YUTAKA
//In tokio 2000 € were just gone in two weeks. I had saved this money so many years to be able to go back to japan. And all my effort was gone within 14 days. I realized I had to do something. I started to work in a noodle-shop. Three old people, about to retire, between fifty and sixty were running this place. And then I found out that they were also pretty cool, people that have had a dream together. They once had a band. One was playing guitar, the other trumpet and the third one drums. They all had were working at different times. The woman working there told me, that their characters were too different to work together. Everyone had a special way of doing things. So they had separated the shifts. I got along well with the guy from the nightshift. He was just wondering a lot. We wouldn't talk, just there was always this tensed silence. First we only introduced ourselves. He was surprised that I've had been abroad, he always liked british bands. He was kind of jelous that I was part of the generation that could travel. Most public was construction workers with towels on their heads, sweat and brown skin. It was a local place with regular customers. The neighbours who also had a little restaurant would come regurlarly each day and would always eat the same. It is one of these small places, just a sink and a bar. You just get your noodles and go, it takes some people five minutes to eat. It was strange for me to suddenly adapt to this circle of life. Everything was just repeating. They would come at seven, the construction people would come at that time and I had to be prepared. At the same time it was all so japanese, I felt like in a flashback to my childhood. England and -bang into this installation of atmospheres. I was displaced in there. I was culture shocked by my own culture. I felt kind of comfortable though I was displaced. Things I remembered from my childchood had maintained the same feeling. Things would be so local. The people that came would talk so much. it was some sort of social meeting point. They discuss their life at all times in a noodle-shop.
//I remember a girl working in the japanese pizza place opposite to the noodle-shop, OKONOMIAKI (this is pancakes with seafood and cabbage and such.) once a week she would come to eat in the noodle-shop because she was fed up to eat Okonomiaki every day. She told me she had a band with her sister. She had a lot of tattoos, all over. I thought, how great, how liberate. When I was 14 we were tought not to express ourselves. Put into a school like into military, your shirt had to be exactly til here, not shorter, not longer. And now that I returned they were so liberated, they didn't accept this any more. There had been an explosion while I had been away. I don't know where they got the inspiration for this, maybe they were imitating american girls from tv, that would be mean and beautyful and just took what they wanted. Suddenly in japan the young were asking the question, why they were working so hard for everything. After a while that we talked, she told me she was doing this to become really famous. Ambituously famous, she wanted to become a rock star. It seemed such a romantic dream, just too far from reality. And I knew it and she knew it and it made it so honest to still go for it. I felt she was really committed and really took decisions. Also from the way she was speaking.
//In europe you finish highschool and you probably wont see each other again. People I met didn't go to university, because it meant to accept the system. people that wanted to do their own thing tried to survive in small groups, sharing a small appartement, sometimes two or three people sleeping on one futon. I was living with a japanese and a korean guy who I had met in london. I wondered how you could invite your friend to live in such a small place, with no privacy, it was crazy.
/In japan, there is not much political awareness about consumerism. In holland or england people would find places to posh or to chique. People in europe seem to prognose the future a lot. In japan people just fall into it. As soon as there is a new thing, they just go for it.
/Sometimes I miss this hardcore capitalism. If capitalism was in balance with nature and the environment, it was a nice thing.
[recorded at a barbecue in berlin in june]