We are on our hometown tour. This year we visited Yamaguchi prefecture, were I, Tomoko Kawauchi am from. We made a big move using two four-ton trucks, one three-ton truck, three cars which carried 17 Yamato members.

After about a six hour drive, we arrived in Iwakuni at around 8 PM. When we left early in the morning, I didn’t quite feel yet as if we were going to my hometown, but when I arrived in the familiar town of my childhood along with my fellow Yamato members, I began to feel a bit anxious. Before I new it, it was the day of the performance.

I put all my feelings into the performance and just as I was really starting to enjoy myself, the concert finished. For an encore we played Yamato’s song, “Hyuga” with local taiko team, Iwakuni Taiko. Iwakuni Taiko is the team I played with before I joined Yamato. Just for today, so that they could stand and perform on the stage together with Yamato, Iwakuni Taiko practiced “Hyuga” hard for the past six months. Their hard work was clear to be seen as they performed with us. They did a great job!

Yamato wishes to thank the members of Iwakuni Taiko and the people of my hometown for their warm reception and applause. We felt an immense joy in our hearts.

The concert was a success. We wish to express our thanks from the bottom of our hearts to all those who were a part of this hometown concert.

For our next hometown concert, we will travel to Kagoshima, the hometown of Saori Higashi. So it’s “farewell” to Yamaguchi and on to Kagoshima!

Hello everyone! Here we are in Kagoshima.  It is Yamato’s first time in Kita-Kyushu!

For this concert we will have a special program! It will be a mix of our former “Shin-On” program and our current “Matsuri” program. So we have a little higher level of excitement than usual this time.

Today’s performance felt longer than any I have done before. And the awareness that most of the audience members were people that I knew made my hands extra sweaty as I performed.

I am happy that we had a chance to give a concert in my hometown and show appreciation to the people who’s support makes Yamato possible. Furthermore, I hope this concert was a good opportunity for people who have never seen Yamato’s concert to meet us for the first time.

Anyway, I can’t help hoping that everyone who came to the concert could enjoy themselves. Thank you to all who attended.

In closing, I’d like to express my deepest gratitude to the many people who helped out to make this hometown concert possible. I’m sure that we caused many inconveniences and extra work for the people around us. Thank you again for all your help.

And I can’t forget my fellow Yamato members and staff, who took five trucks and three cars and made the trip from Nara, all the way to the tip of Kagoshima for this concert. Many thanks to all of you.

The next stop on our Hometown concerts tour is Amami Oshima. The reason for our visit to Amami Oshima is the solar eclipse. The citizens of Amami have organized a special event to commemorate this rare occurrence. It’s called the “Amamii na Project”.

We gave our concert in the hall of the Amami Cultural Center, which holds about 1500 people. Most people on this remote island have probably never heard of Yamato and we wonder if many people will come to see our show. But thanks to the hard work of the event committee, the hall was completely filled.

Even Mr. Yutaka Tsuboyama, who sings the song, “Amami Shima Uta” took part in the performance. It was a big success. For an encore, everyone danced “Rokucho”, a well-known dance from Amami. It was a lot of fun.

Two days later, we enjoyed a performance of heavenly bodies as it was the day of the solar eclipse. A solar eclipse is when the moon comes between the earth and the sun, covering it up, which makes it dark in the middle of the day. Even though Amami is usually a sunny place, it just happened that on the day of the eclipse, it was cloudy. We went to a town near the sea shore called Atta, where they had set up a special viewing stage. Looking up at the sky and wondering if we would actually be able to see anything, we began to prepare for the viewing.

Many people had gathered at the viewing area and as expected, they kept glancing at the cloudy sky with worried looks. At any rate, it was time for Yamato’s performance. Hoping that the sound of the drums would not summon the rain, we performed “Hyuga”.

After our performance, everyone sat waiting impatiently for the show in the heavens, and then, it began. “It’s going! It’s going! The sun is disappearing!” The sky was cloudy, but we could still clearly see the sun. Little by little the sun began to disappear. Because it was cloudy, we were actually able to watch with our naked eyes. The moon steadily continued to cover the sun. You could hear the quiet excitement all around, the sound of the waves breaking on the shore. At 10:57 AM, a gust of wind, all around it is as dark as night!

“Amazing” “Wow!” quiet voices filled with deep emotions and awe could be heard all around us. For Yamato members as well, it was our first eclipse experience and we were very excited to see it. It was almost as if time stood still. We could hear the sound of the waves, the voices of the people around us, the wind blowing, but it all seemed to be coming from far away…

Only a few minutes later, the moon began to move out of the way and Amami Oshima mid-day light returned. The sound of the waves grew louder, as did the voices of the people around us and we began to feel the heat of the sun again.

It was our first time to experience a full solar eclipse, and it may well be our last as well. It is the kind of thing one does not get to experience very often and we are very grateful to the people of Amami for inviting us to share it with them.

Thank you very much.
Thank you to all the people who took such good care of us.

We’re here at Amsterday, Schiphol airport! From here we’ll get on a bus to Cologne, Germany and begin our 2nd 2009 Yamato Europe Tour.

Today we are unloading. We are at the Cologne Philharmonic Theater. It’s right next to the huge Cologne Cathedral. It is the largest gothic structure in the world. It has been designated as a World Heritage site and no matter how many times we see it, it is still spectacular.
This is our fourth time to perform in Cologne. We are excited to be booked this time for 14 performances over two weeks. We’ll get to meet so many people. We’ll perform our best in order to be sure that we will be invited back for a fifth visit to Cologne.

Today is our first concert for our Cologne booking. We also had an interview today. They began by taping our “shime taiko lifts”, which you are probably familiar with. Then they recorded us preparing for lunch. After that we changed into our costumes and performed. It was a great opportunity for the people of Cologne to get to know us on a deeper level!

Yesterday we had our first concert of the second Yamato Europe Tour 2009. We’ll have 14 performances in Cologne altogether. First things first. After two months apart, we were reunited with all of our stage props, and equipment, which we hadn’t seen since the end of May and we noticed a few nicks and scratches. And it’s the day of our first performance! Guess we’d better hurry up and get the paint!

It’s our third day in Cologne. I don’t know if it’s the jet lag or what it is, but we seem to be feeling hungry at the strangest times.
Time for rice balls!! They look white and plain, but in the middle is pork miso!! Homemade by Midori Tamai’s mother, filled with a mother’s love!! “If you’re going on tour, you’d better take this,” she said as she handed it to him.

German audiences are great. They have good manners, dignity and philharmony. They really make us feel at home. The cheers and applause of 2000 people helped us to complete our fourth performance here successfully.