Back from Spring Break

We just returned from about 8 days of traveling around Shimane and Hiroshima prefectures, in south-western Honshu. It was our family spring break trip and our first major road trip in Japan. (Read about my japanese road trip experiences here.) Everyone asks us why we decided to go to Shimane prefecture. Apparently it is not a very popular tourist destination. It is very "countryside", so a bit inconvenient to travel to, but still, a beautiful part of Japan. To answer the why question, it is because my mother had been there once before and wanted to visit again. It turns out, however, that there was a slight taiko connection in traveling there. We learned soon after deciding to spend our spring break there, that Yamada san of Hono Taiko, who also instructs our Yume Mitai and Matto Bayashi classes, is from Shimane prefecture. So we got to visit the home prefecture of our main taiko instructor.

The down side of the trip was that I had to miss taiko practices on Monday and Tuesday last week. You would think one week is not that big of a deal, but I seriously notice a difference when I cannot practice, even for a week. Not only do I miss playing, but I can feel my body losing strength. We did make it back in time for this week's practices, however, and after only 15 minutes or so of practice on Monday night, I could feel everything coming back to me. I felt re-energized, refreshed.

Another positive thing happened at Monday's practice. I believe I mentioned a new Asano sponsored group being formed called Jigen in a previous blog. I had expressed disappointment at being too old to join the group, which had set the age limit from 14 - 30 years old. At Monday's practice, though, Yamada san again inquired of my age. Upon telling her that I am 33 she said, "oh, well then you are okay to join Jigen" (the new group). I said, "What, they raised the age limit?" and she said, "Yeah, many of the people that wanted to join were already in their thirties, so they decided to take people up to 35." I can't tell you how excited I am about this. This should be a fairly high level group, that will offer a real challenge and the focused training we are seeking. I do take it as a compliment that I have been encouraged to join, but I learned that part of the reason is also because of my gender. There are currently about 8 people lined up, two of which are male, so they are doing their best to try to balance it out between men and women a bit more. The first practice will be April 19. My wife will join as well, for the time being.

Concert

Our Sunday performance was more or less a success. I was pretty exhausted afterwards, though. Not from the playing. I only played for 3 numbers and they were spread out through the concert. It was more the release of all the pre-concert stress, I suppose. It was a lot of work (mentally) for the three of us to prepare for this recital, not only the music, but putting together all of the clothes for our costumes (it probably cost me over $100 to get everything I needed), organizing car pools to get to the venue and so on. Needless to say, on Monday, I was able to finally exhale, and my exhaustion finally caught up with me. In spite of the exhaustion, you can bet that we were at our taiko practices the next two days after the concert. (they were a bit lighter than usual, though.)

I hope to eventually get some video up of our performances, but in the meantime, several audience members gave us some nice pictures from the performance (and some of the practices) which I will post here for your enjoyment.

Here's my daughter ready to practice


More practicing...


... and the performance ...


My wife at Matto Bayashi practice...


Me at Matto Bayashi practice...


Here is the Matto Bayashi group before the concert...


Me (in the back) peforming with Matto Bayashi...


My wife (on the left) performing with Matto Bayashi...


Wow, there are a lot of pictures to post
Here is the Yume Mitai group picture before the concert...


Me at Yume Mitai practice...


Yume Mitai performance...


and a close up during the performance...


Oh yeah, I got interviewed again after our Matto Bayashi performance...


That is Kinoshita san of Hono Taiko interviewing me.

And the finale...


So, that's it for the photo essay of our performance. Be patient for videos. It will likely be a couple weeks before I have a chance to get them up. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures.

Dress Rehearsal

We just returned from our dress rehearsal for tomorrow's concert. I think everything went well enough and I feel ready for tomorrow's performance. I had one little thing go wrong for me today, though. I was playing a different drum than what I am used to and it turns out that the head is much tighter than my usual drum. When I hit the first couple notes, the rebound was so strong that my stick flew out of my hand. Although embarassing and I had to walk part way across the stage to pick it up, I recovered well and finished the song without any more mistakes. No one even mentioned it.

It was interesting to watch all the groups go through their rehearsal as well. One thing I noticed is that the instructors gave very few criticisms, if any. They only said things like "Play a little louder tomorrow." "Let's have even more energy tomorrow!" "Use more voice tomorrow." No individuals were pointed out or picked. No particular sections of the music were critized either. I know everything was not perfrect, but still, only very general comments were given. Even the practices the last couple weeks have been fairly relaxed, and non-critical. In my opinion, I think the instructors are thinking that at this point, it is too late to be making big changes. It will only put pressure on people and make them even more nervous. I think that their hope is that we will all relax and enjoy playing, and if we can do that, our best performance will come out by itself. I agree with this 100%. If the performers are enjoying themselves, the audience will too.

Lastly, I got two big encouragments as I was getting ready to leave. Our bags and coats were close to where Jige-san (of Hono Taiko) and Asano-san (the owner of Asano Taiko) were sitting. Both of them told me they thought I was doing a good job. I know not to put too much worth on this, but still, Jige-san is one of my original taiko inspirations and Asano-san, the owner of the company that makes the best taiko in the world, well, he's seen so many different taiko groups at so many levels, it's just an honor that he would give me encouragement. I was pleased.