Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

With NaNoWriMo 2007 now an accomplished memory, I decided that I couldn’t wait to share the new novel-in-progress with everyone. So, without any further adieu, here’s the prelude to Here Is The Wonderland.

Summer 2003, Sajima Super Arena, Tokyo, Japan.

“The place is clean,” said an authoritative voice outside the dressing room door. Another sold-out show.

Inside the dressing room, four young ladies collectively known to Japanese pop fans as Micro4 were putting the finishing touches on their stage outfits. TLC’s FanMail album was playing at a soft, yet audible volume on a CD boombox nearby.

Mitsune Kuroshima, 15 years old, finished tightening the laces on her light pink sneakers, sat back in her chair, and idly drummed on her thighs along with the TLC album, her right foot tapping on the floor as if there were a kick drum pedal underneath.

Mai Yameda, 16 years old – several months older than Mitsune – idly plucked some notes on an acoustic guitar while a makeup artist added some final touches to her stage makeup. Once the artist was done, Mai leaned over the guitar a little and started playing some scales.

Midori Sagurama – at 18 the oldest member of the group – sat and watched as Mai ran though those scales on the instrument. Micro4 were a vocal group and did not play any instruments onstage, but a few members were known to dabble. Midori knew some guitar and piano chords, and Mai had been learning the instrument on her own, while Mitsune had been experimenting with the drums whenever she could.

Marlena McDaniel, 17 years old, was the only non-Japanese-born member of the group. She had been born in San Pedro, California and raised both there and in Hawaii to an American father and a Japanese mother. Marlena had become part of Pop Mountain, the Tokyo-based talent agency and production company behind Micro4 and a few other groups, when she passed an audition for Wahine International, a vocal group that was to consist of gaijin tarento, or foreign-born talent, that had been born and/or raised in Hawaii. Marlena was the only one in Wahine International that was fluent in both Japanese and English, and when Micro4 was put together, she was invited to join. Marlena was already a proficient guitarist when she joined the Pop Mountain team; the acoustic guitar Mai was using was Marlena’s, she always brought it along on tour and elsewhere for when they wanted to rehearse their vocal parts.

Madeki, Pop Mountain’s head songwriter and producer, was planning to bring Pop Mountain’s artists worldwide at some point. He was the one who called into the dressing room that the show was sold out. He knocked on the door of the dressing room and announced, “Ten minutes, girls.”

Mitsune spun around in her chair, shut off the boom box, and said to Mai, “Go ahead, play that song.”

“Oh, no, not again,” said Midori.

“My bad,” joked Marlena. “I’m the one that showed Mai her first few chords in the first place.”

“Ready, Mitsy-chan?” said Mai.

“Always, Mai-chan”

“Great. One, two, three, four!” Mai started playing an opening chord sequence that was normally fitting for an electric guitar, but she played Marlena’s Martin acoustic guitar like it was a Fender Stratocaster plugged into a Marshall amplifier stack.

Mai and Mitsune started singing, “Yeah, chatterbox, I bet you squawk a lot. C’mon, gimmie some lips, yeah, chatterbox…” They got through the first verse and chorus of the song before it degenerated into a fit of giggles.

“You know, other singers usually run through vocal exercises before going onstage,” said Midori.

“These are our vocal exercises,” said Mai.

Another knock on the door, and Madeki’s voice came through saying, “Five minutes, girls. Can I come in?”

“The door’s unlocked, come on in,” said Marlena.

Madeki walked in and took a look at his protégés. Tonight was the end of Micro4’s 2003 summer tour. Their latest single had gone to Number One on the Oricon singles chart, and with every single release, the band was getting to be more popular. A new album was set for fall release; the record company was already predicting that it would make Number One on Oricon’s album chart as well. Everybody in Japan seemed to want to own a Micro4 CD – and so did a lot of non-Japanese fans, judging from how exported copies of Micro4’s releases – as well as unofficial mp3’s of those CDs – were circulating in the West.

“OK, girls, you already know that this is the last show of the summer tour,” Madeki said in the manner of a pep talk. “You know that the place is sold out. You know that the concert is going to be digitally recorded in both video and audio for a DVD release this fall.”

The four members of Micro4 nodded in agreement, seemingly hanging on Madeki’s every word.

“This last date of the tour is the first day of the rest of your careers. The momentum you girls have built up over the past year has been incredible. I am more and more convinced that you girls can do anything. Now, I want you to go out there and do myself and the rest of Pop Mountain proud, but more importantly, I want you to go out there and kick some ass.”

Micro4 stood up and clasped hands together. They closed their eyes for a brief moment, said a quick prayer to Buddha, and then Midori, the group’s leader, said. “Se-no…”

The entire group immediately shouted in unison, “Micro4-desu!”, before running out of the dressing room and heading for the offstage area. Their backing musicians – a five-piece unit of guitars, bass, keyboards, and drums, supplemented by a sequencer that triggered some segments of sampled horn parts, orchestral parts, and other instrumental parts that would have otherwise been impossible for the band to replicate – were already onstage behind a black curtain, waiting for the intro tape to finish playing. Micro4’s microphones were always live; Pop Mountain’s artists prided themselves on being able to sing live, even in the early days when they were doing live appearances where they sang live over taped instrumentals.

The second the intro tape stopped playing, the drummer, listening to a click track from the sequencer through headphones, tapped out four beats on his open high-hat cymbals. The curtain rose, and the four members of Micro4 ran onstage to start their show.