My First Live Show! Also, a Picnic, Hike, and Road Trip

I had a pretty busy week with class projects, practicing on my own for my upcoming live shows, rehearing with my groups and also doing all of the fun and random in-between activities. Monday of this week, I was feeling pretty down in the dumps about a girl I had been interested in, but things didn't quite work out how I was expecting. I didn't grab any photos, but to clear my head so that I could actually stop thinking about the situation so much, I hopped on my bike and went as fast as I could towards the first mountain peak that I thought looked cool. I biked for about 40 minutes, the first part through the city before hitting a fairly steep small mountain road that took me through some small towns as I went up a valley. I eventually ran out of energy and coasted back down the mountain road while the sun was setting, and then met up with my friends at a restaurant for some Indian food!

Tuesday the weather was also great, so my friends invited me to go on a river picnic with them. I was hesitant since it meant skipping class, but I hadn't skipped one class the entire semester and didn't have anything pressing going on in class, so I took them on on the offer. We grabbed burgers from a Japanese chain, Lotteria, and found a nice grassy spot on the side of Kamo River. It was a decently hot day but we had a refreshing breeze the entire time, and it was pretty wild to look up to see multiple hawks hunting for food along the river. These friends were all from my history class: on the right, Gibson from Utah, USA. In the middle, Mana from Japan, and finally on the right Harry from Hong Kong.

After that, the week progressed as normal. I was practicing my bass for at least 2 hours every day on average, if I had to guess. On Saturday, I hiked Mount Hiei again with my friend Shiyou! This time, we started from a point near her house, so the entire hike duration was much shorter than the other time with my friends, taking us only 5 hours total to hike up, down, and eat lunch at the top. During the hike, we talked a lot about relationships and our experiences, present and past, and it was relaxing for me to share some of the struggles I had been facing with dating since coming to Japan with my Japanese friend, and hear her thoughts from a woman's perspective. During our hike, we passed some funny looking faces that previous hikers had constructed out of stones and sticks.

After the hike, I biked home and took a cold shower, and then prepped myself for my first live show that evening! I was both excited and nervous, but told myself I had practiced these songs too much to be that worried about messing up that badly. Also, I was just performing with friends for my club, so the pressure really wasn't that high at all. The first two videos are from my first group, where we covered the Japanese city pop artist Yamashita Tatsuro. The first video is "Christmas Eve", and the second one is one of his most famous songs "Sparkle". I couldn't replicate the bass line exactly due to my current skill level, but I decided to just have fun with it and rock it out in my own way. This group consisted of myself on bass, my friend Chase on vocals and keys (Chase is from Utah and lives in my same dorm here) and then my friend Shijin on drums (Shijin also lives in my same dorm, and was the person who invited me to the Hinataboko club!). These bass lines were pretty simple to play, so I wasn't too stressed about playing them.

However, I was pretty stressed about my second performance group, which was covering a JPOP girl band group named Silent Siren. The song we were playing is called "Fujiyama Disco", and the bass part was by far the toughest I had to learn for the groups I joined for this round of live shows. The part featured two different slap sections and a pretty quick tempo. I was pretty nervous starting the song at first on stage, but after I saw my friend Kai, who is a fourth year in the club and my best buddy there, jumping around in the back of the room, I was able to relax and just have fun playing music! I am extremely grateful towards Kai, because not only can he speak good English with me to help me out when I can't understand what is going on, but he has gone above and beyond in making me feel welcomed and appreciated in the club.

The Silent Siren group was Kanade on guitar, Mahiro on vocals, Chase (agian) on keys, and Izumi on drums. After the evening of live shows ended, Kai invited me to an izakaya for socializing and drinking with some of the band members, so I gladly went along! We had a blast talking about our favorite music and bands, and of course Kai had to go and ask me if I thought anyone in the club was cute. Well, the one girl I did have a little crush on had a boyfriend, so oh well. We all got pretty tipsy and missed the last train home, so I ended up walking all the way back to my dorm which took about an hour and a half. Luckily, my friend Yota also lived near me, so we walked most of the way back together and kept each other company.

The next morning, Sunday, I woke up pretty late, maybe around 11 or so. I got up, showered, made breakfast, and then took a rental scooter downtown to the meeting location for a road trip! A friend I had made about two weeks back, Zenji, messaged me on Instagram a few days prior asking if I wanted to go on a car trip up to Lake Biwa in Shiga. I had nothing going on that day, so I said I'd love to join. To be honest, didn't even know exactly who I was talking to at the time, since most Japanese people don't put their faces in profile pictures or have any posts at all on Instagram. But once Zenji made it to the meeting spot, I immediately recognized him and remembered where we had met - at a club! It took forever for all of the members of the trip to arrive, but once they did we all grabbed Shake Shack burgers for the road (overpriced horrendously for the quality in my opinion) and went to the top floor of a parking garage to load into the rental van!

We drove out of Kyoto, and through the mountain pass towards Otsu, the city next to Lake Biwa. While cruising down the side of the lake, we stopped at a temple for some pictures and a leg stretch break. We continued onwards until we made it to our destination: a children's park on the beach of Lake Biwa! There were some pretty crazy playground fortresses that we tried out for a while, before heading to the beach and skipping rocks on the lake. We stayed until the park closed, and walked out together while the closing song was playing, which has a familiar melody but I just couldn't remember what it was from.

To finish off the car trip, we drove up to the top of Mount Hiei on the Lake Biwa side (which was funny because I had been there two days in a row at this point) while dusk set in, and enjoyed the stillness of the mountain and the lights from the city on the lake. Afterwards, we drove down to a ramen shop and all dug in, not having eaten for about 8 hours at that point. Thankfully Zenji dropped all of us off at our houses before returning the car, which saved me both time and money from having to take the subway home afterwards. Zenji said he would be planning more events in the future, so I'm looking forward to joining!