November 8, 2007

Tone Arms the Yamato Way

I went to see the most amazing show this week. A group from my dojo went to see a performance by Yamato. If you haven’t ever heard of them, they are a Japanese drumming group and they are incredible. If they ever come to an area near you, spend the money on the tickets to go. It is well worth it.

I expected the show to be traditional and rather solemn, but what I got was not that at all. It was downright fun! There were five men and five women who performed; and they got the audience involved every chance they had to do so. The interacting came in the form of making us clap in certain rhythms. They even added some shouts to the repertoire which had me feeling like it was a kiai training camp.

I couldn’t help but notice, while watching the show, how incredibly toned all of the arms were on the drummers. The men and women alike have enviable arms. It got me to thinking that maybe our dojo should look into starting Japanese drumming training. That’s something I could do from a sitting position at least.

I found one advantage to being on crutches when traveling with a group from my dojo. Since I’m unable to climb into the third row, I was able to avoid sitting with the three amigos (If you only would have seen the crazy moustaches I painted onto these guys. . . but then one of them was like "Yeah, sure, you can use my picture BUT NO PHOTO SHOPPING!" Bah! He wrecked all my fun!). Since these guys (in addition to a few others) acted as my body guards and blockers all night so I could maneuver around, (and since two of the three are black belts,) and since they’re all super nice guys as well, I reluctantly post the original squeaky clean smiley version instead.