ST vs S-T

Since this is going to be a blog about my personal experiences in Japan (as in, this isn't exactly meant to be a guide for those who want to study abroad but more of a blog so that my family and friends can know what's going on), I need to explain a couple of activities I'm really involved in right now.

This might be a surprise to some of you; I don't talk about what I do in my free time very often because it usually takes a while to explain and I just don't want to make the effort to spend 10 minutes explaining to every single person who asks me.

So, referring to the blog title, let's start with ST.

ST stands for Street Team.

I'm a fan of GACKT, a reeeeally famous musician in Japan. He's had a career since before I was even born. Recently, though, he started (and ended already R.I.P) a project called YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz (YFC). He basically took members from other bands and added them to his own. One of the new members, vocalist Jon Underdown, is the singer of a band called fade.

fade is not famous. If anything, a lot of their recent fans most likely found them through YFC, including me. They have a heavy, melodious, varied but distinct rock sound. I might dedicate a second post to explaining who they are and why I'm so involved with them, but this is about the Street Team.

Some time ago (bad memory), fade announced they were recruiting worldwide street team members. It was free and I was at a point where I thought about what I wanted to do in the future a lot. I knew I wanted to do something involved in the music industry, but I wasn't (and still am not) sure what. Either way, I decided, I should start getting involved as much as possible.

A street team is basically fans who do free legwork for the band. In my case, it involved updating Twitter and Facebook accounts as often as possible to get the word out about fade, as well as being involved in smaller projects like being in a collaborative music video which still hasn't been released yet. In March 2012, I got the AMAZING opportunity to actually volunteer at their first-ever show in NYC. It's about a 4 hour journey from my home university, but I was crazy enough to do it. I was introduced to all the band members, the band manager - everyone involved. The best part was that they already recognized me from Twitter, which I thought was a little embarrassing...I thought it meant I had been Tweeting them too much.

Anyways, that's what I do on the street team. I try to raise awareness about fade. That also ties in to what I'm doing this Saturday; I'm going to fade's concert in Shibuya! I'm going to work on a USA Street Team project while I'm there, so I might get to talk to the band again, but no promises. Either way, it should be a ton of fun and I'm excited to see them after 6 months.

Now let's talk about S-T: Shattered-Tranquility.net.

You should know by now that I like visual kei. I explained it in the last post. About a month before I came to Japan, I noticed S-T had a "seeking volunteer news staff" ad on their page. Still in my "let's get involved!" streak, I applied on a whim. I didn't hear anything for a couple of weeks and wasn't expecting to receive any word, but a couple of weeks before I got here, I was informed that I was accepted! So, my other "hobby" is to look up visual kei news; this usually involves directly translating news from Japanese band sites (like concert dates, new releases, etc...larger translations are left to the translation staff).

It's a blessing and a curse. I love that I'm learning more about this genre that I love so much, but it's definitely going to burn a hole in my wallet. The more concerts I find out about, the more I want to go. I might even end up getting a part-time job, haha.



So, I hope you understand the point of this post. When people ask, "What do you do in your down time?" my answer will probably be something like, "street team work" or, "writing articles." They're kind of weird hobbies, I guess, but I'm not planning on stopping them anytime soon.