I was joking with someone the other day how sometimes on tour it’s easy to lose track of what day it is or where you are.
It’s a sort of ‘in-joke’ I have often heard. When one group member pipes up and asks, “Kokoha doko?” (lit. where is here?), another will often reply, “Watashiha dare?” (lit. I am who?).
Today I am visiting Shidara. Yesterday, I was at Asano Taiko.
I was there to aisatsu, catch up with folks a little bit and take care of a little business, and I was going to take off fairly early but then Senmu came in and asked if I knew Katsuji Kondo. I said i did and he asked whether or not I could stay for lunch with them…so I did.
Life is simply better with a JR rail pass.
We ended up at a posh sort of kaiseki place, and here’s where my lack of ability in speaking the Japanese language really kills me (and my career) in so many ways.
I can understand most of what’s being said, but I can’t converse at all, and so can’t ask pertinent questions or participate much in the conversation in any meaningful way.
So…as an aside…I’ll say it again. If you are serious about wanting to learn and play taiko…learn to speak Japanese. I can’t emphasize that enough.
Anyway, among other interesting topic of conversation were the fact that women just really didn’t have the opportunity to play the more power-oriented styles (like Odaiko) before about 1990, and that currently it’s a lot harder to find men than women who really want to play.
The phenomenon is not limited to Taiko in North America.
Other stuff that came up included a lot of the other issues that usually come up. Noise restrictions around practicing and finding places to practice, difficulties in trying to keep a group stable, how crazy and great it is to be able to make a living playing…how so much of it hand-to-mouth and involves a lot of sacrifice and so on, and how it’s especially difficult to find anyone to seriously take on being a professional Taiko player.
We talked a little bit about different events and promising new groups and artists debuting here. We talked about food for a while. We talked about how much Senmu has made a difference in the world of Taiko and in out own careers. We talked about how long we’ve all been doing this and how long ago we met and how great it was to see each other again.
It was a nice lunch.
Shortly after I made arrangements to have a new (used) stand sent via takyuubin to Tokyo and headed off on my way to Toyohashi and onward up the mountain.
I had a bit of a layover in Toyohashi so I did a quick run to get some juice (there’s a stand in the mall at the station) and some fruit to snack on. I picked up a 4-pack of ruby red grapefruits for Megan and dashed back in to catch the train.
It’s cold here…about as cold as Sado. I’m gonna head down and say hi to everyone and offload omiyage! (yay!) nothing quite so relieving as that.