As mentioned a few days ago, there's a small Christmas "village" in the open space in front of Lotteria. I walked past on my way to the English school at 1:30 PM on Saturday, and there wasn't anything going on in the way of live music. In fact, there was a marching band, or something, down about 100 feet along the arcade from me as I approached. I could hear them playing some kind of Christmas music. I took a couple photos of the village, and when I prepared to follow the sound to wherever is was coming from, it stopped and everyone cleared out. I guess I'd arrived just as it ended. Either way, I continued on to the school.
There were a few people at the village, enjoying the food, or just wanting a place to sit and talk.
The regular live stage, waiting for a band. I took a few more photos, but for some reason everything kept coming out blurry on the final shots (they looked more or less fine on the camera screen). Not sure what the problem was.
Meanwhile, over at Tenmonkan proper, they had their Happy Christmas Concert in combination with the official turning on of the walkway lights (what they're calling their "Millionation", or whatever). I knew the event was coming up, but I had to work from 1:30 to 6 PM, and the music ran from about 1:30 to 7 PM. Things started with the NHK Children's Chorus, which was just setting up when I walked by. When I got out of the school and returned to the stage, Southern Cross was in the middle of their set.
Normally, they have 5-6 women dancing, but with the small stage, they settled for 3. Off to the side were a bunch of otaku (fanboys), shouting out filler lyrics, and just acting like otaku. Most of the other people walking by tended to turn their heads away and look disgusted. By definition, I think modern otaku are "men in their 20's or 30's, with no social skills, and no visible means of support."
The girls seemed to love the attention, though.
Wicky and his wife, Kana, started playing at 6:30 PM, to a much smaller crowd. Wicky loves Southern All-Stars, so most of his set was covers of their hits.
Nonki, the surf guitarist that sometimes plays with Wicky and Bon DX, had been on stage at 5 PM, and he showed up in the audience for a few minutes while I was talking photos. I apologized for missing his set, but he'd already known that I was going to be working then. After a little while, he left for home.
The set ended at 7 PM, but a few people called out "encore," so Wicky did one more song (don't know the name of it; it was another Japanese cover). Overall, a good ending to the day. I went home and had dinner, then worked on the computer before going to bed.
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