Sunday, October 7, 2012

Oita Music Festival


It's rather late so I'm not going to type out much, but today was a pretty fun day. Oita had a huge music festival going on this weekend with live bands playing on 16 stages throughout downtown. My friend Izumi (Well, technically she's Mary's friend, but I go over there all the time and have been taking Kimono lessens from her mother (Okamura-san, who I've mentioned here before I'm pretty sure), and teaching English to her son, so she's my friend too) was playing on one of the stages. I met them (All 3 of them came) at the station and then showed them to the stage they were going to be playing at. I carried the Koto for her. I ran into a bunch of people I knew at the station, and they all thought it was mine. It was kinda awkward because I lacked the Japanese to explain the situation to the non English speakers.

Anyway, She preformed, and it was awesome. I took pictures and video. I just put the videos up on Youtube. If you're interested in hearing some Japanese traditional instruments and singing (Though I think the Koto tune I recorded is actually a Russian tune) you should check out the videos below.


(Izumi playing the Sanshin, an Okinawan version/predecesor of the Shamisen, which is a Japanese 3 string Banjo)
If you want to watch it on actual youtube: http://youtu.be/wwfduzUt3iw


(Izumi playing the Koto, which is functionally similar to a harp I guess.)
If you want to watch it on actual youtube: http://youtu.be/-xBQD_PouT0


After the performance a guy came up to me and asked to take my picture. He apparently thought I was rather interesting looking and wanted to enter my photo in some kind of contest. If his photo wins, my face will be in a Japanese Magazine somewhere I guess. He bought us all potato wedges as a thank you. After that I helped Izumi and her family get their stuff onto the train. Fitting the Koto in there was kinda interesting. It is not a small instrument. After that I was heading back to my bike, which invovles going through an underground walkway. In the walkway there was a Japanese guy singing and playing guitar. This wasn't part of the festival, but I thought he was pretty good. I talked with him for a bit about how I liked his music and he said he had a CD. I asked him how much, but instead he gave it to me in exchange for taking a photo with me. (He got one on his own camera, but I wanted one with mine too.)

(The sound quality on this one isn't nearly as good as what he was actually singing. My camera picked up all the noise of the people walking behind me really well though)
If you want to watch it on actual youtube: http://youtu.be/Nml3biqaTkA



So yeah, I had a fun day. Hope you did too.

~Daniel

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