I've reached day 50 in Japan, exactly two weeks until the half way point. Today was an exciting new adventure. I signed up for classes through Marie to try out Taiko drumming! If you haven't seen it before, here's an example of something similar to what I learned to day on Youtube. There's honestly a bunch of really good videos on youtube, this one is one of my favorites. They just put so much movement and emotion into it! Learning was really fun, but also really exhausting. After practicing for only two hours, both of my arms hurt all the way down to my fingertips. But I did get to learn the main drum patterns for the Bon-Odori, which is a song and dance done during the Obon festival in late July. If you wanna read up on that, here's a wikipedia page, it's pretty cool, but I don't wanna waste a bunch of space explaining it. I also got to learn a little bit of the dance. Hopefully I'll be able to at least go to an Obon festival while I'm here.
I also got tickets from Marie to go to a Sumo match in a week or two. Haven't actually looked at the date… It's the 19th, so this Saturday. Awesome. There's also supposed to be a big festival that happens this weekend as well. Called the Sanja Matsuri (wiki), it takes place in Asakusa, which isn't too far away. It's supposed to be one of the biggest Shinto festivals in all of Japan. I really hope I'll be able to go. That makes this coming weekend really busy, including more Taiko lessons next monday, and the eclipse!
The rest of my day was fairly ordinary. After taiko, had lunch, then came back here to do a bunch of laundry and clean my room for the first time in a while. Bought some little air fresheners for my clothes drawers. For some reason, whatever wood the drawers are made out of stinks terribly. Oh! I also got my birthday gift from my parents today! An adorable 11th doctor toy set and a shirt with van Gogh's Tardis from the "The Pandorica Opens" episode of series five. Love it. Also, sorry for the pun in the title, but I just couldn't resist.
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