Notes from the Archipelago - a Japanese Autumn 秋 2019
Saturday 16th November 11月16日 土曜日..........
A nice sunny Saturday morning should start with a leisurely breakfast and a look at the paper don't you think?
ah,............. maybe we should concentrate on breakfast .......
......... green tea and a Monaka - a mouth-watering sort of wafer job filled with sweet bean paste......Thank you みさこさん! I've heard you can also eat them with ice cream......mmmm...
What terrible weather for November in Yokohama.........
a gentle breeze necessitated borrowing a clothes peg for my notebook....a Japanese clothes peg....🤣
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One nice spin-off about working for the Japanese Festival in Frankfurt (see https://www.main-matsuri.com/EN/news-social-media/ ) is that you meet lots of nice people whom you can then visit in Tokyo. So not long after I arrived back from the mountains I found myself in a dance studio on the edge of Tokyo : "Razaris" ( https://www.razaris.jp/about-1/ )
Their Hip Hop group from this studio held us all spellbound in Frankfurt.......
..............and I was very kindly allowed to sit in on a training session later in the evening. Here Kyoko-san is teaching a young group a Kpop routine, aided by instructor Shiori-san.........
The studio offers classes in a bewildering variety of dance styles - in addition to Kpop, there is Jazz, Zumba, R&B, "La Style Swag", Jazz Funk, Soul & Rock
.......and seems very popular for even for small kids......
The next day, with my brain still full of Kpop, I had some adjusting to do. A friend of mine was giving a recital with a colleague of Piano and Cello repertoire. At 10 am in the morning! So it was off on the train to Tokorozawa, a town in the adjacent prefecture to Tokyo, Saitama. Tokorozawa turned out to be a pretty smart place.......
with a huge railway station......
and even the camellias were still in bloom.......
...and what a delightful little recital. Here are a couple of pictures.....
....and a sneak rehearsal preview (don't be put off by the weird mirror effect...Takehiko Kudo is all there playing the 'Cello, with Emi playing "4" hands........! ( https://www.emiikeyama.com/ )
Every concert has to have a follow up in a local eatery, so here we are grilling beef (they have these inbuilt grills in the middle of the table, and rather like a Swiss meal, you take a thin slice of meat and give it an instant grilling......absolutely おいしかったです...mouth watering.......
End of Episode 6
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