Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Coincidence!

Today.
Triangle Park, Ame-mura, Shinsaibashi, Osaka.

There is a mysterious crowd, hanging out and watching the building with the big TV screen. There are crowd control people, keeping the general public away from the front of the shop there. There are people with t-shirts, bags, etc. from a band called An Cafe, which is a band I actually know and like.

I decide to hang out and see what's going on.


2 PM. There is a rush of excitement from the crowd. The screen is showing an ad for An Cafe's new single (which will be released in August). They play through one entire song in the ad, to much cheering and clapping and exclamations of "kawaii!" ("cute!").



The video ad ends. The video screen slowly raises. (I didn't know it could do that.)

Standing in the second story of the building are the members of An Cafe, wearing cute summer yukata. (For the record, they are all guys. Even the one in pink.) There is more cheering. They talk about their new CD and their next concert in Osaka (which is free! but unfortunately it's also after I leave). Then the screen goes down again and it is over.


...until they come out and got into the van that's waiting. Then there is more screaming and cheering and waving. Also, the distribution of free postcards by staff people.

See? Postcard! (image from their website):


Hooray for coincidence!

Monday, March 26, 2007

A Brief Moment of Culture

As requested - a picture from the CWU trip. This is from a show in Kyoto on Friday, where we saw examples of about six or seven different traditional arts (in 50 minutes...they were very efficient). This particular picture is from the section on Japanese court music, or "gagaku".


If you look closely you might see the back of a CWU student's head. (Maybe. I'm not really sure who everyone is in there...)

*Side note - If you're interested, check out this site, which has a little more information about gagaku, as well as a nice close-up of the impressive helmet the dancer is wearing.