Mijk van Dijk in Japan, October 2013

After my wonderful live performance at WIRE13, I was back for a couple of DJ gigs to Japan at the end of October. After many years I came back to Okinawa on October 26th for club Central. By the time I flew to the most southern island of Japan, it was still uncertain if we could land in Naha or had to be redirected to Kobe, due to typhoon #27, which luckily changed direction and moved from the Okinawa coast out to the open sea.
But the still stormy rain made sightseeing merely impossible. Just before my show then I received a lot of Facebook messages from German friends, who heard on the news that again an earthquake with a strength of 7.5 had happened in the sea before Tokyo, causing a tidal wave that might even hit the ruins of the Fukushima nuclear plant. My Yurekuru earth quake app listed only a strength of 4.0 and my friend Ramon Zenker, who played with the mighty Hardfloor in Tokyo that night later told me that he also did not feel any earthquake, but only the rumble of the bass of the sound system at Club Air.
The party in Okinawa was nice, I don’t remember when I had so many pictures taken in a backstage.
Next night I played in Tokyo on October 27th at Mogra, where I had DJed already 2 years ago on a very intense party. So glad to be back!
This time I played a DJ set only with my own music, old and new, classics and unreleased tracks. The overwhelming reaction of the fine people at Mogra was enhanced by some pre-birthday celebration activities for my friend Toby Izui, who played before me and later back to back with me the encores.
It was a hell of a party, thank you to everybody who was there.
On Monday 28th October I was invited for an interview and live performance at Michiyo Honda’s music share program at OTOTOY web TV. I had a translated discussion with Toby and Kengo Watanabe about my music, Berlin and the German techno scene.
Then I performed some tunes live, again with Michiyo and Kaori as my singers. I played a couple of new tunes, including “Loveback”, the lead track of my first single on microglobe productions. I changed the words a bit to express my hope that the love will come back to Sendai and Fukushima as well. Spontaneous applause from the audiance for that one.
Also on the show: Katsuhiro Chiba, performing only with his self-programmed Max 4 Live instruments. If you are into Ableton Live with Max 4 Live, make sure to check his M4L patches. I personally love his adaption of the DX100/ TX81Z called OpFour. Think Solid Bass!
The forth highlight was the 50th birthday of my friend Toby at Club Oiran in Tokyo. Check the pictures on the linked article.
And as a special highlight, I also travelled up north to Hokkaido for the first time to visit Sapporo and Otaru, both wonderful cities which again showed me a new side of Japan.
I am looking froward to be back in Japan in 2014.