Forth time to Japan in less than a year. Jet lag hits me hard this time. Usually I deny it's incapacitating grip but instead I just give in and rest my back and indulge in being horizontal. I could care less what the time is when I sleep or rise. Exhaustion from my marathon run at home during the tour break sets in. Nap after nap, computing at all hours and the 24 hour local quick market has fishy rice balls and water that sustain my hunger. A full night and day and night and day before a midnight load-in forces some reality into my mix. At some point while living this bleary timeless state the phone rings and it could be 6am or pm and it makes no difference.

"Lobby call in 3 minutes, the van is already here, we are headed to the fish market, hurry up" Lampi Scott's voice, I am pretty sure, is coming from the phone. Well, it's all news to me and I was out the door before I even bothered to ponder where or why I was going. The fish market we did, shopping with Wayno the Chef, in the seafood equivalent of New York's Wall Street. Passing through the gates, we are informed that we have entered a no-man's land where city laws no longer apply. The police don't enter except to haul out the occasional body from a miss step off off a high place or other questionable demise. The fish mongers rule this land and whatever you do, don't get run over by a cart.

Turns out there are two types of carts, old and new and one type gives you a bigger owie than the other when failing to move from it's path, though it is tough to figure out which is which. The old one was born in centuries past while the new one is nothing like anything I have ever seen. A rotating turret with a motor inside and a steering wheel and thinner round wheel brake on top. The powered front wheel can turn so sharp that it can nearly go backwards and turns inside less than its own length.

Isle after isle of any and every species of ocean life, now food, endlessly fills this massive warehouse and most surprising is what is not seen, the smell of fish and that fact that it is practically non existent. Amazingly, barely hint of scent of the fish as far as the eye can see, all perfectly iced or dry iced

and messes scrubbed clean into the constant flow of fresh water steams disappearing into rough gutters and away.

The king of fish here is the tuna. Massive multi hundred pound swimmers flash frozen on the boats to what I am told is the optimum 60 degrees below zero storing temperature. Earlier than the 6:30 am it is now, the booth buyer was earlier out bidding up to 10's of thousands of dollars for prime specimens. Check out the modern giant band saw slicing whole tuna

Followed by the old school method of hacking out the bones with a hand sharpened axe like knife

to be thawed, sliced, packaged and delivered to fill the daily orders from the endless multitude of restaurant's demand.

**** Ponderings ****

As we wander the endless labyrinth created by one species to consume a myriad of others, the potential to be aghast highlights the human hypocrisy of needing and enjoying to eat. Yet so many turn a blind eye to the foundations by which our polished food is acquired. Whether it be plants or animals, each person decides to draw their personal line of edible acceptability but it makes little difference as everything is interconnected. It is just a matter of which illusion we choose to present ourselves as reality. Is it better to eat the critter or hack down it's habitat to create a field to grow vagatarian crops leaving the critter with an extinguishing fate, and what do they feed those plants we eat anyway? Not unlike the self and society censored parallels where humans publicly gloss over their underlying desires and act in patterns of sexual interaction while pretending to ignore the necessity and natural humanly allure, not unlike an amazing meal on a hungry stomach. Then I ponder the true and unavoidable cause of global warming to be caused by both sex and food. As clearly as we humans are creators of the unraveling predicament, we as a species have the power to halt man made global warming merely by convincing all humans to simultaneously refrain from sex or food and the problem would soon be enough as we extiguish ourselve. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that we as individuals and a race are incapable of treading upon this planet so softly as not to impact it. A quandary indeed unsolvable, given the acceptable choices. Then it becomes clear that trying our best as a species to attempt to slow down the eventual and unavoidable reality is really the only sensible option. How hard, how much and at what rate becomes a personal choice with global ramifications for each to decide and rally for or attempt to dictate. In the mean time, I am quite hungry and there is a fresh Sushi meal in my near future I predict.

**** End Ponderings ****

To Be Continued...

Dave Rat

Japan Airlines flight number whatever bound for Tokyo. My back hurts, my body is crooked and I went to a chiropractor on the way to the airport. Must have pulled a muscle and it knotted up like a twisted rubber band does when let loose in someone's hair. Have ya ever done that or had that happen where someone would twist up a rubber band and let it go in the small hair behind your neck? Ouch! I seem to have acquired a bit of a hitch in my get-a-long which is just what I need right now.

So I immediately pass out on the plane and wake up hour after takeoff to discover I am sitting next to a mid meal Japanese businessman who is a few drinks into the wind. Handing me the menu, "oh, which one do you order? Japanese meal o American meal?" he asks while perfectly combining al R's and L's in into a hybrid that makes me smile. "Well," still trying to hack through the haze, "Um, which on is that?" as I point at his food. While the presence of small rubbery flower shapes, chopsticks and bowls of brightly colored mystery globes clearly gave it away, he nearly shouts "Japanese meal!" Well, then that is what I will have then. Engulfed in excitement he yells down the isle for the flight attendant, orderes my meal and then proceeds to partake in what appeared to be some sort of joke telling session with her that suspiciously felt like it was at my expense.

"To drink?, um water, please," still trying to form words awaking from one of those slumbers that leave your arms feeling like lead. "Water? why water, no wine? why no wine?" he stares, loud and curious as can be. Ummmmm, well, how about a wine please. "Ahhhh yes, Cab Syllah, velly good!" And so it went, with him asking me each time I ate something if I liked it. I could only come up with two answers able to break the language barrier without insult; "yes, good" if I liked it and "hmmm, so-so" when it was beyond the realms of edibility. He loved "good" but really loved "so-so" and so once again he calls the flight attendant over followed by more laughing, a bunch of sounds I don't understand mixed in with the occasional "so-so" followed by more laughing. Wine and more wine and more laughing and I soon figured out that whenever he did not understand something he would invariably look forward as if think intently and nod his head and say yes, yes, ah yes. Then I realized that he barely had understood anything I had said the whole time except "yes" and "so-so."

His English was very limited and very hard to understand and yet still light years more advanced than my Japanese which is primarily relegated to names of Americanized sushi items, "hello" and "thank you." But that did not stop us from chatting away and in the middle of a jumbled question I hear what sounds familiar but not English. So I ask if he speaks Spanish, in Spanish and that is when the fun really began. Turns out he is a car parts distributor for Latin America and he can rock the Spanish. Though I may not have the syntax all down, I fair pretty well as well. So there we go, a common language all good as we both get yelled at several times to hush down. Too much fun and say hello to my plane ride friend Tsuchiya!

Landing at the airport, turns out that all that wine has left me a bit less chipper than the average bear but not so bleary to miss this after Leif pointed at it. Check it out, up there under the C-Clamped webbing is a birds nest with little birdy chicks in it. The webbing and triangular roped off area is to prevent poo bombs from taking out unsuspecting travelers. Cool stuff, I like the awkward mesh of different speiceis looking out for each other.

Next stop, hotel and the 'day of landing production meeting' where a bunch of delirious western roadies attempt to discuss things we pretend are important through interpreters with a sharp team of Japanese perfectionists that tend to be damn good at what they do.

Dave Rat

Day 370 - May 28th - Fast Forward to Almost Now

I have been moving from city to city for over a year now and also now I moving
the place I return to between travels out and abound, oh boy! Well there are
many joys involved with displacing one's self. The opportunity to place all
your things in boxes. The chance to pay someone way too much money to break
all your stuff while moving it and the exuberant mystery of the scavenger hunt
of searching out items afterwards hidden in boxes afterwards. At least time
was short and workload high mixed in with catching up and preparing to leave.
My overload mode was complete and it is rare that I ask for help but without
it submersion was imminent. I am beyond lucky that magical people will drop
all, for my rescue. Here is a pic of where I decided to move:

After some thought, perhaps a bit of alteration is in order and the blank wall
removed?

Ooops daisy, looks like all the wall fell off, oh well, not a big fan of wall
paper anyway.

Say "Bye bye low ceiling." Say "hello big mess."

Why would a human voluntarily indulge in the misery of relocation, perhaps
you ponder? Well, hopping to the other side of an infinite redundant traffic
jam that divides my humanly self from my shorties and the world of Rat was an
inspiration. Compounded by the fact that this small path leads to to the sea

PS. that is the shadow on monitor Daniel next to my head and he lives just
two stop lights away now. Plus, this curious contraption feels attractive for
reasons unknown

Though whether it's worth it is constantly under scrutiny so I must cling to
my momentum of the original decision despite the obstacles that so cheerfully
leap into my path or more realistically put; the obstacles I chose to create.

**** The Surrounding World ****

Oh, on a separate subject, here is something I found interesting on several
levels. There is this guy Harry
McCracken who is the editor for PC World Magazine who is quite possibly
the most respected editor of computer stuff out there and he resigned early
May. Turns out that he had new boss and in in less than a month he wrote an
article that was censored. His new boss felt that an article he wrote was not
so friendly to advertisers and was told to rewrite it, so he quit. I love that!
Integrity vs. money in its purest form. Since then he has been rehired and his
boss re-assigned. I love that too, integrity wins over greed. I love those things
on a global level. Finally it turns out that the article he wrote was titled
"10 Things We Hate About Apple"and I love that but on a more personal
and opinionated lever. the reason the article was quashed was that Apple phoned
PC World and requested that it not be printed. I don't love that. I believe
that cheating by leveraging power to promote your products is a below the belt
move. I am fine with success but only when earned rather than manipulated.

**** End The Surrounding World ****

Right now I am writing from notes and residing in Japan. Come join me, I wish
you were here! Come soon and very soon I will fast forward blog to now in real
time. Tomorrow in real time is a show at Tokyo Dome and in blog time? Well,
we will find out soon enough.

Dave Rat

Last night I was off to the gig at 11:59 pm took a look around and confirmed that all was under control and immediately headed back to the hotel 20 minutes later.

That was way back on June the 4th. Now that it is deep into the 7 AM hour of June 5th, lets go see what breakfast looks like downstairs.

Ewwww! yuck, look at all that horrible food, bummer! Oh well, don't want it to go to waste so I will have to eat it, I guess, before I start wandering around Tokyo for a bit to take another look. There are so many unusual things everywhere, it is really hard to know which ones to take pics of.

Not so cool of a place to call home but as far as living in a box goes, this is the nicest one I have ever seen.

For some mysterious reason I felt drawn to the crepe shop so I indulged in a carmel cream and ice cream crepe. Yumm!

Speaking of food, there is a restaurant a half block away where you put $ in a machine, press a button for you choice, a little ticket pops out and then you walk inside, hand them the ticket and they make that food for you.

At first it didn't make sense but after thinking about it, eliminating having the chefs take orders and handle the money does streamline things a bit. All good, fast and like $5 for a bowl of noodles.

And off to do the rock show.

Dave Rat

Merging time slipped worlds I am in North Hollywood, tomorrow I head out to the desert to hang out at Coachella, a large rock festival about 3 hours east of Los Angeles and not only is Rat Sound is providing PA Systems for all five stage, I am also mixing the headline act on saturday, guess who? Oh, the Red Hot Chili Peppers of course. Anyway, I will blog that adventure when the time comes but in the mean time, close your eyes and let your mind slip backwards in time to April 19th. We are in Sydney Australia and the sunshine is turned on as are the waves and beaches and general happiness of humans.

I have friends in Sydney! And every time I come to town, they are awesome and take care of me. A boat ride

in the harbor makes for a terrible day

And dinner with magic friends

intermixed in the blur of days that whisk by in a flash intermixed with rock shows

and cool tunes

Swimming and running and friends and wine and vegetate toast and happy not being predictable and a few tiny roller coaster bumps and I would not trade these memories for the world. The merging of worlds, as the barriers wash away and today is a great day in a string of wonderful days that were overwhelming enough that I went away and hence, my bloggery delay. Ya know, I could live here and be happy, but wait, I am already happy. Hmmm, ok, I could live here and be also happy. Hugs for all my far away friends that I love and hugs love so strong it is timeless!

No hugs for the cactus though and no hugs for burning hot coals with dancing flames and no hugs for polar bears either, even though they all share the common trait of appearing desirable to touch and just like it looks like walking on the puffy clouds outside the plane window is a fun idea , these are all things I will restrain myself with and attempt to enjoy with my eyes. Mostly and speaking of walking on clouds and imagining the way it would feel to attempt that adventure of plummeting through, I have an idea! How about we do a special bloggery feature all about launching roadies off of high places? I think that is a great idea, I will work on it.

The always happiest when I blindly follow what I feel,

Dave Rat

I am really good at some things and hey, not so good at a whole bunch of others. One of the things I am good at but you may not have noticed is vanishing. Not the see through clear kind called invisible but instead the total immersion into whatever project or adventure is at hand. For the most part I try and "parallel project" my life because in the long term that seems to be more compatible with not heading backwards yet the occasional letting go does help me rebalance. I guess you can just look at it as an un announced vacation. For all that were worried about me, well, don't worry! Even if I did meet some trecherous demise, there is not much you could have done about it anyway. Besides, you all that have been been joining me, should know me well enough by now to know that I play it safe and maintain a high level of caution at all times. Which is why the decision to ride a motorcycle out to a go diving with sharks was high on my list of adventures.

So off we head

To Sea World for a dive in a shark tank with sharks of course

Though being in a shark cage no way compares to last time where we we unprotected, we still had a great time, as you can see by our smiling faces

And as it so often is, the highlight of the adventure was unexpected as our aquarium friends took us back stage to see giant polar bears up close in cages. Big, furry and deceptively sweet giant puppy dog looking polar bears that would just as soon eat like chiken wings us as take a nap. No photos back stage so words will have to suffice. The sheer awe and quiver in the voices of animal handlers as they describe the the predatory ways of the bears and recount horrific events both seen in training and observed in person left no room for doubt that these immense animals are not to be taken lightly.

Next stop, the backstage seal quarters and we met a few biters. In fact one handler was bitten just this morning by a seal named MoFo who likes to poke his head out the feeding hole and take a bite out of passers by. I was informed of this as I had my back up near the opening so I took a step forward. And off to see the dolphins to pet and feed. So friendly and cool, big eyes and you can see the smarts.

What better way to end the day than a rock show? None better that is so off we go to our office we call an arena to meet up with 10,000 of our best friends

And while the show rocks on, I often wander off for one reason or another beyond the confines of the front of house roadie cage. I like to hear the sound in various places and make sure all is well an happy and I found myself here and look

It's John! And so completes another day far away. As I play catch up.

Dave Rat

Second show of three and how incredibly cool is it not to have to move 100's of thousands of pounds of gear around everyday. I want to thank roadie Lee, he rocks and gets all the stuff that I need to mix the sound dialed in each day. It is not easy stuff and I don't know if y'all have figured it out yet but I am a bit "out there" especially when it comes to sound world. There are a bunch of sound things that most engineers stress over that I could care less about and there are crazy and seemingly insignificant details that are crucial to things running smoothly for me. Patience, persistence and once again, he has gone above and beyond.

So, I have been getting a lot of emails and Myspace messages and text messages and blog comments and that is beyond awesome and I read every single one and apologize for when I do not respond right away or take a long time but I will do my best to and it is tough while out here and I truly appreciate the communications as it really makes this bloggery world worthwhile when I know that the effort is appreciated and enjoyed. So in my thank you's I want to thank all o yoos!!

So we left off last as we were heading out to do some possum petting. Now, possum's back home are not the most appealing critters but the Aussie possums are really cute and friendly

They let us pet them and they were gentle and even when my finger found it's way between possum teeth and a banana slice, the nibble was gentle

Roadies love days off in warm places! Off to St. Kilda

and the beach and wanderings and check ot this cool building near the tram stop

It looks old and there is a lot of cool architecture here and look at the external plumbing pipes. There are cool parts of town and little micro tiny shops and fun places to wander and see.

And so the day comes and goes with awesome food and magic friends and just a bunch of all around happiness and show #2 hits stride

Night Night,

Dave Rat

Today, all I have for you are some random wandering pics from various times on our trip to our weekend off in Japan. Sunday, our whole day off, was spent wandering Tokyo, the rest of our day off was spent on a train trying to get there and back. In our infinite wisdom, the backline three and I decided to buy the $20 train ticket rather than the $60 train ticket. Our logic was that we had nothing but time to kill so what difference does a few train stops make?

Who would of knew?

And finally as the blur came to an end, the last image I remember while being on Japanese non portable ground, hey look it's a bird!

The heading home,

Dave Rat