Day three began with me waking up at the usual Way Earlier Than Necessary Or Reasonable time. So, knowing that there would be no morning run, I quietly showered, got dressed, and went for a wee walkabout to see what secrets the ‘hood was hiding.
First, I climbed up the double-kiss-your-ass-turn road that winds up the hill directly behind the schoolhouse, which is where I shot the above video from. It was just around 6am, so aside from a few cars and bikes already out for fun and possible death on the twisty mountain roads in the area, it was mostly pretty damn tranquil. Just the sound of the birds, the wind, and the river. What an environment! The schoolhouse is situated in a sort of valley, with just a few houses sorta nearby, and a temple directly across the street (Chōkei-ji if I remember correctly). Interestingly, there were tea fields behind the temple. This struck me as a real coincidence, as one of the gifts I brought for Ondekoza was a selection of powdered green tea from Furukawa Seicha, a tea grower based in Uji (Kyoto) that has been around since the Edo Period and whose middle daughter is a former student (just graduated from elementary school in March), and one of my favorite students ever. Super sweet kid. I wish they were all like her. Anyway. Lemme blab on about the tea for a sec. One member (Naoto) studied agriculture at college, and spent time in the US doing so in Salinas, California. He’s a fantastic cook by the way—Naoto, those scones rocked the house, man! He’s also pretty goddam knowledgeable all around when it comes to the culinary arts, and when I said “here’s a little something I brought for you guys,” he knew from like a 0.5 second glance it was green tea, which took me by surprise. Ms Furukawa also hooked me up with a bamboo whisk for preparing the tea, and Naoto was stoked about that as well, so I was stoked too. Much stokage! Thanks a million, Ms Furukawa and Hoyuhoyu!!!
On my way up the road behind the school, I spotted this monument tucked away in the woods, just at the foot of the first turnback. I thought “Cool! Creepy shit! I’ll hit that up on the way down.” Turns out it was a monument erected in memory of the local boys and men who died as soldiers during WW2. Yikes. There’s a weird monument like this near my place that has a freaking howitzer type large bore gun made into a sort of flagpole, with the base of the monument having shells stood on end placed every so often around the thing. Weeeeeeird! Far less creepy than this one, obviously. Anyway, my walkabout continued.
Found a few oooold rusty signs. The rectangular one says Unauthorized Vehicle Entry Prohibited—West Elementary School. The round one has English at the top. I also found two other WTF things. First:
Is that not a gas-guzzling full-blooded ‘Murican car or what?! I dunno if the house was even being lived in as it was hard to tell if the debris strewn haphazardly around it had been disturbed at all recently. Weird! Next was this:
A fucking cassette tape, in its case, undamaged, not sun-bleached or waterlogged. Of course that fucker went straight into my pocket and home with me. I checked it out, and it’s super quiet recording of dialog straight off the radio. WEEEEEEEIRD!!!!! Next I trudged down the stone-walled sides to the riverbank and shot a wee viddy. Ok so it seems there’s a one video per post limit. See you in part four then!
So lemme just start by saying this is the second attempt at thumbfucking this post out on my phone in the Stumblr app. First time I was almost all the way through the post when I dipped out to grab a link to a video and when I flipped back to this app guess what, fucking post had fucked off into fuck knows where. Pissed. Me. Off. Anyway.
Exactly one month ago I was visited by opportunity in the form of a Saturday work day which I was told at the last minute (on Friday) that I didn’t actually need to attend. Mental wheels started frantically spinning. What was it that I had thought about doing or going to but in the end gave up on the idea because of travel time and difficulty finding a place to stay... oh shit yeah, Ondekoza is playing kinda sorta nearby. Righty-O then. I immediately got busy contacting the boss (this woman I live with who is the mother of our children) and asked her if she minded if I took the car and fugged off for the weekend. She was like “how soon can you be gone?” Hahaha no not really. She just said sure go ahead just be careful. Then I got in touch with Naoto, the one member of Ondekoza who I talk with regularly, and asked if it’d be ok for me to drive out and stay with them and help set up and tear down for their show and whatever. A positive reply came rather quickly so a last minute plan came together and Saturday morning off I went.
They were doing workshops and fun things, as well as playing a full concert (outdoors, on a stage set up in the middle of a terraced rice field area) to bring a week-long artsyfartsy event to a close. What was the event called again? Something like Umi-no-Stage 2019 (Umi means ocean, sea or beach), featuring workshops and performances by mostly off the wall/weirdo/wacky artists (right up my alley) held in a wee rustic hamlet (so small it’s almost not on maps) called Tagarasu (literally means Rice Field Crow, I dig it) near Obama City (yes, they made a big deal outta that when Drumpf’s predecessor was in office), in Fukui Prefecture (not “fuckyouey” hahaha no, “fooh-kooh-wee”) on the Sea of Japan side. Enough parentheses in that last sentence for you? Hehe. So as you can see on the map, google maps said it would be a two hour drive if I took the non-toll roads. Lemme tell you, freeways are anything but free here. The routes on the left and right on that map had tolls of $40 and $50 each, one way, so I was like the hell with that. It was an easy drive anyway once I got out of the urban sprawl and traffic jam factory of Kyoto City itself. Then it was twisty mountain roads, fresh, cool air, and scenic routes through mountain forests and alongside rivers in valleys. I thought it quite ironic and a helluva coincidence that I ended up driving the westernmost length of a road which I had ran the easternmost part of a few weeks prior on an overnighter with the third graders for work. Here’s a shot of the road sign:
ACCIIIIIIIIIIEEED!!!!!! So before I knew it I arrived in one piece, parked at a beach access parking lot that said “$10 a day, pay at the front” but I was like “I’m with Ondekoza, can I park here? Oh by the way do you know which house they’re in right now?” And the confused looking lady in charge grabbed a guy who was event staff and had him take me to where I needed to go, and in the end I found out that the fee is for people who want to go fishing out on the breakwaters there so whatever.
No sooner had I walked in the door and exchanged greetings than they tell me “we’ve got a job for you today.” Cool. I thought they’d ask me to write up something in English, or maybe do some lettering like make a sign or something, chalk art, whatever. Nope. “We want you to play shime-daiko for a five minute or so attention-getter we’re gonna play to fire people up for tomorrow’s show. It’s a mashup of Utsu Hachijo and Yatai Bayashi. Cool?” Jeeeeezus are you kidding me? Yeah ok I’m familiar with those pieces but it’s been ages, literally 27 years since I practiced them with the then-members of Ondekoza when they came to my hometown and stayed a few weeks during the latter part of their America Marathon Tour (I think maybe it was called the Odyssey tour?). Anyway. Moro-kun (the newest/youngest member?) and I sit down and start brainstorming. We talk out the arrangement of the piece and how it will progress, then do a “rehearsal” drumming out our parts on the table there. All was good. He was sweating bullets, really nervous about the whole thing. I was like “when are we supposed to do this?” And he said “in about half an hour.” HOLY SHIT FOR REAL?! Yikes. Ok ok ok, let’s run through this one more time, cool? We did. No problem. Moro-kun was still a bundle of nerves. I was like “Right. We got this. Let’s go! It’ll all work out in the end.”
Before we were on though, a small, quite out-there modern dance outfit called Monochrome Circus put on a performance at the hamlet’s shrine, so we hit that on our way. Here’s a photo of the entrance as seen from the street:
Fantastic atmosphere. The director of the group gave a short introduction, then explained what the first performance would be. In Japan, there’s a super popular style of comic called the yon-koma-manga (four-frame comic strip). Quite like the funnies in the daily newspapers back home actually. They would set a scene somewhere within the shrine grounds, then one person at a time would enter the scene, strike a pose and freeze, until four people had entered and then the audience would be prompted to say “FINISHED!” For the first one, the group members showed what the deal was so everyone would get it. From the second one on, they asked members of the audience to join in. I ran over to the stairs you can see in the photo, whipped out my iPhone and sat down, pretending to be messing with it—an homage to the modern mindless moron that today’s society overflows with so profusely. The second person came and stood behind me looking over my shoulder. I couldn’t see where the third or fourth people ended up. FINISHED!!! This kept on for a few more rounds, then the group did a few dances, which were really nice actually, and not SO out there. Then it was time to go. Righty-O. Let’s go!
Yeah so when we got to the seawall there, I didn’t get stage fright until it was time to take off my shoes and socks and sit down in front of the drum. Biggest goof? Forgetting to take off my damn sunglasses. Duhhhhhh. At least I managed to keep in time and didn’t fuck up disastrously, though the sticks were a helluva lot thicker and longer than the sticks I’m used to (Ondekoza makes all their drumsticks by hand). But it ain’t everyday you get to play with Ondekoza, so I’m glad I had the chance.
After that we just hung out, did dinner, then walked around checking out the sunset.
Not too shabby. In the evening, a wacko but fun group called something like the Tōhoku Six Prefecture Rock-n-rollers gave a show at the same stage Ondekoza would be using the next day so we went and saw that. Fun, crazy shit. Then off to bed.
The next morning we were up by 5:45, and then it was off on the daily 6am run. Everyone split up and went off on their own though and I was like WHAAAT?! So instead of going solo and getting completely the fuck lost, I tagged along with Naoto. What a scenic run! Through tunnels and down twisty roads that hugged the coastal sides of the smallish mountains there. The view was fantastic. We reached a turnaround point and Naoto said “I’ve got breakfast duty so I need to head back.” No problem. I followed him back, then ran an extra 1km and a bit. Still it totalled about 7km, three short of their daily 10km run (they don’t strictly adhere to this distance though, they’ve become a bit more flexible and I don’t think it’s a bad thing—when they were founded and when they ran in the US when I spent time with them they all ran together as a group but not anymore). Shower, breakfast, then a full-on day of setting up. After the setting up part was done, they had a soundcheck and mini rehearsal. I snapped this photo while that was going on.
What a place. Beautiful. Absolute nightmare for music though, as far as acoustics are concerned. But it all worked out. Two o’clock arrived and concertgoers started mozying in. We retreated to a large tent that was set up as a dressing room. They changed into their performing outfits, and I just zoned out for a bit. Before they go on, they always do this ritual of making a circle and doing warmup exercises, then adjacent members hold hands, and they do a little pre-game cheer of sorts. I was invited to join in all this so I was pleasantly surprised. Then it was GAME ON!!! I shot video of the whole show, and here’s a photo from Instagram of them playing Ōdaiko with me at the right shooting video.
Hahaa a cameo. Gimme a break. Anyway I’ll put a link to the video here in a sec but I just want to say they told the audience that video and photos were prohibited, so I set the video to “unlisted” and the only way to see it is if you have the link. They don’t really mind people seeing the video, it’s more a concern about people taking photos or video and then trying to sell it. Right then, here you go:
It’s about an hour twenty minutes or so. Hope you have nice speakers too. Yeah. So it was a fantastic show in an idyllic, beautiful environment. Then it was time to tear down and pack up. We had quite a bit of help this time so it was over within about an hour. Then they were gonna drive north along the Sea of Japan, heading to catch a ferry way up in Aomori, on their way to their annual Hokkaidō camp and concert, before heading off to a two week stint in China. I said a sincere thanks for being allowed to tag along, let them know that I really appreciated it, and then the director (Mr Matsuda) said “C’mon, you’re family! And besides that, you get shit done! Having you here was a huge help and it’s you who should be thanked.” I was floored. Did not expect to be told that. Wow. So it was in very high spirits thst I made the drive back home, arriving safely, but still full of adrenaline. What a weekend.
The next time I’ll get to fool around with them will be in September when they’ll be in Nagoya for a concert. I’m cooking up a plan to design and have vinyl stickers made for them to sell at shows and events while I’m back in the US this summer. 123stickers.com man, vinyl fucking stickers for reasonable prices and the damn things last forever. I’ve slapped a shitload of small ones here and there around Osaka and Kyoto over the years and they’re still there, in great shape. Graffiti background bared for all to see huh? Hahaha. Anyway. That’s all I have to say about that!
Yeah so here we go again. One video per post limit, wazzat all about? Anyway. After I half-slid down the grass sides of the bank leading down to the river, barely avoiding an unplanned swim in the process, I noticed how much louder the sound of the water was down near the river itself, probably a side effect of like 99% of the rivers in Japan having had concrete or stone embankments built directly at their sides (gotta keep those local economies thriving, ya know?). Ahem. Hehe. Yeah actually that’s one of the “secrets” to how Japan got where it is today, uh, or maybe to where it was until a few years ago: keep as many people employed as possible, doing the most trivial of things, and also make sure that workers are willing to work 60-70 hours a week but only get paid for 40 (“service overtime”). Boy, do the profits roll in!! This shit has come back to bite them in the collective national ass though, especially in this day and age of globalization and the internet—where it’s possible to see what standards other countries abide by and realize some things are better done differently. But I digress. Here, enjoy a riverside scene for a wee while:
Sorry for shoting that one in portrait mode. Shooting video that way goes against all my instincts as a photographer/videographer. Hehe. I shot another video further up the river that gets a bit Tarkovskyish at the end there, what with the underwater weeds undulating in the current and all. Ahhhhh, Solaris. Beautiful. But One Video Per Post! So too bad about that... Well, here’s some pics of other things I found outside, around and inside the schoolhouse.
How’s that schedule grab you? Keep in mind two things here. One, the Hand-copying of a Sutra (the Heart Sutra, Hannya Shingyō in Japanese), is done with either brush, inkstone and all the traditional calligraphy paraphernalia, or a brush pen (not sure which but I think the standard Pentel Fude-pen, grey body and black cap) but LEFT HANDED. I have yet to try this. I’ve done the normal deal tons of times, but never with the left hand. Two, Morning Practice is pretty much an hour straight of eighth notes, or sixteenth notes, or the horse-galloping rhythm (like takatan takatan takatan takatan (RLR RLR RLR RLR), there’s a proper Japanese term for this but it’s slipped my mind at the moment). For. An. Hour. Straight. Oof! Basic rhythm practice. Building a strong foundation. I wish I had an hour for this everydamnday.
Well, after everyone was up an around we had breakfast, finished cleaning up, then set everything back up the way it usually is. Here’s the main practice room:
Quite different from the café-slash-rest-space it was the day before. Once everything was done I noticed the time and it was tine for yours truly to get his butt on the road back home. Man, what a whirlwind weekend it was. It’s already a week since the Friday I left to head out there, and I’m STILL fucking reeling from the whole experience. Just escaped from work and went for a 10km run, and the whole time all I kept thinking was how much easier it was than that long downhill then uphill stretch in Higashi Chichibu Mura (Ondekoza HQ’s proper locale). This experience has changed me somehow, awakened a new understanding of the importance of each little piece in a large, working machine. Whether the machine is an actual mechanical construct, or a conceptual body such as a workplace, a group of friends, or a family, isn’t really important. This idea was really strongly left with me afterwards. That, and the idea that you can’t set your own limits—don’t decide you can’t do something especially before even fucking trying it. And then, if you try but have trouble, KEEP TRYING! Don’t give up, but it’s fine to take a break when the need arises. Being able to see the inportance of thibgs like this again is something that I really needed right now. Thank you, Ondekoza, for everything, and so much more.
Last, seems the Start button on my running watch must’ve been pressed when I threw my bags up on the luggage rack in the bullet train. Pretty funny shit, this. Heh.
Again, my sincerest and most heartfelt thank you to Ondekoza, especially to Naoto Kinoshita for making this happen. I am beyond grateful.
The story continues, me brothers. Day two began at around 05:00, when I woke up just because I can’t sleep as well as I used to, and am always up around the crack of dawn. I have an aunt named Dawn, so I’ve always found that saying borderline incestuous. Anyway. Heh. Yeah so I was up before anyone else but just sat on the sofa zoning out, still not quite yet having come to grips with the fact that I was with Ondekoza. About 05:50 I see a few members pass by the staff room heading out the front door, so I peeked out, saw they were in running gear, and was like “gimme a sec and I’ll be changed and ready to go.” And so I was, and so we ran.
That’s a screenshot of the course we ran I snaped off my Garmin Connect app. 4km and a smidge downhill, U-turn, then 4km and a smidge uphill. I started last, but finished first. That was unexpected to say the least. I just ran as I usually do and before I knew it, I had almost caught up with Yahiro, who was in the lead, and is of Italian-Japanese heritage. He’s a little taller than I am, and thus has a longer stride, so he had an advantage. But just past the 3km mark, he quick ducked into a newly built public restroom (the schoolhouse has old, Japanese-style squat toilets, so maybe the new place has western-style heated-seat deals with warm water showers for your bum and all, hey this IS Japan so of course the toilets are high tech affairs, duh!), and then I had no idea where to go, or where the turnaround point was. So I paused there, waited a few minutes til the next guy caught up, and off I went. Reached the turnaround, then just set back into my usual pace and again was alone before long. I arrived back at the schoolhouse and walked around for a few minutes, when the others started to trickle back in, and when they did they headed straight through the front door without slowing down so I thought uh-oh, time to work already. But as it turned out, that wasn’t the case. See for yourself:
Sorry it goes sideways there but I wasn’t really thinking about what was going on, more like mesmerized that they were doing this, and kinda freaked in a deja-vu way as the generation of Ondekoza I spent tine with in the 90s finished their runs the same way. Being at their HQ, in super rural Japan, well, it made for a very special, almost mystical experience. Then it was shower, breakfast, and prep prep prep, until BAM it was noon already. I was asked “do you cook?” To which I said “yup,” and was promptly made one of the three members in charge of taking care of lunch. I was given salad duty. Half an hour later, everything was ready, the table was set, and lunch was served. After a very quick bite, it was back outside and back to work and then POW it was time for the show. Lemme see if I can throw in a link to the video I shot of the show.
Yeah it worked. There was a point in the middle where Seizan Matsuda (the group director) was like “Where’s White-san? Ah. He’s originally from the US. His ties with the group go waaaaay back, he’s been here since yesterday helping out with everything. It’s like destiny! We’ll get you down here and see if you can do something with us, how about it? Yeah.” YIKES! In the end, I lucked out and was left to my own devices and just shot video til they finished. But then Mr Matsuda motioned for me to come down (I had hauled an old desk out from behind the school and was standing on it to shoot video from a better vantage point), so I did and was allowed to stand in line with the members and take a bow.
Spot the whitey. Hahaha yeah me in my UniQlo TR-808 shirt. Being allowed to stand there was a real honor. Dream come true. But then Yoshi started telling the audience about my experience with the group, and my parents threatening me with disownment and death, and that I’d been living in Japan since 1999 and semi-active with a local taiko group for a while, and so on and so forth. And, that I was going to be in the area at least for that day and the next, so if any locals spotted a foreigner wearing all black roaming around the hills, not to worry or call the cops. Haha. He actually said “He’s not a suspect character at all!” but I quickly threw in “No no, I’m pretty sketchy so you should watch out!” and got some laughs, so that was nice. But goddam, being introduced like that and then taking bows with the band.. It blew my mind.
Next it was a slow cleanup while the crowd gradually dispersed, and then finally a BBQ dinner of venison and wild boar that a local hunter had caught, prepared, and marinated for a few days. Simply amazing. I was full after a short while but the members ate like there was no tomorrow. Which I suppose is a given considering the show they’d just put on. We thanked the locals who hung out til the end, and then cleaned up what was left to clean up, including inside, and gradually ended up in the staff room. A guy I hadn’t seen before was there, and they kept referring to him and bank-boy. Seems he currently works in a bank but is going to quit soon and join the group, after a year and a bit of working there, negotiating with his parents the whole time. Haha! In the end they said ok. I can’t say I’m not envious because I totally am. If I didn’t have a family to support I’d be there myself in less than half a second.
Photo from just when we were finishing the BBQ and enjoying the fire we had cooked over. It got pretty cold pretty quick there.
And after everyone had hit the shower, we drifted off to bed, and day two with Ondekoza came to a quiet end.
Righty then, synth-heads, this ain’t your typical synth-or-nefarious-machinery-related post, obviously. But nevertheless, it’s pertinent, and very relevant to the overall makeup of who I am as a person, so read on anyhow, and maybe along the way you’ll make some new discoveries.
First, you may be thinking what (or who) the hell is Ondekoza? Super long story short: a group of mostly male, mostly young(ish) Japanese borderline psychos intent on preserving various elements of the traditional performing arts of Japan, through super intense training and living a communal lifestyle. The group was started in the late 1960s by Den Tagayasu, who had a vision of creating a center of learning such arts, populated with energetic (and eccentric) youth, where people could come and study and thus keep those traditions alive—traditions which at the time Mr Tagayasu truly felt were all but going to disappear, swept away in the tsunami of Japan’s period of rapid economic growth that was going from strength to strength. Thus Ondekoza was born, and with it (though there were a scant few others doing similar but nowhere as mental stuff) the concept of ensemble taiko—playing Japanese drums in a large group as opposed to the traditional set up where a single drum is used in a small ensemble of other instruments (such as you find in Noh, Kabuki, and so on). In 1981, a disagreement regarding the direction and focus the group was taking led the members to split off and form Kodō, with Mr Tagayasu leaving Sado island, taking the drums and the Ondekoza name, and basically starting over. The group was reborn, and has gone through various incarnations—inavoidable really, mainly because members come and go—and is still active today. If you wanna know more about Ondekoza, the internetz, even wikipedia, is your friend.
In the early 90s, Ondekoza did a Marathon Tour of the US. Wait, a “Marathon Tour?” Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like, they fucking RAN the perimeter of the US. Here’s a poster that was made after their return to Japan following the tour.
You might need to zoom in on the center there to see a kinda wonky map of the US and the course they ran, taking three years to do it. I was studying design at college when they came through my hometown (St Penisblurgh, Flawriduhhhh). I was taking Japanese classes as well, and my Japanese teacher said “you should drop everything and tag along with them for the month they’re gonna be around, I’ll talk to the dean and work it out so you can just turn in your assignments for your classes and not get penalized, I’ll finagle it as a ‘Special Intensive Japanese Language and Culture Study Project’ or something, leave it to me.” Sheeeeit. She made it happen. I had been playing taiko since maybe 8th grade or something, as a close friend was half-Japanese, and his mom founded the Japanese-American Society where I lived, and she decided “You guys pray taiko! Do festibal! Sound good!” Hahaha. Anyway there was some pressure there and I joined maybe a year or two after they started playing (at first it was mostly a family affair, plus two weirdos who claimed to have played with Soh Daiko of NYC though when I had the chance to meet Soh Daiko and ask them, they were like “Who? Ohhh those two annoying weirdos, yeah they came to a few workshops but that’s about it.” Ahem. Anyway. Yeah so I had experience playing taiko. So. I spent three weeks and a bit with Ondekoza, doing everything BUT running with them. I went to elementary, middle and high schools for free performances and workshops. I helped them set up for (and tear down after) those workshops, but also did so for proper concerts in concert halls and such venues. I ate with them, practiced with them, spent just about all day every day with them. At the end, I was so blown away by the whole thing that I had set my heart on joining the group, along with two guys (brothers) from the taiko group I was in (we’d known each other since middle school if I didn’t mention that). My parents flipped their shit! I was threatened with disownment and death. See, they’d paid my tuition and rent while I was studying design. For me to decide to give everything up and walk away from that, when I was like two months from graduating? Haha, yeah, looking back now I can totally see why they were so pissed off. But at the time, it was a huge letdown. In any case, life went on, and 25 years or so later, the chance to spend time with Ondekoza presented itself, and I jumped on it faster than a herd of Drumpf supporters on a box of free MAGA hats.
I’m sorta active on instagram, and follow the accounts of the current (and a few former) members of Ondekoza. Around February I saw posts showing them on a small tour of the US, mostly in central northern states. The flood of memories and nostalgia was sudden and nearly overwhelming. It was like I was seeing the same situations I participated in back in the early 90s all over again. Same situations, same vibe, same atmosphere. Whoa. So I started a conversation with one of the members, told him my background, and one thing led to another and I found myself heading to the asscrack of Saitama Prefecture for a three-day stay with the group, not as a special guest or anything like that, ohhh no, I clearly said “put my ass to work, no special treatment, and I’m cool with running so don’t you worry about that.” (I’ve chiseled my 1km average down to around 4:30, and have no freakin idea how that happened). So last Friday at 06:30 I boarded the express on my local line here and began the 6-hour, nearly 600km journey to The Middle Of Nowhere.
I arrived at just past one in the afternoon, had lunch after some brief introductions, and then it was prep prep and more prep for an annual open-house-slash-memorial-festival they hold at their HQ, which is an old, but not that old, very small, ultra-super-hyper-rural “branch” elementary school building that hadn’t been in use for a number of years thanks to an ageing society and an outflux of people from the area. Beautiful place, in a beautiful mountainous area. But two days prior, they had snow when a cold snap swooped down from Siberia. Check this shit out:
Sakura and snow. Unreal. Anyway. They were worried that either the weather wouldn’t cooperate or they wouldn’t be able to drain the field after the snow melted, but in the end everything worked out and it was Game On! When I said I told them to put me to work I meant it, so when they asked me to do something or help someone out, I did it immediately and to the best of my abilities. Setting up flags on 4m-long freshly cut lengths of bamboo, climbing on top of their main gear-hauling truck and setting up the backdrop curtain (the same curtain I helped set up in theatres and venues back in the 90s!!!). Cutting out printed lines of text, then laying out a timeline display of their activities over the past year (photo below). Etc etc etc. At the end of the day, over dinner (where you have to use utensils with your non-dominant hand, the idea being to strengthen both sides and bring balance to your playing, as well as being a real mental workout), the leader asked me a ton of questions. Seems that I was doing things more like a seasoned member of the group, as opposed to the way people who have offered to help out or whatever in the past have done. It was kind of funny but refreshing or reaffirming at the same time to be sorta praised like that. So even before the end of the first day, I had almost seamlessly integrated into the group, and it was more than I could have asked for or expected. Bedtime came sooner than we knew it, and I ended up sleeping on the sofa in the old staff room, which they use as their main assembly room and area for meals. And with that, my first day with Ondekoza came to a peaceful end.
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