that's right. you read that correctly. japanese christian businessmen. i went to a seminar. you can't make this stuff up. my mom tricked me again. she said we're going to hear the president of kangen water give speech and have some lunch. i'm like, well what am i going to eat, you know, vegetarian? and she was just, eat what you can! (and here i thought i was going to get out of it.) turns out it was a seminar presented by the jcb group, not the japanese credit card company, but the japanese christian businessmen. i cannot get over it! had to listen to two people play disney music on piano and viola as background music and it was driving me fucking bonkers! then they switched to "somewhere over the rainbow" (much better on musical saw or theremin) and then i started tuning out. i really don't want to talk about the rest! but i did get some good metaphors about okinawan people/history from the president's speech. he is, afterall, okinawan.

after that we went home and i decided to bust out the shamisen and look at my notes from way back when i tried to tab out "haisai ojisan", but just the main bit when you actually sing the words "haisai ojisan". after looking at what i tabbed, i looked at the shamisen song book i bought. i was completely shocked. those 5 little notes i tabbed were correct! my ear, brain, and hands actually functioned and were correct! that's like guinness world record shit right there folks. it really boosted my musical confidence. but maybe my ear only works in simpler modes like pentatonic scales. the less notes to confuse it, the higher chance of being right. i worked out those 5 notes during downtime at shamisen class. i did it off of memory, not by listening to the song and trying to play along. now i think i'll dare to do that, to listen and try to figure it out, not just off of memory. (when i first got a shamisen in my hands, i just messed with it and swear somehow i accidentally stumbled upon "when the saints come marching in". now that'd be a great one to suddenly break into on shamisen!)

towards early evening, we did the only thing that could make up for earlier: record shopping, serious record shopping. we went to amoeba in hollywood. but i'm not a serious music collector anymore. i didn't have my arms full of cds and completely blow my paycheck on records. in fact, we were only there for about 45 minutes and my total was less than $50. anyone who knows the old me will have trouble believing that. we'll see what happens though if i ever get to shop in the san francisco bay area again. i'll really have to watch it if i get sent up there for training again.