I bought a clarinet at the end of January, which was a huge financial blow.... my wallet still hurts. It was sort of a betrayal, I worked all year, left me with enough cash to either return to Venezuela and visit my family or buy a new clarinet, I am a jerk so I bought a new clarinet. However, this instrument is not new at all, as a matter of fact it is a 1964 R13 buffet so it is just 50 years old this year. I came to japan to study engineering but it seems my clarinet chops, which were retired since I entered the university hold up quite well here. I joined the University brass band and along it we got to do an inter-university concert called the niigata student wind orchestra, I asked the whole reason for making this in the first place, our technical university has a severe lack of women and the other universities are mostly women so they just want to hook up, music is merely a stage for it. I am the first foreigner to ever participate in this it seems, though I had notoriety I did not have much of anything else. As usual, all I have going for myself is being skilled and not Japanese around here.
As I said before everyone's main goal was mostly hooking up or just trying to be popular with the ladies, in the other hand, I just did as usual, practice get everything to speed and well, because no one else gave much of a fuck I slightly regretted it. Until I saw in the questinnaires they handed out during the concert, clarinet was the most popular option(even if I was not allowed to do an ensemble, which other parts got to do) so my effort had some meaning to it after all.
My new clarinet
clarinet group at niigata student wind ensemble.
In other news, I got a gig of sorts after that concert, playing at one of the other universities; graduation ceremony, easy money I guess. best part is we got to play in the fanciest place in the prefecture.
Stage from the modern hall
Backstage had signatures from old performers, this one caught my eye.
Last but not least, I started using twitter now, got a bunch of followers after the concert.... now i gotta cater to a Japanese audience.
