Karaoke, Rehearsal, and Swing Dancing - Dancing and Singing all Day!

Saturday, October 14

After I finished work on Saturday night, my husband came to meet me, and went to karaoke after a longish time of not going. You can set it up where it rates how well you do a song and gives you a percentage, along with showing your previous percentage to compare (if you have an account login). I often get 90 and up, never 100 because it's pretty strict, particularly DAM. Anyway, all of my songs were worse than last time and it bothered me! Singing is one of the only things I truly feel confident that I am good at, but I just wasn't that night. So instead of revisiting old favorites, I tried to learn a new song and technique, a Japanese enka song called "Tsugaru Kaikyou Fuyugeshiki". The Japanese itself is hard enough, but to sing enka, there's this type of technique called kobushi in Japanese, and the closest I could find to what it is in English is either warbling, melisma, or tremolo. I found that none of these seemed to truly directly translate to kobushi. Anyway, I couldn't do it, but I improved a little, and I'm glad to have a singing technique to practice and a new song to learn!

 Sunday, October 15th

This morning began with Midsummer rehearsal. This is not meant to be a musical, but we have some songs and dances, especially for the fairies (which includes me). Lately these dance we've had to learn for the play, I feel like I'm doing sub-par. I mean I always felt like I wasn't that great at dancing when I was young and taking lessons, but I'm with other people who also haven't taken lessons and dance isn't like their main focus, but they get the dances quickly and I feel like I'm struggling and just ungraceful. It's probably not actually that bad, but I feel like it is. I'm just feel like I'm old and I've gained a bit of weight and feel blah about it. And I don't wanna, so I need to work harder! I want to make my body stronger.

This morning, we went straight into the finale song and dance. Oh that's another thing, singing and dancing at the same time WHILE wearing a mask, I feel like I can't breathe, and I either forget to sing or mess up the dance in the process. But anyway, I totally messed up everything and felt awful. Later when practicing the more difficult Lullaby song and dance (mostly focussing on the dance though) I felt like I was a little better. 

After rehearsal, I had to quickly catch a train and head to a swing dance event located between Yoga and Futakotamagawa stations. I went to this one before, and it was really chill and lots of fun! This time there weren't so many people and about an equal number of leads and follows, so I was dancing non-stop for a while. One guy came who I guess used to come often, but hadn't for a while. I've found that (me included) a lot of the long time swing crew and slowly trickling back into dance after covid. We chatted for a bit because he knew English well and lived in both the US and Australia.

Then I went to meet my friend in Kawagoe for a festival, but that will be in a separate blog post because I took so many pictures!

Fun with Choom, Rehearsal, Swing Dancing and Friend-Making

 Monday October 3rd

I got to see Choom! We walked by the salon she get's her hair done at and saw another friend there getting her hair done, so we dropped in to say hi. What are the chances?? Also, one time I was randomly walking by there alone, and the hairdresser literally ran out and told me my hair was cool and he wanted to have me hair model sometime, and I was like OK, actually my friend is one of your regulars 😄 Anyway, Choom came to my place, helped me organize my disaster of a room a little more, and then we wandered around and did a mini photo shoot, and had a long chat about life while on the swings at at park. The kinmokusei were just past their peak of full bloom.

 Sunday October 10

This was quite an eventful, fun Sunday! Husband was in Osaka with his band, so I tried to have fun anyway. It started out with rehearsal for Midsummer, and I helped our new fairy learn her part in the songs, and we practiced the dances a bit. After that, we went for lunch and drinks at a nearby Izakaya with lots of fish. I was in a really good mood, and I was having so much fun I didn't want to go, even though I had a swing dance event from 3. 

Tomato hai

Table charge food. The fish is shishamo which I have gotten used to eating, even though it has a head and eyes

It just landed like this. Lucky, right?

I ended up leaving right on time to make it to swing dance!  I went to this monthly event before, recently. In fact, I think that this event, pre-covid, is where I met my best friend Mo! Anyway, I was a bit self conscious about smelling like izakaya, but since I was a bit tipsy at that point, I was fine, and jumped right into that prime dancing mode without the awkward warm up time. 

There was a jam session for people who came from afar for this event. There were a few people from Tochigi, other parts of Japan, one guy from abroad. I figured swing people already knew me, so I was safe, but the cute blue-haired, super amazing lead girl pushed me forward, because it ended up being kind of a foreigner jam, so I didn't argue, cuz I'm a Leo and get to be the center of attention, and then I get to dance with everyone 😁 Right before this, I was asked to dance by a Japanese swing-dancer guy I hadn't met before. After the jam, we danced, and he was amazing! Then, he asked for a second dance, which my proud self was glad to accept, that this super awesome dancer actually wanted a second dance with me?! I talked to another guy after, and then we danced and he could kick so high when we did Charleston, I was like, my old ballerina skills better come back and beat this man's kick! The funniest thing was we were all speaking only Japanese during the event, but actually, they both knew really good English! I didn't find that out until later, when I met another cool Canadian girl who was new to Japan. I am glad that they spoke Japanese to me at first though! I want to have more chances to actually use Japanese, you know living in Japan and all, and most people are very quick and eager to try to speak whatever English they know, which often is not a lot, so it makes it hard to get to really get to know people. For me, personally, at least. I'd rather that you dive in with Japanese, I follow the best I can, which is pretty decent, and getting better, then if I'm reeeeeally lost, I will let you know, and then, we can try to figure out the English. I don't want to just be an English language partner, I want friendship, no matter what language we do it in!

Anyway, after the event, one of the guys finally invited me to the after party! I finally had my chance to break into the swing friend group. They now knew I know enough Japanese to communicate, and that I'm truly interested in swing and permanently gonna be in Japan. It all starts here, and man, was it a good start! We went to grab some craft beers at a local brewery. I talked a lot more deeply to everyone in English and Japanese.  After the brewery served their last orders, we ended up on the way to the event leaders' home after stopping to grab some drinks to bring with us. They cooked us dinner, and I talked and listened and learned a lot about the swing community.

Here's to some more fun theatre rehearsal and swing dance adventures!

Which will be this weekend...and a festival...will be posted here! 😉