A Night of Music

One weekend, while I was strolling along my residing city of Kuramae in Asakusa, I happened to stumbled upon a Jazz bar, which I thought was very strange but I have always wanted to go to a Jazz bar since arriving to Japan. Now that I was aware that there was indeed a Jazz bar within walking distance of my house, I decided to invite a Japanese friend that I had grown close to through my program’s various activities. After I asked my friend (named Karen), she wholeheartedly agreed to accompany me to this bar. The day of the long awaited Jazz bar finally arrived and we both met up at the nearest train station and walked the distance to the Jazz bar relatively quickly. When we finally arrived at the bar, the waitress welcomed both of us into the bar and Karen handled the conversation as I stood there stunned at the fact that I couldn’t comprehend a thing that was said within that exchange. The way the floor was set up was that there was three rows of tables and a stage facing the tables for the performers to actually perform.

Since we had arrived to the bar a tad bit earlier than the start of the performance, we had really nice conversation. Since she’s fluent in English, we were able to communicate in primarily English and since she was aware of American trends and politics, it was refreshing to talk to someone about deeper topics rather than the cookie cutter introductions and surface level conversations. We were really bonding through our conversation, and mid-conversation, the performers walked onto the stage one by one and introduced themselves as the program for that night. They also introduced their set list and how they were only there for three performances. That same band would perform three times with 15=30 minute interval in between playing to allow themselves a break. This entire night flew by in an instant as both Karen and I were hypnotized through the Jazz performance. It was truly an amazing performance which was only elevated from each and every players enthusiasm to play. Their passion to play Jazz really bled through their performance which made it that much more entertaining to watch.

Overall, I would love to watch another Jazz performance, but not anytime soon since it was admittedly a little more expensive than anticipated. Below will showcase pictures of the players on stage preparing to play as well as a selfie that I took with myself and Karen.