Promotional performance

A couple weeks ago, we went to a mall near our house, where Asano Taiko was doing a PR performance for the upcoming Extasia Taiko Festival on July 27th. The group performing is Sasuke, consisting of all junior high or high school age students. Earlier this spring, they took part in the All Japan Youth Taiko Competition as a representative of Ishikawa Prefecture, and they received an award (not the top prize, though). Furthermore, I just learned yesterday that they have been selected to compete in another national contest in Tokyo later this summer.

Shipping your taiko around the world

This past Tuesday, we had our Matto Bayashi practice as usual. Our practice area is called Asano-EX and it is a mile or two down the road from the main Asano Taiko buildings. It is also not available as a practice space to the general public, like the practice area (新響館）at the main building is. So it is where most of the Asano sponsored groups practice, like Matto Bayashi, Sasuke and even Hono Taiko. When we came in, there were many taiko near the doorway in cases and wrapped up as if they would be shipped off somewhere. I asked Yamada san (our teacher, and member of Hono Taiko) if Hono Taiko was going anywhere for a concert. She looked slightly confused and asked what I meant. I pointed towards the taiko in the doorway and she said, "Oh yes, we're going to Spain and Russia in July and August." July and August are quite a ways away. It is only the middle of May right now, but I realized that sending taiko, which are extremely heavy, by air would be outrageously expensive and sea and surface mail would be the only affordable option.

In fact, we had a similar conversation just last week with some other taiko friends of ours, Wadaiko Yamato, of Nara. Last week we had some business to take care of in Osaka, and since Nara is not that far from Osaka, we stopped by to visit them. It was one of the rare times when they were all present in Japan, instead of touring all over the world. (Last year, they were on tour for almost 11 months and I think they played something like 200 concerts) Anyway, I was also asking some of the members of Yamato how they moved their drums all around the world and coordinated between concerts in Europe, N. America and Japan. They, as well use sea and surface mail, sending their drums out two months ahead of them. But they also said they have about three sets of drums, because sometimes the times between tours is too short to get the drums from Europe to the US, for example. This amazed me when I thought of the cost involved. I recently researched the cost of Asano drums for the 12 - 15 drums that we would ideally like to have and the cost was over $100,000! Yamato certainly has more drums than 12 - 15 and what's more, they have 2 or 3 sets of them! Amazing.

At least this year's schedule is a little more relaxed in comparison with last years. They are based in Nara for the next 3 months or so, before they head back to Europe (?) for the fall. They have quite a nice facility, with a large practice area in the basement in their hometown of Asukamura, which is in the southern part of Nara Prefecture. It is surrounded by hills and rice fields and they even have a nice keyaki tree in front of the buidling. A keyaki tree is known as a Japanese Zelkova tree in English. Why is this significant? Because most taiko are made from keyaki wood. They said, maybe in 200 years or so, it will be big enough to make a taiko from it. I will write a little more about keyaki trees and Asano taiko another time. In the meantime, here are a couple pictures from our visit to Nara.

Here is a view of the hills surrounding their house.



and the keyaki (zelkova) tree in front.

Fame?

The Monday following the big concert this week was the "Children's Day" holiday in Japan. Following two weeks of nearly daily taiko practices, including some strange dancing, which exercised muscles I have never used before, and ending with two hours of stage tear down, moving large and heavy taiko around, my body was actually pretty sore. In fact, I probably aggravated a pulled back I hurt a few years ago moving a piano (it is all better now). I was actually hobbling around like an elderly man, a much different figure than the person who had energetically played taiko the day before. Still, instead of resting my tired body, we decided to take our two children to a park down by the Saigawa River in Kanazawa for a little carnival that was going on in honor of Children's Day. There were many craft tents, small amusement rides and international foods to sample. Of course, there was taiko too. Not just any taiko, but Toranosuke Taiko of Wajima City in Ishikawa's Noto Peninsula. We saw them a couple times before in the fall, and I even posted some video of their performance in Komatsu.

Anyhow, what is so special about Toranosuke is that this past March, they were awarded the top prize, for the second year in a row, at the All Japan Youth Taiko Competition. So they are a highly regarded group, even if they are not known so much outside of the Hokuriku area.

We tried to leave early, getting to the park about 30 minutes before Toranosuke was scheduled to play, but the parking lot was full. So I dropped off my wife and kids, and drove the car to her sister's house to park it there and walk back. My body being in its less-than-prime-condition, it took me a little longer than normal to get back to the park. I ended up only catching the last 60 seconds or so of the taiko performance. Most of those 60 seconds I spent trying to get out my video camera to record the performance. As soon as I had it ready to go, however, it was over. So I apologize, there is no video to accompany this.

After the performance, we were wandering around the park and we saw the Toranosuke members. I thought a picture with them and my daughter would be nice, and I asked her if she wanted to take a picture with them. She was shy about it, but she said okay. As I walked over to ask for the picture, one of them said to me, "You were in the concert yesterday, weren't you? Matto Yume Mitai?"

"Uh, Oh, yes. Yes I was. You were there?" I asked, immediately straightening up and trying to conceal that my back was hurting. "Did you enjoy it?" I asked.

"Yes, it was a lot of fun," they answered. Cool, I thought, I was recognized on the street. Of course, it's not as big a deal as it might seem. Although many of the other groups that performed were likely musically more memorable, as far as appearance goes, I was the only non-Japanese that performed on Sunday, so in that sense, perhaps I would be the most easily recognized on the street.

Anyhow, here is the picture of me and my family with Wajima Toranosuke Taiko.