Bento Album Release Party

Bento Album Release Party
Originally uploaded by asahimaku.

Well that's it. It's all over for the Bento Boys. It started out as a little off-the-cuff drunken whim and then went from there. Last Saturday Rob and I got Bar 135's in Uozu for the night (well, up until the England game that is!) for our Album Release Party and attempted to pack the place with as many punters as possible. It was a nice way to draw a line under the whole project.

But we also had a little surprise up our sleeves - the first and last Bento Boys live performance. An idea that had only come into effect the previous night whilst round at Rob's house in Unazuki after a couple of beers and a yakisoba down at Gosaro.

It all went well on the night. Having consumed enough alcohol to not care about shouting down a mic at a crowd of people standing merely centimetres away, it went swimmingly. We also managed to sell about 50 CD's - which ain't bad.

But selling CD's of course was never the most important thing for me or Rob. We pushed ourselves to complete an album because we wanted to do something properly. Something by which we could both remember our times in Japan. A souvenir really. That was our only objective. We did it for ourselves and if other people like it, then that's a bonus.

I can honestly say that listening to any of the songs on the album conjures such strong images in my mind. Each song has so much personal meaning attached to it, most of which aren't anything to do with the lyrics. Like a familiar smell it will always take me back to the good and bad times I had in Japan, probably more so than the umpteen photographs have.

I can think back to the long and cold winter days back in February, holed up in my apartment waiting for the weekend, when we could thrash out the next Bento track over a couple bottles of wine. What a great thing making music is! During a time when I really had no idea why I was still in Japan or what I as doing, the Bento Boys was something I always looked forward to. It was not an escape as such, just something that could make light of the bad times and laugh at them. It's probably why on half of the tracks the music is quite dark and melancholy and yet the lyrics are silly. Laughter is the best medicine. And what better way, when one is feeling shit, than to have joke about it.

But I am not saying that the Bento Boys is just something that has been conceived from misery. Without trying to sound too pretentious, for me it will bring back all the emotions of the good and the bad, the rough with the smooth. Most of the photos I have are usually of happy times with friends, of excursions, famous sites, or interesting Japanese things. But the Bento Boys album for me has everything - the happy times and the crappy times. It will be the one of only a handful of things which I will make absolutely sure I don't forget when I'm getting on the plane home.