Raion Taiko Now Offering Lawn Care!

Lawn Care? That's right! This past Saturday, we performed at another graduation party. As usual, we ended with Mushi Okuri, which means to send away the bugs. The piece was traditionally played while walking through the rice fields in Kaga in order to make noise and scare away the bugs and other pests.  As I was explaining this to the audience, the father of the graduate said, "I don't care about the bugs, get rid of the moles!"

"Alright," I said, "Today we'll call it Mogura Okuri." (Mogura is Japanese for mole)

Later, as we were packing up our drums into the van, I noticed a rodent crawling out of the lawn and crossing the street. Upon closer examination, it turned out to be... you guessed it, a mole! I guess it worked. We sent at least one of the moles away. So... should you have a mole problem in your yard, just give us a call, we'll play "mogura okuri" for you and get rid of your moles as well!

Independence Day Parade, Plymouth, MI

A week before the mole episode we got up at the crack of dawn to participate in the Good Morning USA Independence Day Parade in Plymouth, MI.  The parade starts at 7:30 AM and is one of the earliest in the US. As difficult as it was to wake up at quarter to 5, I was grateful for the early start because it got pretty hot later on that day. Mayumi and I played Odaiko for about 45 min non-stop and that was hot enough as it was.

There was a lot of positive response from the spectators along the way and a few shouts of encouragement from people we knew. Overall it went very well. The good news about next year: the parade organizer said they will be moving back the start time.

Here are a few pictures from getting ready for the parade:

Raion Taiko in Concert, This Saturday (Feb 20)

February 20th has nearly arrived.  What's so important about February 20th? We are playing a major concert at Marshall Middle School, in Marshall, MI. The organizers are teachers at the school who are in charge of an exchange program between their school and a junior high in Shiga, Japan.  They contacted me ... gosh ... I feel like it was almost a year ago, to see if we'd be interested in doing a fundraising concert for their students. Although we were still in Japan at the time and the only members of our group were me and my wife, I said we'd do it. Now there are five of us and our new members, Tom, Eileen and Larry, have worked hard to learn new music, as well as teach us a few new songs. 

Last weekend we rented a local auditorium to do a run through on our own, with costumes and everything. (see the picture above) and now, we're ready to go. Friday night we'll pack up our drums and after Saturday morning taiko class, we'll head on over to Marshall for the concert.

We even got a write up in the Battle Creek Enquirer today:

Rhythm of the Far East coming to Marshall

If you're interested in coming out to see us, please take a look at the information on our Taiko Performances page.

We hope to see a lot of people there.