Make Believe Mailer 05: Rando Niigata
Snow, rice, and existential dread
September has been the first month of 2020 that feels vaguely normal in Japan. COVID-19 has been pushed out of the main headlines by Shinzo Abe stepping down from the Prime Minister position and Yoshihide Suga rising up…and the fact overall numbers are down again. More tellingly (and more anecdotal), it feels like the familiar activities of pre-coronavirus life…or at least a mask-on, hand-sanitizer-in-pocket version made for the times…have come back. I see more people traveling around the country, eating out or going to shows and club events, which have started coming back to clubs across major cities. While the live industry isn’t out of the clear yet, it has been surprising to watch all-nighters going off around Tokyo and attempts at festivals going off with seemingly no incident in Osaka.
The real change, though, has been in what people are willing to risk potential infection for as measures and requests loosen up once again. It’s ultimately a personal decision, and I’ve been surprised at what I’m willing to do and avoid. I’ve started riding trains regularly again, but I turn down any invitation to go to a bar. Ditto for music events, which were once a common occurrence of pre-2020 life for me but might be near the bottom of the list of “things I’m eager to do now” (congrats “cruise ship” for finishing in the gorge, though). Even seemingly safer efforts — outdoor raves and drive-in shows — feel a bit like a novelty right now, or maybe just too much effort.
Yet I’m completely willing to go on a three-day press tour of Niigata Prefecture for work, where this week’s newsletter comes from.After a 6 a.m. Shinkansen ride, I spend all Wednesday morning being shepherded around Southern Niigata by two men helping promote the prefecture abroad. Most of the trip is silent, but one 10 minute stretch sees the older advisor playing Christopher Cross’ “Arthur’s Theme” out of the blue. “This is such a hard song to study English with,” he says, and it’s tough to argue that point…don’t you have to watch Arthur to even get half of it?
The whole reason for this trip — and almost every government-sponsored jaunt featuring a journalist thrown from the comfort of the big city for a place where farming equipment outnumbers the local human population — is to find new angles on how to promote Niigata for tourism with visitors from places like the United States, Australia and the U.K. This task — please help us sell this prefecture best known for rice and snow to people who mostly want to hang out in Tokyo — came at a moment where I was confronting my own personal dread over what I’ve been doing with music writing for ten years, and the growing feeling of futility in trying to share what’s happening in Japanese music and why it deserves attention. I went into this trip picturing it as a slight break from said thoughts — I even took a Twitter break so I wouldn’t get all existential! — but seeing every new stretch of rice fields triggered some familiar mental dread.
Though let’s be clear…Niigata rules. I tend to get excited about anywhere that isn’t Tokyo after spending so much time in the city, but Niigata generally is gorgeous and full of delicious food. The main focus of this promotional visit has been on art, as the Echigo-Yuzawa portion of the prefecture is full of art just out and about, centered around the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field. It’s charming to go somewhere…even a place that my guides have described as “kind of depressing” due to the declining population found in all rural areas…and just see quirky art exhibits inside abandoned schools and next to farms. Though that starts some mental pangs too — Niigata deserves attention! Take the two hour train ride up!
It takes one hour for Negicco to come up in conversation. “Patrick, have you ever interviewed idols, like Nogizaka46?” one guide asks me after they learn what the bulk of my writing is about. Ah, time for a relevant namedrop! “Actually, I interviewed Negicco a few years ago.” This gets both of them excited. “Negicco?! Wow, that brings me back. They broke up right?” They sure didn’t. Even bigger shock. Then the two fondly recall times the trio worked with the Niigata government for promotional purposes.
Posing the question “who is the most famous musician from Niigata” proves to be a real challenge. Save for a joking “Negicco” response (poor Negicco!), the two think for several minutes, settling on Sachiko Kobayashi, an enka singer best known for performing on gigantic sets that look like animals and other things, including herself. It’s a good choice, but also just made me think about the promo video she made with Negicco, above. All roads lead back to Negicco.
“There’s a dick over there!” A random older man tells the three of this while we stroll through the otherwise tranquil Saifukuji Temple grounds. I’m not sure any of us understand why he has blurted this out — no intro, no bridge towards such a jarring declaration — but lo and behold, up a set of stairs sits a statue of a penis, offering good fertility luck to anyone who wants a child. Even with this context, I feel like I’ve stumbled into a Weird Japan trap…and get why people get so caught off guard by them. Also definitely took a picture.
A different kind of surprise came earlier in the trip, as the whole first day of the Niigata tour played out in the same area as the Fuji Rock Festival, postponed in 2020 and maybe happening in 2021. Driving around wasn’t quite a replacement for actually going to the fest, but I did feel a thrill seeing a skiing town during the offseason — one of my favorite parts of going to Fuji Rock. There’s something eerie about it, and a welcome feeling in a year where nothing felt familiar.
Japan’s bubble era has become defined by bright neon, city pop and people talking about peak capitalism. All fair, but this trip reminded me just as important to it all was excess…like how you could once get a direct flight to Hawaii from Niigata. I could barely get over the fact Niigata has an international airport, but that was a whole other level, and maybe even wilder than people putting gold in their food or whatever.
Besides getting off Twitter for the week, I’m also traveling with a computer where the sound doesn’t work (thanks to a doomed attempt at using Microsoft Teams…please please bring back in-person meetings), so I’m missing out on all new music releases this week. Finding modern pop music in rural Japan proves to be a tough task, but there’s one reliable place to discover what’s happening in J-pop — convenience stores. This is all to say that, while most Perfume fans could watch the music video for “Time Warp” (above, looks wild with no sound), I was able to hear an extended preview version of it in a Family Mart connected to a train station.
Not sure how to wrap up this semi-stream of consciousness…uhhhh, Twitter breaks are good? Visit Niigata? You can fly to Niigata?…but perhaps it should all come back to Negicco and the fact they are very much still going, appearing on local Niigata TV to perform their latest (Hitomitoi and Parkgolf created!) song. Well, I assume that’s what they are doing…I can hear things on a computer again tomorrow.
