On Friday night, we had a staff New Year's party and went out to a Korean restaurant about a minute walk away from our school. It was quite fun and there was lots of yummy food (plus it made me remember a few things from Korea...if I ever crave Korean food -- I know where to find it! :P)
Saturday I just spent doing a few things I had to catch up on, and then Sunday morning I headed off to Kobe for the rest of the weekend. Actually, on Saturday night I found out that the musician I enjoy was doing a street live Sunday afternoon in addition to a live on the Monday night, so yay, bonus for me! When I got into Kobe, I dropped off my things then wandered around for a while looking at various things. In the afternoon I found my way to the location where he and another musician were doing their joint street live. They were both quite good, but the one drawback was the wind made it rather chilly to be standing out there. After the 3rd set it started to rain a little bit and a policeman showed up to shut them down saying they were a little too loud and blocking an entrance (even though there were some of those announcement cars that went by that were about 10x louder than they were and they weren't actually in front of an entrance to anything...) But anyway....it all turned out alright as after a long discussion with each other and a couple other people who showed up, they decided to move the location of the live to a café a little ways away from where we were. So, we headed off that way (there were about 6 of us...2 being the musicians) and found ourselves in a tiny little café which was thankfully nice and cozy and warm and the two of them continued their live. It was awesome! Actually after the live, I talked with the other musician for a while as well, and it turned out that he had studied in the US, spoke excellent English and actually had certification to teach English to middle and high-schoolers although he's working at a company in another city here in Shikoku of all places. Major coincidences! There was also another funny little thing that happened (well actually twice). While at the street live and they were just changing musicians an old man asked me if I was going to sing. Nope! And then a similar thing at the cafe--- when we all walked in and were getting comfortable, the lady behind the counter asked about me as the "female member" of the group and if I was going to perform too, and so they had to explain that I was just there to watch. Funny though, that the same thing happened twice. Apparently I must look like a musician?! ^_^
After the little live, I headed off to Osaka as I really wanted to go to the 3D light show at Osaka Castle. It was actually pretty awesome. The first section was just going through a lit up archway path and looking at lights through the archway.
After that, you arrive at the 'pyramid tree' which cycles through an interesting 3D display (and it's loud!).
If you can't view this video, click here.
Right next to that was what I'm going to call the light ocean. The lights were all set up in a cycle and positions so that they looked like waves coming in and going out. Pretty cool. And as you walked past that, you actually walked over some of those lights on a glass pathway, so the feeling was like you were walking on top of the ocean...
If you can't view this video, click here.
Next, you arrived at what is probably the main attraction of this event. The area where you can watch the 3D display that's projected onto the castle. It was about a 10 minute long display and it was AMAZING!!! It also had sound too and I'm really glad I took a little video, because it's kind of hard to explain...not that the video really does justice to seeing it live though...
If you can't view this video, click here.
The final display at this event was a musical fountain/light show. They timed the fountain and lights to various classical music and it was pretty cool, although it was a little hard to see from the position that I was in. Nonetheless, a pretty sweet event altogether.
If you can't view this video, click here.
Monday morning, I decided to go check out Mount Rokko, as I'd heard it was a fairly nice place and had an awesome view. It didn't take too long to get out there, but once I got to the top, it felt COLD! And, guess what?! There was snow up there! Not a lot, but it was the first snow I've seen this winter (and quite possibly the only...) There was indeed a very nice view, but the wind was BRUTAL! So after spending a few hours up there, I headed back down into Kobe and cozied up with a nice warm drink in a café.
By the time I got myself warmed up again, it was time to head out to Monday night's live (lucky for me it started rather early in the evening). This live was a combination of three different singers: ヨシダヒロキ, FASE (the two I'd seen Sunday afternoon), and Tyotti. They each had their own unique style of singing -- I won't say to much about ヨシダヒロキ as you've heard lots about him from me already, but FASE (he got made fun of a lot because he wants his name pronounced as 'face' but the way he has it spelled it's not really like that in English and in Japanese they'd pronounce differently as well) has kind of a mellow, relaxing style and Tyotti's style is kind of energetic and he does some really cool things with a LOOP machine. And of course they all sang a song together at the end. I really enjoyed all of the music that night. After they were finished singing I actually saw literally all of the other people that had been at the café the previous afternoon, talked with a couple and talked with the musicians for a little before I had to head off to catch the last bus of the evening back to Takamatsu.
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| Tyotti, ヨシダヒロキ, and FASE |
Not too bad of a weekend at all. I may be having way too much fun, but there's no way that could be a negative thing at all! ^_^
For more pictures from this long weekend, click here.
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