LA Part 3: Visiting San Diego and reunion

So our journey to learn and exchange with Westcoast Poppers didn't slow down at all. We even took a trip down to San Diego to see one of the dopest popper of the West. Yes, Jr Boogaloo of Motion Sickness and Machine Gone Funk.

We decided to go because one of my BF (if you want to know why I call him that, just ask me lol), Carlo Manabat, A.K.A C-lo told me how great of a teacher he was. Also, Jr Boogaloo was the only MGF that replied to us really quickly allowing us to plan quick within a limited time we had here in LA lol.

Ok so I actually took a vid. So instead of reading my terribly written blog, enjoy my horrible english accent LMAO

oh and Mr. Ugly as F that makes you ILL!!! lol

The train ride was chill and relaxing because of the space and the beautiful view from out of the window. Open space to infinity. Man California is huge.

Once we got to the station, we met with Jr Boogaloo and drove to his relatives house. On the way to the house, we just kept questioning him about popping nonstop (I tend to do that all the time lol).

He told us how he got his name Jr Boogaloo, and how popping was in the Westcoast back when he was a teenager.

This interview is close to what we heard

What stood out the most in the talk we had was how a popper called Charley from Heckle and Jackel (I think that was either the nickname or their group name) influenced Jr Boogaloo. He told us how he admired his clean but hard pop which till this day is the best quality pop he had ever seen in his life.

Another one was a funny story. As Jr Boogaloo was gaining his reputation as a popper at his neighborhood and school, he came across a name, Poppin Taco. People from different school would tell him how amazing Taco was, therefore, Jr decides to go to the skating link that Taco used to get down often.


Now this is back in the days, Jr didn't know whether Taco would show up or not. It not like nowadays where he will post a FB status letting people know that he will be there. Fortunately, Taco showed up. His friend hyped him up and he was ready.......


But the next moment Taco went POP!


yea that infamous hit from Taco told Jr that he was way out of reach......

Soooooo

He faked a stomachache lol

well how can he not? I'll do the same if I was in his situation to avoid getting the worlds hardest beat down you'll ever get in your life lol

As the conversation was heating up, we got to the practice spot.
We went to the back yard and got ready to get down.

No studio
No mirrors

Just a beautiful sunshine and a clean tropical breeze.

Man we were relaxed....so chill. In my mind I was thinking "this is what it feels like to practice at someones spot in California eh? this is amazing!"

We had roughly an hour and a half of class and after that we just chilled and talked about popping.

Getting down and learning from him was amazing. I haven't clearly figured out nor put enough time to fully understand his methods of popping in my dance yet, however, the way he thinks about popping was DEEP. Also this was the beginning of how we realized the reason behind why Westcoast Poppers have high quality popping standard in general.

To roughly summarize (not going to break down popping technique and all because I think its something that you can only understand by actually seeing and doing it in real life) Popping is more than a dance style to them. Since it is a style of dance that originated in the West, its part of their lifestyle. It isn't a style of dance that they went to a class to learn. It was always there at a casual party, talent show, street show, even in regular family parties and among public community like school.

For this reason, when they work on popping, it is based on concepts and ideas more than just drilling what we so call "basic popping movements".

Don't get me wrong, understanding the fundamentals are essential, and these guys do drill the basics. But they really think outside of the box. Most of the things we learned were something that we never heard of or things that we never thought about.

Because they perfect that idea by patient practice and exchange, it becomes a lethal weapon that smokes dancers in any given cyphers.

After the class, we had to catch a train. He drove us back and we said bye. It was definitely worth taking a train trip to San Diego.
Jr, thank you for your hospitality and class. Your knowledge and the teaching through a get down will forever be remember. Till we see each other again, peace, respect, love and god bless!



After arriving back to LA, I had another great reunion with Kaistar.
We met each other through my crew mate Karlo, few years ago and we kept in touch.

He took us to an Japanese restaurant and we (including underaged Ilya lol) got to drink and eat.

Reunion is always great. But it was even better because Kaistar has been visiting Japan constantly and I could talk to him about home from the same perspective. What I mean by this is that I'm Japanese, but half of my life I've been living abroad. Thus, there are times I look at Japan from a third person perspective. Of course most of my Japanese friend won't understand my point of view because they've only lived in Japan. But Kaistar was raised here and was visiting Japan long enough to see what Japan and how it's culture is really like.

We had a great talk till the restaurant was almost closed. Than luckily Kaistar contacted Frantick and asked him whether it is possible for us to do a private with him the next day! AWESOME!!!

Thank you Kaister. We will definitely reunite once again soon. I know you'll be successful in DJing and make your dream come true :)



After food, we walked couple minutes and waited to meet our friend Crazy Sun to meet Tabo.......

Continues.....

LA Part 2: Meeting Hollywood Stars and Homeland.

LA welcomed us with the brightest weather on the second day.

This was the first time I saw LA in bright day light. I realized how HUGE this place was and surprisingly the atmosphere and the environment surrounding us felt warmer compare to NY which is dark and dim lol

Our day started by going to UMAMI Barger for brunch.
Umami "旨味" is Japanese. It means delicious taste so I knew I'm gonna have great food to start the day off!

The wall was full of interesting Japanese poem that insisted how you can find a great new dish. As I was reading it, the waiter approached me. He looked part Asian so I assumed he knew the meaning of the poem.....

Waiter "You know what that saids?"
Me      "Yea, its pretty unique and interesting"
Waiter "oh yea? What does it say?"

-____________-

Come on man. I thought you guys put that up because it means something special for you to work there lol

So I translated the poem for him and he was happy, saying that thats what Umami Barger is (well yea I can guess thats why its on the wall....)

Hungry dogg.....lol

UMAMI Barger

The burger was in fact "うまい(delicious)". It had a great combination of crunchy and juicy mixed inside a soft bun. Hmmmm  making me hungry right now LMAO

After brunch, we went to Hollywood Boulevard! Saw this many times on movies so I was excited :)

Street Robot was better than the East....lol

YEAAA FINALLY HERE!!!

Michael's hands and feet were smaller than I thought.

King Of Pop

Master of Martial Art

YEAAA KICK HIS ASS!!! lol

Hollywood Blvd was a lot like Time Square in NYC with full of movie star memorial. It was great :) It was especially great to get to Michael Jackson and Bruce Lee's memorial stars (?). Also I was really surprised to find out how small Michael's hands and feet were. It was about my size exactly. But he can do that dynamic and explosive dance movements. Amazing. Purely respect him as a dancer and entertainer. 

After having fun at Hollywood Blvd, we went to Homeland!!!

YES HOMELAND!!! I've been waiting to go here for many years!!!

We drove from down town LA and it was about a half hour drive. 

Kid Boogie told us that he will be there so I was excited! It's been almost two years since I last saw him. I wanted to show how I improved training the technique he had shown me. 

Here is what I was like when I got to Homeland lol

So I was SOOOOOOO excited like a little kid! lol

BUT

Kid, Slim, Keumsae, nor tabo showed up.....

Because of this, and from the exhaustion from the previous session, by the last hour of the session, I was done.....

Anyway, Homeland was Dope! 

A lot of positive energy was there, and people liked sharing that energy with others. This is what I liked about it the most. 

In a sense, it was like Popshop in NYC. But at Popshop, we don't all make a cypher to get down. I feel like we are a little more separated. But here, they were all making a huge cypher. I thought this was a great way for younger/beginner generation to interact with the older ones. 

Although it would've definitely turned out better if the people I was expecting showed up, I enjoyed Homeland. I hope to visit there soon. 

LA Part 1: Arrival and late night session.

After staying in Japan for a week and saying goodbye to Nonoko while we both shed tears (Don't say nothing....You don't know how tough it is to do this for 5.5 years.....) I arrived in LA.

Now from what I remembered, Ilya, told me that he would have his friend come over to the airport to pick me up.

But NOOOOOOOOOO -______-

He tells me to take a shuttle to get there....
sigh.....what a start lol Me Japanese, no english, scared, understand??? lol

I took the shuttle and arrived in front of this crazy looking modern building. Here, I met Liz and Denom.
They are friends of Ilya from Boston and generously welcomed us to stay with them for a week! Not only that, they drove us around LA (which I'll get to later on) but they were soooooo nice :) I'm really glad that I got to meet and hang out with them.

After I settled down and unpacked my stuff, we went out to eat at Honey Pigs.

Pic

While eating, I got to know about Liz and Denom a little. Also Ilya and I kinda talked about what we did for the past week and a half.
Seeing him felt like ages ago since we lived together for a moth before coming to LA (WOW what a bf gf sentence this is.......SUPER GAY lol).

Than Ilya told me that he was talking to Slim Boogie earlier that day. So we decided to contact him because Ilya thought it'll be dope and a dream come true if we can go to the practice spot that he films his dance clip that is posted on youtube.

So he contacts him.
No response.

I've shared contact with Jr Boogaloo and Bionic Man a month before at Electric Soul Satisfaction, so I started to text them.

Jr Boogaloo was very helpful.
He gave us the numbers of this crew mates and told us to contact them as soon as possible to plan our week.

Bionic Man responded quickly. And welcomed us to come to his place when it is convenient for us.
Unfortunately, he lived 40 min away by driving. So we couldn't go that night.

It was around mid night and we still couldn't get a solid answer.
We didn't want to waste our time just waiting so I decided to text Slim Boogie.

A call back from Slim LMAO!!!

I still can't forget the face Ilya made when I said "oh he is calling me" lol

and what was even awesome was that the spot he practices was only a few blocks away!!!


So on the FIRST NIGHT IN LA, I mean literally few hours after landing, we get to practice with Slim Boogie.

We also planned to go to Homeland to see Kid Boogie the next day and go to San Diego for Jr. Boogaloo's 2 hour private lesson the day after tomorrow.

AWESOME

This trip could not turn out to be better than this.

So we walked and met up with Slim and Keumsae!
We both met slim couple times through MGF workshop tour (link) and SDFX 2 in Boston (link).
I've also met Keumsae before when C-lo hosted an event (link) in D.C couple years ago and she came as one of the judges.

A reunion is always great. I was glad to see them again, but this time in LA.

We exchanged for roughly 4 or 5 hours.

Seeing their get down was amazing. The level of foundation and advanced technique they had was unbelievable. We not only saw, but felt the level gap between the East coast popping compared to the West.

Please don't take this in a wrong way. I'm not trying to look down on the East. I feel that because they are taught by poppers with proper historic background the students had better understanding of how to execute the dance better.
Of course Popping is a dance movement that originated from the West. Thus, the resources to its roots can be easily traced back. Unlike us (the East) or the world, who dig the internet for information, they can go straight to the creditable source.

Some dancers I've met in the past told me that they don't really care about the past. Whats done is done and they want to focus on "THEM" because its their "GENERATION". But I think history is important. Knowledge is Power. Sense of community is crucial to the Hip Hop and Street Dance community. This is why I feel strongly about the need of popping education on the East Coast.

Anyway, I'll discuss that some other time. Back to the trip.

We didn't take any dance footage because I was too focused on observing the Slim and Keumsae lol
I think you can tell by how we were right after the session.

After the session, we were DONE lol In the vid I was wide awake, but I literally fell a sleep as soon as I got to the bed.
The Monster drink we had before going to the session was all used up and our body was collapsing.
I fell a sleep as soon as I got to the bed.

Thank You once again Slim and Keumsae. This would not have been the best day to start off without you two.

Part 1 End.

JAPAN, LA, and NY

So to those of you who had been reading my blog (thank you), yesterday I said there is a big reason behind doing this training right?  WELL HERE IS THE REASON WHY!!! 

On August 10th, I'll be going back to Japan for a week.

Than, I'll fly back to the U.S but will be visiting LA for a week before coming back to NY! lol

In LA, me and my crew mate Ilya are planning to train under various poppers to improve our dance skill.

This is the reason why I'm currently working out.

I know that in West Coast, there are many O.Gs and world class poppers. 

They have much more diverse technique in popping than we do here.

To get the best out of the training by them, I thought it will be best to at least be fit enough to endure any type of training. 

Our goal is not to go to LA and learn how to do the training and be satisfied. 

The goal is to learn quickly and begin the training in LA, grasp as much as we can so that we can continue the training even after coming home.

Therefore, in order to gather as much as we can and to keep up with poppers that are much better than us, I believe its best to be in our finest shape.

So there it is. Today is DAY 3 and I'm keeping up with the plan.