Wednesday - 26th November

Charles: Today was our first full day in Japan. Our plan for today was to meet out friend Steve so he can take us to visit a class at Toho Gakuen which is a music academy where Keiko Abe teaches. The first thing we had to do was figure out how to meet him at Sengawa station. After scrutinising the Tokyo railways map we figured out that we needed to go to Shinjuku to get the Keio line to Sengawa. Emi was going to meet a friend today so she organised to meet at Shinjuku as well.

We caught the train to Shinjuku and found where we had to go and then walked around for a while. We walked outside which was pretty and walked in a big department store called O-dakyu. It was amazingly busy but we saw a great food market all kinds of japanese food being cooked and on display.

Eventually we got on our way to Sengawa and had a fun train ride looking out at the Tokyo suburbs.

Chrissy: At Senagawa there were lots of cool little shops. I went to a 100 yen shop and a bookshop which had Fruits magazine and a Gothic Lolita Bible.

Charles: When we met Steve we had coffee together and happened to meet some of the students at the academy. They told us that the teacher for the class would be Keiko Abe herself! When we went to the academy, Steve had to go to work so he left us there by ourselves. We met all the students and were able to speak to them a bit in Japanese. When the class started we met Abe-sensei who spoke to us in english very kindly rearranged the class so that we could see some cool pieces. The class was a percussion ensemble rehearsal and we got to see the class playing Ionisation (perfect performance, no conductor) and Prism Rhapsody II which featured two marimba soloists who played in perfect sync, again no conductor. Amazing!

Chrissy: There was one girl who was totally weird towards me. She stared straight at me for about 1 minute without blinking and later gave me some rubbish. I didn't know what to do. Then she played a solo part in Prism Rhapsody II which totally blew my mind.

Charles: We left at about 5:30 and made our way back to Shinjuku to meet Emi and her friend Masoto. Masoto was also a student at ANU but is now looking for a job and apartment in Tokyo. We wandered around looking at Christmas lights and bought dinner downstairs in Odakyu. After dinner we said goodbye to Masoto who was going to take an 8 hour bus trip to Osaka overnight (!). We decided to go to Ginza to have a look around.

Chrissy: There were millions of bright lights. It is what everyone thinks Tokyo should look like! We went to a little bookshop and I bought a craft book on tiny cakes made of clay. Everything else was closed. We got back to the hotel around 11pm!