11.06.2007

Sunday Fun

J and I left breakfast and lunch on the table with a note for the younger siblings and S who were sleeping when we tiptoed out the door at 8 a.m. to go to a musical instrument fair in Yokohama. Getting everyone out the door in time and dragging them to Yokohama would have detracted from fun for the day all around (J would have had to rush through the exhibit so we could get out before the other three broke anything and they would have been grumpy about tagging along when they could have slept in) and increased our total round trip time ("Where's L? OK, now where's N?...."). Our student/sometimes helper and his sister came over in the afternoon to play with the younger kids and the kitten, so they weren't at all unhappy about being excluded from the day trip.

We checked out Xaphoons (handmade bamboo saxophones from Maui), ouds (guitar-like Middle Eastern instrument with beautiful mother-of-pearl inlay and 11 strings), saz lutes and all sorts of unique instruments as well as a plethora of mainstream instruments and accessories. J was most impressed with the contra bass saxophone in this photo. There are apparently only four of them in Japan and this is the only privately owned one. The other three belong to various symphonies of bands. She was ecstatic when the people at the booth kindly encouraged her to play the monster sized sax. She actually managed to play a song from her brass band fall concert program, but it was hard to get the sound on the video of my cell phone as the very large conference center was filled with booths of other visitors sampling instruments and the low frequency output of the huge instrument couldn't compete with the din of clarinets, trumpets, alto saxophones etc. She had a great time.

We arrive home to sit down and play with Koro and her guests who were kind enough to bring Baskin Robbins ice cream.

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