china - korea - japan

apologies those of you who actually do follow this blog, i have been really bad with updates!
i will update for the remainder of july in journal form as there is much to write...

8th july - early start, train to shanghai, negotiate shanghai subway and find mcdonalds i am directed to to find their internet service is not working. thankfully i have my friend josie's phone no. so borrow a young lad's phone and call her. we meet,drop off my stuff and head out to visit the pudong area. as i said before, shanghai is so different from beijing, all high rise and bright lights!

9th july - i visit people's square and the contemporary art museum, recording general city sounds, then later josie and i go for amazing dumplings in a place local to her apartment.

10th july - visit rockbund art gallery - very cool 1920's building with good exhibition of paola pivi work. meet top chinese sound artist/musician yan jun at the swatch art peace hotel where he is artist in residence - amazing high end hotel - i immediately decide to apply for a residency also! we meet with some more local musicians called zuzhi, go for food, then are also met by my old friend lin zhang. very good to catch up with him.

11th july - meet with josh atkin,a brit who has been based in shanghai for a couple of years, and we have a delicious noodle soup and chat about music and life. i return to josie's to tool up for the concert, then meet yan jun to perform with him in someone's living room. the concert is great, with us playing through headphones for the gathered audience. quite a challenge to play in this way, but rewarding, and fun. then we all head to a street barbecue place which is, as you will guess, really good!! thanks to yan jun for inviting me to join him. it would be a pleasure to work with him again...

12th july - an attempt to find a gallery run is thwarted by heavy rain and general uselessness on my part! so i wander around a huge shopping mall while it pours down and then once the rain stops i head west to some alleyways and quiet areas of shanghai.

13th july - i haven't mentioned how hot and humid shanghai was while i was there, so the friday was a relaxed affair, catching up with admin and making the most of joies's aircon! i have to thank josie so much for her hospitality - i really appreciate you having me stay! and i hope one day i can return the favour!!
mid-afternoon i headed to the main railway station to meet lin and his wife, and we traveled to a town called hangzhou together. although only an hour or so away, i realised how easy i had it in the bigger cities. it became very obvious that very few people in china speak english... the hotel i was in had only one member of staff that had any english at all and his was really limited!

14th july- lin comes to meet me at the hotel at 5am and we embark on an early morning trip to record the (much quieter) sounds of hangzhou. we hire bikes and explore various parts on the outskirts of the city, capturing some good stuff and generally hanging out. by early afternoon we are flagging so head back to our respective beds and sleep. i am invited to lin's in-laws for the evening for a meal so head out in the heavy rain around 7pm to try and get a taxi - we had already had problems getting one in hangzhou when we arrived and me being a foreigner (because of the language problem, not racism!!), and the weather, made it impossible to get any to stop for me, so eventually lin came to collect me. we had a lovely evening and the food was incredible! and visiting a couple of pubs afterwards where live bands playing odd choices of cover versions completed the evening nicely!

15th july (happy birthday to my bro) - i leave the hotel around 11am, and wander around hangzhou for the next 8 hours, just exploring and recording. a really nice, hot but relaxing day.and witnessing countless newlywed (or soon to be wed) couples having their photographs taken in any piece of parkland. very strange. then back to shanghai.

16th july - fly to seoul, korea. i am met by  ryu hankil and my brother carl, who flew in 8 hours or so earlier. we drop bags off and then go for (delicious!) porkrib barbecue and soju! a perfect start to my visit to korea!

17th july - carl and i wander around the local area, finding our bearings, trying to find a streetmap and good places to eat where they have picture menus or menus in english. this didn't last as there are not too many in the area we were staying in. i should mention, we were housed in the mullae art center, which is a fantastic place to be and thanks hankil for arranging!

18th july - we visit the cheonggyecheon palace for a few hours and then try and find the folk flea market, which takes forever to try and then we just stumble across! i buy a replacement violin (possibly) bow for a couple of bucks so it was definitely worth finding!!

19th july - meet hankil, visit art center nabi, then head to an area of seoul that has lots of alleyways, gallery shops and coffee shops - quite a gentrified area that is good to wander around, then to a building that houses a music market, so you can buy any equipment you'd ever need - i bought some much needed rosin for the bow... we then meet with ji-heun, who is best friends with my buddy soo in bristol, and also sungah, ji-heun's sister, and we go for some more amazing food and then tea afterwards. and these lovely ladies paid for it all! thank you so much!!

20th july - carl and i head to the museum of contemporary art, which is surprisingly far out and takes ages to get to - unfortunate as i had to return to the art center to prepare for a concert that night. this only left us around 45 minutes to actually see the place. plus i had developed ahead cold through forgetting to turn off the aircon the previous night. things got a little tense, but we worked through it... the concert was hosted by jin sangtae at his space 'dotolim' - an apartment, but a great, intimate space. and we had a good sized audience who seemed to enjoy the show. sangtae, hankil and i performed two sets as a duo, the second of which worked much better than the first i feel... then out for more great food and soju! a shame my headcold stopped me enjoying a longer night out, but i was exhausted way too early...

21st july - a brief coffee with hankil and then we head to the north seoul tower to try and catch the sunset, which we miss completely! we do go up in the tower however, which has amazing views across the city, but strong lighting inside the tower does detract somewhat from that...also, because of a massive queue for the cable car to the top, we decide to climb the hill to the tower, going the wrong way at one point. hard, hot work, but kind of fun, and just as hard on the thighs coming down!

22nd july - travel to mokpo in an attempt to visit jeju island. we get to the ferry terminal to find we missed the only ferry on a sunday by about 3 hours! so we check in to a motel very close to the terminal and head out to explore a rocky outcrop close to where we stay. we see the sun set from the top, then head into mokpo for something to eat. details of what i actually did eat in korea are sketchy as for some reason i didn't write them down, and half the time didn't know what it was called anyway - apologies for this - it was all great though!!

23rd july - travel to jeju by ferry and then check in to a hostel really close to one we had booked, but way cheaper! only one bed, but fortunately there's a mattress i can roll out to sleep on on the floor. i don't have a problem with sharing a bed with my bro in principle, but when he kicks me in the night i'd rather not!! ;-)

24th july - we walk in the hottest part of the day once again to find the bus terminal and visit the seongsan ichulbong crater to the east of the island. it's so hot and the climb to the crater is strenuous, but thankfully not too long. and nicely breezy up top! on our return to jeju city wehave a problem with not being able to order one meal between the two of us, as had have done countless times before, so end up in a great little place where i try dog soup for the first time. and it's actually pretty tasty!

25th july - visit to halla mountain to try and visit the huge crater there, but as we climb, knowing it's an 8-9 hour round trip,we see signs that tell us if we don't reach a certain point of the mountain by 1pm we can go no further. we continue up, then take a steep side path to a smaller crater where i get some nice photos and hydrophone recordings and we eat lunch on the bank of the crater lake. a round trip of around 4 hours back to the bus stop, we realise to do the whole climb would have been really hard!

26th july - back to seoul by ferry and then 5hr train journey, taking in the scenery.and back to the barbecue place hankil took us to the first night!

27th - an easy day wandering around the gallery area, which is pleasant, if a bit touristy...and then one more helping of dog soup, this time much more heavy on the dog meat. the regulars seemed really impressed we were there, eating dog and drinking soju...!

28th - visit seoul musuem of art (sema) which has some nice stuff (marred by an awful audio tour!) and where i saw an amazing film: 'the cloud of unknowing' by ho tzu nyen. find it and watch it! time for the second concert in seoul, this time at lowrise, an abandoned workshop space perfect for these type of events!
the evening was a great success, with all the artists playing very different styles that complemented each other, although the high volume of the preceding acts happened to affect my performance so i played very softly (for once!). carl and i stayed up drinking soju until it got light, and then slept until mid-afternoon the 29th! we did venture out around 6pm with a new artist in residence, debbie ding from singapore, and had a chicken rice soup that has a whole chicken in it! perfect for a hangover!! it caused us to sleep further, then go out and drink a few beers outside the local gs25 convenience store!

30th - carl leaves seoul at 9am - sad to see him go,and it felt totally weird then being there without him! i headed to the art centre at changdong for a meeting with curator heejung park and also got to spend time with tao, a slovenian artist thereon a residency who had also performed at lowrise on 28th. then a meeting with hankil and soojung at art center nabi to discuss my possible return to seoul in the future. i left them after an hour to meet once again with ji-heun and sungah, and then when hankil joined us we went for dumpling soup. once again great to see them all and a perfect end to my visit.thank you all for everything!!

31st - fly to japan, chatting to a very interesting officer of the us army all the way there. amazing how you have expectations of someone like that and they totally blow you away by their liberal views and opinions of their own government.... arrive at the capsule hotel that is to be my home for a night and explore the asakusa area, firstly with camera and then with recording gear. funny things, capsules, because they are basically an enclosed bunk bed! not bad at all really!

1st august i head to yokohama where i meet with all round great guy marcos fernandes, who is currently hosting me. more soon...