Flaming

Man, I can't believe I forgot to tell you all about the happenings of, oh, three weeks ago. I mean, Beppu in flames, priceless works of art in Fukuoka and rare indie J-rock...what was I thinking?

First, on the final day of spring break I took a day off where I would otherwise be in the town office doing the backbreaking job of sitting and reading a book (it was Ayn Rand, so that sort of constitutes work) to jet over Fukuoka way with my friend Chizuru and generally get some damn culture into our bloodstreams. Chizuru, I think, has it worse than me in this respect--she's had to move back to Hita to help her parents at the family music shop after almost a decade of living in Tokyo with a rock star boyfriend. Harsh. Anyways, we specifically wanted to visit the Asian Art Museum, but regretfully found out it's closed every Wednesday. Why is that exactly? Instead of that we were forced to take in the Fukuoka City Art Museum since it's the only other one we knew of and it's easy to reach by subway. I don't think either of us were disappointed with the decision since the museum is stocked with some damn impressive works. What is the Fukuoka City Art Museum doing with, like, three Marc Chagalls, a massive Salvador Dali, one of the Warhol Campbell's Soup Cans and a bunch of other cool crap that I can't remember? I think someone's got too much money and nothing to spend it on...


Lunch at my favorite place in Fukuoka, the Riverain Building rooftop greenhouse park thing. Decent lattes, tasty panini, sublime ambiance. That's Chizuru on the left mugging for the camera and, if you're British, telling us all to go f**k ourselves.

From the museum it's a short hop over to Fukuoka's shopping mecca, the Tenjin district. The air around here and in the neighboring district, Nakasu, during the evening is filled with a good deal of electricity. Tenjin is in essence the crossroads of Kyushu pop culture and sees all types. Everywhere you look the space is filled with fashionistas, posers, political extremists, drop-outs, the religiously penitent, punks, bums, "Ze Germans", Mr. and Mrs. Respectable Businessperson and any other category you can think of. But I make the mistake of coming within a kilometer of Tower Records and Chizuru, a craven music junky, smells it and locks on. She spends almost every penny she has in there. I buy a Sergio Mendez album and a rare PolyABC (a mostly defunct indie J-rock band out of Tokyo) album. I love this damn city!


ZOMG, a CLOCK FOUNTAIN!!! The Central Fukoka City Hall sure knows how the spice up boring old time.

OK, moving on to the other event of note that week: The Burning of Beppu! No, not the whole city, just a mountainside behind the city. And, uh, they do it every year. Not much to say about this, I think the pics will speak for themselves. I wish I'd gotten some closer shots, but the city was bedlam that Friday night as you'd imagine when such a spectacle is put on.


Yes! I finally figured out how to use the night exposure command on my camera! Maybe it's not such a piece of crap after all. No, wait, it's a total POS. What was thinking...

--Matt