umi

Yesterday, akai SKY played at the Asian Heritage Street Celebration. We played at the Civic Center stage which had an amazing view of City Hall.

The stage is just to the left of the photo. It’s kind of amazing to play while looking out on it.

Before going on stage, I had some time to wander around and fair and check out all the booths and eat some fair food. I had a tasty taco made of Korean Bulgogi meat and bought a really large red velvet cupcake that I wasn’t able to finish.

When we arrived at around 3:30PM it was a nice, warm day but by the time we got on stage at 5:00PM, the fog had rolled in and a blustery wind had kicked up. I played bass without being able to feel my fingers! But we had a good crowd that stuck out the cold weather with us, so I can’t complain too much.

Although our EP, Tokyo Beat Riot, hasn’t officially been released yet – we got a batch of our CDs yesterday and decided to sell them after our show. We sold so many! Thanks to everyone that purchased one. And to everyone that wasn’t able – we’ll be making the CD available to own soon enough – no more of this low-quality streaming stuff!

It’s been a while since I made a casual blog post no? Time to check in again with the world of Umi.

Lately it feels like I can’t live life casually. Like everyone, I have a list of things to do, but lately it seems my list of things to do in the evening and the weekend is getting longer and longer. So long, I sometimes catch myself goofing off by surfing the Internet or lazily watching TV on the couch for too long and tell myself I’ll give myself an day off of my to-do list.  But, doing that too much is making the list REALLY long!

I was proud of myself yesterday for being really productive all night. I worked out, practiced bass, cooked dinner, prepared my lunch for the next day and cleaned my bathroom.  That doesn’t sounds like much huh? But trust me, I only ever seem to have enough time to work out and then eat, not even enough time to make lunch. Or worse yet sometimes I work out and practice bass and then end up going to sleep without eating at all!

Drink Me

… since everyone knows that posts without pictures are really boring – here is one! Three mocktails lined up all in a row from an Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter’s Tea Party I attended before the movie was release. You can read more about that party, in my Carousel of Crowns blog post.

Long time no blog, eh? akai SKY has been quietly preparing and recording our first EP. We haven’t decided when we’ll release it yet, but it should be soon.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a scary/gross story…. about the time I came home last week and found a giant spider hanging out on a curtain in my bedroom. OK – it wasn’t a tropical-sized tarantula or anything but it was plenty big – about the size of my thumb plus legs.

Bleh!

I know what some of you will say. “It’s just a bug.” “It’s more scared of you than you are of it.” Well, I wasn’t about to just pretend it didn’t exist, go to sleep and have that thing bite or walk all over my face thank you. I caught it, named it Melinda and escorted it off the premises. And by escorting, I actually mean I flushed it down the toilet.

And that’s just the latest episode of the spider invasion. Where the heck are these things coming from!?

Merry Christmas, and to the British folks, Happy Christmas! Hope you are all having a wonderful day however you’ve chosen to spend it. I thought now would be the perfect time to spread a little Christmas cheer by sharing some photos of Christmas decorations I found while visiting Hong Kong and Tokyo recently.

Large Christmas Tree in the lobby of my hotel

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Still a little jetlagged, but I’ve been back from vacation for about six days now. I flew on JAL. My very favorite thing about flying JAL is that they serve Yuzu, a citrus non-carbonated soft drink. Tasty!

JAL Skytime Yuzu, the best non-carbonated drink served on an airline EVER!

Although I flew out on Thanksgiving Day and missed dinner with my family, the airline food wasn’t bad. They didn’t serve turkey or mashed potatoes, but they did serve this!

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