The Other East

While May was a slow news month, TOE busted out some great content that is just a hint of what’s to come from collaborating with HearJapan.com. Not to forget the pen/keyboard of TOE’s Japan based writer Remy Zane. This month saw the debut of what will be a great deal of concert coverage. To clarify the Hear Japan arrangement; Hear Japan gets TOE the press pass, Remy writes the concert review, we post the concert report here first, then a little later Hear Japan posted the concert reports on their site. All reports that have involved Hear Japan’s help have been, and will continue to be noted as such. Of course TOE will continue to go out and cover concerts independently as well. I’ve put in press requests for Otakon and Vamps, and Remy covered the multiband event Kuki no Shindo as well as X Japan’s May 3rd Tokyo Dome show.

With Hear Japan’s help he also reported on a a:vout’s first maxi-single debut party which featured a pile of up and coming Jrock bands (α:Vout / Ageha Biscuits / Jewel / XodiacK / OtogaDead / Scapegoat / Velqrow ). Later in the month he covered the old and the new coming together when King Show and Merry opened for Versailles in Tokyo

Next month he’s looking into covering Kaya, Nobuchika Eri, and D=out. Nothing is set in stone of course, it could end up being a number of completely different shows. Check back to see.

On the news side of things:
-An informant brought us behind the scenes photographs that suggests X Japan is paying models to attend X Japan shows in the audience

-D’erlanger announced their rumored Taiwan concert

-X Japan re-announced their “Best” album

-The Killing Red Addiction Re-scheduled their LA concert

-I upgraded my photography equipment

-LM.C canceled their Akon concert over swine flu

On pen names:
If you’ve talked to me over the internet or in person you know that I don’t use my real name do to respect for a legendary photo-journalist baring the same name as me. I’ve been using Shichi as my user tag on The Other East for a few months now as a place holder as I try to think of a good pen name. If you don’t speak Japanese, shichi means seven which is my lucky number. I’d like to come up with something soon, I have to decide if I want to do some sort of H.P. Lovecraft style abbreviation or just make up some entirely new name.

Oh don’t forget to enter our contest to win Versailles’ new DVD