The Little Things

My host brother, Tomoya, plays the bass in the school brass band (the large upright bass, although he also plays the electric). A few days ago he traveled with the band to a competition in Kurashiki which I attended with my host mother and father. The performances were rather breathtaking, considering that the students were only in junior high school and playing difficult arrangements without a conductor. I had never heard Tomoya's band perform before, so I was quite excited to attend the event. When I looked in the program, Uno Chuu (Tomoya's school) was playing 62nd after another local junior high. I also happened to notice that they were both playing the same musical arrangement, some ballad.

I became absorbed by the bands. They were really excellent and easily kept my attention. After many performances, a group of girls took their place on the stage. They all took a starting bow in unison and promptly began to play. My mouth dropped as soon as the performance began. I don't have much musical knowledge, but these girls could play. My mind kept flashing back to images of musical robots. The bass player’s fingers moved faster than I could see. It was a cacophonous blur of sound. When they finished, all stood in unison, took a bow, and left the stage. It was about the time I turned to my host mom to say "That's going to be impossible to beat" when I saw Tomoya come on stage. It turned out the last band was Tomoya's competition. Uno Chuu gave it their best, but was obviously outplayed by the girls’ team. Sad, but I guess you can't win 'em all.

Today, Tomoya, Mayumi, and I took a trip to Okayama for the JAS New Year's Concert. JAS, or Japan Automobile Society hosts the concert every year at the Okayama Symphony Hall. It lasted about two hours and featured two famous flute and cello players, accompanied by various singers and a full orchestra. When I think of flute players the image of a very relaxed individual comes to mind. For this concert the main flautist was the most aggressive member of the orchestra. He would lean all the way over his music stand and raise his eyebrows until you thought he was going to fall right off the stage, but boy could he play the flute. The soprano blew me away as well, and I left feeling quite satisfied.

But today's really surprising development was on Japanese radio. Usually I refrain from listening due to the relatively short span of music and long span of advertisements. Today I caught KDDI's Prime Time Radio hosted by George Williams, who also hosts a very popular "Teach Yourself English" program on Japanese television. He is half-Japanese half-British with superb fluency in both languages, and I found him extremely easy to understand. I was listening to his show and he had a special guest, Jonathan Poneman. I knew I had heard his name somewhere, and then I remembered he was the founder of Sub Pop, the label of not only Nirvana and Soundgarden but more recently Hot Hot Heat, Iron and Wine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Postal Service, The Reverend Horton Heat, The Shins, and Ugly Casanova (to name a few). Any one of those would sustain me on a desert island for years. So here I was, in Japan, singing along with The Shins while my host mom is wondering what in the world I'm doing. Little things like that make my day.