Yesterday the family came over to the house and then we went down to Jan Z's for lunch. This was the second Big Event for Wakana. None of her family has ever come to visit her in any of her former homes. Of course, none of her former homes was ever much more than a resting place between work or play days. This one is a true home. Understandably she was nervous about their impression.

And that impression was quite favorable. From the ocean view to the large rooms they were very impressed. We all sat in the living room and drank iced tea and talked. Fumito and I shared songs and passed my old guitar back and forth. He tried out my little Martin and my Haruo 12-string. It was a lovely visit.

Way back on my last visit to Tokyo with Fumito we visited one music store that had a taishogoto. I was interested in the instrument and asked several questions. Yesterday he handed me one as a gift! So now I own yet another musical instrument. Sigh.

The taishogoto is about 2 feet long and looks a little like a keyed mountain dulcimer. Mine is black with a gold design painted on the top. There are six strings, two that act as drones and four that are keyed. The strings appear to ALL be tuned to the same note, the larger strings an octave down from the smaller strings. There are twenty-five keys, fourteen white and eleven black, all numbered. The black keys are labeled with a sharp sign (#) but my chromatic tuner seems to indicate that those keys are playing natural notes and the white keys are the sharps.

I don't have a clue how to tune it or if I can change the tuning to fit better into a Western music style. Somehow I don't think it would be a good idea to change the tuning but I will need to play with it some more. It might sound good as a back up to the Yangtse River Shanty, Charley. It has that Asian sound, the high twangy almost off-key sound we associate with the background music in bad movies that feature Asian settings. I will start a thread on the instrument looking for info. A Google search didn't have much help.

Today we put the family on a plane and we will be done with one of the Big Events for this summer. The other one is coming up fast, the Big Trip. We will be leaving in July for Japan, England, New England, Seattle, and Hawaii.