お琴 (Okoto, aka the Japanese Harp)

Mina san, hisashiburi desu ne! Long time no see, everyone! I have been unbelievably busy this past week. Not with anything fun mind you, mostly with just mountains upon mountains of homework. Not to mention we are about to have our second midterm and our first draft due of our RESEARCH PAPERS. Yeah. Research papers. In Japanese. Which we must present in a 6 minute fully memorized speech. Someone just kill me now T__T
On Tuesday, we had another cultural lesson. This time we learned a bit about the Koto, which is the Japanese harp. The koto has been a traditional Japanese instrument for hundreds of years. Like, I think...thirteen hundred years, more specifically. The reason I wrote "Okoto" up in the title... In Japanese, with a lot of traditional words and items you add "O" in front of it to show respect for it. For example, you usually will say "Osushi" instead of sushi, and "Osake" instead of sake. 
The group of us went into the tatami room where there were four kotos. The koto is a long wooden board (made of a specific type of wood, but my teacher didn't know the English word for it), and the underside was hollowed out. There are 13 strings, traditionally made of silk (but not on the ones we used), and the bridges holding the string can be moved to tune it. Like a lot of oriental musical instruments, the strings do not go like "do re mi fa sol la ti do". As the sensei explained to us, the strings of the koto go "do re mi sol la do"...I think...I tried to record the lesson, but Japanese batteries- or at least the inexpensive kind- are really terrible, and my camera died after a few seconds despite the batteries being absolutely fresh. If someone knows if that is wrong about the notes, please correct me! :P But anyway, it's played by strumming the strings, and the player wears rings with pics on them, and they strum alternately one finger at a time. They can get additional notes by pressing down on the strings near the base of the koto as they strum. Our sensei started the lesson by playing a wonderful song called "Cherry Song". We then got our turn at the koto, playing simple songs with music that were labeled using kanji numbers for us to know what string to play. 
I love the sound of the koto and I wish I could have had more time to play with it. I was actually really good. But koto lessons are apparently rather expensive to take, so I don't think I can take them while I'm here. In case you are interested, here is a performance of someone playing the koto, since my camera hates me and only recorded 15 seconds before dying. But this chick is crazy good, so please watch it!

Unfortunately, next week's lesson costs money, so I won't be partaking. They'll actually be teaching traditional sword dancing, which I think would be really cool, but I just can't part with a thousand yen just for one pseudo-lesson. I plan to update tomorrow though, as long as I have enough time, since the day seems like it will be pretty busy. Now it's time for bed! Oyasumi! ^_^

Mary

Location: mah beeeeed
Mood: Pumped （＾ｖ＾）
Listening to: Lullaby of Takeda - Yoshida Brothers http://youtu.be/1TBe5o3Phpw
Japanese for the day: 玉がありませんが、千円があります。大丈夫ですか。Tama ga arimasen ga, sen en ga arimasu. Daijoubu desu ka? - I don't have any coins, but I do have a thousand yen. Is that alright?
(This is something that happens to me a lot- the hundred yen coin is very important in Japan, so I often run out, and I have to constantly ask to pay for small items using big bills. Like today I paid for a chocolate coated banana with what essentially is equivalent to $100 -___-)