Music Already?!

So I've arrived in my new home of Tome, Japan, and I've already gotten involved in some music stuff!

By my second day, I saw a poster for a summer concert of piano and voice recital.  Upon mentioning that I was interested, one of the Board of Education staff members took note, got me a ticket, and called me the next day to say I could go with him and his wife!  The concert was wonderful, especially considering the group.  They were all local college-aged kids who performed with much the same styles (they probably all took lessons from the same teacher) and only two performers out of ten seemed to be a bit inexperienced at performing for an audience.  I especially enjoyed it because I could recognize the names of most composers whose works were performed, including Chopin (I heard at least 5 pieces of his from etudes to a nocturne), Lizst, and Prokofiev.  The two most interesting names were Ravel and Debussy.  Each took me a minute to figure out as Japanese has more limited sounds than many European languages, and often requires a bit of creativity in the "spelling" of names like these.  Ravel was phoenetically spelled as "ra-ve-ru" but caught me off-guard when they wrote the "wu" character (ウ) with the ten-ten slashes on the upper right side (ラヴェル).  That's not something I've seen before!  Debussy confused me as it was written "do-biu-shiiii..." (ドビュッシー).  Not exactly the way I say it in English!

One thing I took note of in concert etiquette was the extensive offers of flowers to the performers.  Many audience members bring flowers to any performers they may know personally (the man and wife who brought me bought 4 large bouquets on the way to the concert for the performers that were his students), and this is quite common for many audience members.  Because of the large volume of gifts going to each person, a table is set up so that you put your flowers on the table with a name label and memo card, and the performers pick up all their gifts after the concert is over.  This is a bit different than in the U.S. where you deliver the flowers directly to the person yourself by catching them backstage, and often flowers like these are only delivered when the recipient is a featured artist or soloist of sorts.

Here's a picture of part of the summer poster, and all the performers lined up at the end of the concert:

Right after I got home from this concert, I had contacted my predecessor, another former JET who is still in the area, about joining the local taiko group.  To my great amusement, he called me right away saying he was on his way to perform with the group as we spoke!  My friend drove us over to the concert, which was part of a small summer festival at the local elderly nursery, to catch the tail-end of the concert!  This is the only picture I got, but the big drum is well lit, and you can see another smaller drum as well as drumsticks in motion!

The procession of people walking around the drums seemed to be a simple way to get the elderly involved, and many were being pushed in their wheelchairs by women who were part of the festival.  Those who were not busy aiding the elderly did little dances as they walked in a big circle around the main stage.

Although we only caught the tail end of the taiko performance, the rest of the festival was great, including the strange lady who randomly grabbed my friend and I by the wrist and physically drug us to the booths handing out free food.  She was very friendly, and gave us more than we could carry, so she patiently waited for us to finish our watermelon slices before handing us our slushies!  It got even better when the three foreigners, myself, my predecessor, and friend, were all thrown on stage for a "ramune" drinking contest!  (Ramune being a Japanese type of soda but that has a marble which plugs up the hole you drink out of as you're trying to drink it!)

It was a great day filled with plenty of music, and plenty of fun at the festival!  It was nice to hear some familiar classical music followed with exciting drumming!  I'm very anxious to get settled and begin playing with our local taiko group!