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the eleventh hour

October 16, 2005

I’m writing this on a coin-operated internet computer in the lobby of a vast, glossy, cultureless international hotel skyscraper in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It’s twenty to one in the morning and in exactly eleven hours’ time I will step onto the stage at the Tokyo International Japanese Taiko Contest. Which is crazy. All things considered, I should probably be a lot more terrified than I am. I’m looking forward to it, but there is also a small prayer that I don’t screw up in some gut-wrenchingly audible or visible fashion fluttering about inside my mind.

I have no idea what our chances are, because I have no idea what the other bands will be like, and I’m not inclined to make predictions about this kind of thing anyway. All I will say is that if this was a movie then we’d surely have to win: last week, in our hour of need, the drummer from a big 70’s Japanese rock band turned up on our island like a large, black-clad, poodle-haircutted angel and dispensed rhythm-wisdoms and encouragement. Along with the ridiculous chain of coincidence that took me from seeing the band by chance in a London street four years ago to finding myself living next door to Mr. K, the head of the group, in Okinawa two years later, it would just make such a good story if we won…

I must now go to sleep, but please consider touching some wooden objects, stroking your lucky rabbit paw, shouting some sort of an oath, or any other such thing that might in some way help. Thank you.

posted in Japan1 comment

1 comment:

  1. Posted by mayee — October 18, 2005 at 1:51 pm

    good luck! but most importantly, enjoy the moment…