Gagaku Concert, No Drum Game, and Drunk People

Since I had a free morning on Thursday (19th) I got up and got my computer to talk to people. I also tried to do some work on my growing collection of photos but didn’t end up getting very far with that. It’s really more time consuming than I originally thought. I got ready for the gagaku performance I was going to see that night and also watched a little TV before I left.

When I got to the station near where the performance was going to be I spotted a Denny’s, yes they have them in Japan, and debated maybe going there for dinner. I walked over to the building where the concert was going to be and went to wait for an elevator. They were impossibly slow so I decided after about 5 minutes or so to just go up by escalator. As I was going up I saw they had an arcade on one floor and that they had the taiko drum game. I was so amused and was thinking about playing after the concert.

I got to the theatre and found my seat. Michael was already there and was talking to one of our sempai from Kunitachi. Slowly the others arrived as well as Terumi-san. She handed us the information we would need for our palace visit and we chatted for a little bit. Besides our sempai from Kunitachi that were at the concert a couple of people I knew from my group lessons with Sasamoto-sensei were there also.

The concert was absolutely wonderful. The first part was more traditional gagaku music but the second half was quite interesting. It was newer music that was Buddhist themed with chanting by Buddhist priest. Different instruments were also used like Tibetan singing bowls, little mouth whistle things, etc. I was captivated the entire way through.

After the performance we met up \with the people from Kunitachi and I asked Masami if she wanted to play the taiko drum game for a bit. She was amused and said yes. First however we were all going to see Miyata-sensei and Sasamoto-sensei to congratulate them on the concert. We headed backstage but soon realized that we had to go down a floor first.

We said congratulations to Miyata-sensei, I got to see Sasamoto-sensei really quickly and I also got to meet his mentor so that was cool. After that as we were going to leave we got little paper things that the Buddhist priests had been scattering on the stage, I think they’re charms or something. We then were headed down to play the taiko game but unfortunately that floor was closed. I was sad, I wanted to drum.

We went outside and people were trying to decide what to do. I wanted to go home and so Michael and I headed back here and Asami went home too. Everyone else headed out to drink in Shinjuku. When we got back to Kita-Urawa I had a little bit of Wendy’s for dinner since I was hungry and then came back to the center.

I saw the very end of the finale of Last Friends, a drama that I had become addicted to, and then went online for a little bit. Then I came back down to my room and watched some anime for a little bit. It’s so nice being able to watch anime on TV. I was just about to doze off when I heard a loud noise from next door which signaled that Casey had gotten back. It was almost 2am. After it got quiet again I went to sleep finally.