Arena hosts the Nano-Mugen Fes 2006 with Japanese artists such as Asian Kung Fu Generation playing with other international acts followed by Wire ‘06, Asia’s biggest techno festival.

Beautiful Shonan, with its great beaches, hosts Shonan Music Fest Vol. 0.9. Then take a stroll down the beach to party for charity at the Kamakura Beach Party.

And if this isn’t enough, we’ve still got Summer Sonic in Chiba too…

Around Tokyo

Surrounding the pulsating capital, the nearby beaches and mountains are a great place to recharge and get back to nature. The Izu Islands, Shizuoka’s beaches, Mt. Fuji and Nagano’s rugged alpine ranges are perfect backdrops for some outdoor party fun.

The Stones and the Grateful Dead did the Altamont Raceway in ’69. Santana and Kiss do Fuji Speedway at Shizuoka’s wing of the Udo Music Festival 2006. We’ll ask any Pranksters on board to keep the Angels in check this time.

Shizuoka, with its green tea fields, hosts a couple of 'green' events: Wind Blow ’06 and AP Bank Fes ’06, which last year featured Mr. Children and Every Little Thing. Both aim to raise awareness of environmental issues. Things splash down on the island of Niijima for The Pirates, Anoyo’s collective art conscious festival.

Honshu’s adventure capital of Minakami (Gunma) hosts their popular Full Moon Parties all summer. Camping, bungalows and adventure weekend packages are available and it’s just a short trip from Tokyo.

Asagiri Jam, SMASH’s low profile follow act up to Fuji Rock, has sold out the last two years— before even announcing their line-up! Once again you’ll have to wait until the week before the show to know who’ll show up.

Our final stop in this neck of the woods is the Rock in Japan Festival in Ibaraki. Staged at a seaside park by the publishers of Rockin' On, it allows huge crowds get to see the good, the bad and the beautiful of the Japanese music scene. Dragon Ash, Shonen Knife, M-Flo and Polysics will all be there.

Up North

Time for the big one: Fuji Rock is Japan’s answer to Glastonbury. It takes place on the green slopes of Naeba Ski Resort in Niigata—a venerable summit meeting of top international and Japanese acts. This year’s line-up includes Red Hot Chili Peppers, Franz Ferdinand, Super Furry Animals and the Strokes, among others.

Ravers will delight in the Solstice Music Festival, and then, what better place to watch the sun sink on the horizon than the Sea Of Japan Sunset Concert on Aoyama Beach.

Before we leave Niigata altogether, the mighty rhythms of the Earth Celebration on Sado Island draw us in. The Kodo drummers are the focal point of this three-day music, dance and arts festival, which encourages musical and cultural collaborations with artists from around the world. This year they welcome Tamango Urban Tap from French Guiana.

Anybody see that? I’m sure it was a white rabbit heading north. We roll along rugged coastlines, through rich, virgin forests on our journey to the natural wilds of Hokkaido.

In Sapporo, we find a couple of events of classical splendour. Leonard Bernstein founded the Pacific Music Festival in 1990. His wish to contribute to world peace through classical music is carried on here every year. At the 19th Sapporo Asahiyama Music Festival, we get a breathtaking view and feel the power of a 700-person chorus as fireworks explode overhead.

Where do we stop? Our long and winding road trip through the magical wonderland of the Japanese summer music festival season ends where it began - by the sea.

The harbour city of Otaru, with its canals, beaches and great seafood, hosts the Rising Sun Rock Festival. This hefty event for all generations has been highlighting the Japanese rock scene since 1999. Camping is available and this year boasts sets from Kazuya Yoshi, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra and Kodama, the Dub Station Band and many more.

As we reel in the remaining stragglers and head back to our rabbit holes, we thank you for riding along. As you alight from the OJ Magic Bus, we hope you’ll leave with some great summer memories to tide you over until next year…because the music never stops!

ARTICLES // Open Up (2003)

This article was originally published in Brighton's 'Insight' magazine in 2003. While the content is anything but 'gonzo' in style, the writing of it has its own story, created as it was under pretty frenetic circumstances.

Back in early 2003, my personal life was hanging in the balance and, unbeknownst to me, my time in Brighton was drawing to a close. I needed time and space to get away and think a little. My father presented me with a sudden opportunity to get away to Africa for a week in order to celebrate my sister's 30th birthday with her - she was living in Tanzania at the time.

Never one to stare a gift horse in the mouth and knowing that it was both what I needed and something I'd long dreamed of too, I jumped at the chance and took him up on the offer. It was also during the period that the clamour for war in the Middle East was reaching fever pitch and I was delighted to have the chance to get away from those voices in the corridors of power and in the media that were steamrollering the Western and Arab worlds towards disaster. The millions who'd marched through London on the previous month hadn't been able to stop a thing, and there was a depressing stench of inevitability about the whole misadventure.

About a week before my hastily arranged flight was due to depart, 'Insight' magazine got in touch with me to write a piece on Brighton artists Open Houses schemes that run during the Brighton Festival. Then as now, I'm not a writer with offers of publication lining up at my door. I agreed to do it despite the lunatic demands that it'd place on my schedule, glad of the opportunity to get my writing out to an audience.

There were a couple of days within which to do the research, mainly during the lunch breaks of the new job I'd just started. Grabbed my notes and interviews, packed my bags and made for Heathrow where I was to begin writing the first draft. Waiting in some airport bar or other for my father to arrive, I managed to at least get it started.

Had been going to write more on the flight, but didn't manage to. Got off the plane at Dar Es Salaam and was confronted by tropical heat of which I'd never known and my first time setting foot on African soil. This fact was rather more overwhelming than a publishing deadline and I soaked in every new sight, smell and sound.


Back at my sister's place, I managed to finish off writing the piece and then had to type it up. The power supply to small African villages tends to be intermittent at best, yet grabbing whatever moments of juice I could out of a faltering laptop, I got the piece written up.

The deadline came into play again and as they didn't have an Internet connection at the house, we had to drive an hour to the nearest town to find the Internet cafe that she often used. Slow as the connection was and as old as the computer there was too, I managed to get the article sent off to the magazine just about in time for their submission deadline.

There was something quite bizarre about writing of people in an English seaside town letting the public into their houses to look at their paintings from the perspective of a creaky Internet cafe in a dusty town that opened out onto the African bush. It may have played its own part in helping me to reassess my priorities and draw the conclusion that the time was ripe to expatriate and see what else was out there other than my own little island.

The original article was edited slightly by 'Insight' and appears in that form here. Tempting as it was to go fully gonzo and write instead about the circumstances in which the story was written, I managed to write just about the Brighton artists after all!

Photo of Tanzanian villager's house by Hans Jamet.

Open Up

It must be something in the air. Not just the fresh sea breezes that can awaken the senses, but a sprinkle of that extra ‘something’ that makes Brighton such a touch paper for innovation, such a creative laboratory. Some early techniques of cinema were developed in Hove. Anita Roddick helped to usher in the concept of the ‘ethical consumer’ with her first Body Shop in Brighton. In the early Seventies, the means that would allow networks to communicate with each other and pave the way for what we now know to be the Internet, were presented at Sussex University.

On a lesser scale, while many people wouldn’t dream of letting the general public across their threshold for a look around their own private space, a growing number of individuals from right across the city, openly encourage it during the burst of spring madness that is the Brighton Festival.

‘I think the visiting public initially feel a sense of wonder that anyone would do such a thing’, says Jehane Boden Spiers, an Open House artist. ‘They enjoy meeting artists who make the work, as opposed to in galleries and shops, which are far less personal. They also enjoy seeing the work in context and I think it helps people to think about how to display artwork in their own homes.’

The Open House concept began in 1982 by Ned Hoskins. Frustrated by the lack of opportunity to exhibit art in Brighton at the time, he opened his house to the public and also exhibited other artists. In 1989, the ‘Five at Fiveways’ group was set up. Such was its success that it exploded across Brighton during the 1990’s. Other artists joined the group, other groups sprang up all over the region (Kemp Town Artists, Seven Dials Artists, the Lewes Group), and the concept became arguably the main attraction to the Festival itself.

The Kemp Town Open House trail stretching from the brightly coloured terraces near Queen's Park right down to the sea is a particular favourite with tourists as a fair degree of the art features boats, the sea, Victorian frontages and The Downs. Belinda Lloyd, co-ordinator, told The Insight, 'This year musicians are going to join the trail so as people wander the streets of Kemp Town they will be accompanied by buskers and in the houses may even come upon a harpist, saxophonist or string quartet!'

Colin Ruffell, a former secretary of the Fiveways Artists Group and exhibiting artist himself, estimates that there are now over 200 Open Houses and Studios operating during the festival, with 100-300 visitors per week, making up to 100,000 people enjoying these unique opportunities to experience art. Open Houses can now be found all over Sussex, including Ditchling, Hove and Portslade, and have even spread to places like Oxford, Cambridge, Kent, Cornwall and Buckinghamshire.

Jehane says ‘anything and everything!’ is on display– Ceramics, Jewellery, Painting, Sculpture, Mosaic, Textiles, Wood, Metal, Glass, Photography, Video, Literature. It makes it possible for artists to make their work more affordable to the buying public. Visitors can also commission pieces directly with the artist, which could be an otherwise daunting prospect.

Open Houses have become so successful that they may have even outgrown the Festival itself. Jehane Boden Spiers says that it has become quite a feat to even see 10% of what is on show. ‘I can see more houses opening up at other times of the year, apart from May,’ she says. ‘This is already happening… some houses have organised Christmas shows’.

Information on Open Houses 2003 can be found in the Brighton Festival Fringe brochure, which is available from thousands of outlets across the city. The following weblinks also contain further information:

Fiveways Artists Group

The first Open House art buying website

Colin Ruffell’s own site