Adventures in a foreign country: ヨシダヒロキ Street Live in Osaka

This weekend was a long weekend for me, and as luck would have it, one of my favorite Japanese musicians, ヨシダヒロキ (Yoshida Hiroki), (who I met last summer in Osaka) was doing a street live on Friday night. So I had to take advantage of my day off and headed up to Osaka for an amazing evening!

On arriving at Osaka station's bus terminal, I was immediately reminded why I like Osaka. There were already people performing their music even though it was still only early afternoon. When I think about Osaka, I always think about all the music that seems to be around all the time. (I must've walked by at least 2 or 3 guitar stores on the way to my hotel, and in the Umeda area, there always seems to be people carrying their guitars and other instruments around with them.

Before the live started I got a nice welcoming wave from Yoshida-san plus a handshake (but what do you call it when its not really a handshake but the 'cool handclasp' and shoulder bump?) (he still remembers me from last year).
That night it was unfortunately raining quite a bit and I forgot to being an umbrella, so I had to stand a little far off to stay dry-but I could still hear, and that's the important thing anyway. Because his music is wonderful!

I really enjoyed listening to him, and he came to chat in between sections (he'd sing for maybe 30 minutes, the another group would do the same and they switched back and forth the whole evening). While we were chatting, I also found out he's going to be doing a live in Takamatsu in September! Yay!!! Plus then he'll have his new CD too! Something else to look forward to! ^_^

After the live, we chatted some more and he told me that he had another live Saturday afternoon, and I should go, and he'll see me there since I hadn't decided what time I was leaving Osaka. ^_-

He also decided he'd take a picture with me, and started with the typical Asian 'V' pose, but then changed his mind and decided on this one:

And also here's a few videos from the live--listening is probably better than watching--like I said I stood a bit far off and I was paying more attention to listening than the videos, so sometimes it points to random things or you get to see my fingers ^_^;