Looks as if there probably won’t be a Cow Parade in Hong Kong; they already have something similar. In true Hong Kong style, it’s related to money – in this case, to horse racing, the only legal form of gambling here.
To celebrate the December racing carnival, each year the Hong Kong Jockey Club places a number of decorated racehorses around Hong Kong. I’ve seen a few around Central, above is the Currency Horse, and this one is Beautiful Women of the World:
Elvis is not dead – he just lost some weight and moved to Hong Kong.
Melvis is essentially a Hong Kong Chinese busker who looks (or at least, dresses) like Elvis (in his Las Vegas incarnation) and performs short and almost incomprehensible Elvis songs at the drop of a hat.
We were out last night, and one of the guys with us saw Melvis in the street and asked him to come in and play for us. He did a very short Hound Dog, and a brilliant A Little Less Conversation. He has a remarkable talent for cutting to the very essence of each song, leaving out frills like melody and recognisable lyrics.
Like many others, we scored free tickets to the Prince gig staged as part of the Hong Kong Harbour Fest. I had never seen Prince before, and hadn’t heard much of him recently, but the show was excellent.
He moved and grooved all over the purple stage, singing a good range of well-known and more obscure songs. The band was fantastic. Just smooth funkiness from beginning to end.
Cow parades have been going on for a few years, in various parts of the world. I was excited to discover decorated cows in Marunouchi, downtown Tokyo, where I worked. So excited that I decided I would try to shoot all 60-odd of them (with my camera).
This was the first cow parade in the Far East, featuring lots of Japan-themed cows, and one or two impressive technology-enabled cows. It was fun hunting them all down – I even found some interesting parts of town that I had never been to before.
In the end, I ran out of time – I only managed to find 61 of the 64 cows. Some of them were sneakily positioned inside buildings, and one was way over on the other side of Tokyo station. Some of the cows also moved around over the course of the parade… Anyway, I had to steal other people’s photos to complete the three missing spots in my photo album.
Have they been taking happy pills? This is a pretty upbeat set, with their usual great melodies and naive vocals. So far I have enjoyed it immensely. It may not scale the quiet heights of “If You’re Feeling Sinister”, but I think it’s just going for a fuller sound. And it’s much better than the patchy “Storytelling”.
I am particularly amused that they rhyme “I’m a cuckoo” with “Harajuku”, since I used to live in Harajuku (Tokyo) until a few days ago. In fact, I bought this CD in Harajuku the day before I left. (And got a free badge with it.) Ah, good times, good times.
Sunday was a beautiful day. Blue skies made it a bit easier to get up this morning, As usual, difficult to get out of bed in time for breakfast, but again it was well worth it, even if the omelette wasn’t as good as yesterday’s spring rolls.
Today there weren’t any must-see bands for us (he said dismissively) so we thought we’d have a bit of an outing. Part of the Festival was above the rest of the venue – a secluded play and performance space called Silent Breeze, and also an outdoor DJ sound system called Day Dreaming. To get there, you had to take the
Dragondola cable car.
A fantastic collection of dreams. Most of these short pieces are less than a page long, but they perfectly convey that weird logic peculiar to dreams. It’s amazing how much he packs into such a short form.
I bought this randomly in a used bookshop, in a double edition with the same author’s Wearing Dad’s Head. WDH is similar to Airplane, but does seem to focus rather a lot on the author’s troubled relationship with his overbearing father. The makes the book more personal, but for me, less beautifully dream-like. (Your dreams may vary.)
Dragged ourselves out of bed unenthusiastically for what we expected to be an unappetizing breakfast – it was included in the price of our room. Turned out to be delicious! Fried spring rolls, salad, grilled fish, pickles, and of course the breakfast staples of miso soup, rice and dried seaweed. We returned to our room feeling satisfied and then just lounged around for an hour or so. We decided to take it easy – the first band we wanted to see, Goldfrapp, weren’t on till 1 o’clock.
It was still raining a bit, so we thought we’d go to an onsen (hot spring bathhouse). There were a couple nearby (no doubt very popular during the ski season). One had outdoor baths, and we’d gotten discount tickets for it at last night’s restaurant, so in we went. Like most such places, the baths were segregated, so Jo and Lora went to the ladies’ bath and I to the gentlemen’s. It was crowded – I had to wait about 5 minutes for my pre-bath shower. Waiting in line is never fun, but even less so when you’re naked. Anyway, the bath was lovely, half-enclosed by a wooden roof and with nice trees to look at.
The best was saved for last – by the time we left the onsen, the rain had stopped and the sky was blue!
Crowd-surfing in the blazing sunshine, vodka-fuelled midnight revelry, and majestic views of Mount Fuji. That’s what any reasonable person would expect from the Fuji Rock Festival. Actually, for us it involved none of these things, but I still had such a good time that I’m already planning for next year’s festival.
The first Fuji Rock Festival was held on the slopes of Mount Fuji about eight years ago, but it’s been relocated a couple of times. These days it’s held in a ski resort called Naeba, about an hour or two out of central Tokyo.
I would like to have gone last year, but arrived in Japan a bit too late to organize it. But this year, thanks largely to Jo’s organizational efforts, I made it. On Friday morning, 25 July 2003, Joanne and I met up with Lora, and the three of us set out in search of music and fun.
Harry Potter books are always published just before my birthday, which is handy. This book is more of the same, with the emphasis on the more – a bit too close to 1000 pages for my liking.
This time around, apart from the usual conspiracies and evildoers, Harry must contend with the opposite sex. He proves to be as clueless with girls as he is clever with magic. (Time’s running out – he’s only got two more books to sort himself out.)
I was pleased with the way that quite a few plotlines from previous books are picked up, which helps sustain interest. I thought the book was paced well, given its length. Even so, parts of the denouement felt a bit perfunctory. (Don’t you hate those perfunctory denouements?)
Well, I can’t blame her for wanting to finish by that stage. No doubt she was eager to get cracking with Book Six.