I have photos to go with this… they are coming. But I want to do the writing part while it’s fresh in my brain.
Today I had a shamisen meet-up. It was a gathering of students of the Iemoto, who is the head of the group. An Iemoto (that’s an “i”, not an “L”) is the head of a school of traditional arts: dance, music, and so on. The students of that school of teaching, once they reach certain levels, take on the name of the school/get a new name. I’m a student of a student, so I joined it.
I went to my teacher’s house at 10 am, to get dressed. We got done early, so we drove to the center where we would play… it was like a club, almost, with a restaurant downstairs, and sort of banquet-hall type rooms upstairs. We practiced for a while, then we folks started showing up at 12, we talked with them, and drank tea and so forth, served by guys in black suits, and then at 1, we started playing.
It was a long room, with tables at one end for the shamisens, then two long tables running the length of the room, where we sat. At the other end was a Japanese stage, which is just a low platform that we covered with fluffy blankets and then bright red cloth, backed by a giant gold folding screen. Photos to come.
We all had programs, and so it was like a mini-concert… but with room for tuning up and rearranging and making mistakes. I played in 3 songs, and luckily, the hardest one was first, so afterward I could completely relax. I sat and drank tea and ate snacks and admired my souvenir ceramic hot-pot rest (you know… the thing you put on the table when you’re going to put a hot pot or something on top of it… what is that thing called?).
It was nice to sit and listen to good (and complicated) music and singing for 4 hours… but it got really tiring. For one, I was in a kimono, which was pretty comfortable, but also unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. For two, I had to be “on” the whole time. Everyone was really nice and friendly, but making small talk in a second language with people you don’t know for almost 9 hours… it’s exhausting!
The nice thing was… everyone was so relaxed and friendly, that they would come up and yank on my kimono if it was out of place, or press me with more tea or information about a song, and that made me feel better and less out-of-place.
After we played all the songs, we ate dinner in another room. Japanese-style big dinner, which was just dish after dish of food on a big rotating wheel in the middle of the table. There was cold soba (gross), sushi, sashimi, tai fish (just severed down the middle and fried! I took a photo of its scary head) crab, raw fish with salad, radishes, a nabe pot, some sort of lasagna, fried chinese-style veg, steak with weird potatoes, fruit… I quit towards the end, and picked up again when the fruit showed up.
They also had a karaoke machine, so all the ladies were getting up and singing enka songs. People were asking me about English songs, but as I am crap at Michael Jackson, I sang the Sukiyaki Song:
Then I got some other ladies to sing “UFO” by Pink Lady, and I did the dance (because I know it. It’s a brilliant thing to have in your arsenal, because everybody in Japan knows it):
After that I listened to the ladies rocking out to enka songs (which to tell god’s honest truth, every song sounds exactly the same, so if you can see the lyrics you can sing along to anything and everyone will be very amazed). I have heard enka described as such:
The most typical form of Japanese pop music for the last 100 years was, with uninterupted success, Enka. For proper musical ethnologists and watchmen of good taste, it is a pure horror, not even worth mentioning.
Classy. Click here for a typical example. They play stuff like this on TV all the time.
Definitely you don’t have to watch the whole thing of that, but do take a look at Jero, a part-Japanese American, who is making “hip” enka.
It’s still enka, yo.
Not to rip on it too much, the ladies were choosing peppy songs with lots of clapping and chances to sing along, but since, like I said, they all sound the same to me, I used the time to zone out a bit and plan my classes for Tuesday. Heh. I was tired, OK?
Aaaaaannnnyway.
We finished around 8, and I was in my teacher’s house with kimono off, drinking coffee, by 830 (that’s 10 hours in a kimono. YOW). Then I biked home, crawled under my kotatsu, and here I am!
I need a shower.
Where did my weekend go???





























