First off, yesterday's workshop was amazing. Thomas was pretty tough on us, but I know we'll improve now. A few changes he told us to incorporate into our weekly routine are:

• always come to practice wearing our Kidaiko shirts
• bow and say "ohayou-gozaimasu" before entering our "training dojo", aka the school choir room
• line-up and start practice saying "yoroshiku onegaishimasu"
• do 30 minutes of stretching and warm-ups as opposed to our usual 5
• approach taiko with the motto "First time. Last time. Every time." - reflecting the attitude that every day we're a changed, and therefore new person
• keep keening in mind the sensei-senpai-kohai relationship, never letting your senpai do menial work before you, such as moving drums and cleaning up, while your senpai must always be there to help and instruct you
• before leaving practice, bow and say "oyasumi nasai"

He gave us some very specific pointers when it comes to technique and form, emphasizing that anyone can learn a rhythm, but correct form only comes to those who seek it. The warmups he had us do felt like we were in boot camp. I'm sore all over. We also were encouraged to keep and cherish our own personal bachi, forming an attachment to them the way any musician does to his instrument.

The morning focused on mainly chu-daiko technique, followed by a brief rundown on shime. In the afternoon, we tackled the new piece, and he intends to have us perform it alongside Denver Taiko when they come for Japan Fest the end of September. The middle section goes crazy fast with a R-L-R-R-L-R-R-L-R pattern that my vibrato-accumstomed left hand doesn't like. And of course, he had me on lead shime, so I was expected to do all the shime solo transitions in perfect time. The last runthrough of the piece, we had an audience of several Japanese visitors who are here as part of our exchange program with Maebashi in Japan (the details for that, including our hosting our third Japanese student, will be saved for a later post). By that time, I somehow managed to pull off the proper rhythm and speed for almost all the piece. Crazy what pressure can do.

Now, all we have to do is institute all these changes and stick with it. We can start pretty quick, seeing as we have a performance for all our Japanese guests tomorrow morning (at 7:30!! - are these people insane??). Tuesday will be our next practice. I wonder how warming up for 30 minutes will affect our 2-hour time constraint?

As a quick sidenote - when Thomas arrived at the airport, we were trying to spot him coming off the plane and couldn't. We had to have him paged so we could find him. When he finally walked up to us, he looked more hispanic than Japanese, hair slicked back, slight mustache and trimmer than I remembered. Wow, was I embarassed. I totally saw him come off the plane and hadn't recognized him. Way to go me...