200: Two of My Favourite Japanese Composers – Hisaishi and Sakamoto!
I’m going to dedicate the 200th post of my humble blog to share two of my favourite japanese composers! Joe Hisaishi and Ryuichi Sakamoto!
JOE HISAISHI
Friends and family who know me knows that I am an ABSOLUTE FAN of Hayao Miyazaki’s films and Joe Hisaishi’s music! Joe Hisaishi just composes the most beautiful scores for Miyazaki’s films. A few of my absolute favourite scores include Princess Mononoke’s, Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away and Totoro’s scores! Joe Hisaishi’s music is just BEAUTIFUL. No better and simpler word to describe his music, simply BEAUTIFUL.
Here’s some really old videos of his live performance! My dream will be to catch Joe Hisaishi in concert! But he seldom holds concerts beyond Japan and within Japan as well, and I heard the tickets for his concerts are just really hot and exclusive. And something I MUST DO before I live my last breath will be to catch Joe Hisaishi live in concert!
Here’s an absolute favourite of mine from Princess Mononoke – Ashitaka Sekki
And another lovely piece from Princess Mononoke.
And here’s the absolutely gorgeous theme from Howl’s Moving Castle! Pure love:)
And then there’s the super adorable Totoro theme from Totoro! One of my favourites! The crowd just loves Hisaishi (from the applause from the audience! I believe this piece was an encore piece during the concert).
Plus, another gorgeous Totoro score!
And finally, the theme from Spirited Away!
THIS MAN IS JUST PURE GENIUS! He’s such an adorable man too. I love how he smiles and how he enjoys what he’s playing and interacts with the other musicians. Plus, he’s such a humble man too. I think he’s the kind of person who brings much joy to the people around him. I am so much in love with Joe Hisaishi’s music and the films that these music bring life to, Hayao Miyazaki’s amazing films! Two great masters, so in love with their crafts.
RESPECT. 🙂
RYUICHI SAKAMOTO
Another amazing japanese composer is Ryuichi Sakamoto. I am very sure millions out there would have heard of Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, Sakamoto’s signature piece. He has other beautiful and interesting pieces as well.
But I love this live version of Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. It’s just beautiful.
199: Cold Rock Creamery and Provence Bakery (Holland Village)
I’m really mad right now. We just wasted $6.50 on ice-cream that tasted so horrible I never want to step into the ice-cream parlour again. I mean, if the ice-cream is good and all, I wouldn’t mind splurging $6.50 on them. But the ice-cream that they serve over at Cold Rock was just disgustingly weird and mediocre. And they are charging too much for such gross ice-cream.
We chose ferrero and honeycomb ice-cream. The ferrero was just way too strange. There wasn’t ferrero (ferrero rocher) taste at all. All I could taste was a strange dough-ey taste, if playdoh was edible, I think it would taste like this. I think they are just using the sugar and all to disguise the ice-cream as erm, ice-cream? Ice-cream was way too sweet. I would say Udder’s Hazel’s Nuts ice-cream tastes 100000000000x better than Cold Rock’s Ferrero ice-cream. Honeycomb was not much better, although I much prefer honeycomb to ferrero. Well, it didn’t taste like how honeycomb could taste like and there was this strange dough-ey playdoh taste as well. Just plain weird.
I swear I am not stepping into Cold Rock for ice-cream anymore. They charge exorbitant prices for such lousy ice-creams.
I’m mad at myself because I was just too stupid. I’m regretting it really really BADLY. But well, lesson learnt. We should have stopped by Great World City for our good ol’ trusty Island Creamery. I’ve been dreaming about my Island Creamery’s Pulut Hitam and Horlicks ice-cream for ages! And the best part is that a scoop of Island Creamery’s ice-cream was just $2.80. And a pint is just a mere $8 (I think) and you get good quality ice-cream! Plus, it’s just $1.50 more than what we paid for a pathetic cup of Cold Rock’s ice-cream.
My verdict: Just stay away from Cold Rock Creamery’s ice-cream! Stick to good old Island Creamery and Udders! You’ll never regret it!
On a sidenote, I bought 2 milk pans from Provence bakery at Holland Village. My favourite bread in Singapore is Provence’s milk pan. We reached Provence at around 315pm and the racks were full of freshly baked breads. Plus, the crowd started streaming in at around this time too! There were a mix of customers, a group of japanese housewives, a pair of elderly but really educated couple, a pair of Caucasian middle-aged couple (I figure they’re French) and a few Singaporean middle-aged ladies taking their picks at the breads. Plus, many of them were having their tea/coffee with their breads at the tables within the bakery.
Yes, I believe that they have specific baking times! So do drop by Provence if you are in the vicinity at around 3pm! That’s the time when they start baking more breads. The shelves were all full of trays of different varieties of breads! A rare sight for me since I usually buy my breads at “unearthly” hours. And there were 3 full trays of milk pans when I was there!
Here’s my lovely milk pan. Really delicate. I had to protect them to prevent them from being squashed on the bus journey home.
And here’s one of sis’s bread. Some cinammon bread. She bought it cause’ it reminded her of McDonald’s Cinammon Melts which she totally adores. And according to her, it tastes like the Cinammon Melts. I think the sugar frosting/coating (?) on the crown of the bread looks very scary!
She bought some coffee cinammon bread too but she ate it the moment she bought it, she was exclaiming that the bread was really yummy!
And yes, we saw two Mediacorp artistes over at Holland Village filming. I believe they are filming for a new drama series. I don’t usually watch Singapore dramas but I could recognise them as Paige Chua and Jerry Yeo. Not as famous since they debuted only quite recently (past few years?). But well, they look so stressed and serious while filming. A little scary! They are not smiling or speaking to one another but just focusing and looking so serious while filming. Quite a few passers-by were watching them while they film. Interesting sight since I seldom see local stars filming.
198: 4 Girls, 60 Meatballs (IKEA’s Swedish Meatballs)
4 girls, 60 meatballs
Met up with the lovely girlfriends yesterday at IKEA for swedish meatballs. The original plan was to buy a present for a guy friend and we succeeded and kept within the budget (exactly $60, amazing stuff). Proceeded to IKEA for swedish meatballs after that.
I was originally planning to eat just the 10 meatballs set (SGD6, Tuesday Promotion) but the two crazy girlfriends were brainwashing me to go for 15. And so, we went for 15 meatballs each, extra cream sauce and extra jam.
Crazy and amazing stuff. We were joking that the servers would be wondering if these girls are monsters if we told them that we wanted 60 meatballs, extra sauce and extra jam. But well, we didn’t. We specified 4 servings of 15 meatballs. I think it will sound a bit better. But it’s still 60 meatballs. Haha whatever:)
Swedish meatballs are yummy stuff but having to stomach 15 meatballs all at one go can be quite challenging. In the end, we got sick of the meatballs and the cream sauce. And would rather eat the potatoes. But still, one shouldn’t waste food. So we finished all our 60 meatballs and the potatoes! Amazing, aren’t we? Me thinks we are 4 mighty scary girls. But I’m going to abstain from swedish meatballs (or meatballs of all kinds) for at least 1 month.
And Mummy says “not to play with your food”. But we did anyway. Alright, I did this mess. Naughty me 😦
Rina's Silly Musings 