Sunday, March 25, 2018

Izumi School Spring Concert




Izumi is a small city several hours northwest of Kagoshima by car. I first visited there after the big earthquake that caused the Fukushima reactor meltdown, when I left Tokyo and was trying to find a new place to live. A couple years later, I returned to the area to see the red-crested crane nesting grounds there. The place pretty much lives for the nesting season between October and February, when all the tourists arrive to see the cranes. So, when I saw the sign announcing the Izumi High School Spring Concert, I kind of had a small vested interest in going to Tenmonkan to hear them, in part because I didn't think there were enough kids living in Izumi to justify their having a high school.



It was scheduled to start at 2 PM on Wednesday, and I got out the door a bit late, arriving as they were finishing the first song. I didn't have a chance to identify it.



The second song was the Village People's "YMCA," accompanied by 4 cheerleaders. The band played very well, but it's a copyrighted song, and would be blocked by youtube.



The third piece was something of a big-band jazz song that I didn't recognize. I tried recording it, but 1 minute in the battery in the camera died. That was disappointing. I hung around a few minutes more, then returned home. As I say, the band was very tight, and did have a lot of fun with the music. But, being unable to record it made my hanging around to the end a bit unnecessary. The first thing I did when I got back to the apartment was to recharge the battery, mainly because the camera refused to let me copy the files off to the laptop otherwise.

I'd definitely get a backup battery if only it didn't cost such a large percentage of the price of the camera itself.

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