update 02_LEARN, THEN LIVE
Guess who!?
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Well, they say that I overstay my welcome sometimes. It's been an even longer cycle than what I have thought and I do apologize for being not there when the site is most needed. I can say that I have gone through a complete transformation from a person with nothing to say to a person that will come for your neck. I guess that injecting my system with Japanese hip-hop for a year really changed my attitude with people. You'd feel a different energy from my previous City Journals with this one and I suggest you to look back at the Okaiken entries to see the transformation.
Thank you to the first nine people who commented on the first update (@Namiko [thanks for coming to Japan with me by the way, t'was a great adventure], @TekindusT, @sejr99999, @TowerDude, @Tokyu (Kelis), @kschmidt, @Harry's Place, @korver). We'll see how many of you guys are still here this time around. Less expletives, more dialogues, more roughed up stories sent straight from Sagamihara. More beef, yo. I'm not that cool enough to be a gangsta you see on the street but I know what the implications are. I'm a storyteller, a maker, an architect and a presenter. We give out our views through media and I'd like to show you how I update mine using multimedia that you guys are familiar with. It does not need to be multifaceted or overly detailed. It just needs to connect to your audience.
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Ready?
02_LEARN, THEN LIVE
Disclaimer: Please watch the video on its entirety. After the video, you can begin the Spotify playlist located at the information message above.
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記憶の手引き
点を線に
紐解く旅路
Maybe I’m a soul searching
Maybe I’m too deep in conscious
- SEEDA, Live and Learn (2006)
[Expletive], I really hate pop culture. I do not understand how people like those kinds of propaganda. I was not into anime or even those cute evil idols (either male or female) that I am used to seeing every day.
What was the name of that anime again where a red-haired, "cute" and over-powered teenager gets all the attention? I had already forgotten. They were what was wrong with this country; scandals predominated here and there and the government did not give a [Expletive] about it, kind of like how they don't regulate toonie [Expletive]. Then just like that, TV-Chino had a change of heart, and they began to listen to the people who are tired of the same [Expletive] each night. They removed anime from their evening/night lineup and instead focus on three shows past 9p.m.: Music Plus, a pop oriented music show; Yachatta, a comedy show; and Concrete Jungle, a music/urban show that explores deep into what people actually like right now.
I say that it was both a blessing and a curse for me, the government changed the late-evening timeslot used to carry cheesy shows starring idols to a music showcase for genres that do not get much love on TV. The government also regulated talent agencies and regulated how media is being distributed. At the same time, there is also a lot of censorship involved (sarcasm), and I somewhat felt-- Nah, I do not really feel bad for them, good riddance to pretentious [Expletive].
Okay, I am going a little bit off tangent here that I have forgotten to introduce myself to you. I'm Yuto. Nice to meet you, stranger. You can call me "Yu-san" if you're cool with that; and welcome the port city of Hashima. Hashima... well it's an island but not far from the mainland so there are bridges and all that so you can bring your ride to the island but I just walk around or take the subway.
I was born in Hashima but my family moved abroad when I was about three years old. We settled in Seattle and I learned English while I was in elementary school. My dad was an office worker at an advertising agency, I believe it was Dentsu. We moved back to Hashima when I was about 10 years old. I had no [Expletive] clue on how to speak Japanese when we came back so I started hanging out with the "haafus" -- Gon and Ban, who were both half-Malawian. We joined a local football club in my high school and with other people formed our gang called Sai-bais. It's not really a gang per se, but rather a group of people interested with hanging out.
I usually hang out with my gang at the docks near the cruise terminal. I usually see a lot of rich girls on their suite balconies while us poor guys in the dock hang out and talk about which ones we'd like the best. Gon-chan would always say that people on the eighth deck are better than the ones higher up because he could see them better. We'd always scream towards the cruise ship. Not like that they'd hear us anyway.
About Gon-chan. I guess he had moved somewhere. I haven't seen him in about 4 years now. He just left us without telling what's wrong. I know for a fact that he is not dead though since his closest friend said that he had lost interest with the gang when he moved further away from the port. When Gon-chan left, things started to go wrong here. Three years ago the gang started fighting other groups for turf and even involved the local "Gumi" chapter to break up the conflict between the gang and another group from another turf.
I left the gang about a year later to pursue something different and I heard from someone that Ban-chan had been involved in an accident inside the docks. The shipping company gated us out of our spot and now the group hangs out in one of the city's abandoned "funaya" shops, or so that's what I heard. Ban-chan visited me a few weeks ago and told me that he got employed as a construction worker. I always worried about Ban-chan's safety since the accident but I'd rather have him responsible this time. He chose that path after all.
I pursued a career in music and eventually landed on Hashima's hip-hop scene. I participated on freestyle competitions and was the representative of Hashima for the UMB Freestyle championships held here last year. I placed second after Mu-Ton. Check out his new song "Spin Me Around"; that's the [Expletive] right there. So far, my career has been moderately successful with a little hardship now and then. I mean I should probably be investing my money towards some sort of retirement but I refuse to go the path of a robot.
One of those hardships involved an old friend of mine who chose to be some sort of a rival instead. Look, I don't look for any fights when it comes to my music and I respect someone's action when he needs it to be. Anywho, I used to be friends with someone named Emi when I was competing at UMB. He seemed to be nice. He liked a little bit of the hip-hop culture but he like to talk about anime a lot. Look, I'm not into those things. I grew up in Seattle and I found anime to be dry. He likes Slam Dunk and credits his entry to hip-hop after seeing the NBA embrace hip-hop music. His style was akin to Jay-Z or something. I honestly don't know. My style was similar to Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man or to Raekwon with a little bit of the Hashima dialect. It's quite serious and funny at the same time, if you'd like to listen to it.
We'd like to talk about our differences a lot. We are both well-versed in the world of hip-hop and I even invited him to the new hip-hop collective called Jumperz to see if he wanted to connect with some people with Hashima or to producers from around the world. One of the producers of Jumperz came from some city in Austria (Salzburg I believe), and our album artist was from Alphen aan den Rijn in the Netherlands. At first he seemed to be alright, and there were fruitful discussions when there need be, such as how to freestyle differently and what are the trends in hip-hop right now.
About six months ago, just as I am about to embark on a journey to Seattle for two weeks, Emi went to Kuala Lumpur for a vacation with his posse and when he returned he started to be a little sour. He began arguing with members of Jumperz and started to think like he's above everyone else. "I am the best [Expletive] in town," he says. One of his songs was called Shining and every person that I talked to say it was garbage. Is this what people should be listening to nowadays?
I can see the changes of his attitude on his lyrics too. Apparently all he says is "I'm above everyone else and hip-hop is me". This [Expletive] isn't cool at all. I'm chill though, because I'm not the one that feeds trolls and haters on the internet like that. We'd give him his medicine and he'd just freaks out like a little [Expletive]. Just yesterday the Austrian producer published his instrumental mixtape and he claims that all of those tunes came from his producer...
And then the Yozawa Shinbun article appeared saying that he had stolen one of the mixtapes when I went to Seattle, probably out of jealousy. I can think of it as some mathematician finding the process for the solution but not actually blurting out the answer. All I can say is that he looks trapped in his own world and probably just clucked like a chicken all the time. I don't mind it anyway since I surround myself with good friends and I'd probably waste my time trying to deal with it but I just can't help it. They say in the hip-hop world: you ain't gonna live without your posse.
My posse came into my mind when I first said it, and I was like "why not come back to Hashima?" I immediately went after my visit to Seattle and I immediately went to the "funaya" occupied by the Sai-bai Gang to see how everyone is doing within the group. It just happened that Ban-chan was on his way to the "funaya" from work. Just as I opened the door:
"Gon-chan?"
"Wassup my brotha!"
Gon-chan had a lot of stories to tell, but first I told him about my little problem with Mr. Suppai and he answered "Emi Maruchika?" He was an [expletive] all the time. I never trusted him. I found out that Gon-chan moved to Chino to work as a studio producer and rapper for another group called GEEK. He had done a little rapping here and there on their tracks but he returned to Hashima to see how we're all doing with the Sai-Bai Gang. He noticed my face when I was competing for the UMB championship and tried to approach me after the event but was instead stuck to an after party hosted by Emi.
"Shall we beef then? He was one slick snake."
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I waited one year to find a new inspiration for this project. I can't just sit on the corner and waiting for my friends to take the shot. I'd need to shoot my shot as well. So with love, welcome to the Concrete Jungle.
Fictional characters. Not based on a true story. SEEDA "Live and Learn", "花と雨" ©2006 KSR; "Come Back" ©2017 Chaki Zulu; SEEDA and OKI (GEEK) "TERIYAKI BEEF" ©2009 Ghetto Hollywood. Mu-Ton "Spin Me Around" ©2018 SPACE SHOWER MUSIC. All real life photos ©2018 Carl Sotomil. SimCity 4 Photos ©2018 Carl Sotomil. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of this update or its contents are strictly prohibited.
Concrete Jungle. Because we meant serious beef.
学ぶ、そして生きる
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