Weekend Part 2, Monday - Young mandolins
Today I wasted the afternoon away again. The only useful thing I did was going to the post office to send that card holder to ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fuj. I always end up talking to the same post office lady, so I'm always like "I'm sorry I'm so stupid and don't know how to do any of this" and she's always like "It's okay, I'm sorry I can't speak any English," and I'm like "I'm sorry I can't speak any Japanese!!" and either way, after all the apologizing, things get sent places, so it's all good. I also checked my postal bank account and yes, I've been paid. Not that I doubt that I would be, but it's nice to see.
I went to Nakano, where one of my students was having a concert tonight at Nakano Zero, which has a really nice concert hall. She's part of the mandolin club at the Tokyo Agricultural University and had told me like two months ago that she had a concert today. I had said, "Dude, that's a Monday, I could totally go to that!!" so last week she brought tickets for me and the other student in that class and for the other GEOS teachers.
However, I ended up getting to Nakano around 4:30pm and the concert wasn't until 6:30. I hadn't eaten any food yet, so I set out looking for some. Walking towards the concert hall, I saw a place that advertised itself as a "coffeehouse and mexican food" place. Weird, but that sounded like an excellent option since Mexican food is so rare here. Sadly, it was kind of expensive to get things separately and there weren't any real combo meals. A taco was Y250, a salad was Y370, a chicken wrap was Y350, chips were Y200 and nachos were Y400, and so on. I got an avocado salad (very tasty), a chicken wrap (decent) and iced tea. Next time maybe I'll get some tacos and chips. If there is a next time; I'm not really sure I have all that many excuses to go to Nakano. I wasted the rest of my pre-concert time by walking to the other side of the station and going to the Sun Plaza shopping area, where I went down to an arcade I knew was there and played a game of Pop'n.
When entering the concert hall, they were having people sign in to a guest book. It wasn't optional apparently, so I handed them my ticket and they gave me a concert program and asked me to sign the book. I asked in Japanese, "Really? Me?" and they said "Yes, please," so I said "Well, er, is katakana okay?" and they said sure, so I took their nice brush and wrote my name in katakana. (I heard someone saying something behind me like "Oh my, they're making the gaijin sign in too?")
The concert itself was really nice. They played a mixture of classical stuff and more modern stuff. The mandolin group was really a whole bunch of mandolins, some mandola tenors, cellos, and guitars, and then four basses as well. For two of the songs they also had two flute players and two clarinet players.
Here's what's funny -- almost every year in college I was always either watching or performing in a Kiltie Christmas concert at the beginning of December, so it really was appropriate for me to go to this one. On the other hand it was a bit odd. First, there was no obvious group director or anything. Occasionally someone would be announced as a concertmaster or conductor but it was different people each time. Also, whenever anything was announced, it wasn't announced by an actual speaking person that we could see, but was instead announced over the loudspeakers.
About halfway through the intermission, I'm working on a sudoku puzzle and I hear "Hey, there she is!" in English. Sure enough, it's my coworker Duane, and the other student from my Friday 7pm class. So, they came over and sat with me for the second half of the concert.
They played two extra songs as far as I can tell as an encore. The first one, they turned off almost all the lights on stage and it was a dark blue hue, there were no lights on the music stands, so I'm not sure if people memorized the music or what. Halfway through it a voice came over the loudspeaker like "We play this song because we have to remember painful and sad things and let them go", or something like that, I didn't understand all of it. The second song, the lights came back on, and they burst into a big Christmas medley (just as I was thinking how funny it was for me to be at a December-beginning concert that WASN'T a Kiltie Christmas). They played Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Jingle Bells. It was all done with a kind of country-western twang that results from being played by a whole ton of stringed guitar-like instruments.
Afterwards, we wanted to find our friend/student to tell her that the concert was good, but apparently we weren't allowed to, and the non-seniors weren't allowed to come upstairs until the entire backstage and whatnot were cleaned up. So, my other student had a great idea to write a note for her, and the three of us wrote a bunch of notes like "We loved your concert! The Christmas music was very nice!" and all signed it, and gave it to one of the mandolin club seniors like "Please give this to ____ and tell her that we came to see her concert!" and he said in English "Thank you very much" and in Japanese said that he would give it to her.
We split and went our separate ways after that. I wandered around Nakano a bit and then wandered back up north, watching a little of the Hoshino Japan baseball game while on the train. I stopped by Kura sushi for dinner (the meal at 4:30 was really lunch) and got home around 10:15pm. Apparently I had just missed seeing Paris Hilton on Bistro SMAP (yeah, I'm so sad. Really. NOT) but watched the rest of SMAPxSMAP (which had Exile as their musical guests which reminded me ofkawaru) and then also watched Ainori, as is becoming my Monday night habit. the2belo and I IMed all through Ainori about the FOUR new people they got this week as the bus headed into Germany (since Neko confessed and was turned down, Teppei retired, and Chaba-the-psycho had some sort of medical issue). Two guys, one of whom (Miya) is a kindergarten teacher and I think I decided I'm going to cheer for him even though he's kind of a loser because at least he seems like a sweetheart loser; the other (Ryo) is an ikemen-type who we've already decided seems like a complete asshat. The two new girls, one (Momo) is very pretty and seems nice but ditzy, and the other (Kuro) isn't quite as super-cutesy but is pretty in her own way. We'll have to see exactly what the hell is wrong with these people eventually, I guess.
My students think it's really freaky that I follow Ainori, hence I am going to follow it even more. So there.
fuj. I always end up talking to the same post office lady, so I'm always like "I'm sorry I'm so stupid and don't know how to do any of this" and she's always like "It's okay, I'm sorry I can't speak any English," and I'm like "I'm sorry I can't speak any Japanese!!" and either way, after all the apologizing, things get sent places, so it's all good. I also checked my postal bank account and yes, I've been paid. Not that I doubt that I would be, but it's nice to see.I went to Nakano, where one of my students was having a concert tonight at Nakano Zero, which has a really nice concert hall. She's part of the mandolin club at the Tokyo Agricultural University and had told me like two months ago that she had a concert today. I had said, "Dude, that's a Monday, I could totally go to that!!" so last week she brought tickets for me and the other student in that class and for the other GEOS teachers.
However, I ended up getting to Nakano around 4:30pm and the concert wasn't until 6:30. I hadn't eaten any food yet, so I set out looking for some. Walking towards the concert hall, I saw a place that advertised itself as a "coffeehouse and mexican food" place. Weird, but that sounded like an excellent option since Mexican food is so rare here. Sadly, it was kind of expensive to get things separately and there weren't any real combo meals. A taco was Y250, a salad was Y370, a chicken wrap was Y350, chips were Y200 and nachos were Y400, and so on. I got an avocado salad (very tasty), a chicken wrap (decent) and iced tea. Next time maybe I'll get some tacos and chips. If there is a next time; I'm not really sure I have all that many excuses to go to Nakano. I wasted the rest of my pre-concert time by walking to the other side of the station and going to the Sun Plaza shopping area, where I went down to an arcade I knew was there and played a game of Pop'n.
When entering the concert hall, they were having people sign in to a guest book. It wasn't optional apparently, so I handed them my ticket and they gave me a concert program and asked me to sign the book. I asked in Japanese, "Really? Me?" and they said "Yes, please," so I said "Well, er, is katakana okay?" and they said sure, so I took their nice brush and wrote my name in katakana. (I heard someone saying something behind me like "Oh my, they're making the gaijin sign in too?")
The concert itself was really nice. They played a mixture of classical stuff and more modern stuff. The mandolin group was really a whole bunch of mandolins, some mandola tenors, cellos, and guitars, and then four basses as well. For two of the songs they also had two flute players and two clarinet players.
Here's what's funny -- almost every year in college I was always either watching or performing in a Kiltie Christmas concert at the beginning of December, so it really was appropriate for me to go to this one. On the other hand it was a bit odd. First, there was no obvious group director or anything. Occasionally someone would be announced as a concertmaster or conductor but it was different people each time. Also, whenever anything was announced, it wasn't announced by an actual speaking person that we could see, but was instead announced over the loudspeakers.
About halfway through the intermission, I'm working on a sudoku puzzle and I hear "Hey, there she is!" in English. Sure enough, it's my coworker Duane, and the other student from my Friday 7pm class. So, they came over and sat with me for the second half of the concert.
They played two extra songs as far as I can tell as an encore. The first one, they turned off almost all the lights on stage and it was a dark blue hue, there were no lights on the music stands, so I'm not sure if people memorized the music or what. Halfway through it a voice came over the loudspeaker like "We play this song because we have to remember painful and sad things and let them go", or something like that, I didn't understand all of it. The second song, the lights came back on, and they burst into a big Christmas medley (just as I was thinking how funny it was for me to be at a December-beginning concert that WASN'T a Kiltie Christmas). They played Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Jingle Bells. It was all done with a kind of country-western twang that results from being played by a whole ton of stringed guitar-like instruments.
Afterwards, we wanted to find our friend/student to tell her that the concert was good, but apparently we weren't allowed to, and the non-seniors weren't allowed to come upstairs until the entire backstage and whatnot were cleaned up. So, my other student had a great idea to write a note for her, and the three of us wrote a bunch of notes like "We loved your concert! The Christmas music was very nice!" and all signed it, and gave it to one of the mandolin club seniors like "Please give this to ____ and tell her that we came to see her concert!" and he said in English "Thank you very much" and in Japanese said that he would give it to her.
We split and went our separate ways after that. I wandered around Nakano a bit and then wandered back up north, watching a little of the Hoshino Japan baseball game while on the train. I stopped by Kura sushi for dinner (the meal at 4:30 was really lunch) and got home around 10:15pm. Apparently I had just missed seeing Paris Hilton on Bistro SMAP (yeah, I'm so sad. Really. NOT) but watched the rest of SMAPxSMAP (which had Exile as their musical guests which reminded me of
kawaru) and then also watched Ainori, as is becoming my Monday night habit. the2belo and I IMed all through Ainori about the FOUR new people they got this week as the bus headed into Germany (since Neko confessed and was turned down, Teppei retired, and Chaba-the-psycho had some sort of medical issue). Two guys, one of whom (Miya) is a kindergarten teacher and I think I decided I'm going to cheer for him even though he's kind of a loser because at least he seems like a sweetheart loser; the other (Ryo) is an ikemen-type who we've already decided seems like a complete asshat. The two new girls, one (Momo) is very pretty and seems nice but ditzy, and the other (Kuro) isn't quite as super-cutesy but is pretty in her own way. We'll have to see exactly what the hell is wrong with these people eventually, I guess.My students think it's really freaky that I follow Ainori, hence I am going to follow it even more. So there.