December 5, 2016
Dear Virtual Diary
Location: Singh’s Kitchen (Nipponbashi Area)
I exit the subway and come up to the area of Nipponbashi. The bustling crowd buzzing with the electricity of Osaka-Life on a Saturday, and I become utterly lost amongst its magnificence. After traversing the streets, sometimes in circles, I finally find Singh’s Kitchen, a small Indian restaurant. I am confused though, “I am supposed to be performing here?”, I ponder. I hear someone say “Do—way—n-san” behind me, it’s Ken and he is carrying a large carrying case, probably for his DJ equipment. We exchange pleasantries before he leads me to a narrow hall behind the Indian restaurant. He opens the door and I step into what seems to be a small little venue for live events. The venue reminds me of some of the ones down around Queen and Bathurst in Toronto.
We set up and then go have dinner…I had the butter chicken. It was really good.
By 10pm people start to showing up. The music is loud, the alcohol is flowing, the guys are drunk, the girls are dressed for a fashion show and I sit quiet and anxiously anticipate my set time. Ken kept saying that I was way too serious. Which led to him feeding me drinks and me becoming so drunk that I began to worry if I’d remember my lines or not.
There were a bunch of other really good sets before me. One group, totally forgot their names, but there was a DJ, bass player and a vocalist. The DJ would play a drum loop and the bass player would play accordingly to it. Then the DJ would scratch the record while the bass player played off the flow of the tuen. Never seen anything like it before and they were really vibing out.
It seems my earlier concern for forgetting the lyrics were not needed as the alcohol truly assisted in a pretty good performance. For me, performing is an euphoric sensation, very similar to any hard drug. The moment you are done you can’t help but think “when’s the next time?”. I felt light throughout my entire set; This probably due to the alcohol. It was as if I was going to just lift off and float to the ceiling. I remember every minute and thanks to a couple friends taking videos I was able to see most of the performance and I am happy with how it all turned out.
Osaka is probably the lightest place in all of Japan.