Front and Center

I know I wrote about a different talent show, but now I've participated in one myself--only this one was the showcase for a certain Foreign Exchange Student Performance Contest. The program even included laudatory letters from each student's home country ambassador to Japan (!), but this was as close we got to cross-cultural communication; instead, the thoroughly Japanese audience was content to appreciate the exotic.

How did I get here? A classmate from my summer semester of language instruction started jamming on this Hawaiian love song with a ukulele player going to his central Tokyo college, but they wanted a low-end pulse and gave me a call. We ran two casual rehearsals at their dorm, then auditioned and somehow were allowed to advance to the finalist stage. I liked playing with these dudes so much that participating in the Harajuku concert was icing on the cake, though several of the other 18 groups were clearly there in the hopes of winning.

Our song was 3 minutes long, so for playing it twice--morning dress rehearsal and afternoon debut--all three of us got 1) a full day's entertainment from Laotian wind instruments to a masterful piece on a guqin [oldest Chinese stringed instrument, somewhat like a zither] that was built like a koto [Japanese and derived from the guqin] to watching a few internationals live out the karaoke player's dream of a professional backing band, 2) lunch of o-nigiri [small piece of meat wrapped in rice and then a layer of seaweed] and sandwiches as well as a buffet banquet for dinner, and 3) a grab bag of prizes which I'll get to in a second. I think we were well compensated!















So yes, after our performance we were awarded the title of "Most Rhythmic," although to be fair this was one of the consolation prizes everyone but the top three received. And while I am very grateful for the generous grab bag of gifts, all three of us could only laugh when it turned out that everything had been donated...and half of those generous companies are apparently makers of women's clothing! "You want this skirt?" "Hey, check out these pants!" It was like getting Christmas presents from a Santa loaded on sake. True, they weren't Goodwill donations and our guitar player can really use the futon & electronic dictionary we got, but the prizes just made the experience all that much more wacky and ultimately memorable.