Ochiai

Yesterday was the 4th summer in a row that I have taken part in the Ochiai Park Peace Festival おちあい公園ピースフェスタ(http://ochiai-fes.jp/)   This year however, we had terrible weather.  It rained on and off all day long, including through my demo workshops.  I`ve never sang and played guitar in the rain before! What a day!

I must thank Fumi Ito and her husband Juntaro, who helped make me a makeshift tent out of blue picnic sheets and string.  No I wasnt prepared enough with string, but one of my families who came to support me in the demo class luckily lives next to the park and she rushed home to get us string and scissors and rubbish sacks. Thank you Maki-san!!

  
Note to self for 2016 : pack a tent and be prepared for all weather. 😛

Due to the bad weather there wasnt many people attending the festival so it wasn`t such a good day for promoting OMT.  But in the end it was quite an experience. Hazel and Rose still enjoyed themselves, and got very wet and muddy – they were just like uk festival goers, caked in mud and looking very dishevelled indeed. LOL.

Juntaro Ito, apart from being good at building rain shelters, is also very good at taking photos and he took these nice shots for us.  Thank you so much.  So many of them captured me making strange expressions and poses.  The ones below are the least embarassing of the batch.

Fumi and my husband Tsuyoshi kindly helped support the workshop.

That’s me, playing through the rain. ‘Hello Everybody’.

We all got up and moved around to ‘Dance with Me’. Fumi is getting on down 🙂

Large movement songs, where we all stand up and move and dance around, are my favourite.

We got the egg shakers out and sang the traditional Ghanaian song ‘Obwisana’.  My youngest daughter Rose (2) found a nice seat on my lap ….

Hazel (5) and Yoshi (4) liked taking part together.

My husband, Tsuyoshi, accompanied me on guitar for ‘Me, You, We’ and ‘Dance with Me’. The festival was very loud with music coming from many different places, so it helped us to have some acoustic guitar to boost our sound.

For ‘One little Owl’ I used the singalong storybook to present the song. I thought it would be a good experience for people to see us ‘singing’ instead of ‘reading’ a story.

Hazel (5) didn’t like getting wet. The friendly yoga ladies from the next workshop slot were very sweet and held umbrellas over our music class participants to keep them dry. They practiced ‘Brain Yoga’ (I must find out what that is ….)

We finished with an upbeat version of ‘Shady Grove’ with lots of la, la, la, du, du, du verses so every one could join in.

Once we finished I thought oh dear, everyone must be so miserable and wet. But my number one fan gave me a big hug. Thanks Rose!