6/8 Japanese Instruments

こんにちは！

Today was a little bit more of a chill day, which is what I needed. One of the guys forgot his train pass, so two of us stayed behind to wait for him. We ended up showing to the university about 10 minutes late, but our teacher was nice enough to wait outside for us to show us where to go. ありがとうみちこ先生！After a short class that covered a scavenger hunt we had to do yesterday, we went and got lunch with some of the university students. After lunch we had a class on shakuhachi and koto. I wasn't able to get any pictures of the class but here are the instruments I'm talking about - 

Shakuhachi

Koto

The teachers first gave some performances of their own. The music was beautiful and relaxing, and I had a hard time trying not to fall asleep. Admittedly this is probably because I didn't get too much sleep the night before, but I was dozing off a bit during their performances. We then attempted our own hand at the instruments. 

The group was split into two - four people would try the koto and the other four the shakuhachi. To begin with, I was in the shakuhachi group. The shakuhachi brought me back to 3rd grade band class of when I attempted the flute. I could not get a single sound out of that thing and made myself lightheaded trying to do so. Two of the guys from our group tried helping me with it, but I just couldn't get the hang of it. Luckily the teachers had us switch instruments, and I had better luck with the koto. I actually managed to play the simple song called "Sakura" that the teachers gave us. After about 15-20 minutes of practicing, we then had to give a mini class recital. I immediately dived for the koto, and we had about 3 or 4 tries on it. Here's a video of the fourth try - 

Playing the koto was actually pretty fun! I screwed up towards the end, but hey! 

After exploring another nearby department store and getting more Mister Donut and takoyaki for dunner, I went back to my room to chill out for a bit. We're going to Hiroshima tomorrow so I have to pack and get plenty of sleep. So, that'll be it for now :)

おやすみ！