Rambin’ In Akihabara

Bah. I didn’t realize I recorded in mono until I got home. Sorry for all the wind noise. Need to do something about that. I should try to make shorter podcasts from now on.

Show notes:

  • Photos I took during the podcast
  • Photos of Akihabara on flickr.com
  • Laox home page. Pretty typical-looking site for an electronics store in Japan. (Butt ugly.)
  • The lapel mic I used. Model AT9830. (Interestingly enough, there’s a Russian model AT9830 too. She looks like the Grinch in a blond wig.)
  • I mentioned Kappabashi, a neighborhood of Tokyo with stores that sell restaurant supplies, including plastic food.

Being Rich Pavovitch

Hitch a ride inside my head while I roam the streets of Kabukicho in search of…well, audio. My favorite part is when I buy a bottle of green tea from a vending machine and you can hear the sound of me drinking it as if you were there inside my head. The hawkers who try to temp me into their tittie bars, nightclubs and whorehouses won’t take no for an answer until I practically beat them over the head with it. There are a few craptacular camera phone pics in the gallery. I also updated the gallery for last week’s show.

Please don’t announce this podcast to tens of thousands of people. I don’t want to incur the wrath of the bandwidth gods. Let’s leave it as a well-kept secret for now.

The tour was so long that I didn’t get to cover some things I wanted to, like my meeting with Scott Lockman of Tokyo Calling. He came to my company’s office on Thursday evening to discuss a teaching gig. It’s funny how radio guys never look the way you imagine them. Matching the face with the voice for the first time is like watching a movie that’s been dubbed–only difference is the mouth moves in perfect sync with the voice.

My apologies to those of you on dial-up connections–this one’s also a bigun’. Also, sorry for the audio levels being set way too high, but unless you’re an audiophile you probably won’t notice. Just turn the volume down a bit.

Thanks to everyone who left comments. What a nice bunch of people you all are.

Wooooooo Hooooooo!

My first podcast! What an ordeal it is to put one of these things together, but the most fun I’ve had by myself in a long time. Guzzling red wine probably helped.

Intro: Guano Apes

See the photo gallery! If there’s nothing there, I fell asleep before I got a chance to upload photos. Check back later. I’ll get them up, promise.

The JET Program

MasagoroMasagoro’s home page. In addition to being an accomplished artist, fluent in baby talk in two languages and performing original songs on toy piano outside the Shibuya station, a Google search reveals that she’s also a published poet.